Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
Oh yes it fucking is....
But back on topic...
We need UHC but how we get there is my concern and how keep healthcare honest and fair for the tax payer.
And I have relatives in Canada... I have gone to the ER or clinic with a relative and sat there for hours waiting for care for them... not lying at all. BUT I have also sat in a US ER myself waiting for care for up to 2 hours.
And thanks for the link Craig... almost done watching it.
You're welcome and thank you for the post. This interview is not 'the answer' on UHC - it is some very valuable information for framing the discussion.
I accept everything you said, and we do need to think long and hard about the problems UHC has run into as we consider how to improve things.
It seems to me there are a few basic facts:
- There is a *massive* industry built on profiting from the healthcare needs of this nation, and some of the effects of that are for people with billions at stake to manipulate opinion.
- There absolutely are massive efficiencies to gain with some shift towards a greater government or single-payer or public option, with trillions to save.
The efficiencies are so massive as to play a big role in the nation debt and the economy, where some change is critical.
- There are absolutely issues to work out regarding the government's possibility in reducing the care available.
When you think of 'public transportation', you don't think 'driving your own nice car' or 'riding in a limousine'. When you think public housing, you don't think of a mansion, you think of minimally functional units that are unpleasant and minimal, you think of big soviet buildings with thousands of units of the 1960's projects. When you think of government food assistance, you think of cheese handouts, not a filet mignon dinner in a nice restaurant.
There are reasons for the low-budget things above, but people like the feeling of freedom that they have some control over being able to spend and get better, and especially so on healthcare - even if the facts show that's often an illusion, with many denied care, with the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US medical expenses for crises.
What's hard is for the discussion to be rational - to not just say 'that's scary' to either side and plant your feet in and instead to try to look for what will work well.
What's harder is to do that looking at everyone's needs and not just your personal situation.
I saw an excellent documentary that took the approach I was interested in: it did a world survey of UHC and asked how can the US learn and pick the best from the lessons?
It was more discouraging than I'd like. Evey nation had run into some problems. And then came Singapore (IIRC) who took the approach of trying to use the best from other countries - and it too ran into problems, basically because as much as people like healthcare to be good, they don't like being taxes, and the funding was set low. So no system had really been a utopia of 'it's just more efficitned and therefore cheaper and better period'. It was always a mix of things.
But I remain convinced that the current massive bloated private corrupt system that makes people billions they want to hang on to is more bad than good in a lot of ways.
The mere situation of that much money being able to corrupt our political process for decades is a problem, because any good reforms are defeated by that corruption.
This interview leaves a lot of questions, but it answers some of the biggest ones that are polluting the discussion now, propaganda from the monied interests.
In my view, there are a lot of things the government does far better than they'd be done without the government doing them, and we need to not have some ignorant ideology preclude options that might be important. If we get the government out of auto and consumer safety, out of food safety, out of regulating the financial markets, out of some areas it's involved in power production, out of the supply of clean water, and so on, I think those things would suffer a lot.
Unfortunately, our media isn't up to the need of a debate on this. The well-funded and smooth propaganda from the industry tends to dominate the 'discussion'.
Because of the financial crisis and the need to cut the growth of medical costs, there's a rare opportunity to get something passed. We'll see what comes of it.
Unfortunately, there are those who would prefer a bad public system to a good one, in the hopes it will get dissatisfaction and can be opposed with popular support.
One thing's for sure, there will be criticism of any public system by those who want to replace it with a profitable one.
One thing I do notice though, for all the anecdotal complaints in other countries, I sure seem to see alot of high public approval of the systems overall, not calls for privatization.
Even with the advertising the private interests can deliver to encourage that demand. People in other countries seem horrified by our system more than impressed.
There are some areas we seem to excel - and many others there are myths where we really don't but people think we do.
Facebook
Twitter