US Healthcare reform

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Yeah.

If Nazi Germany successfully invaded Britain, I'd be curious to see how America would win the war, or declare war at all. They'd probably reason that it would be better to trade for reichmarks than soon to be obsolete ruples.

Um... not really. I don't think there cost is a viable objection, especially given that our private system already costs a lot. I just think the quality of care would suffer quite badly, and you certainly have not addressed that objection.


Is it? On what basis do you make this claim? Most economists seem to believe we'll be out of the current recession in maybe two years at the outside.


And again, that's not what I'm objectiong to. I just don't want government to be managing the healthcare industry because I don't trust them to do it well. I could support some sort of subsidization system, but not socialized medicine in the style of, say, the British NHS or Canada's social medicine. Also, any government involvement in healthcare has to be careful to avoid crowding-out effects that would basically leave us with government insurance as the only option.


So does food. Does the government buy your groceries? Do you want the government in charge of food production and distribution? I don't want to be subject to food rationing, do you?


It is rather dishonest to paint all opponents of a particular healthcare scheme as evil, greedy bastards with no empathy for their fellow man. Some people just think that socialized medicine is not the most effective way of solving the problem.

The united states has roughly double the per capita health-care expenditure than most other western countries. The money is clearly not being put to good use and there is clearly diminishing returns the more money that is added to healthcare.


It is in the governments interest to pay for certain procedures for all of it's citizens, a broken arm, mental health issues, potentially dibilitating conditions. Because the country would lose more from having a citizen with a malformed arm (or an untreated disability) than the cost of the procedure. A social-health system does not necessarily imply that everything is free, but implies that access and basics are free.

The reason our healthcare system sucks so bad, is because it's corporate (not free market). You can actually thank the government for that. Nixon was the one who imposed HMOs on us in the 1970s. Even Michael Moore's "Sicko" mentions that. Big pharma also bought out a bunch of congresspeople to eliminate pill competition from other countries. I don't remember what the name of the bill was, though...
Before HMOs, there was an actual free market healthcare system. Guess what? People got more care, and it was cheaper than it is now.

And as a sidenote about Obamacare: They're trying to get it rushed through without anyone reading it. That should send up a lot of red flags. If it passes, healthcare is going to end up being rationed. Also, the government can't run anything else right (especially education), so why would you trust them with healthcare?

Agreed in large part, but again much of the higher expenditure is because Americans just don't take care of themselves. No other country has their population making lousy lifestyle choices to the same extent as Americans. Our medical system has to deal with a huge number of very overweight people, and this drives up costs a lot. A cultural shift would go a long way to improving the situation, but how is that to be arranged?


Providing emergency care and care for very serious problems for free would actually be significantly more expensive than providing a more comprehensive coverage that focused more on preventive medicine. By establishing such a program, what you do is crowd-out some private solutions (people just rely on the government program) and then people will neglect their medical problems until they become life-threatening enough for treatment to be approved by some bureaucrat, and then the costs of treatment are higher than if they had dealt with it sooner and the outcome for the patient is significantly worse.

If you're going to push for government involvement in healthcare, at least propose a system that has a chance in hell of working.

I get my health care from the Veterans Administration, have for almost 20 years. It is government-provided health care. I love it, and am certainly a lot healthier than I was before the VA took me on.

Richard Wagner was more of an inspiration to the Nazis. Wagner and Nietzche broke up over the matter of Wagner's anti-semitism.

It was Friedrich's sister Elizabeth who perverted the image of her brother and made him seem like a Nazi. It simply was not the case. Nietzche's sister painted her brother with the Nazi-like brush. In point of fact, Friedrich Nietzche greatly admired the Jews, especially the ancient Hebrews.

As to Might making Right, it always has and it always will. The Romans acted on that principle. Strength produces results. When the Romans were at the top of their form (during the Pax Romana) they ran the world.

ruveyn

So let's use 9% as the figure.

Per capita UK: 2760
Per capita US: 6714

Assuming no money was spent on obesity in the US and that the UK has no obesity...

Per capita UK: 2760
Per capita US: 6110

and let's look at some other fun facts!

US cancer incidence = 5.388 per 1'000
UK cancer incidence = 6.071 per 1'000

US cirrhosis incidence = 14.72 per 100'000
UK cirrhosis incidence = 16.99 per 100'000


The stats do not agree with your assumptions, infact they seem to be painting a picture that english individuals take less care of their health than their american counter-parts do. So the quality and accessability of your health-care system is the key issue. Also people who have been shot to death or mangled in a pile up have very minimal health-costs...


My statements were extremely vague and without further information it would be impossible to state wether they would work or not. The fact you are claiming my vague detail-less statements would not work, suggests you have idealogical reasons for not wanting a more social like healthcare system

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: If the Government were to ordain when we should sow and when we should reap, we should all soon want for bread.

Letting the government run food production and distribution would very quickly produce a famine.

ruveyn

Orwell, on what basis do you make the claim that our quality of care will suffer greatly. I guarantee at least 50 million Americans will be receiving better healthcare than they are now. And what about the great care the government provides to the VA? They seem to manage that healthcare quite well.

As for the recession, I'm not talking about our current situation, I'm talking about what is inevitable if we stick with the status quo. As costs continue to skyrocket, many will have to make some hard choices and cut back their own spending even further. Personally speaking, if my family's premiums go up another 30% or so, we will have to choose between dropping healthcare or selling our house, which we happen to be underwater on - not unlike many Americans these days. We have no intentions of jeopordizing our children's health, so we would have to ask the bank for a short sale, or perhaps deal with a foreclosure. We are not unlike many middle class Americans feeling this very squeeze.

We will have to simply disagree on who we feel is better at providing care. I simply do not trust the private, for-profit sector any more than you trust the government.

And to address the food argument, the government does provide food to those who don't have any through the food stamps program and WIC. They are also involved in the production and distribution of food through the FDA, although not nearly enough if you ask me, but that's a whole different issue. I'm not sure you can even call a lot of the stuff at the grocery store "food" anymore. The private sector has done a heck of a job of turning what used to be food into a bunch of over processed crap. The meat industry has become a horror story as well.

Last but not least, I apologize for painting all opponents of a government-run healthcare system as evil, greedy bastards. I just believe that anyone who thinks that healthcare is a privilege and not a basic human right is an evil and greedy bastard.

Yes, I know the biases of both people.

I would have preferred not to have a former member of the Bush administration, however, his blog was the place I found quickest, and the numbers generally matched the numbers I remember hearing about in the past.

Professor Perry is linking to a study that he did not conduct and was not affiliated with. The fact that it is his blog is irrelevant.

In both cases, I do not see bias to be a significant factor given the factual nature of the debate, and both sources basically have their own sources.

Based on the US government's track record of screwing things up, and because we do have higher quality care than countries with socialized systems. (Cancer mortality rates, trauma care, etc) It's just that we get those good results very inefficiently, and not for enough people. I've heard mixed reviews of VA care, to say the least.


And this is where I agree with you: costs are a major problem in our current system. We need to find some way of lowering costs and making healthcare more accessible.


Our current system really isn't private. There is heavy government involvement (someone already mentioned that Nixon established HMOs) and research is largely funded through government grants. I can see a sort of mixed system being viable... I just don't want total government control over the medical system.


Well, I can think that any number of things are basic human rights, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there is a viable way to make government provide those things for everyone. Nor does it mean that going through government is the most effective way to provide such things to as many people as possible.

Watching the American government and people talk about national healthcare is halarious. The idea of someone going to see a doctor without having to pay a bill is so alien to them, they have no clue how to do it. They look like chickens running around with their heads cut off.

Why won't they ask the other free world contries how they did it?

...because under your system private companies aren't making a killing. That is an absolute requirement for the US system; anything else can't get past the greedy "free market" proponents. It's not about health care, it's about money.

edit: It's also about denying Obama a legislative victory.

I don't think it really has much to do with denying Obama a victory. This stuff has been debated for like the last 60 some years. The Republicans aren't really holding this up either with huge Democratic majorities in the house and senate.

...not really. It's because quality of care genuinely suffers under fully-socialized schemes. Oh, and those cheap drugs the Canadians and everyone else uses? They're mostly rip-offs of American-developed drugs. The US is absorbing most of the world's research and development costs, and the rest of the world uses our innovations without paying the people who developed them. Damn leeches, and smug about it too.


Yes, the past fifty years or so of bickering about healthcare reform is all about spiting a man who until four and a half years ago no one had heard of.