Time for universal health care ? (unemployment, Congress, independent, military)
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Pardon me for butting in here. I just happened to notice this thread was listed on the Active Discussions side panel and thought my observations from practicing medicine for 45 yrs might be worthy of sharing.
First let me quickly dispense with the example of Europe's experience: Europeans have been accustomed to living under the heel of The Monarch since the days of Caesar Augustus: everything belongs to the state and he allows us peons to survive out of the goodness of his heart, but no opportunity to advance our condition. The real American Dream is to get out from under the heel of The Govt. ... Economic opportunity is a secondary benefit.
Surely access to air, water, food, shelter and clothing are all more important to human life than health care. So why doesn't the govt provide those free of charge before they offer free health care? Because the only reason govt offers anything free is to buy votes with tax payers' money. (Cf- bread & circuses as a ploy to appease the masses since ancient times.)
Physicians didn't make much money until health insurance became wide spread thanks to efforts by unions ( communist organizations run by The Mafia. What could go wrong there?) Physicians got really rich with the advent of Medicare. The early yrs of that program were filled with exploitation of the system. {The Clinton administration revamped the program, cutting $billions out. Have we forgotten that 1/3rd of the country's hospitals ( mostly in under-served rural & inner city locations) went out of business in a 3 yr period then due to unmet expenses?} When a third party is footing the bill, law of supply & demand dominates and expenses skyrocket.
Now add in the unreasonable expectations imposed on medical providers instilled by the corrupt legal system and you have increased expenses of medically unnecessary (but legally prudent) testing & consults. The physician is now punished for exercising good clinical judgement. It's now necessary for him/her to be able to prove correct decision making with test results to 12 people too dumb to get out of jury duty.
Our life expectancy has gone up in three great steps since the mid 19th century: indoor plumbing, then antibiotics, then coronary bypass surgery. Routine medical care has almost nothing to do with it.
Our expenses would go down if we (a) get rid of insurance and (2) start treating med professionals like baseball umpires: we know they don;t always make the right decision, but they're doing the best they can. Nature operates as probabilities under the bell curve. Just accept that.
Pardon me for butting in here. I just happened to notice this thread was listed on the Active Discussions side panel and thought my observations from practicing medicine for 45 yrs might be worthy of sharing..
Except that you only provide a the political polemic of 45 seconds of Googling instead of any actual professional information that might have been gained from practicing medicine for 45 years.
Surely access to air, water, food, shelter and clothing are all more important to human life than health care. So why doesn't the govt provide those free of charge before they offer free health care? .
What are you talking about? I got government-provided water literally on tap. I can get shelter and money for food and clothing if I am in genuine need. About the only one government does not provide of those is air, and that is because there is a surfeit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by guidoLaMoto
Our life expectancy has gone up in three great steps since the mid 19th century: indoor plumbing, then antibiotics, then coronary bypass surgery. Routine medical care has almost nothing to do with it.
But life expectancy is still lagging the rest of the developed world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by guidoLaMoto
Our expenses would go down if we (a) get rid of insurance and (2) start treating med professionals like baseball umpires: we know they don;t always make the right decision, but they're doing the best they can. Nature operates as probabilities under the bell curve. Just accept that.
As far as the taxes go vs national health care countries, if you count what we in the U.S. pay in health insurance premiums + medical bills, I'm quite sure we pay a similar amount for our health care.
How about you ask the Europeans to step up their defense spending so we could cut ours. They rely on us! Of course this allows them to spend more on social programs. I'm betting they wouldn't do it.
As far as comments from those who have experienced "European" healthcare, my friends from England would probably disagree pretty strongly with you. One came here specifically for state of the art breast cancer treatment that just wasn't happening. Felt like she had a death sentence over there. 5 years later and she is doing well. Her comment was the system in England was pretty good in England if you were healthy!
Having spent a lot of time in Canada I can tell you that plenty of them up there complain about the system. Until a few years ago we had more MRI machines in Raleigh, NC then they had in the entire country. The average time for knee replacement surgery in Canada is 182 days. I've known several people here that have had it done within a few weeks. Universal is NOT a panacea.
I think we need to be careful about anecdotal evidence here, but I'll add my own. I had endometrial cancer and was treated on the National Health Service. The care was equal or better to anything that I had received in the States (no cancer while I lived in the US, but an operation and illnesses aplenty). I had my cancer operation in 2007, and I am still here, doing just fine, thank you. My mother, on the other hand, lived in the US and had a horrendous experience when she developed cancer; I don't think she would have survived regardless, but she did suffer more than she should have.
I also had a health scare in the UK that led to a day in the cardiac unit and extensive testing to discover what happily turned out to be a relatively minor health condition. That condition has been monitored and tested every so often over the past 10 years. All by the NHS, all at no cost to the user at the point of service.
There's a bureaucracy to deal with when you use the NHS. Once you understand how it works, it often isn't as bad as it's portrayed. The system in England is also pretty good for most people when you're sick, including very sick. Sorry your friend had a bad experience, but I know from personal experience that it takes a while to understand how things are done when you live in a foreign country, and that no system is perfect.
Pardon me for butting in here. I just happened to notice this thread was listed on the Active Discussions side panel and thought my observations from practicing medicine for 45 yrs might be worthy of sharing.
First let me quickly dispense with the example of Europe's experience: Europeans have been accustomed to living under the heel of The Monarch since the days of Caesar Augustus: everything belongs to the state and he allows us peons to survive out of the goodness of his heart, but no opportunity to advance our condition. The real American Dream is to get out from under the heel of The Govt. ... Economic opportunity is a secondary benefit.
Surely access to air, water, food, shelter and clothing are all more important to human life than health care. So why doesn't the govt provide those free of charge before they offer free health care? Because the only reason govt offers anything free is to buy votes with tax payers' money. (Cf- bread & circuses as a ploy to appease the masses since ancient times.)
Physicians didn't make much money until health insurance became wide spread thanks to efforts by unions ( communist organizations run by The Mafia. What could go wrong there?) Physicians got really rich with the advent of Medicare. The early yrs of that program were filled with exploitation of the system. {The Clinton administration revamped the program, cutting $billions out. Have we forgotten that 1/3rd of the country's hospitals ( mostly in under-served rural & inner city locations) went out of business in a 3 yr period then due to unmet expenses?} When a third party is footing the bill, law of supply & demand dominates and expenses skyrocket.
Now add in the unreasonable expectations imposed on medical providers instilled by the corrupt legal system and you have increased expenses of medically unnecessary (but legally prudent) testing & consults. The physician is now punished for exercising good clinical judgement. It's now necessary for him/her to be able to prove correct decision making with test results to 12 people too dumb to get out of jury duty.
Our life expectancy has gone up in three great steps since the mid 19th century: indoor plumbing, then antibiotics, then coronary bypass surgery. Routine medical care has almost nothing to do with it.
Our expenses would go down if we (a) get rid of insurance and (2) start treating med professionals like baseball umpires: we know they don;t always make the right decision, but they're doing the best they can. Nature operates as probabilities under the bell curve. Just accept that.
The LAST person that I'll listen to on this issue is a doctor. First of all because there is a conflict of interest.
But most of us can cite bad diagnoses (in one recent study the majority of American patients will suffer at least one SIGNIFICANT incorrect diagnoses in their lifetime). But further we can almost all cite stupidity in regard to how the American medical system works.
Take yesterday. I'm dissatisfied with my cardiologist. So I've been looking around at choosing a new one. I had heard very good things about one particular cardiologist, so I yesterday afternoon I called his office and asked if he was taking new patients. "Yes he is. Would you like to make an appointment?" It would be 3 weeks out, so I said that I would call back the next morning. Meanwhile I had what I'll call an interim appointment with my general practitioner, and told him I would probably be switching cardiologists and asked him about the one I had called. He said he knew him and thought he was excellent. So he gave me a referral because that might speed up an appointment, and he told me to call today and make an appointment with referral in hand. But this morning I was told I couldn't make an appointment because they had not received the fax yet...even though yesterday without a referral I could have made an appointment. I mean duuuuuuuuuuuuh!
Or the 3 times I was called by my GP's office with test results. The only trouble was that I hadn't had any tests. Wrong patient.
Or in the practice I go to -- by the way, which has repeatedly won awards as being the best medical practice in the region -- if you are a walk-in you take which ever practitioner you get, even if your regular practitioner who knows your case well is taking walk-ins that day.
Or making a mistake in a code, resulting in a diagnosis of "heart failure", even though it was not "heart failure". A rather significant error.
I could go on.
So no, I don't want to hear from another doctor whose goal is to create as assembly line of $patients$ who can be pumped through their office in 15 minute cycles.
The problem with Obamacare and any other alternative care system is that it's too almost 40 years toolate. I remember big concerns by employers clear back in the EARLY-80'S, and nobody in power wanted to touch it with a 10' pole. I don't know what the best answer is at this point.
I've always thought that expanding Medicare to a universal care system was the more realistic approach. However, that whole institution would need a massive expansion and complete overhaul of its system to provide efficient operations, which it never has had. And, then, of course, the exorbitant costs would likely get passed on to all of us.
Im just worried that the costs wont be distributed EFFICIENTLY. I certainly cant afford 1000 a month for health insurance for my family of three. Im paying 600 right now. I dont see how making healthcare universal would LOWER the costs. Im going to vote based on what it would do to my household expenses.
How about you ask the Europeans to step up their defense spending so we could cut ours. They rely on us! Of course this allows them to spend more on social programs. I'm betting they wouldn't do it.
As far as comments from those who have experienced "European" healthcare, my friends from England would probably disagree pretty strongly with you. One came here specifically for state of the art breast cancer treatment that just wasn't happening. Felt like she had a death sentence over there. 5 years later and she is doing well. Her comment was the system in England was pretty good in England if you were healthy!
Having spent a lot of time in Canada I can tell you that plenty of them up there complain about the system. Until a few years ago we had more MRI machines in Raleigh, NC then they had in the entire country. The average time for knee replacement surgery in Canada is 182 days. I've known several people here that have had it done within a few weeks. Universal is NOT a panacea.
Creating universal health care and creating efficiency in that system are definitely two completely separate things. Efficient systems are the result of directives being put in place to address those things that lead to inefficiencies, period. It has no bearing on what kind of system we are speaking of, but it has a ton to do with intent. If anything Americans are guilty of ignoring their collective interests in favor of pursuing the best path for the individual, often to the detriment of the whole..We should have the political will necessary to implement a better health care system, and single payer systems are a good start in that direction.
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