Universal Health Care in the US. Yea or Nea?

[3point14]

Again, in the examples I posted they are showing doctors offices set up without going through insurance companies. The patients/doctor save time and money. They use laser eye surgery as an example of the progress that can be made in price reduction if there is competition.

Yeah sure, today's treatment will be cheaper, but by then the cutting edge treatment that everyone will want will be as expensive (in relative terms) as today's cutting edge treatment.

 

[volatile]

Who do you know that has NO money??

You think poverty doesn't exist?

Why would you think Chemo meds are impossible to make cheap enough for most people to afford?

And you also think that enough people are magically going to develop cancer to increase the demand for chemo such that it becomes cheap to treat? Really? Do you even have a clue how much it costs to treat cancer?

 

[Darat]

Don't forget cars used to cost more than housed til good ole Henry Ford got ahold of them.

That's a good counter to your argument. Cars still aren't cheap enough for everyone to have one despite over a hundred years of the "free market". Why?

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Of course it's been tried. The failure of such systems lead to the creation of systems like the NHS in the first place. What do you think happened in the UK before universal healthcare was set up?

Many physicians protested at what they saw as their rights being trampled on by being "forced" to work for the government.

http://www.nhshistory.net/intro1.htm

Bevan refused to discuss the details of his proposals until, after the first reading, there was a measure of parliamentary approval. In the final round of negotiations Bevan accepted key demands from the doctors. For the specialists this was a part- or whole-time salary plus merit awards, and the right to treat private patients in NHS hospitals. For GPs it was a system as far removed from a salary as possible; capitation was a defence against the perils of state servitude.79 Like it or not, the state and the medical profession had become mutually dependent. Many doctors had received state funds through the Lloyd George national insurance scheme, but now they were even more dependent on government for their incomes and the resources at their command. The state had become dependent on the medical profession to run the NHS and to cope with the problems of rationing scarce resources in patient care.80 The restrictions imposed by local authority boundaries were removed. The decision to take hospitals into national ownership in 1948 and the inevitable compromises did not please everyone. Herbert Morrison, in the Cabinet, and the local authorities, some themselves Labour, were upset at the loss of their municipal hospitals. The voluntary hospitals disliked their loss of independence. Despite the bickering of 1946/7 nearly everyone was in tune with the broad principles and was prepared to do his or her best to make Bevan’s pattern of NHS work. Nurses were strongly in favour, as were the younger doctors. The objectors were the older men who were the controllers of the BMA and its committees. Behind it all was an attitude epitomised by an elderly Civil Defence worker who told Richard Titmuss, the social scientist, that ‘The war made us realise that we were all neighbours’. From the rubble of war it was believed that Labour would create a better society.

When Bevan died, in 1960, a BMJ editorial described him as the most brilliant Minister of Health the country had ever had, much less doctrinaire in his approach than many of his Labour colleagues, and conceiving the NHS on more liberal lines than his Conservative predecessor. He towered over a long line of Ministers of Health and attracted in the medical profession profound admiration on one side and the sharpest antagonism on the other. The editorial proceeded to claim that the medical profession, rather than Bevan, was the principal architect of the NHS. But when Bevan had left the Ministry of Health in 1951 the BMJ had been less generous:

"his vicious attacks on the profession, his attempts to sow discord, and his rudeness in negotiation would never be forgotten. He never rose above being a clever politician and at critical moments failed to become the statesman. He had done his best to make himself disliked by the medical profession, and, by and large, he succeeded."81

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

How will people with no money be able to repay the millions of dollars it might cost to treat severe illness?

Jesus, millions!?!? How often does a million dollar procedure happen, and if it does how much of that cost is a result of jacked up rates from the way our current system works now. In the new system doctors won't have to charge 150 buck for a box of tissue.

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

That's a good counter to your argument. Cars still aren't cheap enough for everyone to have one despite over a hundred years of the "free market". Why?

It's a good thing a chemo pill doesn't cost as much as a house.

 

[volatile]

Jesus, millions!?!? How often does a million dollar procedure happen, and if it does how much of that cost is a result of jacked up rates from the way our current system works now. In the new system doctors won't have to charge 150 buck for a box of tissue.

Even if it only happens once, you still have to explain how that person will get treated.

So, explain to me how someone who cannot afford insurance who needs a million-dollar treatment will pay for it in your completely marketised system.

 

[Darat]

Jesus, millions!?!? How often does a million dollar procedure happen, and if it does how much of that cost is a result of jacked up rates from the way our current system works now. In the new system doctors won't have to charge 150 buck for a box of tissue.

Which "new system" is this? You haven't outlined any new system.

 

[volatile]

It's a good thing a chemo pill doesn't cost as much as a house.

A course of chemo does. So what's your point?

Darat is right. The problem with what you're wishing for is right there in that sentence. Why can't everyone afford a car? Why hasn't the free-market made the car affordable for everyone? If you can answer that, you'll also answer why the same is necessarily true for chemotherapy.

 

[Darat]

It's a good thing a chemo pill doesn't cost as much as a house.

You should perhaps check how much chemo treatments can cost - literally hundreds of thousands of pounds over just a few years.

DaN K. StAnLeY - perhaps you are getting a bit worked-up because your posts are becoming more and more, well again to be blunt, silly?

 

[volatile]

Another thought - Dan, you said that "private charities" could cover the shortfall in a marketised system. How is this a better way of avoiding free-loaders, your still seemingly primary objection to UHC (which is cheaper and more effective than the alternative)?

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

DaN K. StAnLeY - perhaps you are getting a bit worked-up because your posts are becoming more and more, well again to be blunt, silly?

Your right. I tend to get worked up when I get 15 posts to respond to at once.

Let me ask a simple question. What if I don't want to contribute to anyones HC? Why should I have to if I'm not asking anyone to pay for mine?

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

Darat is right. The problem with what you're wishing for is right there in that sentence. Why can't everyone afford a car? Why hasn't the free-market made the car affordable for everyone? If you can answer that, you'll also answer why the same is necessarily true for chemotherapy.

I don't know anyone who can't afford a car. Do you guys not have used lots in the UK?

 

[3point14]

I don't know anyone who can't afford a car. Do you guys not have used lots in the UK?

Just because you don't know them it doesn't mean they don't exist!

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

How is this a better way of avoiding free-loaders, your still seemingly primary objection to UHC (which is cheaper and more effective than the alternative)?

You wouldn't be sure to avoid free loaders, but you would minimize the need for people to freeload if everything is cheaper. The big difference is that people have a choice where their money goes.

 

[Darat]

Your right. I tend to get worked up when I get 15 posts to respond to at once.

Let me ask a simple question. What if I don't want to contribute to anyones HC? Why should I have to if I'm not asking anyone to pay for mine?

I would say leave the place that is in your opinion "forcing" you to make such contributions.

Or (and isn't this just right back to the start?) under your current system you are already forced to pay for other peoples' HC, why not then encourage a move to a system which will result in you having to pay less than you currently do. Wouldn't that be the lesser of two evils?

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

Just because you don't know them it doesn't mean they don't exist!

I'm sure they do exist, but they are few and far between. In the states at least.

 

[volatile]

I don't know anyone who can't afford a car. Do you guys not have used lots in the UK?

Are you SERIOUS? You don't know anyone who can't afford a car? Even if that is true (and I find it hard to believe), do you think the world ends with "people Dan Stanley knows"? You are aware that people who cannot afford cars exist, right?

I can't afford a car and I earn $44,000 a year, more or less.

 

[3point14]

Your right. I tend to get worked up when I get 15 posts to respond to at once.

Let me ask a simple question. What if I don't want to contribute to anyones HC? Why should I have to if I'm not asking anyone to pay for mine?

But if you get sick you are asking other people to pay for your health care, aren't you? Unless you have enough money to cover a triple bypass and all the after care, you're always going to be either paying for someone else's illness, or costing more in treatment than you've contributed.

 

[volatile]

I'm sure they do exist, but they are few and far between. In the states at least.

Dan! 17% of the entire population of the US is in poverty, with "most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75" (WP), with "poverty" defined as "The "absolute poverty line" is the threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health."

Wow. You're clueless.