Stossel Solves the Health Crisis with Capitalism

[Toke]

I heard from some people on a distilery tour that the haggish were served with a small botle of wisky to dull the taste. Strange, my faroese ancestry have given me a good taste in lamb inards, and dried meat. Dried only slightly faster than rotting.

The idea of educating poor children to avoid illiterate adults later, and do the same for healthcare, makes perfect sense to me.
I am afraid it is in conflict with some basic US conservative ideas.

The conflict might be in the individuals rights/responsibilities versus the interests of society.

The socialist CT in me is tempted to see it as a scam/false flag opperation for the elite to maintain their hold on power by having a population that is uneducated and too worried about their next meal/mortage/medical bill to pay attention to how society is run.


Now, everyone let us attend to the vagina of Hokulele.
Her answer is post 18.

 

[Rolfe]

Now, everyone let us attend to the vagina of Hokulele.
Her answer is post 18.

Maybe the first time a TLA finallist post has been in AAH???

I just follwed that thread back to the beginning. Then back to where that came from. Then back to the thread THAT OP came from.

I think my brain just crawled out of my ears.

 

[Toke]

Yes, Yrreg is amacing

 

[aerosolben]

No, they think that they should get their money back to spend it where they wish.

Sorry to snip a bit, but we're starting to drift off topic. I'm not arguing for vouchers, I just don't think it matches the scenario I'm envisioning. If they wanted only the very poor to get vouchers, and everyone else to pay out of pocket to send their children to school, that would be the same. I do see your generally point about it indirectly dismantling the public service.

 

[aerosolben]

I'm quite shocked by all the knee-jerk declarations that "socialism" is the way to hell in a handbasket. We wouldn't mind a bit more of it here.

...

I hope Obama has the sense he appears to have been born with.

Rolfe.

An impassioned point, but one that won't fly here, I'm afraid. That's the sort of talk that inflames right-wing radio hosts and sends politicians in red states scrambling into foxholes.

I have no strategy for you on selling Americans "socialism" or "sacrifice for the greater good" or anything like that. But I don't think you need to for UHC - it can work on strictly pragmatic grounds.

 

[Rolfe]

Oh sure, universal healthcare is arguable on totally pramatic grounds. I was just pointing out that far more radical "socialism", such as taking people's land against their will, was already SOP in America.

The problem seems to be that although the pragmatic arguments are unassailable, the ideological arguments are used to damn the idea. In spite of the fact that, as I said, far more radical socialism is already accepted in other areas. Like someone else said, it would work very well in practice, but we feel it doesn't work in theory.

How do you cope with people who characterise universal healthcare as "these commies want to take my money and use it to get medical treatment for someone else's child, when I need it to get medical treatment for my child!"

That "isn't even wrong", but it's the sort of mindset that keeps coming up.

Rolfe.

 

[oggiesnr]

How do you cope with people who characterise universal healthcare as "these commies want to take my money and use it to get medical treatment for someone else's child, when I need it to get medical treatment for my child!"

...and don't seem to understand that they will get medical treatment for their child because the healthcare is universal and that includes them!

Steve

 

[Rolfe]

They seem to be convinced that "socialised medicine" is so substandard that they wouldn't want it. Look at the guy who was saying how much poorer someone on a low income would be, because his taxes would go up to pay for the "socialised medicine" (why?) and he'd still have to find money for insurance because the "socialised medicine" would be such limited coverage.

I suppose if and when the USA gets a universal healthcare system, it will be how the USA devises it. But nobody else has such a system that is so limited in coverage that people are obliged to supplement it, or not so far as I know. Here, people with serious health problems find it's the NHS that provides the level of care they need. The leader of the Conservative party, a very rich guy indeed, used the NHS for his seriously ill child, because that was where the expertise and facilities are. Private medicine is more for convenience and better accommodation and not having to rub shoulders with the Great Unwashed.

I'm thinking maybe that's why the publicly-funded healthcare in the USA is getting such a bad press. If it's only used by people with no influence, then where's the incentive to provide a good level of serivce? However, if your movers and shakers, your politicians and businessmen, even just the bulk of the middle-classes who are voters and opinion-formers, use it, you immediately et the pressure to raise the game and deliver state-o-the-art.

You should try it. It works pretty well.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

See what I mean? There's stuff like this all over the forum.

I am going to switch hospitals/oncologists for many reasons, not the least of which is being threatened with lawsuits over what I owe for insurance companies not paying for over the past 5 years. [....]

It's good I got a raise this year but things are still tight and I still have mountains of debt from the original surgery when I didn't have insurance and for the times my switching jobs and insurance didn't cover MRI's and radiation etc.

It's inhuman. It's batst insane. It's bad enough having the disease Ducky has, that's more than any human being should have to put up with it. To have to worry about paying for necessary treatment as well is just too much.

Why does your society put up with it?

Rolfe.

 

[themusicteacher]

See what I mean? There's stuff like this all over the forum.




It's inhuman. It's batst insane. It's bad enough having the disease Ducky has, that's more than any human being should have to put up with it. To have to worry about paying for necessary treatment as well is just too much.

Why does your society put up with it?

Rolfe.

Because Americans are some of the most dogmatic, unreasonable people you'll ever meet. It doesn't matter is something is logical or reasonable, the idiology is what is important. It's more important to be right on a hypothetical level than it is to do right on a real level. This is where we get Glenn "I just love my country so much (sob, sob, sniffle, golly-gosh, gee whiz)" Beck. No critical analysis of an issue is necessary. Just label something "socialist/communist/fascist," show some Nazi's marching along and kill the debate dead in it's tracks. It also helps to present a few well-placed anecdotes from people who say, "Canada's health care system is awful!"

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

Just wanted to drop in and let everyone know I have completely dropped my HC and am going balls out with my own business. I'm going to look into getting my own insurance and see how tough/expensive it really is. So far I've found a PPO that is only $42 dollars a month and even one as low as $26 dollars a month. I'm going to try and apply for those, and if that doesn't work I've made an appointment with CareLink so I'll at least have something to cover me until I get private coverage. So far, so good.

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

Everyone cross your fingers so I don't come down with scabbies soon.

 

[Rolfe]

Everyone cross your fingers so I don't come down with scabbies soon.

Hey, good luck with the new venture! Good for you.

Remember the lessons we've learned from this thread.

• Don't put off getting coverage one minute longer than need be. Higher priority than eating if necessary. You just don't know what might happen.
• Go for a high upper limit on the policy, even if it means a large excess (co-pay, is that what you call it?), because it's the big-ticket items that really screw you over.
• Avoid "temporary" policies that won't cover you after a certain date even if you've contracted the illness while the policy was in force.

And good luck again!

Rolfe.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Thanks to Aerosolben for your kind words. Honestly, the more I hear about the US healthcare system the more shocked I get. Every time some forum member says something about not having the money to see a doctor or fill a prescription I get a physical shock.

The weirdest part of it all is the cognitive dissonance. So many Americans really honestly believe they have the best, the most superior system in the world. They don't believe you can have a heart-lung transplant or stuff like that on the NHS, whereas of course you can.

I don't get this either. It seems my coworkers are totaly convinced that the care is almost non existant in other countries.

 

[Rolfe]

It's weird how often I've posted the link to Abigail Hall's heart transplant in these threads, and I have not had a single American poster engage with the issue. This is in well over a year (I first posted it when I read it in the dead-tree paper the day it was published).

Abigail was born with a serious heart defect. She needed a transplant, but the main difficulty was keeping her alive until a suitable donor could be found. She was airlifted in the NHS air ambulance for a transplant, but the donor organ turned out to be unsuitable. She was deteriorating, and the doctors decided to try her on a type of artificial heart developed in Germany which had never before been used successfully on someone with her condition. This was successful enough that it kept her alive until a matching donor was found, at which point she was airlifted to the heart transplant centre, and the operation was successful.

Jerome da Gnome's only comment was that looking at the photo with the article, he didn't think the mother had good dental care.

Dan remarked that the first artificial heart was developed in the USA anyway.

Nobody answered my questions.

1. What more could possibly have been done for Abigail if she'd been an American child? (We're constantly being told how inferior and basic the care we get is, so come on, tell us, what did she miss out on?)
2. If she's been an American child, would she have been guaranteed to get that standard of care, no matter who her parents were?

I still don't have any answers on those questions.

I was struck in that story by the sheer persistence of the medical team. It must have looked as if it was a lost cause, but rather than just bow to the apparently inevitable, they pulled out all the stops and tried an experimental procedure, and hey, it paid off. Now maybe a US team would have done that too. But I hear so many stories about US insurers refusing to pay for procedures because they don't reckon much on the chances of success, that I do wonder.

I was also struck by how much it all must have cost. Abigail's parents were middle-class professionals, the sort of family who would usually have decent insurance cover in the USA, but it still must be a terrible worry. At least all they had to worry about was whether or not their little girl was going to recover. Nobody was trying to put a price on her life. And if her parents had been penniless, she'd have got exactly the same.

I also noticed that the experimental artificial heart that was used was developed in Germany, another country with a universal healthcare system. Medical research goes on. Some government funded, some charity-funded and some funded by drug companies. Just the same as in the USA.

Since I posted about that story, two forum members have told of their own personal experience with similar cases - one even was the patient, many years ago. It goes on all the time. This one only made the paper because of the pioneering technique, not because the standard of care was anything out of the ordinary.

Read also the biography of Sam Galbraith. He was a top brain surgeon, with turned to politics in the later part of his life. He had a heart-lung transplant nearly 20 years ago, and he's still alive. As I said, he was a brain surgeon, and later he was a Member of Parliament. But he got the transplant and the aftercare and so on on the NHS, just the same as anybody else. Because like everybody else, he's entitled to NHS care, and the NHS is the best place to receive such care because that is where the expertise is.

Of course people bitch and moan about the NHS. Nothing that size is ever going to be perfect, or ever going to reach a stage where you can't improve it. And when people are let down because they didn't receive what they were entitled to, they get annoyed, and vocal. But that doesn't mean they'd rather have the sort of healthcare system that exists in the USA. Most of them would rather gnaw off their own arm.

I told earlier about an American friend who was struggling under a heavy burden of chronic illness, but was so happy and grateful to be American because she knew she wouldn't be getting the top-class treatment she was getting if she lived anywhere else. I didn't have the heart to tell her that in Britain she's have got it, and not had to worry for a second where the money was coming from.

You guys need to get out more.

Rolfe.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Oh sure, universal healthcare is arguable on totally pramatic grounds. I was just pointing out that far more radical "socialism", such as taking people's land against their will, was already SOP in America.
.

Hell in america we will take your land and give it to someone who will create a higher tax base.

 

[Rolfe]

It also helps to present a few well-placed anecdotes from people who say, "Canada's health care system is awful!"

Funny you should say that. Yesterday a student showed up here for a week's work experience. She happens to be Canadian. I asked her about their healthcare system.

She launched into an impassioned defence of the system, said it was more or less the cat's pyjamas, and that although waiting lists were sometimes a problem, if you were a clinically urgent case you would be bounced to the top immediately.

She said, although her Canadian entitlement card would get her treatment in the USA if she needed it while she was there, she would be back in Canada as fast as she could the minute she needed any healthcare. Because the US system was so incredibly expensive and unreliable.

She also said, you asked me why I chose to study in a foreign country. Well, I did, and here I am. I'm not in the USA. No way would I choose to live in a country without a universal healthcare system, even temporarily.

OK, just one random Canuck who happened to cross my path. But there you go.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm not searching the thread for the post to reference, but this is an update on the glucose meter thingy.

We had a poster who had a prescription for a glucose meter, and he told us the pharmacist gave him a choice of meters starting about $20, with the most expensive at $80. If he'd been paying for it himself, he said he'd have picked the one at $40, but because the insurance company was paying he just went for the $80 model. He also said that the strips were stuck on about $1 a pop, but should cost much less given what they were.

He blamed all of this on the insured patients having no sense of value for money, thus there was no commercial incentive to cut prices. This was used as an argument against univeral healthcare, on the grounds that if everyone was getting it for free, nobody would have any incentive to shop for good value.

Of course this is nonsense per se. If patients can do that in the USA, it's the fault of the insurance companies for not mandating that the doctor specify the most cost-effective item. Far from being a problem in universal systems, it just doesn't arise, because the universal healthcare system makes damn sure the doctors prescribe the cheapest option that will satisfy the patient's needs. It's funny how we keep being shown faults in the existing US system, and being told that these are reasons for not having a universal healthcare system - when these faults are demonstrably not present in existing universal systems. Project much?

Anyway, the glucose meters. I'm a bit hazy about why they're so easy to buy in Britain. If you're diabetic here, you get given one that suits you, and you get given the strips, I think 4 per day. Nevertheless the strips are on sale at any pharmacy (it's likely some diabetics want to buy more to supplement their ration), and so are the meters. Of course vets and owners of diabetic animals also buy them, but their sale isn't confined to veterinary outlets.

I'm a vet, and we need one of these things. Don't know why I didn't get it ages ago. I'm going shopping.

I check online. The price varies a bit but it's not hard to find good offers. In the end I bought one on eBay.co.uk for £5.49. That's just over $8 at current exchange rates. For an absolutely state-of-the-art machine that takes only 3 seconds to give a reading. (And it came with 10 strips free as well.)

So now I want a supply of strips to use with it. The normal pack size is 50, and again there are varying prices to be found, with bargains easy to come by. Again, eBay.co.uk comes out cheapest. £7.89 per pack. That's less than 16p each, or about 23 cents. (I admit that postage and packing adds to that a bit, but it's still under 17p or about 25 cents a strip.)

This is the availability for purchase by anyone, in a country with a universal healthcare system. (If I hadn't gone with eBay I'd have paid a little bit more, but there were still actual pharmacy prices not far off that.) I can flat guarantee that whatever you can get these things for on eBay, the NHS is paying less. The purchasing clout that comes with buying for the entire population gets you a pretty sweet discount.

So, in the wonderful world of free-market America, patients are paying $80 for a meter and $1 each for a strip. In the awful commie world of universal healthcare the free market price is $8 for the meter and $0.23 per strip. The central purchasing system which buys for most patients is probably paying even less.

And this is an argument for not having universal healthcare, because it would remove the price competition that brings prices down?



Rolfe.

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

Just wanted to hit this topic again because it looks like things might be changing here in the US. I heard recently that we may be getting some sort of public HC soon and joining the rest of you "godless socialists" in having inefficient medicine. My views on the subject have changed dramatically since i engaged in this discussion with Rolfe (and others). I still believe that the free-market is an awesome thing, but commenting here and having it out with some of you has helped me realize that one ideology may not be the best solution for every problem. Some of the points made in here have also prompted my dad (George Bush/ Free-Market Fan Club President)to start doing more open minded research on the subject. I still don't have health coverage, but it's just because I haven't really been looking. If we do get public coverage i must admit, it would make things easier for me and my business.

Anywho, just checking in. Hello to everyone and I hope you are all happy and healthy.

P.S. Did anyone hear Glen Beck screaming about UHC the other day? Pretty funny stuff

STANLEY OUT!!

 

[Rolfe]

Just wanted to hit this topic again because it looks like things might be changing here in the US. I heard recently that we may be getting some sort of public HC soon and joining the rest of you "godless socialists" in having inefficient medicine.

Hey, who are you calling godless? I won't be called a woo by Thaiboxerken only to have you call me godless!

My views on the subject have changed dramatically since i engaged in this discussion with Rolfe (and others). I still believe that the free-market is an awesome thing, but commenting here and having it out with some of you has helped me realize that one ideology may not be the best solution for every problem.

Well, the funny thing is, you see, that we think we have a free market here as well. Thoroughly capitalist economy. We just use taxation (which you have too) to pay for one more thing than you do! The money still goes around just the same, and the doctors still have their Mercedes and their yachts.

Some of the points made in here have also prompted my dad (George Bush/ Free-Market Fan Club President)to start doing more open minded research on the subject. I still don't have health coverage, but it's just because I haven't really been looking. If we do get public coverage i must admit, it would make things easier for me and my business.

Seriously, Dan, Obama may be awesome, but even he is not going to deliver universal healthcare to the USA on a platter in ten minutes. It's a huge job and the transition ain't gonna be easy. In the meantime, people will still get sick.

Even young healthy people like you get sick or get hurt sometimes.

Remember the woman at the start of the Stossel film. She gave up her job, with healthcare coverage, to strike out on her own in business. She was more prudent than you're being, but she still ran into trouble. She got sick with a chronic illness during the period when she didn't have appropriate health insurance. It completely ruined her life. The last we saw of her was a woman not going for her follow-up appointments because she was afraid of being told she needed more treatment that would cost money she didn't have.

You are risking the same, only worse (she at least had insurance cover for her initial course of treatment). For goodness sake take some advice and get something sorted out.

(And I say again, this is just one more freedom that we benighted communists have that is denied to the citizens of the great US of A. The freedom to give up our job to do something else, without losing our healthcare coverage.)

Anywho, just checking in. Hello to everyone and I hope you are all happy and healthy.

P.S. Did anyone hear Glen Beck screaming about UHC the other day? Pretty funny stuff

STANLEY OUT!!

1. Indeed, both, excellently so. (I've just ordered a new car, a peach of a model, which I certainly wouldn't have splashed out on if I had to worry about saving for a possible big-ticket healthcare need in the future.)

2. No. Linky?

3. DON'T WALK AWAY WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU....!

Rolfe.