So I Watched "Sicko" Last Night..

So let's have a socialized medicine thread.

I posit that cheap and effective health care is integral our national character, and that the private insurers are generally a cancer feeding upon their clients, who bribe doctors and legislators to forward their scheme to prey on people.

Someone's got to disagree.

Wont be me.

NHS costs about £98.7 billion a year for us, so it shouldn't be more then £250 billion for the yanks.

How much does the current system cost now?

Good question!

I've never seen a government run program that was ever cheap and effective.

The military?

The rural electrification act?

I'd say the following:

1. Any institution that provides for you, controls you. One way or the other.

2. Government services have a long and colorful history that shows they are expensive, low quality, and dependency-forming.

3. He who pays the piper calls the tune. If you're not paying, you're not calling the tune.

4. It is inherently corrupting to a republic for the government to take from some in order to give to others. Such transactions inevitably entail empowering the takers over the makers.

5. What percentage of our escalating health care costs are due to (1) government regulation and (2) liability losses?

6. Worried the government might read your e-mails? Then why trust them with your confidential medical records?

7. Government's going to drive down costs through higher efficiency? When has that ever happened?

8. Private health insurers will give you the amount of care you've paid for. Public health insurers will give you your democratic allotment.

9. Private insurers give you an option; if you're being treated poorly by one, you can seek out its competition. How do you opt out of a government service?

10. Studies show that most of us are very satisfied with our health care and the WHO ranks the American system #1 in the world in responsiveness. Do we really want to risk that?

I left in the references, in case anyone doubts the veracity of these claims.

As of 2008, the USA's GDP was about $14,000,000,000,000. So roughly, we spend 2.1 trillion dollars on health care.

Not sure on specifics, but the US healthcare system costs twice as much per capita as those in other industrial countries, with worse outcomes for the majority of the population.

Actually no, the rule of the day is that you pay the piper until something's actually wrong with you, then they look for whatever excuse they can find and deny your claim.

If so, that's what courts are for.

And public insurers will refuse to cover you at all once you've expended your "fair share."

What percentage of the world's new drugs, therapies, etc. do we produce?

The first part is fine, the second not so much. Once you control for important factors (such as lifestyle, e.g. high number of obese/overweight patients), the U.S. does pretty well.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

http://www.photius.com/rankings/total_health_expenditure_as_pecent_of_gdp_2000_to_2005.html

The courts? The "activists" who are supposed to interpret laws written by corrupt and depraved legislators trying to shore up their coffers for reelection? The same legislators who enjoy the world standard of health care for the rest of their lives, once they're elected?

Is there not a thread on this board about how the courts are crucifying a woman for downloading a CD? Weren't you just railing about the government and how you don't trust them?

ORLY?

I've known at least a couple people that have need several expensive surgeries for various things over the years, and they haven't been refused coverage. One of them still receives dialysis a few times a week without paying a dime.

Oh, and an additional point on health care's percentage of GDP; there's no reason why health care spending shouldn't keep growing. It's not like health care is somehow "bad", with growing wealth it makes a fair bit of sense to invest more in health care.

Except that a "fair share" is all to often the first and/or a desperately needed claim.

30%?

If you're spending more per capita than other first-world countries and you don't have a healthier population to show for it, there's something wrong there.

The argument is that we're bitching about waste and inefficiency of government programs, when a better standard of care is achieved with less money in other countries through government medical programs.

The only waste and inefficiency that is going on, are the profits that line up insurance company's pocketbooks, the campaign contributions to that thirteen-repeat Congressman, or the trips to Aruba for your doctor so he can "conveniently" prescribe you that new designer drug.

Also, there's abundant evidence that existing government healthcare programs in the US such as Medicaid are more efficient than private programs.

Yeah that's not very helpful.

People not receiving care because of lack of health insurance obviously doesn't say anything about the quality of the care. (The U.S. scores 24th on "overall level of population health" - and again, I'm not sure whether this is controlled for other factors (probably not) - and scores 1st for system responsiveness, according to the tables Rick's ranking links to.

It says a lot about the outcome of the health system. In a public system those people would recieve care.

Read my post again. If the U.S. has twice as many fat people as France but only 1.5 times as many deaths from diabetes and obesity is the cause for diabetes, then the U.S. health system is better than the French one, not the other way around. The numbers are of course made up here but I'm just trying to illustrate the point here.

Gee, I sure wonder who would stand to gain for developing drugs and therapies that "treat" but rarely "cure" anything?

How about our status when it comes to prevention?


I don't think the health care should be necessarily provided by the state, but I do like some of the systems out there that define "standard rates" for mature, common practices.

This type of system arguably provides more incentive for innovation and research (new treatments are still the big profit centers), and also serves to lower costs (common treatments have low prices).

There's a big problem inherent in the system in that the consumer of the services/goods often pays the same flat rate regardless of how much the provider charges.

This makes it a lot easier for insurance prices to slowly expand over time, since the providers are gouging the insurance, and the patients who make the decision to "buy" don't see any increased cost (at least not immediately, it eventually manifests itself in terms of higher insurance costs).

You'd obviously have to ask about the outcomes for the people actually paying for it.

Those outcomes are included in the assesment.

The market dictates there's more money in providing "treatment" than cures. Some would call that a failure of the market.

There's almost no money in preventing lifestyle-related illness, but there's a shitload of money in accommodating people with lifestyle-related illnesses.

Some would call that a failure of the market.

I've often said we should give a tax-break to the healthy.