Fauci forecast: 100,000 - 200,000 American deaths.

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I have a $50 co-pay should I go to urgent care. A $15 co-pay for a GP visit. A $30 co-pay for a specialist visit. A $250 deductible for hospital care. I have to make sure every doctor I go to is “in network,” though.

I work for The City of New York. I don’t get anything taken out of my check for my health insurance. I’m pretty lucky.

Time for one of my favourite movie quotes from “Vanilla Sky:”

“What’s the answer to 99 out of 100 questions that start with why?

..Money.”

The USA could relatively easily hit copy & paste and implement an English NHS style healthcare system, or Canada’s similar single payer healthcare system, or any other in the world.

They don’t because the health insurance industry makes far too much money & money is power - they lobby your government to maintain & increase their grip on power and profits over health and healing in your medical system. It really is as simple as that.

Eliminating all of the redundant departments of redundancy that exist in your several layers of pointless administrative busy work and paper filing would be the smart move, but then the publicly held and traded health insurance conglomerates who are seeking ever higher quarterly profits would disappear and there’s no way that politicians are going to do that to the hand that feeds.. the rich f***s that own and run those insurance companies line the pockets of the politicians who make the rules they all have to play by, ensuring their revenue & profit streams are protected, peoples’ health as a very distant secondary concern be damned.

Literally that’s why. It’s not even “America bashing.” It’s just the cold harsh truth of the matter.

$$$.

^ True as far as it goes, but British pre-NHS healthcare was far, far worse than current American practice in that regard.
Part of the story of how we got the NHS is that the captains of most other industries joined the movement for national health insurance & provision in anticipation of savings on their effective wage bills (economy of scale compared to having to pay through corporate schemes or higher wages).
The effect of WWII on the populace at large sealed the deal really: Beveridge Report, 1945 election, and the welsh coal miner became Health Secretary and did it. (Well, that’s the edited highlights of a thousand page history)

^Bezos, Buffet, Gates and I think another American Billionaire have been working towards some sort of group healthcare plan for all of their employees over the last couple years because they know they can do a better group plan for less money than the for profit options currently available to their employees. If and when this comes to fruition I can see it being the beginning of a national insurer in the USA much the same as industrialists forced the creation of in the UK.

^ Didn’t know that, sounds like the sort of thing they’d do though: if I were an American who wanted a single-payer future I’d regard that as a beginning with potential.

America already has government run health care.

Poor people get "Medicaid"
Old people get "Medicare"
Anyone can get "ACA" (Obamacare)

If the government is so good at health care , why can't they compete with private insurance?

Yep. They announced a year or two ago that they were collaborating on it because they’re paying for worse healthcare service for their employees via a patchwork of crappy for profit healthcare industry options and collectively they know they can do better for their employees and their families for less money by cutting out the middlemen. They have armies of employees and the economies of scale to do what large states in the USA can, and to do what the federal government doesn’t have the balls to. If they’re successful, then I can foresee more and more large corporations joining in with them until eventually it evolves into s national plan and the profiteers are told to take a hike. Probably take decades, but never know, this whole pandemic could be a catalyst to speed it up.

The one thing that has always puzzled me is to why people from other countries are known to come to the U.S. for care but you never hear about someone from another country going to the U.K. or Canada for care even though I believe there are private pay options in both countries for people who don't want to or can't get care through the government healthcare programs.

And healthcare rationing is just a bogus myth about the NHS and Canada's system, correct?

Gov’t run healthcare in the USA is not comparable to Canada or the UK.

They can’t get it right because of the laws written in the USA to protect the profits of all the layers of insurance companies.

People come to Canada for medical tourism all the time. Mostly for births, though, and not because their home country doesn’t have people trained to pop out babies, but because they get citizenship for their kids and then love back and forth between Canada and China or Hong Kong etc.

But people do come here for other procedures just like they do in the USA. There are fewer for profit hospitals to choose from, though, so not as many come here for elective procedures.

People do come here for treatments of things because they know they won’t be turned away, though. Then they’re given a bill that they never pay as they f**k off back to Asia never to return. Our Provincial healthcare system has many Millions in debt like this on the books that will never be paid.

Also, Americans do come to Canada to fill prescriptions at cheaper prices. Hell, it was even in a Michael Moore documentary.

Depends: what are the “myths of rationing of care” ??

Hmmm.....I worked at a healthcare plan from 1995-2000 that was actually a division of a metropolitan county and as such our job was to pay submitted medical claims for county workers as well as pay submitted medical bills for people on "general assistance GA" (aka welfare) and "medical assistance MA". The difference between the two is the with GA, recipients received free medical care AND a monthly check from the county whereas MA people usually had jobs but were below an income level that allowed for them and/or their children to have free healthcare.

With that job there were two different payment structures. The county employee medical claims were subject to contracted rates (ie the health plan normally would pay less than the rates billed by the healthcare providers) and coverage limitations. The MA claims were NOT subject to contracted rates nor were they subject to the stricter coverage limitations. In effect, the free MA health insurance was a "Cadillac Plan" compared to the county employee plan (which compared to the private sector was a "Cadillac Plan" in its own right). In addition to getting less restrictive healthcare for free, the MA recipients were also given free taxi rides to and from medical appointments even if they were capable of taking the bus.

I don’t know about Canada, but the UK has sufficient numbers of people coming here to use the NHS for it to be a political issue, “Health Tourism” is how it’s referred to: it’s integrated into immigration as a political issue.
The rationing thing isn’t true though: less drugs & therapies are approved as safe than in the US, and Tory governments somehow always mismanage it so badly it looks like they must be... but that’s assuming malice in the face of incompetence.
(For political balance: Labour is just as capable of being incompetent, just differently)

Rationing care: I don't have time to do it now, but I do think it would be a fun and interesting internet search to see how many similar things come up for Canada and the U.K.

NHS rationing putting hernia patients' lives at risk, say surgeons

Poor and on Medicaid here.
All my medicine is paid for,no copay.My mental health care is paid for.All my MD visits paid for.Preventive care mammogram and colonoscopy paid for.Free gynecology.
And no hours waiting at ER.When I need to see doctor I get an appointment right away.
Our health care could be better for people who make too much for Medicaid.
But other nations need improvement also.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5826705/

Canadians Pay A High Price For Free Health Care

I bolded a sentence that alarms me from the 2018 article:

"Last year, Canadian patients forewent $1.9 billion in wages while waiting for medical treatment, according to a report from the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank. Canadian patients face some of the longest waits for care in the industrialized world due to their government-run system’s strict rationing."

Not sure what you mean by “rationing care.”

Are there waitlists for non emergency surgeries? Yes. A friend has to wait something like 2 years for a knee surgery he Needs. There’s a backlog of almost all surgeries that aren’t critical or emergency and it disrupts lives and the economy as some people are bad enough off that they have to sit at home crippled on disability payments because they’re not well enough to work until a necessary knee or back surgery is completed. But they eventually get it done. It’s not rationed, per say, just backlogged.

But immediate needs are tended to in a timely nature. My sister exploded her foot a couple weeks or so ago. REALLY BADLY. As soon as the swelling was down enough, and because she wasn’t bumped by any emergency surgeries, she had it operated on a couple days ago - put in a couple balls, a few plates, and lots of screws and pins. With a little luck she won’t have to have any of the metal removed or additional surgeries in the future, but she does have a solid year or so of recovery time ahead of her now.

If I go to an emergency room the wait time depends on patient load and priority, like most anywhere in the world. Some hospitals are known for long waits because the local demographic clogs up emergency rooms just because they can and don’t want to wait to go to a clinic or their gp. So if I ever have to go to an Er there are a couple hospitals a farther drive away that are known for short wait times, so I’ll drive the extra 20 mins and then have next to no wait vs potentially all night. In either case, whatever is needed is given. There’s no putting bandaids on compound fractures and pretending that’s good enough or anything like that. People get the medical attention they need and then go on their way without ever seeing a bill.

I don’t know, but I’d wager that the quality of service and timing of procedures is similar to decent healthcare plans in the USA. Perhaps those with top level insurance plans Or the cash to pay out of pocket may receive faster surgery times. But overall peoples’ ailments are treated and no one is doling out bandaids and Tylenol in place of surgery and Physiotherapy. We get a full meal deal, we just sometimes have to wait for it depending on what the ailment or procedure is.