The Horrors of Socialized Healthcare

[woolfe9998]

Good thing that some of us who aren't conservative understand applicability and the subject. If you want anecdotes I have some beauties and none of them are positive about the current system.

You mean our healthcare system?

Yeah, me too. It sucks.

The anecdote I described above where my in-laws were injured in that car wreck, if that had happened in the US instead of Portugal, and they had insurance, they still would have paid $5-10K of their own medical bills, with a separate bill of $1500 for the ambulance.

Without insurance, they'd have gotten a $200K bill and their next call would have been to a bankruptcy lawyer.

In Portugal, all that cost them 50 Euros. And they were tourists who didn't even pay in to their system. Tourism is economically important there though, so they treat tourists there for a small copay just like they do their citizens.

And as to the quality of care, the American doctors told her the Portugese surgeons did an excellent job on a difficult surgery and that they couldn't have done any better.

 

[dank69]

Medicare rates are higher in areas with less access. It helps offset things, but money isn't the reason doctors concentrate in cities. It's more desirable living, close to where they trained, easier to connect and refer to colleagues, attend conferences, etc.

I realize I phrased my question poorly. I meant do people who qualify for Medicare have problems obtaining healthcare services anywhere in the country? Do native Americans that qualify for Medicare have problems obtaining healthcare services locally? What I am asking the expert is, does Medicare function well enough for its intended purpose? He seems to be saying just taking a blueprint from one of the many other nations won't just work here, yet Medicare as far as I know does work here. Why can't we just scale it up to Medicare for all? All the money people and corporations pay right now for health insurance instead is collected as a tax to pay for Medicare for all. Then maybe one minor tweak to actually give Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices. Hopefully the expert can explain why this will not work to an imbecile like me.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Not an expert but I think it varies by country. They generally have lower costs because of price controls and fewer billing parties involved. US Healthcare has way too many middlemen that add zero value.

No. Not in the slightest.

Healthcare is typically paid for by ways of taxation in single payer places. The reason why healthcare has a low cost of $50 isn't because it cost $50 for those services. That's never the case. The reason it's $50 is because they have substantially higher income taxes along with a VAT on all of their purchases.

You think all the qualified nurses and all the qualified doctors there did $50 worth of work? lol.

 

[dainthomas]

No. Not in the slightest.

Healthcare is typically paid for by ways of taxation in single payer places. The reason why healthcare has a low cost of $50 isn't because it cost $50 for those services. That's never the case. The reason it's $50 is because they have substantially higher income taxes along with a VAT on all of their purchases.

You think all the qualified nurses and all the qualified doctors there did $50 worth of work? lol.

You're paying substantially more money through employer costs, personal costs, and taxes than you would if you lived almost anywhere else.

 

[Sunburn74]

No. Not in the slightest.

Healthcare is typically paid for by ways of taxation in single payer places. The reason why healthcare has a low cost of $50 isn't because it cost $50 for those services. That's never the case. The reason it's $50 is because they have substantially higher income taxes along with a VAT on all of their purchases.

You think all the qualified nurses and all the qualified doctors there did $50 worth of work? lol.

The fact of the matter is even those with insurance costs deducted from their paychecks are still paying far more than a similar person in Europe is paying for the same goods and services. Most of the extra money isnt going to the pockets of US doctors and nurses. It's going into the pockets of pharma and medical device company CEOs.

I realize I phrased my question poorly. I meant do people who qualify for Medicare have problems obtaining healthcare services anywhere in the country? Do native Americans that qualify for Medicare have problems obtaining healthcare services locally? What I am asking the expert is, does Medicare function well enough for its intended purpose? He seems to be saying just taking a blueprint from one of the many other nations won't just work here, yet Medicare as far as I know does work here. Why can't we just scale it up to Medicare for all? All the money people and corporations pay right now for health insurance instead is collected as a tax to pay for Medicare for all. Then maybe one minor tweak to actually give Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices. Hopefully the expert can explain why this will not work to an imbecile like me.

Scaling it up doesn't work because Medicare is funded to cover only a minority of the population (which is growing). To scale it up, you'd have to dramatically increase funding for it which could be an increase in taxes or making people enroll in it as a monthly premium but perhaps lower than what they'd get on the free market. To be clear most of the US issues aren't funding based. Our current level of Medicare funding for people just over 65 could cover everyone in the US regardless of age if we adopted European cost reduction strategies. The problem is a lot of fatcats would not be happy with the implementation of such practices that would severely limit their profit potential

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

You're paying substantially more money through employer costs, personal costs, and taxes than you would if you lived almost anywhere else.

I wasn't arguing against the concept of single payer as if what we currently have is better. I'm all for heavily reforming our medical industry.

I'm simply explaining that medical bills don't cost $50, no matter how much you want to tell yourselves that. No one goes to medical school for 10+ years, practices and assists for 10 more years all to get shit pay. That's laughably stupid.

 

[Sunburn74]

I wasn't arguing against the concept of single payer as if what we currently have is better. I'm all for heavily reforming our medical industry.

I'm simply explaining that medical bills don't cost $50, no matter how much you want to tell yourselves that. No one goes to medical school for 10+ years, practices and assists for 10 more years all to get shit pay. That's laughably stupid.

Actually they do. Go see what the VA charges gets for services.

For reference the VA is a vertically integrated healthcare network with incredible cost saving measures built into the system design. Vertically integrated.

 

[dank69]

Actually they do. Go see what the VA charges gets for services.

For reference the VA is a vertically integrated healthcare network with incredible cost saving measures built into the system design. Vertically integrated.

Gah, actual socialized medicine! The horror.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

No. Not in the slightest.

Healthcare is typically paid for by ways of taxation in single payer places. The reason why healthcare has a low cost of $50 isn't because it cost $50 for those services. That's never the case. The reason it's $50 is because they have substantially higher income taxes along with a VAT on all of their purchases.

You think all the qualified nurses and all the qualified doctors there did $50 worth of work? lol.

So how much should stitches cost for a deep cut on your hand?
Assume it’s a normal injury

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

So how much should stitches cost for a deep cut on your hand?
Assume it’s a normal injury

Let me ask you this.

How much does it cost just to get a qualified person to come to your house and just do an assessment on your AC. Or a plumber to come out and do an assessment on a plumbing issue.

Now think about what a reasonable cost is for a qualified doctor to come out and give a health assessment.

 

[zinfamous]

I wasn't arguing against the concept of single payer as if what we currently have is better. I'm all for heavily reforming our medical industry.

I'm simply explaining that medical bills don't cost $50, no matter how much you want to tell yourselves that. No one goes to medical school for 10+ years, practices and assists for 10 more years all to get shit pay. That's laughably stupid.

But what you're saying here is meaningless when you're trying to argue that the actual healthcare costs through VAT and higher income taxes are greater in socialized healthcare systems, when in fact they actually aren't. Why do you care about what the $50 bill actually costs, when after compensating for what you are currently paying your employer for "healthcare," then deductible, actually still comes out as being more money out of your pocket compared to your taxes paid and VAT in a socialized system with a proper progressive taxing scheme?

Again, a lot of cost reduction comes in eliminating leaching middlemen, redundant and unnecessary procedures that only exist because of bogus liability claims, and a paradigm shift in proper medical care: regular general checkups, throughout life, to prevent our current typical practice of catastrophic-only care; on top of us not footing the bills for ER visits to homeless and poor that will never pay those bills. Simply eliminating that burden across the board would result in a huuuuge savings.

 

[zinfamous]

Let me ask you this.

How much does it cost just to get a qualified person to come to your house and just do an assessment on your AC. Or a plumber to come out and do an assessment on a plumbing issue.

Now think about what a reasonable cost is for a qualified doctor to come out and give a health assessment.

wat?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Let me ask you this.

How much does it cost just to get a qualified person to come to your house and just do an assessment on your AC. Or a plumber to come out and do an assessment on a plumbing issue.

Now think about what a reasonable cost is for a qualified doctor to come out and give a health assessment.

So how much should a few inches of basic stitches cost?

 

[dainthomas]

Actually they do. Go see what the VA charges gets for services.

For reference the VA is a vertically integrated healthcare network with incredible cost saving measures built into the system design. Vertically integrated.

And they have a very favorable bargaining position. I'm a type 1 diabetic who gets my supplies from the VA. No way they're paying anything close to these horrible list prices for insulin that everyone else pays. Scale that up to the whole population and big pharma would be under massive pressure to reduce their prices.

 

[Sunburn74]

Let me ask you this.

How much does it cost just to get a qualified person to come to your house and just do an assessment on your AC. Or a plumber to come out and do an assessment on a plumbing issue.

Now think about what a reasonable cost is for a qualified doctor to come out and give a health assessment.

This is stupid.
First of all, you go to them generally.
Second of all, doctors are cost shared. A typical predominantly outpatient physician can carry a patient panel of 1000-2000 patients depending on the healthcare system. The cost of the doc is basically spread out over 2000 patients. It's not a 1:1 relationship. There are docs that see 40-45 different patients everyday and it's not uncommon to do so though ideal is probably around 20-25 people a day (20 min appointments). Next time you're at the doctor's office, ask your doc how many people they have scheduled that day. Go ahead.
Thirdly the cost of the doctors examination is <1% the cost of healthcare services generally received. A doctor can implant a CRT device (a type of pacemaker) in about an hour and can do 8 in a day or so. The cost of each of those devices alone (not accounting for the costs of the implant) is 30 to 90k depending on the model. That's what the hospital is charged for the device (actually they get them a bit less but not a massive discount less)

The VA however
1) slightly underpays their docs but have great benefits
2) has negotiating power so things they dont make they can seriously negotiate down
3) make a ton of stuff themselves to avoid paying extra to buy it from other people (mostly hospital supplies and the like)
4) concentrate specialities and avoid duplication (for example in the VA there are only 4 heart transplant centers because not everyone VA needs to be doing heart transplants despite there being 50 major big boy VA hospitals country wide) and are generally slow to offer the latest and greatest until that therapy is proven and time tested. In the private sector, large hospitals have a lot of redundancy with services offer because they have to offer everything to compete with each other including a lot of novel but not necessarily highly beneficial therapies.

There's a lot of other stuff the VA does to save money but most of it is vertical integration and cost savings through negotiating power.

 

[DarthKyrie]

Gah, actual socialized medicine! The horror.

I wish the actually felt the need to provide it proper funding so they could hire the doctors and nurses they need in order to provide THE BEST HEALTHCARE to our Vets.

 

[Aikouka]

I will stand by my statement elsewhere that a cohesive unified and superior health care system would be the largest single project this nation and likely any other nation for that matter has attempted. To do it properly requires a level of coordination and innovation that's not even properly understood at this time. It is indeed easier to put a colony on Mars or create the means to fix global warming in the allotted time than moving to a different form of care, and I don't mean lipstick on a pig.

Isn't that really because attempting to fix the United State's medical system is really trying to fix a multi-faceted issue? One of the reasons why I think the ACA is considered both good and bad is because it tried to act as a fix for insurance coverage (good), but it didn't do enough, which caused ripple effects elsewhere such as higher premiums (bad). To be fair, getting the ACA enacted was difficult enough, and I'd suspect that anything more robust than that would've had a snowball's chance in Hell of getting through. Anyway, in other words, it tried to help, but it only tackled one smaller area of the problem. It's like trying to pull up a few weeds and not consider than more will just grow in their place.

 

[hal2kilo]

Now, now, in the US his cost probably only would have been in the $3,000-8,000 range. Is that so unreasonable?

Sounds about right. Getting fluids and antibiotics for high fever and infection, 4 hrs maybe total stay. over $4000. Thank you Franciscans.

 

[dank69]

I wish the actually felt the need to provide it proper funding so they could hire the doctors and nurses they need in order to provide THE BEST HEALTHCARE to our Vets.

Of course, but in their crusade to prove that socialized medicine doesn't work, GOP politicians fuck up the VA system any way they can. Meanwhile in many blue states the VA system works fine. Never hear anything but praise about the system from my father or FIL who are both Vietnam vets and live here in CT. Of course my father doesn't think socialized medicine will ever work, haha. Then again he also thinks Bill and Hillary are known to have committed at least 30 murders over the past 3 decades in their quest for power.

 

[DarthKyrie]

Of course, but in their crusade to prove that socialized medicine doesn't work, GOP politicians fuck up the VA system any way they can. Meanwhile in many blue states the VA system works fine. Never hear anything but praise about the system from my father or FIL who are both Vietnam vets and live here in CT. Of course my father doesn't think socialized medicine will ever work, haha. Then again he also thinks Bill and Hillary are known to have committed at least 30 murders over the past 3 decades in their quest for power.

Haven't you tried to point out the irony of going to the VA and thinking socialized wouldn't work here? I think it is a rhetorical question based upon your posting history and your love of sarcasm, but feel free to correct me if I am wrong. As far as the last part something tells me he is fairly close on those numbers, they did own that small airport in Arkansas that the CIA was using to bring cocaine into the country from Columbia.

 

[DrunkenSano]

The biggest problem with our medical care right now in the US isn't about single payer or not having socialized healthcare. Nothing can work in our country until the bullshit fraud of hyper-inflated medical costs are clamped down.

Harvoni, a drug to treat hepatitis C, costs $2,132 for a course of treatment in Taiwan; in the United States the same amount costs an average of $32,114, she said.

An MRI costs $288 in Taiwan; in the United States, it’s $1,119.

A C-section procedure costs $1,404 in Taiwan; in the U.S. it’s $15,106.

That is your problem right there. People are getting raped by the cost of services in our medical field. How people aren't going to jail for charging those obscene numbers, it's insane. No plan, whether it be Obamacare or Single Payer will work in this country until that is fixed.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Of course, but in their crusade to prove that socialized medicine doesn't work, GOP politicians fuck up the VA system any way they can. Meanwhile in many blue states the VA system works fine. Never hear anything but praise about the system from my father or FIL who are both Vietnam vets and live here in CT. Of course my father doesn't think socialized medicine will ever work, haha. Then again he also thinks Bill and Hillary are known to have committed at least 30 murders over the past 3 decades in their quest for power.

Seems the VA varies quite a bit. Father in law recurved perfect VA care until end of life. Only thing that had to be paid for was the food he was served. He really wanted some sweets and for whatever reason the VA wouldn’t cover them.

 

[DarthKyrie]

The biggest problem with our medical care right now in the US isn't about single payer or not having socialized healthcare. Nothing can work in our country until the bullshit fraud of hyper-inflected medical costs are clamped down.



That is your problem right there. People are getting raped by the cost of services in our medical field. How people aren't going to jail for charging those obscene numbers, it's insane. No plan, whether it be Obamacare or Single Payer will work in this country until that is fixed.

That is called cost controls and it is done in all countries with an NHS style system, and would, of course, be a part of Medicare-for-All here. Medicare already has cost controls built into the system the only part that they can't negotiate on pricing is with PhRMA. Once Medicare is allowed to negotiate on drugs it will be good.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

You mean our healthcare system?

Yeah, me too. It sucks.

The anecdote I described above where my in-laws were injured in that car wreck, if that had happened in the US instead of Portugal, and they had insurance, they still would have paid $5-10K of their own medical bills, with a separate bill of $1500 for the ambulance.

Without insurance, they'd have gotten a $200K bill and their next call would have been to a bankruptcy lawyer.

In Portugal, all that cost them 50 Euros. And they were tourists who didn't even pay in to their system. Tourism is economically important there though, so they treat tourists there for a small copay just like they do their citizens.

And as to the quality of care, the American doctors told her the Portugese surgeons did an excellent job on a difficult surgery and that they couldn't have done any better.

Good for them. Now tell me detailed steps to get the same thing here. I had a lawyer once who handled a case pro bono. It was a small matter and we won. Now how do I get you and all lawyers to do the same? If I had Trump's fortune I could get great lawyers but representation could cost a hell of a lot more depending on the situation, potentially over a million. Ask Manafort. So get me that for 50 Euros. Should be easy, right?


Neither my nor your anecdotes say anything as to what is possible and how to get it done.

Don't complain about anecdotes or what it's like elsewhere. Don't go "socialized medicine", "Portugal", "Medicare for all", give specific solutions as I have and some others.

 

[dank69]

Seems the VA varies quite a bit. Father in law recurved perfect VA care until end of life. Only thing that had to be paid for was the food he was served. He really wanted some sweets and for whatever reason the VA wouldn’t cover them.

The death panels are real.