Universal healthcare question?

Question

In the United States I can get an MRI in 4 days. The wait-times for the rest of the world 3-4 months. Also mortality rates are higher in socialized countries. By the time cancer is diagnosed it’s too late. How long are you willing to wait

Answer 1

I believe the right answer is four days but only if I can't pay for it sooner.

The left answer is as long as it taks as long as it's free*

*Free is defined as I paid for it with my taxes and standard of living and someone more productive probably paid more than I did.

Answer 2

In 1995 the Society for Thoracic (Heart) Surgery heard a paper on the delay in heart surgery in Canada as opposed to the United States. It was found that the wait for presented cases in Canada was at least six months longer than in the US. The presenter did not have mortality statistics but did mention that he was aware of some mortalities that resulted.

I was present at the meeting and remember speaking to the speaker about the findings. He was distressed about the situation but given that provincial budgets were set in stone there was little flexibility to treat patients the way they should be treated.

In the US Oregon has tried a version of government funded health care in the Medicaid program by setting coverage levels on a year to year basis with covered services being determined by the level of funding. In a good year more services are included. I believe there is a base level of guaranteed services but I am not sure.

My point is that it is clear from other countries experience that there are some significant costs of government sponsored health care. Waiting lists and politically determined coverage of services are just two of the documented possibilities.

I agree that the level of uninsured is too high but in at least some cases the people involved have chosen NOT to be covered. Do we have the information necessary to tell those people that they have made a bad choice? I would suggest that a choice not to be covered by health insurance may be rational given a person's situation and second guessing that or saying that their choice is just "stupid" is making a mockery of an important issue. For all of those who do feel that you know how to make a better decision for me than I can, you are wrong.

There are ways to deal with this without making government the sole arbiter. See Massachusetts. We are way too early in the debate to decide on a national solution. I would suggest that there are a number of states willing to try out different solutions. Let's see how those work before we throw the baby out with the bath water.

Answer 3

It looks like you've been brainwashed successfully.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births

Remarkably, the United States is nowhere to be found on the Economist's global index of lowest infant mortality. At the other end, our average life expectancy, at 77.9, puts us 40th in the world- after Costa Rica and Cuba.

You may get to a Dr. here but getting an MRI in time is a whole different thing. I have two friends that died of cancer(both with insurance) in the past year because they weren't diagnosed early enough.

Answer 4

I live in Germany where even H. Clinton has once said that the health care system here is a sample of how socialized medicine works.
What would most American say when they had to pay what the germans pay for health care. Cut your paycheck in half. Wait for next year when the government says that the need to cut costs and raise rate because they did not meet cost. Imagine having to go to a doctor to get a recommendation to see another doctor. Imagine having to get a list of doctors to go to because of where you live. Recently in the local hospital a surgeon amputated the wrong leg of a patient, then realizing his mistake he had to remove the other leg. This doctor is still practicing and the patient was awarded a 20.000.00 Euro settlement for pain and suffering.

There are many problems with the American system of health care, but still wealthy Europeans will travel to the states for health care. I do not see the American health care problem a care problem but an health insurrance problem.
What is good in Germany is that everyone has health insurrance. Imagine a 1/3 of your paycheck being for health insurance another 1/3 for taxes. so out of $10.00 per hour you earning $4. but you get to go to the doctor anytime you want and wait in line. The doctors get paid on a point system for what they do. And really care less about you, they care about racking up points. It takes allot of points to get that Benz. So yo get stuff you do not need, medicine you do not need, they learn to work the system more than heal the patient.

Americans should rethink socialized medizine, and not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Answer 5

Are you kidding me? In this country the only people who get help are the extreemly poor on welfare or the extreemly rich who can afford insurance, for example, My family doesn't have insurance because the best and most affordable plan is $1700 per month for premiums. I don't make enought to pay for that and a roof over my head not to mention I would still have to pay 30% out of pocket and it don't cover perscriptions. We are actually moving out of the state so I can get a job with my old company so I can have group insurance. Sadly my whole paycheck will have to pay for my insurance premiums because pay scales are so sad, and I will need a second job to pay for rent/mortgage, and other family expences.
There is nothing wrong with socialized medicine. What we need is more education on how to use it effectively. You can not go by mortality rates because we do not record the stats on our people the same way. We would need a complete breakdown of people on private insurance, people on group insurance through a job, welfare recipients, rich people and all the middle americans who don't have insurance and any other demographic group to come up with real mortality statisics. And that will never happen. Please look into this a little more before you make such a blanket type statement/question.

Answer 6

I hear this a lot in here, but oddly, I never see any kind of link to support your statistics. If Eurpoean standardized healthcare was really so poor there, why would Fox Noose not be televising their protest rallies and demonstrations, demanding BETTER healthcare from their government, especially if the taxes to FUND those terribly ineffecient systems is as high as Republicans (who must own Health Insurance stock to defend the ridiculous system we have in the US) claim it is?

The other argument I've heard in here is, "I make enough money to have good health insurance. I PAY only for what I myself use."
I won't even address the insensitivity of the first part of that statement, the seeming inability to conceive of people in this country who DONT make enough to afford heathcare. And you have ot admit yo've heards this argument yourself, if you haven't USED it yourself. It's a good way to feel on the surface, just the wrong context. I don't agree with entitlement programs either, which is why I am SO against subsidies for Big Oil, Sugar, Tobacco and corporate farmers who are steadily driving family-owned farms into receivership.
Then guess who buys up the land the foreclosed farm sat on?

Damn, off on a rant again.. sorry... Back to the "I pay for what I use" argument.

I am a single male, a veteran of the US Army, I've been engaged three times but only married once (I usually say I was arrested 3 times but only CONVICTED once) but the point is I have no children of my own..

Using the logic of the aformentioned claim, the portion of taxes I have paid (along with all the other childless Americans in this country) which goes to public schools should be refunded back to me immediatelly, and for the last 33 years (I am 46, Ive been working and paying taxes since I was 13, when I lied about my age to get a job bagging groceries) and with interest. I'll accept 6% per annum.

I have no direct stake in sending kids to school, good ones or otherwise. I dont care if they spend all day picking their noses and spraypainting park equipment (a good portion of my business is removing or covering graffiti, on walls, on playground equipment, even had one place the kids spray painted the CARS- thats just MEAN)
But it is simple forethought and an eye to the future which allow me to pay those taxes, and not grumble. The only way to have equal education in the US is if EVERYONE pays a little bit toward it.

The $500 or more a month you pay now for Health and Dental Insurance (hey wait a minute- WOULD this include Dental?) is a lot more than you would have taken from your taxes for Standard, Universal Healthcare in the US. If it was implemented, do I think we would see an immediate reversal of decades of greed, drug companies owning our doctors as much as they own our politicians and poor old women bleeding to death in hospital emergency rooms?

Of course not.

But damn man, we have to start it SOMETIME. Maybe by the time your grandkids graduate high school, nationally funded stem cell research will have cured Alzheimers and other diseases, your grandchildren could see the end of cancer in their lives, and everyone could enjoy a quality of life in this country unseen in all of history.

Call me a romantic. I apparently care more about the health of your grandchildren than you do. SHAME (kidding)

Answer 7

Would you be able to provide a link to the data? I am curious how long other countries (and which ones they are) with no subsidized health care have to wait until they get treatment. Also, do the doctors in the other countries get special protections from the government like most in the US?

Answer 8

None of this is true. In America their are 43 million with no basic health insurance.. You say they can get a MRi in 4 days?? I have talked with many in Canada and they don't wait months as you say.. Also it's another bare face lie that Canada's doctors are coming to the USA.. According to facts. Fear mongering will not work on those that see lies for lies..

Answer 9

Yes, you can get an MRI in four day, or in twenty minutes if you have the money. The uninsured may or may not get an MRI if they need it.

Industrialized countries with universal health care generally have better overall outcomes from their health systems.

Answer 10

Not to worry. Congress can't agree on anything except their yearly pay raises. You think the Senators and Representatives would give up their tax payer funded medical benefits for a Government controlled universal plan.