To all those universal healthcare fans...?

Question

A lot of you probably saw Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko. While it is great that more people have become interested in the healthcare of the U.S., Sicko is not the best source of info. You come out of the theater thinking, Wow...what a great idea universal healthcare is. The insurance companies don't care about squat, its all about the money. While some of that is true, universal healthcare (UHC) isn't all that peachy. For example, many people complain aot the high cost of healthcare when you would just be paying the around the same amount in taxes. Nothing is "free." Competition among companies has always led to greater cost control and effectiveness Waiting times for regular check ups and surgeries can take up to 6 months, a year, or longer. Is it fair that you, a healthy person, will have to pay for operatios caused by smoking, drinking, obesity, etc. when the atients could have prevented this. Will the gov. be willing to pay for costly new technology or medicines?

The NHS, the healthcare system in the UK, has deemed some treatments unsuitable due to their poor cost effectiveness. One article about the NHS is that cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive. There are many more stories simialar too this, and not just in the UK.

Procedures and the way hospitals are run would have to be federally evaluated if the US were to switch over to universal healthcare. This process could take several years and it might bring in something nasty...like politics.

Another thing, where in the US Bill of Rights give us, the citizens, the right of healthcare...NOWHERE. Though, it does say we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. Notice the key word PURSUIT.

I agree that there need to be changes made, but that change is not universal healthcare. When another movie like Sicko comes out, do some research before you all join the bandwagon and start ranting.

Give me some feedback.

PS-think about it, not one department in the US gov. is run efficiently. Can you imagine the mess a healthcare department could lead to. Just look at the VA hospitals and the way the gov. has treated patients.

Answer 1

Word! You're dead-on target. Admittedly, the US is the only... "civilized" country without Universal Healthcare, but as you were admonished when you were five, "if everybody jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?"

Illegal aliens are already breaking into our country and committing identity theft at a record pace. Throw free healthcare into the picture and you think that's gonna go down? I think not!

I work hard for my money. I have good healthcare coverage because I've earned it through hard, honest work. I do not consider unlimited access to the world's greatest healthcare infrastructure to be a right. What we already have in place goes far beyond with the framers of our constitution would have ever imagined -- or feared.

Answer 2

I suggest you do some more research on the many other nations with a universal health care system. The facts and figures you are spewing out are way off. Here's afew examples:

1) You are right about one thing, nothing is free. Federal taxes would increase to help pay for a universal health care system. However, what you fail to realize is that individuals who are currently paying for healthcare (in my case almost 20% of monthly gross for a policy that does not included dental or vision) would be saving that much money. Also, employers, business owners, who in my case pay the other 70% of my health care plan, would also be saving a huge amount of money.

2) I have many friends in Canada and the waiting period you claim (6 months or a year) is total BS. IT doesn't happen.

3) SO you think it unfair that a healthy person has to pay for the health care cost of a sick person? And how exactly do you think the insurance companies decide upon what your monthly premium is now? The point is you are already paying extremely elevated costs, with huge profit margins factored in

And there's more ..... do some research yourself, you'll be amazed.

Answer 3

I haven't seen the movie, but I've been pro-universal health care for years. People who don't want it obviously hardly ever go to the doctor. I have chronic UTI, and even though I know what's wrong with me I am forced to go into the doctor's office and see a doctor ($150 cha ching!) and get lab work done ($300 cha ching!) and then get a prescription ($75 cha ching!). I also went through something similar with a dermatologist where I had to have three separate visits for the same cancerous mole. I had no choice -- pay or die of cancer. I have insurance now, but I didn't in college and thusly am still paying off college medical bills 5 years later. I can't even begin to imagine what people with no health care and/or more serious conditions than mine are going through!!! Being against universal health care is about the most selfish thing I can think of. I'm sure if it happened, there would be privatized clinics that rich, healthy people could go to so they wouldn't have to (gasp!) wait in line.

Answer 4

If you have group insurance through your employer you already pay for those with a less healthy lifestyle. If you have individual insurance, you also pay for the less healthy because individual polices are bundled for risk assessment. No one thinks universal health care will be free. It will most likely be universal payer system - which will function similar to a union on negotiating health care costs. You will actually pay less since the bundle is the entire U.S. population. See what Brazil pays for medicine as opposed to the U.S. . . . check the numbers out -it's a staggering difference. We already have roughly 35% of the nation on some sort of government health insurance. The only way to pay for medicare, vet, medicaid,is to reduce risk - the only way to reduce risk (statistically speaking) is to bundle these programs with the U.S. population.

Answer 5

"previous college Conservatism" - or in different words the denial of the life of marketplace failures. the advantages of all of us having medical insurance at the instant are not purely felt by people who could in any different case have none. subsequently government action is had to confirm a Pareto useful effect. because of the fact the three Dem contenders all recommend widely used medical insurance by at the instant present day inner maximum sector concepts the effect on the unfastened marketplace would be minimum. As for removing income tax - that's the main present day form of taxation (different than sources tax - yet of course staggering wingers won't even enable us to circulate close to that one) so proposals to eliminate this, fairly of diverse greater regressive and enterprise unfriendly tax concepts basically exhibit the main appropriate's desire to head the tax burden in the direction of the damaging and the middle type. did you recognize that we would possibly not have a deficit and could be 4 trillion greater suited off as a rustic if sales had persevered to develop on an identical fee after Clinton left place of work. The Bush tax cuts are the reason we are interior the mess we are - and the main appropriate's answer - decrease greater taxes.

Answer 6

universal healthcare can work if run properly.

here in uk it is a mess. but that is onyl because previous governments have privatised parts and cut costs at evrey corner.
if the health system is efficient and good people will not mind paying a bit extra for it

if you let companies run it. they only look out for profit and that is never good