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I had a health crisis in France

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Re: I had a health crisis in France

#141

Post by geomark »

kgwgk wrote: post #127
rapala wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I-don't-want-to-pay-for-others != I will not insure my health. But it is. Insurance works by pooling money from a group of people where only few are going to use it. >People never ask "So, what does this drug/treatment cost?" but rather "Do you accept my insurance?" Which makes sense, as survival and physical and mental well-being are humans primary needs.

Health insurance is not really insurance, though. Not only "a few" are going to use it. If auto insurance worked in the same way people would expect it to pay for oil changes, new tires, and other car maintenance expenses.

Was wondering when someone would say this. It always boggles my mind reading the discussions about "insurance". It's what Americans have become used to calling insurance even though much of it isn't insurance at all.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#142

Post by srean »

alkonaut wrote: post #131
vacri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem to solve, though, is getting money back out of medicine. American doctors get paid ridiculous amounts more than doctors in other developed nations. If you want affordable medicine, then medical salaries are going to have to take a hit, so you can afford more staff overall. An example of how much money is in the system: I was talking to a nurse in the US whose adult son had a series of mental i…

US doctors are paid more because they take risks (they have expensive education, handle expensive treatments etc) If an MD cost zero to get, doctors would still be paid well, but not crazy well.

I will believe it a little bit more once the number of people who has the right to practice is not artificially capped.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#143

Post by jdietrich »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #108
iraklism wrote: post #30

I still giggle a bit every single time one of these EU healthcare stories pops up. It highlights a core difference between one of the two most "advanced" places in the western world. For us Europeans, we don't even think that free healthcare, free education ( university included ) , and free state support when things go wrong is a right. It is a as essential as a core human function as breathing and blinking. We don'…

>> free education ( university included ) keep in mind that this is not a given in all EU countries. In the UK (still an EU country, though not for long) one has to either get a student loan from the British state, or cover their own tuition fees.

The British student loan system is essentially a graduate tax in disguise. You only repay 9% of your income over £21,000, deducted automatically from your wages in the same way as income tax. The loan is cancelled after 30 years, regardless of how much you have repaid. Young people understand that it's not a "debt" in the conventional sense of the word.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#144

Post by fiatjaf »

jdub wrote: post #74
iraklism wrote: post #30

I still giggle a bit every single time one of these EU healthcare stories pops up. It highlights a core difference between one of the two most "advanced" places in the western world. For us Europeans, we don't even think that free healthcare, free education ( university included ) , and free state support when things go wrong is a right. It is a as essential as a core human function as breathing and blinking. We don'…

There's another way to look at it that I don't think the USA will be ready to understand any time soon: Universal health and education are (key parts of) freedom. You can even put a market spin on it: None of the risks involved in starting a small business in Australia have to do with health care for myself, or for people who might consider joining my small business as employees. I've never felt as if I'm giving up a…

That impression probably comes from the fact that you're not on the payer side of the bills, you're always on the receiver side.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#145

Post by cel1ne »

antirez wrote: post #21

This is normal on all western Europe states. However France has very high standards in general about health care and is regarded as one of the best systems. I think it's time for US citizens to accept that most of Europe has better life expectancy, lower infant mortality than US, and to be ill is not a financial tragedy. Moreover the treatment that a low-income and high-income citizen receives is very similar, so the…

It's not just that the costs of getting healthy are taken care of.

Here in austria free, yearly "health checkups" are offered to you by every doctor. Meaning, when you go there because of a cold, he will tell you that you ought to do a checkup every year, which include blood tests, psychological screening for alcoholism and other individualized tests like prostate cancer for men.

It's just convenient to use the system. I even had multiple MRIs and dozens of XRays after minor sport injuries just to be sure.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#146

Post by maxerickson »

ThomPete wrote: post #121
tomp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obama was going in the right direction Can you expand on this? I've heard many critics of Obamacare (that say it doesn't actually work that well in reality), and in general, it seems that it was only tackling a part of the problem. In Europe, you usually have a single payer, single buyer and single executor (or at least each of those is very regulated, so there's less chance for exploitative monopolistic behaviour…

The primary issue with the system before Obama was two-fold. 1) Too many young people didn't insure themselves meaning that the relatively low cost of having them as insured couldn't be used to balance out the higher cost needed for later on in life. This was putting the primary burden of the cost on the older generations. By forcing everyone to pay the idea was that you could even out the cost. 2) Pre-existing condi…

1) Too many young people didn't insure themselves meaning that the relatively low cost of having them as insured couldn't be used to balance out the higher cost needed for later on in life. This was putting the primary burden of the cost on the older generations.

This shouldn't be a significant problem. In an actuarial sense, the burden of the cost should largely be born by the party with the risk. If you aren't doing that, it isn't insurance. If you are providing healthcare instead of insurance, you don't pay for it by taxing poor young people (those are the young people opting out of the system, not the wealthier ones).

So the premiums the young people weren't paying should anyway only be high enough to cover the cost of insuring them.

The real problem with cost in the US healthcare system is that the majority of people have a third party payer that will cover almost anything, so they don't care whether prices are remotely fair or not. The "agency problem".

We should stop making it advantageous for employers to provide insurance (I'm sure someone will be outraged by my supporting this opportunity for employers to lower compensation, I don't care, I paid out of pocket for 2 CT scans last year and know our healthcare prices are nonsense).

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#147

Post by snowy »

markharris99 wrote: post #51
madaxe_again wrote: post #23

I was hospitalised in France last year - and coming from the UK, which has a social healthcare system too, I was likewise blown away by the quality of care. I was staying in a remote house, miles from the nearest village, an hour from the nearest hospital. After about four days of continuous vomiting in 40 degree heat I caved and called a doctor, in the hope of getting a prescription for antiemetics over the phone. I…

> I had a similar experience earlier this year in the U.K., and the contrast was significant - in the U.K. one feels like an irritation and an inconvenience. "Bloody hell, what's a patient doing here? This is a hospital!". I'm 50. I remember what London was like way before Labour first got into power. Lets look at today. Immigration is way out of control. London has probably 10 million people? It's busting at the sea…

If doctors and nurses are at breaking point, its down to them been underfunded and under resourced. Blaming this on immigration is unhelpful and wrong!!

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#148

Post by tim333 »

I note the president elect has said in the past:

>"We must have universal healthcare...I'm a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses...

I know he flip flops all over the place but maybe if people lobbied, something could be done.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#149

Post by jdietrich »

witty_username wrote: post #122
brianwawok wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now refine that down to college educated nonndrug using people. I suspect it would be even more narrow.

Could downvoter(s) explain?

He's literally asking us to disregard the health outcomes for a particularly vulnerable section of society. That strongly implies that these people aren't worth factoring in to our evaluation of a healthcare system, that their health simply doesn't matter.

On a purely statistical level, it makes very little sense. Does he believe that poverty and drug addiction are uniquely American phenomena? Does he believe that the healthcare system has no impact on the number of people with drug addictions or chronic poverty-related diseases?

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#150

Post by [deleted] »

markharris99 wrote: post #51
madaxe_again wrote: post #23

I was hospitalised in France last year - and coming from the UK, which has a social healthcare system too, I was likewise blown away by the quality of care. I was staying in a remote house, miles from the nearest village, an hour from the nearest hospital. After about four days of continuous vomiting in 40 degree heat I caved and called a doctor, in the hope of getting a prescription for antiemetics over the phone. I…

> I had a similar experience earlier this year in the U.K., and the contrast was significant - in the U.K. one feels like an irritation and an inconvenience. "Bloody hell, what's a patient doing here? This is a hospital!". I'm 50. I remember what London was like way before Labour first got into power. Lets look at today. Immigration is way out of control. London has probably 10 million people? It's busting at the sea…

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