People depending on SCHIP could not purchase health insurance, they are not making enough to pay $1000.00 a month even if their taxes were cut. Family & charity are fine. Until you get a hospital bill for $50 thousand or $100 thousand. Then your ideas fail miserably. If we had national health care, we would be paying less money to the insurance companies and more money to the doctors. As it is now, we subsidize insurance executives at the expense of the poor.
Our current "health care system" kills your fellow citizens on a regular basis. I met a man 2 weeks ago who has a brain tumor, and can't get Medicaid. He applied & was told the program is closed for now. He's going to die because we don't have national health care. He used to work steadily. About 5 years ago he was attacked, someone hit him on the head with a hammer several times. He recovered somewhat, and went back to work. But he was never able to make as much as he used to, and the jobs he did get didn't provide health insurance. Recently he started getting severe headaches, he lost the lousy job he did have, and managed to get a diagnosis of brain tumor by getting family to pay for Dr visits. Right now his family is paying his monthly bills for him. But they can't afford the more expensive tests he needs for the cancer specialists to determine his treatment. And unless he gets some kind of help paying for treatment, it doesn't matter, his family can't afford to pay for the complicated specialized treatments he needs to have a chance to stay alive. He's an regular guy, could be you, your brother, your friend or neighbor. I guess his death is OK with you?
No doctor or hospital will refuse treatment because you have no health insurance. When we talk about National Health Care we talk about shifting the cost from employers to government and tax payers, the government writes the checks and will set the policy it will say which equipment to buy and what treatments to offer based on what is cost effective and not what is most works best for the consumer of health care.
You're overlooking the fact that de-regulating the industry would increase competition and drive health insurance costs down. Not to mention that fact that most people purchase insurance that covers more of the low end expenses than the high end. If you have a middle class income, do you really need insurance for emergency medical care under $5,000? When you have socialized medicine, the cost is always charged out at the maximum. There is no competition. This is incorrect. Social insurance and Medicaid are nearly bankrupt, the accounts do not have any money in them, it's all been transferred to general revenue with a promissory note (IOU) to repay it later. How? God only knows. Doctors in countries with socialized medicine make LESS than Doctors in the US. The money is eaten up by bureaucracy and the people who abuse the system, going to the doctor for a subsidized prescription instead of managing their own personal health. With competition, and less governmental cronyism to the HMOs and drug companies, prices would go down. With all of the advances in medical science and treatment, don't you wonder why the cost of care continues to escalate?
Because other countries set price controls on medicine and technology the cost for research and development are paid for by American purchasing health care. If the US goes the socialized medicine route and puts price controls in, we will see a dramatically reduced level of spending on research and development because there would be no incentive to investment money in new medicine and technology if you can't get market rates for it and with that the level of health care will fall.
You are wrong. Many medical treatment places will not even schedule an appointment for you if you have no way to pay. So, it's OK with you if this guy dies then?
I'm not overlooking anything. You seem to be overlooking the poor guy with a brain tumor. So it's OK with you that he can't get the treatment he needs NOW to try & save his life?
Thank you. The market drives innovation, the government drives cronyism. Please don't roll out a victim for me to feel bad about. I have a relative with a serious brain injury who did not get adequate care in a socialized medical system due to the limited resources, and now his brain damage has little chance of being corrected. If there were open market solutions, we could have done something for him. I'd like to say, that no matter what, people are going to get sick and die. They are going to get hurt and suffer pain. There is going to be medical malpractice. Socialized medicine does not mean that everyone gets fantastic and effective care across the board, it just means that everyone gets at the minimum, the same level of service, good or bad. Which brings me to the glass ceiling concept. In some countries with socialized medicine, you cannot purchase better care. You must step through bureaucracy to get enhanced care, regardless of your means. What this does, is raise up the people who currently do not have healthcare, but lowers those who could get better care. When you offer the poor gentleman as an example, understand that in a socialized medicine paradigm, he might get care, but he might not get enough care to make a difference or save his life. Whereas private options might give his neighbors a chance to chip in for his enhanced care, or his family, his employer, or to seek assistance from a church or other charity organization. The greatest crime is not that we are without socialized medicine. It's that by the tax ponzi scheme, we have all become detached from, and apathetic about poverty and sickness, working under the assumption that with our money, the government will assume the moral responsibility to care for our fellow man. When people cry that people are not covered by SCHIP, that's not just a failure of the government, it's a failure of all of the people who pay taxes, and do not demand accountability from the government for the proper use of appropriated funds.
Why not discuss real victims of our current system??? Isn't that what we are talking about here? Or is it all just theory in your mind, and no actual people are involved? You go on & on about SCHIP, & socialized medicine like they are evil. I'm not suggesting you feel bad, only asking why it's OK in our society to let him go without treatment. What other market solutions would help him now? You never responded to my observation that our current system rewards health insurance executives at the expense of the poor. I suppose you might be one of those executives, but I doubt it. I'm sorry your relative didn't get the care they needed. Shouldn't that experience inspire you to be more compassionate and want to make sure it doesn't happen here? Yet somehow you seem to be saying too bad if the guy with a brain tumor dies, my relative didn't get the best care, so I don't care about my fellow citizens who need help. People have to step thru insurance company bureaucracy now, so I don't see much difference. I really don't even understand what you are advocating for. You don't want "socialized" medicine, you don't want the current system either, at least I think that's what you're saying. So what exactly are you proposing? If you think the insurance companies are doing a good job, and Dr's should make as much as possible, then hospital bills will continue to be in the sky high range, and individuals will not be able to pay for their own catastrophic care. So anyone with a brain injury or a brain tumor might just as well go shot himself.
OK, 3 states, & it doesn't say which ones. Apparently not my state, otherwise the guy with a brain tumor might be able to get it. I'm not saying SCHIP is the answer. But we should be able to do something for people like him.
My relative was the victim of a system you are advocating. It's not just theory, it tears at my heart that I was unable to do more for him, because the system was "socialized". Socialized medicine is not evil. It's immoral. We have private health care. You ask me why it's ok to let him go without treatment. Are you fund raising for him? Have you devoted your time and money to help him? Have you lobbied your friends, neighbors, family and co-workers to help him? The reason why he is not getting care in this system is that no one is standing up for their fellow man. Don't dance close to the fire of accusing me of having a vested interest. I did respond several times to who profits. In socialized medicine, it is the government bureaucrats and their lobbyists. That's exactly what I am doing. Trying to be more compassionate and saying, "don't dumb down the system, keep the system open so we can actively participate in caring for our family members, not deferring it to government bureaucracy". You're making straw man arguments by attributing a position to me that I have not taken. Choice. You can always look for a new insurance company. When the government controls the system, you have one option and one option only. This is known as communism, it is the opposite of a free society. The current system is broken by government intervention. Socialized medicine is more government intervention. We need to get the government out of the health business, and into the business of maintaining the rule of law. If enough of us want cheap health insurance, insurance we can afford, and covers the major expenses we cannot deal with in the event of an emergency, the market will see companies crop up and provide it for us. We might even see them compete and drive the costs down. The argument people make, is that people won't be insured. If insurance was cheap, and not regulated to favor the HMOs and Drug Cartels, we could probably afford to insure our parents as well. You don't have to look much farther than Katrina, or even Social Security to see that the government is incapable of managing social programs for this size of population, and of this much scope. In fact, the government was never intended in the Constitution to offer services like this, at least, not at the Federal level. No one wastes like the government. And social medicine is not compassionate. It's just a way for us to have the cost deducted at the source (payday) without realizing what it costs, how it is applied, and whether or not it best serves our own interests, or our own level of compassion. Deferring morality to the government with a low one time monthly payment of $49.95 isn't compassion. It's indifference and laziness.
guerilla, I would like you to take a look the norwegian health care system that is highly socialized. Then we can talk about what is wrong with that system and what you dont get there that you will get in a non-socialized system.
Is the Norwegian system ranked #1? I'll check it out, but I think culturally and economically we are a lot closer to Canada than a small European nation.
I dont know what rank it has. But it is the system of socialized health care in itself that interesting here I think, regardless of other circumstances. I am not sure of what you mean by culturally, but I think there are many similarities between the two countries.
Well for one, they don't have a military industrial complex that creates wars for profiteering. This would bankrupt the US.
Norway has less then 5 million people while the US has over 300 million. Also would we provide health care to people who are illegally here?
We already do, I doubt if it will change. That's why CA governor wants to tax everyone to pay for their healthcare. Right now we all pay for it, we just don't see it. Seeing the tax come out our checks should make us demand better accountability, according to the Terminator. My words, yeah right, just like we do when we see the Fed Tax taken out of our checks. My brother was hit by a car and was in a coma for 4 months, he had no insurance, but was taken care of by the hospital for 6 months and had outpatient care for another 6 months, didn't cost him a penny...some federal program paid for it which we all know is me & you.