Have you heard these MYTHS about Universal Health Care?

Question

By Dr. Marcia Angell, Past Editor New England Journal of Medicine February 4, 2003. Washington D.C.

Myth #1: We can’t afford a national health care system, and if we try it, we will have to ration care. My answer is that we can’t afford not to have a national health care system. A single-payer system would be far more efficient, since it would eliminate excess administrative costs, profits, cost-shifting and unnecessary duplication. Furthermore, it would permit the establishment of an overall budget and the fair and rational distribution of resources. We should remember that we now pay for health care in multiple ways – through our paychecks, the prices of goods and services, taxes at all levels of government, and out-of-pocket. It makes more sense to pay just once.

Myth #2: Innovative technologies would be scarce under a single-payer system, we would have long waiting lists for operations and procedures, and in general, medical care would be threadbare and less available.

This misconception is based on the fact that there are indeed waits for elective procedures in some countries with national health systems, such as the U. K. and Canada. But that’s because they spend far less on health care than we do. (The U. K. spends about a third of what we do per person.) If they were to put the same amount of money as we do into their systems, there would be no waits and all their citizens would have immediate access to all the care they need. For them, the problem is not the system; it’s the money. For us, it’s not the money; it’s the system.


Myth #3: A single-payer system amounts to socialized medicine, which would subject doctors and other providers to onerous, bureaucratic regulations. But in fact, although a national program would be publicly funded, providers would not work for the government. That’s currently the case with Medicare, which is publicly funded, but privately delivered. As for onerous regulations, nothing could be more onerous both to

patients and providers than the multiple, intrusive regulations imposed on them by the private insurance industry. Indeed, many doctors who once opposed a single-payer system are now coming to see it as a far preferable option.

Myth #4: Claims the government can’t do anything right. Some Americans like to say that, without thinking of all the ways in which government functions very well indeed, and without considering the alternatives. I would not want to see, for example, the NIH, the National Park Service, or the IRS privatized. We should remember that the government is elected by the public and we are responsible for it. An investor-owned insurance company reports to its owners, not to the public.

Thoughts?

http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_hr676_4.htm

Not ONE worthy answer so far. It really is sad.

Answer 1

Funny to see all the socialism answers. Why's socialism bad people? Don't just say it, tell me why it's bad. I want to know! I crave information! It's just a word to me right now, one I know a lot of benefits to. Works rather well in the Kibbutzim in Israel, so give me a reason to hate it, someone!
But to the point at hand. People believe in these myths to comfort themselves. They love the opportunity to turn down an idea that they have heard is terrible offhand without investigating how it works. People like simplistic ideas, not the complex. There are reasons to argue against universal healthcare, but people normally point to these myths. It's sad, it's perverse, and it shows a lack of the education in society.

Answer 2

You can afford it. At present you pay more than I do in the UK through taxation. And that is with the private health cover I have! The main reason is that money in your system goes to shareholders, whereas in mine, it goes towards healthcare.
Also the UK has been involved in many medical innovations. Loads of drug companies are based in Europe, not the USA.

I live in the UK and work in the NHS (our universal health care system). It has problems, but not as many as the US healthcare system has. Despite spending much more per head of population than other developed countries, the US has worse health outcomes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care#Economics Life expectancy and infant mortality figures in the US are worse than in other developed countries, despite more money being spent (and wasted) in the USA.

In the UK there are waiting lists for routine problems. Problems that can not wait are treated as emergencies. Also, in the UK, people can also have private health care.

I can understand Americans being proud of living in the richest and most powerful country in the world. What I can not understand is why Amercians settle for an expensive healthcare system where babies die that would have a better chance of life if born in another developed country.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2167865,00.html

Answer 3

1. Average wait times for medical procedures would increase (by ~25-50%) Well, that's unfortunate but it would not change my mind. 2. Average wait times would decrease (by ~25-50%) This would only encourage my view even further. 3. Access to basic care (primary care visits, vaccinations, etc) would increase substantially This would once again encourage my view. 4. Access to specialist care (surgeons, dermatologists, etc) would decrease somewhat This would be an issue, but if the decrease is minor it wouldn't be a big issue. 5. Overall costs of health care would increase OK, big deal. If the U.S. gets out of all its wars and slashes the military budget drastically as well as wasteful government bureaucracy, cool. 6. Overall costs of health care would decrease This would encourage my view, once again. 7. Overall costs of health care would stay about the same, but be distributed progressively (that is, poor people would pay less and rich people would pay more, for about the same level of care) I am completely against that, I think everyone should pay the same. 8. Overall health (sick days taken, per capita deaths, etc) would improve, at the expense of slightly worse care for extreme cases (advanced cancer, etc) This would probably worry me a lot.

Answer 4

1) Medicaid?Medicare? Extremely expensive programs that FAIL the people that need them most - and benefit lawyers, bureaucrats, well-placed vendors, etc.

2) Hurricane Katrina. The DMV. The IRS. "Civil Service." HUD. CSEA. Public education. Public transportation. Public restrooms.
Oh yeah, great track record. Let's have them handle brain surgeries and heart transplants and labor and delivery, too.

3) European bureaucrats are graduates of the Sorbonne, of Oxford, LSE - equivalents of our Ivy League schools. American bureaucrats are typically c-students (in sociology) from State College.
Bit of a difference there, I think.
Do you not think it takes some expertise to run a large health insurance plan? Actuarial science, accounting, finance, statistics, asset management?
Is this something Medicaid examiners are versed in? Or are they social science majors from city college? Are they hired for merit? Or through connections, or based on "multiculturalism?"

4) Nothing our state or federal governments have done has ever been remotely associated with efficiency or efficacy. Not one thing. Certainly not health care!!

5) There are more MRI machines in Chicago than there are in all of Italy. There is no question innovation would perish, buried under civil service labor rules, "diversity" initiatives, unfireable, unnaccountable employees, corruption, and the usual stew of governmental incompetence.

6) Who would determine the "fair and rational allocation of resources?" Probably AARP, unions, Democrat legislators, political bosses - the very people the rest of us WOULDN'T want allocating anything.

7) Socialism has, historically, been a failure in every country that's practiced it, from India to Britain to France.
It creates horrid, heartless, inefficient, omnipotent bureaucracies; it ruins economies and living standards; it eliminates democracy and freedom;it has to be enforced through government power that one would really call "theft."
Countries who abandon socialism nearly always see a rapid improvement in standards of living.

8) Do you not think the government would use National Health Care to increase its own power, to everyone else's expense?
If you think governments are charities, then I fear you're a bit naiive & ignorant of history!!

Answer 5

Socialism

Answer 6

The long lines and long waits for surgeries, etc, is true. I know people who live in countries with this kind of healthcare and that is their number 1 complaint. People die while on waiting lists for surgeries. It's sad. I have low income and crappy insurance, (lived most of my life without insurance, and am tempted to drop what I have since it is so shoddy), but I sure do NOT want the universal healthcare system. No freakin' way.

**EDIT**
"Not one worthy answer." Let's see, that translates into, "Hmm, YOUR thoughts disagree with MY thoughts."

Answer 7

I agree with all of it since it's quite logical and makes sense, except for Myth #4. The government WILL screw it up.

Answer 8

I disagree with her basic premises re: what the problem is elsewhere and can make a well-documented argument about their problems. Let's just focus on ONE of the government-run programs in the US, Medicare, as she seems to fallaciously believe it's a good system:

In the US, Medicare is going bankrupt. In 1998, Medicare premiums were $43.80 and in 2008 will be $96.40--up 120%. "Medigap" insurance is common because of the 20% co-pay required for service. Medicare HMOs are common because they reduce that burden without an extra charge in many cases. HOWEVER, many procedures which used to have no or a low co-pay NOW cost the full 20% for the HMO Medicare patient. ALSO the prescription coverage they tended to offer has been REDUCED in many cases to conform to the insane "donut hole" coverage of the feds. Doctors are leaving Medicare because of the low and slow pay AND because the crazy government wants to "balance" their Ponzi scheme on the backs of doctors.
"That dark cloud lurking over the shoulder of every Massachusetts physician is Medicare. If Congress does not act, doctors' payments from Medicare will be cut by about 5 percent annually, beginning next year through 2012, creating a financial hailstorm that would wreak havoc with already strained practices.

Cumulatively, the proposed cuts represent a 31 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursement. If the cuts are adjusted for practice-cost inflation, the American Medical Association says Medicare payment rates to physicians in 2013 would be less than half of what they were in 1991."
http://www.massmed.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=vs_mar05_top&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=11037

Clearly, government run health care does NOT work anywhere it is tried. Further support for the problems in the US:
Oregon's at least honest about the FACT that ALL government health care IS RATIONED care:
"But the real-life story of 18-year-old Brandy Stroeder may come to embody a harsher truth: namely, that even as we perfect more and more advanced medical procedures, not everyone is going to have access to them. And, as Americans struggle to come up with an equitable health care system, that even the best-intentioned system can seem heartless when forced to balance the good of thousands against an individual's suffering.

The story began last fall when doctors told Brandy, who lives with her single mother in a weather-beaten farmhouse about an hour south of Portland, Ore., that she was likely to die within a year unless she got a simultaneous lung-liver transplant, an operation that has been performed fewer than a dozen times in the United States.

Under Oregon's unique Medicaid system, which openly rations healthcare in order to provide basic care to as broad a population as possible, Brandy was eligible for a liver transplant or a lung transplant, but not both. In January, and again after a review in May, the state-run health plan said no. There wasn't enough data to show the $250,000 procedure was worthwhile, the health plan's administrators said, and the plan didn't cover experiments.

But Brandy wouldn't take no for an answer. A tough, determined young woman who had managed to work part-time at a photo studio, baby-sit her boss's children, coach the high school football team and maintain a 3.2 grade point average between numerous and prolonged bouts in the hospital, Brandy wasn't about to give up her life without a fight. She sued the state of Oregon, charging that it was making a flawed moral choice in refusing to save her life. Since then her caustic, articulate criticisms of the Oregon system have given a vivid sense of the obstacles any universal healthcare plan for the nation would face.

"They'll pay for an alcoholic to get a liver transplant because they've been drinking all their life," she says, sitting with her mother at a rickety picnic table under a cherry tree by her front door. "They'll pay for a heroin addict to get cured, to help someone kick the cigarette habit. Those are things people do to themselves. If you put it to a vote the people would say pay for some girl's operation instead of some alcoholic's liver transplant or some crack head's needles. I just think it isn't very fair.'"
http://archive.salon.com/health/feature/2000/07/07/brandy/

Texas has also been the boldest in supporting the growing-in-popularity "futile care theory":
"Texas, however, has become ground zero for futile-care theory thanks to a draconian state law passed in 1999 — of dubious constitutionality, some believe — that explicitly permits a hospital ethics committee to refuse wanted life-sustaining care. Under the Texas Health and Safety Code, if the physician disagrees with a patient's decision to receive treatment, he or she can take it to the hospital ethics committee. A committee hearing is then scheduled, all interested parties explain their positions, and the members deliberate in private.

If the committee decides to refuse treatment, the patient and family receive a written notice. At that point, the patient/family has a mere ten days to find another hospital willing to provide the care, after which, according to the statute, "the physician and health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment."

Since the patients threatened with death by ethics committee are often the most expensive to care for, it will often be difficult for families to find other institutions willing to accept a transfer. But the futility deck may be especially stacked against Houston patients. Many city hospitals participate in the "Houston City-Wide Guidelines on Medical Futility," raising the suspicion that participating hospitals will not contradict each other's futility decrees.

If so, this would mean that patients seeking refuge from forced treatment termination will have to be transported to distant cities, as has already occurred in a few futile-care cases, perhaps even out of state. Illustrating the level of hardball some hospitals play against patients and families, the Clarke family's lawyer Jerri Ward told me that St. Luke's agreed to pay the $14,806 transportation costs to transfer Clarke to a hospital in Illinois — more than 1,000 miles away — if the decision to transfer is made on Thursday (4/27). If the family doesn't decide until Friday, the hospital will pay only one-half of the cost of transportation. Thereafter, it would pay nothing."
http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200604271406.asp

Answer 9

Our government can't even provide adequate health care for veterans. So why should I trust them to provide it for my children?

Answer 10

Say that dirty word with me: "SOCIALISM!!"

- Bullworth (great movie)

When we have socialized health care, I will run down the street naked screaming "Hallelujah!"