Universal Health Care

[garyd]

He has just shown you that their system is also bloated and unfair. Or can't you read. The government is essentially killing people in order to save money under those systems. And you think that is fair?

 

[pfife]

I did not say, "It's broken because it's broken". I said it's broken because it's designed to be broken. By any reasonable standard, it's not INTENDED to work well, and it doesn't.

Care to read the post and try to understand it without sounding like a dumbass?

How is it not intended to work well?

 

[Chris]

He has just shown you that their system is also bloated and unfair. Or can't you read. The government is essentially killing people in order to save money under those systems. And you think that is fair?

Yes, our system is bloated and unfair and profit driven.

Check out this from Robert Bazell....

Let me be clear, the vast majority of interventional cardiologists — the doctors who perform angioplasties — are honest and caring physicians. But I remember standing in scrubs outside a procedure room in Miami when the other doctors (who mistook me for a colleague) were bragging about how many “normals” they had done angioplasties on. That’s right, people came in complaining of shortness of breath or chest pain, so the doctors put them into the cauterization lab and examined their vessels, then told these patients they needed an angioplasty and did it knowing full well it was unnecessary. For many doctors and hospitals, angioplasty has been the mother lode. I’ve had young interventional cardiologists brag to me of their multi-million dollar signing bonuses to change hospitals.

This specialty faces a mine field of potential conflicts because so much of it is based on self-referral. An interventional cardiologist diagnoses the blockage by injecting dye into the coronary arteries with tubes inserted from vessels near the groin. All too often the doctor will tell the lightly sedated patient he or she has one or more blockages, which can be taken care of right away with an angioplasty. That sure sounds great but it doesn’t always work. And there's no opportunity for the patient to weigh other options; no chance for a second opinion

Conveyor-belt cardiology puts profits first - Second Opinion- msnbc.com

 

[Chris]

He has just shown you that their system is also bloated and unfair. Or can't you read. The government is essentially killing people in order to save money under those systems. And you think that is fair?

Fraser Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1999, the Fraser Institute was attacked by health professionals and scientists[citation needed] for sponsoring two conferences on the tobacco industry entitled "Junk Science, Junk Policy? Managing Risk and Regulation" and "Should government butt out? The pros and cons of tobacco regulation." Critics charged the Institute was associating itself with the tobacco industry's many attempts to discredit authentic scientific work.

 

[Diuretic]

Yes Chris and every other country has also found it necessary by fair means or foul to limit access to that care in one way or the other. Most often penalized are the elderly.

Not in Australia. It is true that our system is strained and that's because of underfunding by the previous conservative government during its 11 years in office. It hated our system but knew that if it tried to dismantle it we would run them out of office immediately, so they tried to starve it to death. That didn't work. The result of the mismanagement and ideological blindness of the previous federal government has seen elective surgery queues lengthen and the only way to shorten them is better funding. I think that's on the way. As far as access is concerned, no, it's not limited, if someone needs treatment they get it and it's no walk in casualty treatment, it's treatment for anything and everything.

 

[Diuretic]

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care -- Part I | OurFuture.org

Extract:

I'm both a health-care-card-carrying Canadian resident and an uninsured American citizen who regularly sees doctors on both sides of the border. As such, I'm in a unique position to address the pros and cons of both systems first-hand. If we're going to have this conversation, it would be great if we could start out (for once) with actual facts, instead of ideological posturing, wishful thinking, hearsay, and random guessing about how things get done up here.

To that end, here's the first of a two-part series aimed at busting the common myths Americans routinely tell each other about Canadian health care. When the right-wing hysterics drag out these hoary old bogeymen, this time, we need to be armed and ready to blast them into straw. Because, mostly, straw is all they're made of.

 

[Chris]

Not in Australia. It is true that our system is strained and that's because of underfunding by the previous conservative government during its 11 years in office. It hated our system but knew that if it tried to dismantle it we would run them out of office immediately, so they tried to starve it to death. That didn't work. The result of the mismanagement and ideological blindness of the previous federal government has seen elective surgery queues lengthen and the only way to shorten them is better funding. I think that's on the way. As far as access is concerned, no, it's not limited, if someone needs treatment they get it and it's no walk in casualty treatment, it's treatment for anything and everything.

Sounds like the Bush administration...

 

[Diuretic]

Sounds like the Bush administration...

Close, very close, it was John Howard who presided over that 11 years. I don't know if Bush is an ideologue but Howard certainly is and he would have loved to have dismantled our health care system if he thought he could get away with it. But he knew it would be political suicide. As it was he fiddled around with our industrial relations system and got the boot but that's off topic here so I'll leave it at that.

 

[pfife]

Close, very close, it was John Howard who presided over that 11 years. I don't know if Bush is an ideologue but Howard certainly is and he would have loved to have dismantled our health care system if he thought he could get away with it. But he knew it would be political suicide. As it was he fiddled around with our industrial relations system and got the boot but that's off topic here so I'll leave it at that.

Normally I'd say Bush is an ideologue, but quite frankly his Medicare PartD program was a rather large step toward socialized medicine especially for someone ideologically opposed to socialized medicine.

 

[Cecilie1200]

So does the US. Most often penalized are the poor and those without insurance.

It's amazing how life just generally penalizes you for being less successful at it. But there's a big difference between the cosmos saying, "You're a loser. Suffer for it" and the government doing so, because you're entitled to expect the government to give you the same as it gives everyone else, and you're not entitled to jack from the cosmos.

 

[Cecilie1200]

How is it not intended to work well?

For starters, as I have pointed out, the goals and incentives for government are completely different from those for private businesses. So if your standard is the sorts of achievements you get from private business - like cost effectiveness and efficient customer service, for example - an organization designed to do something completely different can't possibly work as well.

In addition, since one of the major goals of government programs in general is to perpetuate people's jobs and solidify and even expand their power and influence, those programs are NOT going to be designed to actually SOLVE the problems they're created to deal with. They're going to continue and exacerbate the problem. If you get paid by the government to fight poverty, for example, then eradicating poverty is going to put you out of work. Not much of an incentive to accomplish anything, is it?

 

[pfife]

It's amazing how life just generally penalizes you for being less successful at it. But there's a big difference between the cosmos saying, "You're a loser. Suffer for it" and the government doing so, because you're entitled to expect the government to give you the same as it gives everyone else, and you're not entitled to jack from the cosmos.

Being poor means you're not successful at life?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Being poor means you're not successful at life?

Generally speaking, yes. Being too poor to provide yourself with the basic necessities of life means you're pretty much a failure.

 

[pfife]

For starters, as I have pointed out, the goals and incentives for government are completely different from those for private businesses. So if your standard is the sorts of achievements you get from private business - like cost effectiveness and efficient customer service, for example - an organization designed to do something completely different can't possibly work as well.
In addition, since one of the major goals of government programs in general is to perpetuate people's jobs and solidify and even expand their power and influence, those programs are NOT going to be designed to actually SOLVE the problems they're created to deal with. They're going to continue and exacerbate the problem. If you get paid by the government to fight poverty, for example, then eradicating poverty is going to put you out of work. Not much of an incentive to accomplish anything, is it?

Again, I'm asking about medicare & medicaid specifically, not all government programs. What specifically was intentionally done to the design of these specific programs to make fail - intentionally - as you've argued?

 

[Orange_Juice]

Please show me where in the constitution it says every american deserves government provided healthcare.

Healthcare is a responsibility not a right.

So, just end government funding of health care? I think most real Conservatives support this sick position. It would led to so much needless suffering that its almost unconscionable to think of, but this is the world Conservatives want. They are sick people

 

[pfife]

Generally speaking, yes. Being too poor to provide yourself with the basic necessities of life means you're pretty much a failure.

Health care insurance is a basic necessity of life?

 

[Orange_Juice]

Generally speaking, yes. Being too poor to provide yourself with the basic necessities of life means you're pretty much a failure.

So being born rich means you are a success!

 

[Chris]

Generally speaking, yes. Being too poor to provide yourself with the basic necessities of life means you're pretty much a failure.

So if you get cancer and can't work and pay insurance premiums, it's your fault.

 

[Chris]

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care -- Part I | OurFuture.org

Extract:

That is one of the best articles I've read on the difference between our system and the single payer system.

 

[editec]

What do you think about it? Personally i think it will take away the incentive to make more money because the government will be paying the doctors bills and the government will not pay much. Why? Because its the government for Christs sake. There will be no reason to pay more to go through college to be a doctor because whats the point in spending more time and money to be a doctor if a school teacher is making just as much?

You are assuming that the system becomes entirely socialized, right?

Yes, in a completely socialized system Doctors and most HC providers would make less than they do currently, I quite agree.

Now where you get the opinion that they'll only make as much as school teachers is a bit mystifying, but your point does have merit.