Who are the 47 million Americans who ‘don’t have health care?”

[Care4all]

How is that "the system" not working for you? You work (presumably), they work, you're all reasonably intelligent adults (again, presumably). What, precisely, is it that you think "the system" owes you?

Better yet, HOW is the system working for you?

Please tell us.

Then, maybe you will get the answer to why Editec and the 4 young men living with him do not have healthcare insurance.....and the "system" is not working.

I would bet that YOUR employer provides the healthcare for you and your family....with a minor amount coming from you.

THIS IS THE ONLY way that anyone can even say that our healthcare system is working for those that do have insurance, unless they are the wealthy, where they can afford their own private plan and the $1-2k A MONTH insurance premium to cover their family.

 

[KittenKoder]

From what we have seen in other countries, whether a health care system works or not depends on the people AND the government. Just regulating it doesn't always work, but leaving it to fester on its own doesn't either. Read more on the UK and Japan health care system for two completely opposite ways of dealing with it, those two appear to still work fine after being like that for many years.

The problem is that our practitioners are not interested in health care, they are interested in money, because people are so paranoid that they go to them for evey tiny little scratch, bump, headache, etc. they are now able to set their own price.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Not nearly so often as we read about people dying because their PRIVATE INSURANCE COMPANIES decided that a treatment is experiemental (when it isn't really) and they wouldn't pay for it, actually.

Actually, you almost never hear about that, either. What you hear mostly are people telling generalized horror stories and urban legends about it, like this. Which is not to say that it never happens that people decide they need a treatment which isn't covered by their health insurance. But nothing stops them from finding other ways to get it, and it is NEVER as though the company didn't fully disclose exactly what they covered when the people signed the papers.

I am so sick and tired of this myth that government is less effecient than private insurance companies, folks.

I am so sick and tired of this myth that they aren't. Name me one - just ONE - government department that isn't riddled with inefficiency, bloat, and cost overruns.

It is simply not true.

Prove it.

Private insurance comapnies have vested interest in screwing people, and they respond to that vested interest often.

That is such incredible, paranoid bullshit. No legal, legitimate business in America has a vested interest in screwing its customers. They have a vested interest attracting and keeping customers, and you don't do that by screwing them over, and you CERTAINLY don't do that by killing them.

Now bear in mind my previous post.

There is NO perfect solution to this problem...not privatizing, not semisocialism and not pure socialistic health care either.

Each comes with their own sets of problems.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, well, life's not perfect. So what?

Health care is not like other things we buy, folks.

And why is that? Certainly not because it COULDN'T be.

Any of us who think HC responds to the laws of supply and demand like other necessities do, is not thinking about this issue very deeply.

It does when it doesn't have outside agencies and agendas interfering in the market process.

For example we know that :

More doctors tends to increase the aggregate amount of HC used, and does not reduce the cost of HC (the more doctors in an area? the higher cost for HC tends to be in that area!)

First of all, you have not demonstrated that that is a fact. Second of all, who says that that's proof of healthcare not responding to economic laws? Sounds to ME like you're just not factoring in all the forces at work.

Consumers do not comparison shop for the best buy in HC because they are wholly unqualified to decide what the best buy is.

Which makes perfect economic sense when you consider that they aren't spending THEIR money. Who comparison shops when they're on someone else's dime? And they are NOT unqualified to decide what the best buy is. Maybe YOU consider yourself an ignorant babe in the woods who has to be led by the hand and spoonfed, but most of us are perfectly capable of researching, gathering information, and deciding what our own priorities are. You ever talk to the parent of a handicapped child, particularly one who has been dealing with that handicap for a while? They usually know that condition backward and forward, all the research and experimental treatments in that area, the names of the best doctors in that field . . .

Consumers do NOT decide how much HC they need, the providers do.

Wrong. Providers decide what they're paying for. They don't stop you from getting what you decide you need. They just don't foot the bill. That's like saying if my mother refuses to go out and buy me groceries, she's deciding how much food I need. When did I become helpless?

Other things to consider...

MOST of the nation HC dollars are spent on patients in their last year of life because keeping people alive for those last day is typically the most intensive and expensive HC.

Even assuming that would be a bad thing if it were true, I would like to know exactly where you even got this particular statistic.

Sooner or later we are going to just have to accept the fact that HC doesn't work in the standard economic model way that most other things do because the demand for health care is an ever increasing but the return on HC investment is a diminishing return.

Horseshit, AND increased demand does not in any way indicate a lack of working to economic laws. Ask yourself WHY healthcare demand is increasing in this country. Also, prove to me that there is "diminishing return".

Sooner or later, every HC system, public or private, is going to start to ration the HC dollars they'll spend on people, folks because of the aforementioned statement.

Well, gee, maybe we shouldn't be asking for other people to pay for it, then. That way, any rationing of expenditures is made on our own individual priorities, rather than someone else's. If you stand around with your hand out, saying, "Take care of me", you have a hell of a nerve bitching because someone else ends up deciding how you'll be taken care of.

HC rationing is inevitable because HC demand doesn't like any other necessities we purchase.

A statement you keep making with no evidence whatsoever.

Health care is like a black hole into which we could (and have been) shoving money.

Nice hyperbole, but not really saying anything of substance. If you don't want to pay for healthcare and you think it's a waste of your money, then don't pay for any.

But the thing is...its a black hole we can never fill.

Meaning what, exactly? As long as people continue to live, they're going to continue to get sick and need medical care? The horror!