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Canadian Heathcare system sucks!!

Ziggurat said:
No. I don't think it will happen in anything like such a concious decision process. Rather, I think if such a system gets implemented, a chorus will begin to expand provided services, and politicians will start giving it to them to buy votes. The costs will largely get brushed under the rug by those same politicians. And we'll end up with an expensive health care system.
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Why hasn't this happened in other countries that have UHC?
 
Ziggurat said:
Because public expectations aren't the same. And expectations shape political demands.
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Well yes, on the whole, expectations of health-care in the USA are less than they are in developed countries with UHCs so why would having less expectations mean the costs would go up?
 
I realise that getting the public to accept that tax-funded services have to be paid for by raising taxes is not always easy. Especially in the USA. However, is it really that hard a concept that it can't be communicated? If you want this, your taxes will have to rise?

Trying to suggest that it's someone else's taxes that will go up, suggests that the campaigning is being done by the people at the bottom of the heap, the people who don't pay so much tax. Indeed, the people who by and large don't get to access much healthcare at all at present.

So, the USA can't introduce any sort of universal healthcare, because the low-paid people who currently don't get much healthcare and who would really benefit from this sort of system, will campaign to have all sorts of luxuries added that the taxpayers don't want to fund.

Or something like that.

Rolfe.
 
Darat said:
Well yes, on the whole, expectations of health-care in the USA are less than they are in developed countries with UHCs
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No, actually, I don't think they are. I've seen various claims made about lower outcomes, but outcomes aren't the same as expectations, the relevant expectations here are not even about outcomes but about provided services (because that's what costs money), and I've seen no stats on relative expectations.
 
Well, if you've seen no stats on relative expectations, why are you so certain that unrealistic expectations in the USA will fatally damage any universal healthcare scheme?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Trying to suggest that it's someone else's taxes that will go up, suggests that the campaigning is being done by the people at the bottom of the heap, the people who don't pay so much tax.
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You evidently haven't been paying attention to the political jockeying that's going on right now. Obama expressed support for a surtax on the wealthy to pay for the current proposal. That would affect only a small portion of the population, at the top of the income spread. Of course, it can't possibly provide the necessary revenue, and so taxes will have to go up for the middle class too. But that would all come after the system is already in place, at which point nobody would be willing to dismantle a system even if there's buyer's remorse. So no, Rolfe, you really didn't get what I was suggesting, nor is that the way American politics works.
 
Zig, do you acknowledge that there is scope in the US system for significant cost savings without cutting back on the amount of healthcare that is delivered? If we've put that to bed, then at least something has been achieved.

Rolfe.
 
Ziggurat said:
No, actually, I don't think they are.

...snip....
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How can they not be? In a country like the UK every single person expects to get every single medical treatment they require. Whether that is an in-growing toenail removed to a heart, lung, liver and bowel transplant. We expect all of that will be there when we require it.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. I don't think it will happen in anything like such a concious decision process. Rather, I think if such a system gets implemented, a chorus will begin to expand provided services, and politicians will start giving it to them to buy votes. The costs will largely get brushed under the rug by those same politicians. And we'll end up with an expensive health care system.
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Ziggurat said:
[....] and so taxes will have to go up for the middle class too. But that would all come after the system is already in place, at which point nobody would be willing to dismantle a system even if there's buyer's remorse.
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I can see what you're suggesting. However, as I said before, a relentless stream of negativity isn't necessarily a constructive approach to a difficult situation.

You already have an expensive healthcare system. An extremely expensive healthcare system. With a lot of problems, and more problems looming in the future. Opting to cling on to it for the reasons you state above seems to me perverse, to put it mildly.

It's virtually back to the "piss-up in a brewery" argument.

Rolfe.
 
Darat said:
How can they not be? In a country like the UK every single person expects to get every single medical treatment they require.
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For the right definition of "require", I suppose that's true. And yet, at least some UK citizens are stating that their expectations are lower.
http://www.pjtv.com/video/Washington_Watch/Socialized_Medicine_Through_the_Eyes_of_a_Recipient/2169/
Yes, this is anecdotal. But when you make a categorical claim (as you did), all it takes is one anecdote to disprove it.
 
Rolfe said:
You already have an expensive healthcare system. An extremely expensive healthcare system. With a lot of problems, and more problems looming in the future. Opting to cling on to it for the reasons you state above seems to me perverse, to put it mildly.
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And this is a fundamental misunderstanding of my position. I am not clinging to the current system. But the changes I would like to see are not for the most part the changes being advocated by UHC advocates.
 
Rolfe said:
As I said, I just bought a nice car. I negotiated the dealer down by a factor of about 7.5% over the list price.
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Just think what kind of deal you could have gotten if you had bought a dozen of them!
 
Darat said:
How can they not be? In a country like the UK every single person expects to get every single medical treatment they require. Whether that is an in-growing toenail removed to a heart, lung, liver and bowel transplant. We expect all of that will be there when we require it.
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I think that is a point that really needs to be emphasised. Absolutely everyone resident in the country expects to get what their doctor believes they need. Certainly, not many of them expect to get stuff they don't need, but that's a different story.

They may not necessarily expect to get it immediately, or in a single-bed rooms, or with cordon bleu cooking. But they expect to get it. And what Darat said about recent improvements is also very important. Twenty years ago people might have been more likely to expect a long delay for treatment, for example, or that they would have appointments cancelled on them, things like that. But by increasing the funding of the NHS to more realistic levels such problems have been mitigated to a very large extent, to the point where people now do indeed expect to get what they need, in a reasonable time-frame.

That is of course the reason for the occasional protests about people being refused very expensive new drugs that could only offer a relatively short postponement of the inevitable death. They are so used to expecting to get everything that they demand even this. And this applies equally to the affluent middle-classes and to the low-income groups.

In the USA, I'm certainly prepared to believe that the affluent middle-classes have higher expectations than British citizens, in that they expect more than what is necessary and demand to be provided with unnecessary luxuries. However, it's quite clear even from reading the posts here made by US members of this very forum, that a significant number of people in the USA have very low expectations indeed.

Insisting that it's impossible to improve the expectations of this group because political jockeying will inevitably wreck any proposed system just seems to me to be a wee bit defeatist.

Rolfe.
 
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pgwenthold said:
Just think what kind of deal you could have gotten if you had bought a dozen of them!
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Indeed. Most dealers have fleet buyer departments that expect to give out far bigger discounts to secure that size of order.

What the US government has done is the equivalent of telling the largest fleet car purchaser in the country that it must pay the published list price for all its vehicles. Even though I suspect the dealers would be falling over themselves to offer sweet discounts for that sort of volume.

Rolfe.
 
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Ziggurat said:
And I think that in the US, the public would campaign for enough to keep total costs well above the costs in the UK.
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And what would be wrong if they did? Of course there is a big anti tax movement and desire to cut social programs in the country as well that would partialy counter act that.

If we spend 30% more than anyone else so what? We are spending 100% more than anyone else now.
 
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