Private health care has never worked anywhere in the world.
It has worked quite well for me all of my life.
As long as you're content to pay double what it would be in a country with single payer.
OMG!
Where do they get this endless supply of morons???????
1. Universal Healthcare Around the World:
Italy: average wait for a mammogram is 70 days
“When you compare the outcomes for specific
diseases, the United States clearly outperforms
the rest of the world. Whether the disease
is cancer, pneumonia, heart disease, or
AIDS, the chances of a patient surviving are far
higher in the United States than in other countries.
The same is true for prescription drugs.
For example, 44 percent of Americans who
could benefit from statins, lipid-lowering
medication that reduces cholesterol and protects
against heart disease, take the drug.
That number seems low until compared with
the 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of
Britons, and 17 percent of Italians who could
both benefit from the drug and receive it.”
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-613.pdf
In Great Britain, about 20% of patients with treatable colon cancer at the time of discovery are considered incurable by the time treatment is finally available.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-613.pdf
Countries in which complementary or supplementary private health insurance policies are common include
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States (in
the case of Medicare programme beneficiaries).
In countries where private health insurance is available, governments often impose rules on what sort of
coverage is permissible. For example, Australia prohibits private insurance policies from covering the
ambulatory care co-payments required in the public programme. Canada prohibits private health insurers
from covering benefits included in the national plan.
The
public-integrated model combines on-budget financing of health-care provision with hospital
providers that are part of the government sector.6 These systems, which merge the insurance and provision
functions, are organised and operated like any government department. Staff is generally paid on salary
(although, in some cases, doctors can have private patients as well) and they are most often public-sector
employees. Ambulatory doctors and other health-care professionals can be either public employees or
private contractors to the health-care authority, with a range of remuneration packages. Ensuring complete
population coverage is particularly easy under such systems, and as they are under the control of the
budget, the growth of overall costs has been contained more easily. However, they have weak incentives to
increase output, improve efficiency, or maintain quality and responsiveness to patient needs.
2. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE): tells Brits if their life is worth living- in actual dollars and cents. As the NYTimes states, its job is to develop “a standard method of rationing. NICE has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.”
(
British Balance Benefit vs. Cost of Latest Drugs)
So, the average one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is worth way more than a Brits’ life!(
www.tregny.com
So, it has concluded that if you have breast cancer, the drug Tykerb, shown to delay the progression of the disease, is worth more than you are “despite Glaxo’s offer to pay for the first 12 weeks of treatment.”
U.K. Says Tykerb Isn’t Worth Cost, Even With 12 Free Weeks
3. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle praised NICE-type policies in his book about healthcare and advocated a ‘super board’ that would tell doctors how to treat you. This board would choose “what it will cover and how much it will pay.” Can you spell “NICE”? (
Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis by Tom Daschle, Jeanne M. Lambrew, and Scott S. Greenberger (Hardcover - Feb 19, 2008) p. 158 BTW, Daschle was Barack Obama’s first choice as Sec’y of HHS.
4. The Bush Administration sent chief medical officer of the Center for
Medicare and
Medicaid Services, Dr. Sean Tunis to learn about NICE and try to adopt the processes and mechanisms they used, “and we just couldn’t…[use]price to determine which drugs or devices Medicare or Medicaid provides has provoked fierce protests.”
British Balance Benefit vs. Cost of Latest Drugs
