Originally posted by: ja1484
No to all three.
There's nothing wrong with the US healthcare system - the problem is the attitude of the population.
The United States public has taken the attitude that they can buy their way out of anything to the extreme, and they are paying a price for which there is no "cure" - you
cannot eat horribly, exercise little or none, and engage in unhealthy behaviors and then expect health insurance to bail you out.
They shouldn't do so, nor should they be expected to. It really is just amazing to me that so many people out there expect someone else's money to pay for their poor lifestyle choices. My healthcare costs are nice and low - because I eat well, exercise well, sleep enough, and manage my stress. I don't smoke either, nor drink in excess.
People talk about socialized health care, or nationalized health care, or whatever euphemism you want to use, as though it will actually alleviate the so-called "problems" in the US health system rather than make them worse. This is equally ludicrous to me as other claims, because all the major health insurers in this nation take their pricing and reimbursement cues from Medicare, the
government run operation. And, of all the major insurers in this nation, Medicare is the stingiest of them all. If you put medicine in the hands of the government, you're going to see benefits
decrease, not increase.
There are plenty of other more specific issues we could get into (the overuse of pharmacy being an especially popular one right now), but the overarching issue is simply that the majority of the public in this country wants to do all the things that feel good and are bad for you, and have health professionals prevent them from having to face the consequences. Sorry to tell you folks, but incredibly difficult skilled work has always been expensive. That hasn't changed - the American lifestyle has.
Originally posted by: Slew Foot
So what does the US health care cost, $2 trillion a year? Divide by 300 mil, and you get 6700/person. So would you want your taxes going up by about 4K/year per person (Ive taken out about what is covered by the government already) for socialized care?
I agree with the rest of your point, but bad math. There aren't 300 million taxpaying employed Americans in this country. It's significantly less than that.
Part of the cost problem is the inability of certain clinics to deny care to people who can't pay for it. EMTALA was one of the biggest mistakes of the Reagan administration, proving once and for all that that man was no conservative.
Health Care is expensive and difficult for taxpaying, employed Americans because most everyone outside of that demographic is receiving care on their tab for free. To keep from going under, hospitals have to get the money from somewhere - and it comes from people doing it by the book. You want to fix a large part of the health care cost "problem"? Repeal EMTALA. Inside a couple years people would be singing a lot rosier tunes.
Originally posted by: agentbad
I think making the health care system national would dramatically reduce the strain on much of our populace that can barely afford to live. Suddenly they will have money for other things like a good education which in turn will get them out of the poverty cycle.
Not trying to be rude, but I think that's largely crap. I went to a public high school. Yes, I went to a private college, because I had that opportunity. I had many friends, however, who went to state schools, sometimes on scholarship or loans. I actually had a friend who attended MY same school on scholarship and would NOT have been able to afford it otherwise without massive debt.
And I knew other people in high school, who's family's had plenty of means, that turned into useless societal leeches. I do not call them "friends" because they are not. The company you keep helps define who you are and whom you become.
There ARE people who get a raw deal, but they are a VERY small percentage of the population - I would bet <5%. I remember doing Christmas Cheer work with my church youth group back in high school, taking donated presents to supposedly "underprivileged" families that would not have had presents otherwise. Many of these families had personal belongings
far nicer than my own. Video Game consoles, Direct TV, Cars, all kinds of possessions, and yet supposedly they needed this charity. They did not "need" our charity - they needed to amend their poor spending habits. You have to buy your children clothing before you can buy satellite television.
The roundabout point that I'm getting to through all this is that I have seen little to no evidence that the majority of the working poor/unemployed in this country (which I will remind people amounts to a small percentage of the overall population) are being screwed by the system. What I see evidence of is that they are wasteful people who make bad decisions even in the face of good advice. I will reiterate that this is NOT all of them, but I have yet to see reason that this is not the majority.
People point at the unemployment rate sometimes as though it's a sin. 5% unemployment does not worry me. I would bet that 5% or so of any society is unemployable, plain and simple. As I put it to another friend recently: "Take 100 random people off the street. Think you'll get 5 people who are any combination of the following: assholes, deadbeats, cheats, liars, criminals?"
And please don't try to tell me that social inequities produce many of these traits. Sometimes, maybe, but not always. As I already said, I had and continue to have many friends who built themselves from the humblest beginnings. The people who do not have typically have not earned.