Obamacare 5 years later. Crow, anyone?

[ponderingturtle]

Even that's... meh... Some of the single payer countries have funding issues of their own. The UK faced issues last year because of the way it's population is dealing with funding. It would be nice to see measures taken at the source of the costs before going full-on single-payer

The UK could solve it easily with more american levels of premium inflation. Of course they already spend about half the %age of GDP on healthcare so they have a long way to go before they can hope to catch up with the quality of the american system. After all you get what you pay for and no one pays more than americans.

 

[twinstead]

If you really got what you paid for medical system wise, then Americans should have conquered cancer, be growing organ replacements in the laboratory, and have an average life expectancy of 116.

 

[ponderingturtle]

If you really got what you paid for medical system wise, then Americans should have conquered cancer, be growing organ replacements in the laboratory, and have an average life expectancy of 116.

You are using the wrong metric though, it is about prestige. By that logic Luxury cars would be more reliable and efficient than inexpensive cars. So we have the Cadillac of health care systems. Not some silly Toyota of health care systems.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Because I was responding to you. Not sure how you connect what you said to the ACA though. Clearly it was better when people still died of treatable diseases because they had family around them or some such?

See? That's why I wondered why you quoted me. Because I implied no such thing.

 

[Upchurch]

Of course all of them are politically untennable in the US. No one could cut into profits like that and get through congress, way to much lobbying money against them.

To be fair, I would have said the same thing about the ACA before it actually happened.

 

[a_unique_person]

At home, yes, but when we had extended families there was a safety net for the ill, the elderly, and the lame.

Not a safety net as much as a cheap hospice service for people with treatable diseases.

 

[ponderingturtle]

To be fair, I would have said the same thing about the ACA before it actually happened.

No really. It wasn't designed to help control medical spending in any real fashion. It was intended to deal with the moral problems with the existing system not the structural issues that cause us to spend so much on health care.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Yea clearly you were much better off when you simply would die if you got sick. I have a problem seeing a relatively small fine as back breaking, but a few hundred thousand dollars in unexpected medical bills isn't a big deal.

In roses idea lworld you only pay for insurance when you need the insurance to pay your bills.

Locked into poverty by the aca.... What a ridiculous story.

 

[BobTheCoward]

The conservatives make the wrong argument against single payer or social health care. Saying it won't work is wrong. The government can be pretty good at taking other people's money and paying enough to get something done...like the Apollo program. Instead, they should focus on what people could do if they were able to make the best use of their money. Its a more emotional argument, but it doesn't fail as readily as saying that the government can't purchase health care for everyone.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The conservatives make the wrong argument against single payer or social health care. Saying it won't work is wrong. The government can be pretty good at taking other people's money and paying enough to get something done...like the Apollo program. Instead, they should focus on what people could do if they were able to make the best use of their money. Its a more emotional argument, but it doesn't fail as readily as saying that the government can't purchase health care for everyone.

But Americans suck at government, that is why it is really Germany that should get the credit for putting men on the moon. All the US did was fund it.

 

[ponderingturtle]

In roses idea lworld you only pay for insurance when you need the insurance to pay your bills.

Locked into poverty by the aca.... What a ridiculous story.

Not ridiculous, just rather short sighted.

 

[3point14]

Is there a perception in the US that health insurance = healthcare and that they are one and the same thing?

 

[bonzombiekitty]

Is there a perception in the US that health insurance = healthcare and that they are one and the same thing?

Generally. The two are so tightly entangled, that you can't really separate them. It really is a mess, the ACA made things a bit better as it did encompass some larger reforms in regards to healthcare itself as well as the insurance process, but it's still a mess.

As an example of how messed up it is:

My wife is a Physician Assistant, specializing in liver disease. Her role is essentially supposed to be that of a doctor - but dealing with the more day to day routine issues. In her old job, she spent more than half of every day simply dealing with insurance companies rather than dealing with patients themselves. Her current job is better in this regard, as she has someone who will do most of it for her, but there's still a big cost there.

 

[Lowpro]

Please to illuminate about this..

The funding issues for the NHS are due to a number of factors. Demand for the NHS is growing due to an increasing population and more importantly an increasingly elderly population. Medical inflation is typically higher than CPI/RPI due to the more expensive and more effective treatments that are available but NHS funding is fixed to inflation. Another huge millstone around the NHS neck is PFI (private funding of investment in the NHS where costs are exceptionally high compared to funding it publicly - indeed many health trusts have bought their way out of PFI contracts, they're so expensive) the costs of which are much higher than anticipated.

The U.S. model faces many of the same challenges but unlike the NHS has the ability to increase premiums above inflation. This means that while the NHS has to do things more efficiently, there is no such pressure in the U.S. to do things efficiently and take advantage of economies of scale.

Despite all of the above (and the breathless media reports of an NHS in crisis) more people than ever before were treated by the NHS and the NHS achieves better health outcomes for the UK population than the U.S. model does for the U.S. population for about half the cost (as has been pointed out in many other threads, the U.S. spends a greater proportion of GDP on government funding of healthcare than the U.K.).

Can you give me sources for that if ya don't mind? I've heard conflicting measurements and personally I don't believe the statement to be true without qualifying the disease burden.

Read another way, I don't want to argue with it on this thread, but I want to know where the data for that was summarized.

 

[CynicalSkeptic]

Is there a perception in the US that health insurance = healthcare and that they are one and the same thing?

I don't think so. health insurance = affordable* access to healthcare.



*for varying definitions of affordable

 

[Modified]

I don't think so. health insurance = affordable* access to healthcare.

Because without health insurance, you will be billed 2 to 10 times more than insurance would pay. Then you have to "negotiate" the bill down to a reasonable amount, which is still much more than insurance would pay. This makes no sense, because by eliminating all the insurance hassle for the doctor and clinic, you save them a lot of money. Even if you are a billionaire, you wouldn't want to be self-insured.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Donations pour in from liberals to help Obamacare-hating conservative who’s losing his eyesight

 

[CynicalSkeptic]

http://www.gofundme.com/s78e9w
and some leave snarky comments without donating:

I want to donate enough to really help you out, but I can't figure out how to get GoFundMe to accept bootstraps

f only there was some type of program that would allow people to pay money into a pool even if they were healthy so that if the time ever came when they would need it, they would not have to worry about losing evetrything they worked for. Maybe they could even have a preexisting condition and not have to worry about it being covered. Oh, and if they couldn't afford the premium, maybe the state they live in could expand medicaid so it it can help them afford it. A subsidy, if you will. If that was offered by the Federal Government to states it would be CRAZY for the states to deny that to their citizens. Yeah, if only.

et's re-cap shall we? You have diabetes, yet you continue to smoke. You let two open enrollment periods for the ACA go by without signing up for insurance. You were gainfully employed, yet chose to not purchase health insurance for yourself or your family. Now that you have reaped what you have sown, you expect other people to GIVE you to thousands of dollars you need for your medical procedures, preferably while you keep your $300k house. And on top of that, you want to blame Obama for your troubles. How's that "personal responsibility" thing working out for you?

 

[Dr. Keith]

You are using the wrong metric though, it is about prestige. By that logic Luxury cars would be more reliable and efficient than inexpensive cars. So we have the Cadillac of health care systems. Not some silly Toyota of health care systems.

God, what a perfect analogy. Thank you.


(Although Cadillac is making much more reliable vehicles of late. But calling it the BMW or Audi of health care systems just doesn't have the same zing.)

 

[The Don]

Can you give me sources for that if ya don't mind? I've heard conflicting measurements and personally I don't believe the statement to be true without qualifying the disease burden.

Read another way, I don't want to argue with it on this thread, but I want to know where the data for that was summarized.

NHS demand rising:

In 2013/14 there were 64 per cent more operations completed by the NHS compared to 2003/04, with an increase from 6.712m to 11.030m.

The total annual attendances at Accident & Emergency departments was 21.779m in 2013/14, 32 per cent higher than a decade earlier (16.517m).

NHS effectiveness and quality of care:

In comparison with the healthcare systems of ten other countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and USA) the NHS was found to be the most impressive overall by the Commonwealth Fund in 2014.

The NHS was rated as the best system in terms of efficiency, effective care, safe care, coordinated care, patient-centred care and cost-related problems. It was also ranked second for equity.

NHS Expenditure:

Health expenditure in the UK was 9.27 per cent of GDP in 2012. This compares to 16.90 per cent in the USA, 11.77 per cent in the Netherlands, 11.61 per cent in France, 11.27 per cent in Germany, 10.98 per cent in Denmark, 10.93 per cent in Canada and 9.19 per cent in Italy.

http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs