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Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

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Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#651

Post by tredre3 »

tptacek wrote: post #288
satnhak wrote: post #272

Come to a country with universal healthcare (England) and realise that if you work then you're paying 5x the market price for the worst healthcare imaginable. MRI scan - we don't know, one month wait, maybe two. Operation - are you going to die tomorrow with out it? No, ok then that could be years. You need to pay rock bottom wages to doctors to make it work, so guess what all the good doctors leave for private healt…

One of my favorite health care facts: there are more MRI machines in the state of Massachusetts than there are in the entire country of Canada.

I know that you tend to be balls deep in American Exceptionalism, but the truth is that reasonable countries with reasonable health care average 15-30 MRI machines per million inhabitants.

America is a wild outlier, and unless you have data to back that those machines are put to good use, I'd trust the rest of the world who decided the sweet spot is 15-30 mer million, not 60.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#652

Post by s1artibartfast »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #585
s1artibartfast wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many hospitals are run by non-profits or the government (e.g. universities)

How do the salaries of administrators at such hospitals compare to for profit hospitals? How do they compare to non-medical institutions of similar size? Without a lot more information, your statement doesn't mean anything.

My point was that if it is all Hollywood accounting to scam consumers, then the nonprofits and government hospitals are doing the same thing.

Administrator pay scale is completely irrelevant to the point

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#654

Post by ideashower »

flenserboy wrote: post #643

impose universal health coverage & the jockeying will commence to see who is in charge of it. medical & diet fundamentalists will rejoice at the opportunity to seize control & force everyone to take certain drugs, eat or not eat certain foods or types of foods, exercise a particular way, surrender their organs at a particular age, or whatever else their hearts desire for everyone else. there have been so many rabbit…

Source on... any of that?

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#655

Post by analog31 »

pstuart wrote: post #628
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the reason hospitals have to charge so much is that they take massive losses on uninsured people in emergency rooms. Medicare for all means they don't have to treat anyone for free.

It also means that emergency rooms can be used just for emergencies and ongoing and preventative care can happen in clinics. Cheaper to operate and preventing preventable emergencies lowers the load.

Here's what happens in my locale. If you show up in an ER, they quickly decide whether you need emergency care, or regular urgent care, delivered in the same facility. And medicine is anything if not statistical, so they know the amount of each kind of service that they need to plan for.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#656

Post by dbbk »

trollbridge wrote: post #634
GratiaTerra wrote: post #629

There aren't enough Physicians, they don't make much and they all seem to be working 12 hour days but being paid a salary that would equate to an 8 hour day. Doctors see downsides of a universal coverage are mostly about loss of autonomy and increased demand because when care becomes free demand rises along with pressure to expand access without extra staff.

Yeah, having lived under universal care, the dark side of it was atrociously long waits to see a specialist and having a GP who is obviously overworked and barely spends any time seeing you.

If you want to be seen immediately (even when triage determines it not necessary) you can just supplement with private insurance

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#657

Post by AIorNot »

flenserboy wrote: post #643

impose universal health coverage & the jockeying will commence to see who is in charge of it. medical & diet fundamentalists will rejoice at the opportunity to seize control & force everyone to take certain drugs, eat or not eat certain foods or types of foods, exercise a particular way, surrender their organs at a particular age, or whatever else their hearts desire for everyone else. there have been so many rabbit…

WTF are you talking about dude - we average white collar/blue collar people are so desperate for a unified healthcare system in this country not tied to our (constantly unstable) jobs

We are so desperate that someone murdered a Healthcare CEO - ie resorting to violence

We are so desperate that many is (myself included travel to cheaper countries for dental and other healthcare)

Its a simple calculus but one that is obtuse to conservatives and richer people

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#658

Post by lkey »

flenserboy wrote: post #643

impose universal health coverage & the jockeying will commence to see who is in charge of it. medical & diet fundamentalists will rejoice at the opportunity to seize control & force everyone to take certain drugs, eat or not eat certain foods or types of foods, exercise a particular way, surrender their organs at a particular age, or whatever else their hearts desire for everyone else. there have been so many rabbit…

Standard single payer insurance is not identical to 'seize total control of ever living body in America'. I shouldn't have to point this out.

The attempts by the current republican admin to seize control of certain 'illegal' bodies has caused so so much harm, I'd agree there. But even operating at 10x the nominal level of the past and ICE still haven't been able to exert temporary control over a single American city that resisted them, much less everyone in America.

You should figure out specifically what you are scared of and deal with that, rather than catastrophizing about things that cannot physically happen on any near timeframe.

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#659

Post by magicalist »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #562
tga_d wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general the countries with the highest levels of nationalization also have the most problems with shortages. Do you have any citations for this? I've heard this rhetoric before, but every time I look into it, searching around for studies on google scholar or the web, I can only find studies and reports indicating that health outcomes trend better in countries with more universal coverage. There are think pieces…

One way to begin is look for studies on wait times or procedures of a given type per capita.

Like this one: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...

> Among patients undergoing cancer surgery, waiting times to initiation of first-course therapy have steadily increased since 2012, particularly at high-volume academic centers and among patients referred for definitive care. With continued consolidation and expansion of health systems, system-level strategies are urgently needed to monitor and mitigate delays in the delivery of surgical care for cancer.

> Delays were more pronounced at academic compared with community hospitals and among patients referred for care. Predictors of longer waiting time included Medicaid insurance (5 of 6 cancers), lowest-quartile income (6 of 6 cancers), Black race (5 of 6 cancers), increased travel distance (4 of 6 cancers), care in the West region (6 of 6 cancers), and treatment at academic institutions (6 of 6 cancers). Receipt of robotic operations was linked with longer waiting times for nonbreast malignancies (5 of 5 cancers).

Re: Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

#660

Post by KZerda »

0xy wrote: post #382
dbbk wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government provides your police force and fire department. Why not?

Look no further than the UK, with 24 month waiting lists, the shunning of experimental treatments (many high profile kill decision cases) and skyrocketing costs. In the UK, a brain surgeon is paid less than the General Manager of a single Buc-ees Gas Station location in the United States. Absolutely diabolical.

The US, we ration too. We just do it in the most cruel way possible where the working poor doesn't get access to health care, because they can't afford it, and just lives with preventable and easily treated conditions until they die sooner and more miserably.
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