Why do people insist on mixing up the concept of universal health 'insurance' with health 'care'?

Question

I've noticed that whenever the question of universal health insurance comes up the usual answers are, 'socilism' or 'Canada'. Health insurance is a totally different thing than 'health care'. Private, or employer based health insurance leaves a massive number of Americans uninsured. As we all eventually pay for the uninsured anyway, why not charge everyone something instead of charging a lot of people nothing and everyone else a lot more?

Answer 1

There's a mistaken belief that Canada's health system is free, the fact is that premiums are paid by everyone, it is anything but free.

And it is in dire financial straits, the waiting lists are horrendous, if not demonically cruel as people have to put up with their pain while awaiting their openings.

I live right across the border from the US and when visiting a large medical complex 20 minutes across the border, half of the license plates in the parking lot were from Canada.

The notion that 40 million people in the USA are uninsured is both derived and contrived, based upon the information coming from Census data. It's great political sport to make things sound much worse than they are and to make promises which we couldn't hope to keep. It has becme accepted fact with no more foundation to it than that.

I spent an entire career working in the health care delivery system, all aspects, including management in Medicare/Medicaid and can assure you that the well intentioned goals of our government is directly responsible for creating an out of control escalation of costs that were being satisfactorily met before they began in the middle 1960's. The overzealous politicians who "invented" a crisis which did not exist, grossly underestimated the downstream effects that bureaucracy would bring to the greedy doctors and hospitals.

Let me asssure you that, all over the country, fees for hospitals and doctors dramatically increased the day after Medicare began, and that's the truth of the matter.

So we've unleashed a systemic disease process and it has gone so far that our politicians don't really know how to solve it. Their remedy is to add insult to injury or to attempt to compare the USA, with a population near 300 million people to other much smaller countries who seem to have successful delivery systems, an unrealistic comparison when juxtaposed against all of the other benefits and international responsibilities of the USA.

There's no solution that I can offer because mine don't involve political considerations. But getting government out of the system would be the first volley in a dramatic return to an earlier time.

Answer 2

Yes, health insurance and health care are totally different things. But, usually people looking for "universal health care" are using the term interchangably with "universal health insurance" - meaning, free health care that the government pays for, they don't care how. No copays, no deductibles, no premiums.

Private insurance doesn't leave as many Americans uninsured as you think - and HALF of Americans that are uninsured, are "self insured" BY CHOICE. MOST of them, don't end up regretting it.

The problem is, anything that government gets it's hands on, gets messed up. Do you WANT to live in government housing? Because if you want government health care to be just as great as government housing, advocate it. Government does everything the private sector does, at 3 -4 times the cost, and half the effeciency. And the people that aren't paying for their health costs now, will STILL not be paying for their health costs - as they won't be subject to any of the taxes, not being workers. All government health care, or government insurance (which we HAVE, by the way, Medicare and Medicaid!!) will do, is increase the tax burden on the working class.