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Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

economist.com

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Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#331

Post by guitarbill »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #246

Skeptic's questions: 1. How many are aware that Britain's NHS, if run as well as Spain's healthcare system, would kill 10,000 fewer patients each year due to better treatment? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-world-ranking-... and http://www.cityam.com/270171/nhs-world-class-if-you-ignore-i... (3rd to last paragraph) 2. I can get an MRI in the USA within 3-5 days (sometimes next day), virtually anywhere…

> 2. I can get an MRI in the USA within 3-5 days (sometimes next day), virtually anywhere in the country.

Not if you don't have insurance, like a few million Americans. But fuck those guys, right? At least my MRI is fast!

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#332

Post by Frondo »

conanbatt wrote: post #283
Frondo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like throw-away statements like this almost come out of a different era, like the platform Reagan ran on, "government isn't the solution, it's the problem" or whatever. They're claims that are so simply phrased, people can repeat them without thinking critically about them, but if you do, and start unpacking them, the claims are either wholly unsupported, or unknowable. "Taxes == get fleeced" ... no. Or, at le…

> "Taxes == get fleeced" ... no. Or, at least, not as a matter of course. Maybe some taxes are bad, or unfair, but we can judge each tax on its merits. Sure. I pay private healthcare and i also pay a medicare tax. Im already getting fleeced for a service I don't use. > "Government program provides worse services" ... no. Or, at least, not as a matter of course. Maybe some things the private sector does better? But a…

Paying taxes isn't getting fleeced.

I can tell you feel passionately about this, but your feeling that you're being ripped off by your taxes isn't going to translate well to any sort of workable policy.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#333

Post by soru »

conanbatt wrote: post #196
sykh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The services could be worse but aren’t necessarily worse. It’s foolish to think that any government service is worse than a private one. Also, universal healthcare doesn’t necessarily mean government run.

It's foolish to believe the state is more efficient that private actors, that is just contrary to real life experience.

Like the real life experience of those private Russian mercenaries who went up against the US military in Syria?

Some things governments simply do better; health care is one of them. Denying that fact in the face of the mountain of supporting evidence is nothing but dogma.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#334

Post by toasterlovin »

arcticbull wrote: post #44
ordinaryperson wrote: post #18

Universal health care is a euphemism for the poor and sick getting their medical care subsidized by the wealthy and healthy. Morally, caring for the sick seems like the right thing to do, but it's like when I hear Bernie Sanders call for "free college education": he doesn't mean free, he means the wealthy subsidizing it for others. Universal health care implies just distributed costs, but the focus should be on bring…

There's some serious mental gymnastics going on here to justify that the US spends 2x the next country per capita on health care expenditure and still doesn't manage to pay for all its citizens. Especially when the federal government has already taken all its worst customers (the old) and thrown them into a socialized pool (medicare) without anyone to balance out the risk. Wasn't there a writeup recently that wealth…

Just want to point out that part of the reason for larger healthcare spending per capita is probably that healthcare spending is mostly for services and US GDP per capita is 1.5x most other developed countries (excluding small countries whose economy is majority natural resource extraction). In other words, incomes are higher in the US, so health care is automatically more expensive.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#335

Post by Bartweiss »

mavelikara wrote: post #244
clarkevans wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems the public interest is subordinate to private interests and often times with immoral consequences. This perspective of public vs private interest is rather puzzling to me -- it's more a matter of short-term vs long-term thinking. In the long-term, it's in the private interest of those having sustainable companies to have a broad base of educated and healthy workers to employ. The short-term interest of any…

> In the long-term, it's in the private interest of those having sustainable companies to have a broad base of educated and healthy workers to employ. Immigration affects this calculation significantly. If your long game is to be an attractive destination to healthy educated immigrants, investing in the "land of opportunities" mythology has better ROI than investing in universal healthcare.

> If your long game is to be an attractive destination to healthy educated immigrants, investing in the "land of opportunities" mythology has better ROI than investing in universal healthcare.

Sure, but it's not a dichotomy either. I suspect they both have better ROI than average for government spending.

If you want to attract, say, a young PhD with a spouse and kid, the guarantee of healthcare for the family - even if they change jobs - is a huge selling point. Anecdotally at least, I've known several international students who left the US after college for Canada, France, or England and cited this as a factor. (The ridiculous artificial barriers like "go home to file this form and come back" don't help either.) And with non-open immigration, e.g. the Canadian model, there's no special economic burden to this approach.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#336

Post by AstralStorm »

Kequc wrote: post #284

I've lived in countries that have socialized medicine and ones without and my experience was dramatically different. I was always taught that socialized medicine was better. However I never got half decent care until I bought private health insurance. My whole life I've been on government healthcare plans, across various countries. Imagine my shock when the first time I called my private health insurance provider at…

You will quickly find the limits of private healthcare once a surgery or advanced treatment is necessary. Usually that it is not covered in your plan. Heck, even relatively simple specialist interventions will go beyond coverage.

In many countries they are great at routine care, no doubt, as they're just not overcrowded and that is the main reason for problems in public systems. If you shift all the crowd there... well... they degrade much quicker and worse than public.

So, apples to apples. Fully public vs fully private systems.

You could say compare German system with US system which are almost completely mirror images except German one is many times cheaper.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#337

Post by dnomad »

chimeracoder wrote: post #313
dnomad wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The VA is, on the whole, atrocitous. There are a couple of regions which do relatively well, because the system is federated, but on the whole, it's almost universally considered to be a disaster, even by people who are supportive of the program's existence. Yeah, this is bullshit. The VA and its effectiveness has been studied quite a bit. Its quality has been found to generally exceed the quality of private hospit…

> Its quality has been found to generally exceed the quality of private hospitals. The media and conservatives paint this idea that the VA is "atrocious" but it has no basis in reality. That's certainly one way to summarize the research around the VA, but it's a highly misleading one. It's easy to cherry-pick the metrics on which the VA performs well, but they're not representative of the big problems that the VA has…

Your response to scientific studies that demonstrate the VA actually provides better care than private counter parts is to dismiss them all as dishonest cherry picking. You offer up no studies or data of your own. You have no evidence for your claims except vacuous appeals to personal anecdote. You've somehow reached the conclusion that the entire VA, a $200 billion dollar program that cares cares for ten million of Americans, is "atrocious" based on ... what?

I think this pretty much proves the point.

The point here by the way is not that the VA is perfect. Nobody has claimed that, though you seem to keep insisting that people must admit something they don't claim. The actual evidence we do have shows the VA has problems but still offers better care so I'm not sure how we're "ignoring" anything. It seems like you're the one ignoring the plain facts and have chosen to buy into a convenient falsehood. Until people like you are willing to even look at the evidence -- and the evidence for universal healthcare is overwhelming at this point -- real discussion is pointless.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#338

Post by XorNot »

ajross wrote: post #312
merpnderp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the private healthcare system is immoral, you should take a look at the 100% government ran healthcare system that is the VA. You literally couldn't make up worse things than their administration has been caught doing with little or to consequence. If the VA is the best the US government can do, with some of the most sympathetic citizens, then it is incapable of doing better than our private system.

> You literally couldn't make up worse things than their administration has been caught doing with little or to consequence. I literally could. The scandals you're referring to basically come down to them having been cooking books about care records. Bad, but not exactly in the realm of "literally nothing worse" hyperbole. In fact the VA tends to produce health care outcomes that are well within the range of US citiz…

Also the problems with the VA generally stem from the reality that US politicians "support the troops" right up until they're home and maybe not so enthusiastic about the war anymore.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#339

Post by Clubber »

chimeracoder wrote: post #323
Clubber wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They supplement it, I don't believe they are leaving it, unless they are wealthy and can afford to pay out of pocket because they want to use a doctor that is not participating in the medicare program. Do you have a cite?

> They supplement it, I don't believe they are leaving it, unless they are wealthy and can afford to pay out of pocket because they want to use a doctor that is not participating in the medicare program. Do you have a cite? No, this is wrong. Private Medicare plans fully replace Original Medicare. If you are on a privately-managed Medicare plan, you receive none of your benefits from Original Medicare (the government…

My mother is supplementing her medicare with insurance. GAP insurance is I think what she calls it. I mean I'm sure what you are describing exists, but it's not universal.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#340

Post by ryandrake »

Clubber wrote: post #308
mter wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But some of them truly do offer superior care to a typical private hospital Which ones? Because that has not been my experience at the hawaii facility. From my appointment time being written down on a piece of paper then they send me my actual appointment date a few months later to the doctor being an hour+ late, my personal experiences have been subpar. Add in how doctors/nurses at multiple hospitals do comically…

I would think it would be safe to say that the best VA hospitals are better than the worst private hospitals. I don't think that's a stretch.

I’d love to hear from anyone who actually uses services from the VA whether they’d trade that system for the “pay or die” system the rest of us get.
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