Lack of universal healthcare - a sad story

[Texashiker]

You are to fucking dense to realize exactly how stupid you are. I feel sorry for your parents and if you have a job, your employer.

What part of the statement did you disagree with?

 

[KMFJD]

Actually, the "fuck you, I'm going to take yours and give it to them" mentality is why.

there we go

 

[Incorruptible]

While I agree with you on a lot of stuff, I have to disagree on the free market concept fixing the health care problem.

How are the working poor who are barley getting by supposed to buy health care?

Why aren't companies like walmart forced to provide health care for their employees? While a record number of people are on welfare, companies like apple pull in record profits.

If the federal government threw as much money into health care as the spent on foreign aid, we would have universal health care.

How many hospitals could a single ICBM nuclear missile fund?

The government is throwing money at military contractors to build more tanks, while we have homeless and working poor who need healthcare.

The free market has worked wonders and it can work in healthcare.

The free market would lower the costs of healthcare so poorer people would actually be able to afford it. This is done through competition. Right now insurance is making healthcare more expensive because many people don't even bother to check the costs and shop around for the best price. Insurance is also meant for catastrophes and not to be used for anything.

Also the statistics of Americans without health insurance are flawed. Illegal immigrants are included in there. Then there are people who don't want to buy health insurance.

Hospitals in California and other states being infiltrated by illegal immigrants are being shutdown because they are facing so many costs by the illegals.

We use to have charity and Catholic hospitals who helped the poor and needy but they have been under attack by the government.

If the federal government were to end ALL foreign aid and stop subsidizing the defense of Europe, Israel, Japan and South Korea and bring home all the troops and close down those bases they would bring back billions of dollars and give it back to the taxpayer so they can spend the money for healthcare and other areas.

The US government must stop giving away so much money to the MIC and instead return it back to the taxpayer.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Everyone in the US would benefit from universal health care and corresponding efficiency increases. Not only that, but you're already paying for those idiots you complain about now, just in an inefficient way.

Even outside of straight fiscal benefit, there are a lot of other tangential benefits as well. People constantly complain about outsized tort awards, but in a country with universal health care much of that would go away as well. Our current system uses the courts as a form of secondary health insurance, which is clearly a poor way of going about it.

You keep saying this as if it's a given, but this is the US and all the politics and regulations and legal issues involved, how do you guarantee this? How does this work? I have a guy pissing in his wheelchair because he can't get adult incontinence supplies without tons of time and paperwork under a government plan right now. Explain how this benefits him.

 

[CrackRabbit]

What part of the statement did you disagree with?

All of it, despite the fact that dipshit can't seem to put two and two together, for the most part (not counting obvious government programs like the VA, and Medicare and Medicaid and some local/state owned hospitals) the healthcare system in the US is a for profit, free market system.

 

[fskimospy]

You keep saying this as if it's a given, but this is the US and all the politics and regulations and legal issues involved, how do you guarantee this? How does this work? I have a guy pissing in his wheelchair because he can't get adult incontinence supplies without tons of time and paperwork under a government plan right now. Explain how this benefits him.

Nothing in life is a guarantee, but as evidence in its favor I would present the experience of every single other developed economy on planet earth, without exception.

 

[woolfe9998]

So they don't have car insurance? How about the guy who hit them?

Doesn't matter if they had it or not. Car insurance isn't medical insurance. It typically pays only $5,000 for your medical bills. You can make an injury claim against the other driver's liability insurance, IF the other driver is at fault, but that claim takes at least several months to resolve. In the meantime, if you have no medical insurance, you're hoping charity will provide your care. Then there's also the low minimum policy limits which may not cover all your injuries. Then there's subtracting the lawyer fees.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Nothing in life is a guarantee, but as evidence in its favor I would present the experience of every single other developed economy on planet earth, without exception.

That's nice, but in the real USA there's nothing like dealing with government induced paperwork. It's a nightmare that takes up hours a day of our time, and is increasing apparently in the name of efficiency. Young docs I know have had enough and some are using their medical degrees to pay off their loans and get an MBA or the like and then leaving. Why? Complete frustration at bizarre regulations that have to be complied with. Handcuffs.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Because most folks are responsible middle class citizens and know good and damn well they won't be the ones who benefit from it. They're happy to have government cover costs which would positively impact them (like universal vaccinations) but most certainly will resist bitterly when asked to pay for the costs of treating the countless examples of idiots going "hey y'all, watch this!" they've seen over the years.

...until they actually have a major health problem that ends up bankrupting them (even though they have insurance).

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

...until they actually have a major health problem that ends up bankrupting them (even though they have insurance).

There needs to be reform, but no one is talking intelligently about it. They just toss around words like they have some magical meaning. I doubt that many know anything about health care at all. Certainly it seems that way with DC. I've called for a substantial reformation of the system, but apparently if that happens it will be by regulation. I mean there's a real difference between ICD-9 code 788.31 and 788.30, right?

 

[glenn1]

...until they actually have a major health problem that ends up bankrupting them (even though they have insurance).

So what's your point? Obamacare could have consisted of providing a universal stipend to purchase catastrophic health insurance, but didn't. Instead they decided to play Santa Claus in order to provide goodies like "guaranteed issue" (blowing up medical underwriting for insurance) and taxpayer-paid health insurance for poor people instead. They basically fucked over the middle class, young, and those who try to live healthy lifestyles.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The free market has worked wonders and it can work in healthcare.

Health care does not lend itself to perfect competition because you cannot live without health care and health care can be expensive and complicated (unlike, say food or shelter). If you are having a heart attack, you don't have time to price shop. You can't do without it or find some cheaper alternative. Health care costs are also unpredictable and thus often opaque.

The free market would lower the costs of healthcare so poorer people would actually be able to afford it. This is done through competition.

We already have plenty of health insurance companies and hospitals that are "competing". How has that worked out? Also, without regulation and licensure, anyone would put up a shingle and offer to do surgery even if they've never been to medical school. (I suppose that such people could be sued later for negligence, but that doesn't do a victim much good after he's dead.)

Right now insurance is making healthcare more expensive because many people don't even bother to check the costs and shop around for the best price. Insurance is also meant for catastrophes and not to be used for anything.

Insurance is making healthcare expensive because it needs to turn a profit and it is very inefficient compared to having universal health care. Probably 1/3 of the money spent on health care goes to people that have nothing to do with actually providing health care, and most of that is insurance and billing related. That's how other nations can have 100% coverage while spending far less than we do while also having the same (or even more) doctors and MRIs per capita.

You also fail to account for the legal costs associated with insurance. You're going to have to hire a lawyer to read through your 1000 page insurance contract and find that little bit on page 787 where it says they can rescind your coverage when you get sick.

 

[nickbits]

I have lived in the US and Canada and prefer US health care.

Cheap. Good. Fast. Pick 2.

Canada is cheap and good.. fast it is not. (Cheap only in the sense of direct costs, it really isn't cheap since you are taxed like crazy on everything)
US is good and fast

 

[fskimospy]

I have lived in the US and Canada and prefer US health care.

Cheap. Good. Fast. Pick 2.

Canada is cheap and good.. fast it is not. (Cheap only in the sense of direct costs, it really isn't cheap since you are taxed like crazy on everything)
US is good and fast

It's cheap by any measure. They spend a considerably lower proportion of their GDP on health care than we do.

Wait times for non-essential procedures are considerably longer in Canada than the US though, this is true. People who say they have medical needs that they can't take care of is modestly lower in Canada than the US, however. In Canada unmet needs are most often caused by wait times, in the US unmet needs come from just not being able to afford it at all.