So I Watched "Sicko" Last Night..

Yeah but you want to separate them out and only look at them. "You're paying $6,000 a year and here's what you're getting" is different from "You're paying $6,000 a year and here's what you're getting and what the other guy over there who doesn't have $6,000 a year to spend is getting".

No, you want to do that, since it removes those whom the system fails and stacks the result in the direction you want it to go.

Watch "Manufacturing Dissent" and "Michael Moore Hates America".

And really what the government should've done was support the smaller local hospitals so they didn't get bought out and absorbed by these huge corporate medical groups. Keeping the competition there would have been a lot better than the government attempting to foot the bill for everyone. The VA hospital shows us a great example of what government-controlled health care would be like, and if that isn't enough one only need look critically at Canada and Britain to see the long waiting lists and the mortality rates for things like breast and prostate cancer.

It's just two different discussions to be had. One is about - for lack of a better word - "access" and the other one is about "quality".
I don't know whether "quality of care" is better in the U.S. (I've seen a few data where the U.S. was better but not enough to reach a definite conclusion). Given my political leanings I would expect it to be better but it's something that can be researched.

Wow. You sure seem to have a grasp on the realities of government.

Why on Earth would you want it involved in your health care?

I'm sure if we all practiced enough prevention, no one would ever get sick and die.

Socialized medicine has the same problem. People tend to view it as "free" and to overuse it.

Because I have a voice in one and not the other.

And the other is a snake in the grass.

Again, you're arguing we're going to waste money when other countries have demonstrated that they save money doing so.

How do you know they "saved" money? Show me their modern private system for comparison. That they spend less per person proves nothing.

I'd also argue that a lot of the costs in our system are BECAUSE of existing government intervention. The U.S. is hardly laissez-faire in regards to its health system.

And, again, other health care systems develop very few drugs, therapies, etc. They have waiting lists for things Americans get right away. They have many fewer elective options.

I read German magazines from time to time. If European-style socialized medicine is so great, how come the magazines are filled with ads for private health insurance plans?

So, the government that runs your health care is going to somehow be different than the rest of the government?

P.T. Barnum was right...

And what would you do?

Nothing? Perhaps you derive pleasure from the poor being thrown out of hospitals while dazed and confused, or watching the elderly struggle to pay for medicine that costs a fraction in other countries?

All you do is squawk and cry about "waste and inefficiency" when the evidence has shown the opposite true.

No, but the health, mortality rates, and average lifespans do.

Send all the wetback beaners back to mexico and our heath care cost will drop like a stone.

I think once a taco bender brood mare turns 13 she can pop out two booger eaters a year till she is 40.

What's driving up cost and driving down quality is a lack of competition. Government health care would have the same problem, in so far as a lack of quality. When there is no reason to strive to be better, most businesses don't.

Find me an example of this actually happening. No one is denied care, even if they have no ability to pay.

The higher prices in the U.S. market is what makes that medicine exist in the first place. A drug company that sells a medicine for $50/pill here but $.10/pill in Canada would not develop that medicine if it had to sell it at $.10/pill everywhere. The $.10/pill is not the market price, but since drug companies recoup their investments in the American market, they can make a small additional profit by selling the product for near cost in others.

WE SUBSIDIZE SOCIALIZED MEDICINE THIS WAY.

Countries like Canada benefit from this situation, not realizing that they're living off the scraps from our table.

I know when I think of the efficiency of big social programs, the United States federal government immediately comes to mind...

That's a really rational response...

Franklin was right when he said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The treatment in the US is pretty high quality (for those that are insured). The prevention ranks poorly. Nobody is expecting to prevent everything, but we aren't doing a good job in prevention because it isn't profitable.

I didn't mention that we should socialize medicine anywhere in my post... I proposed something different.

Anyway, you didn't respond to the actual suggestion.

Medicare, for all of the flack it recieves, operates at 1% above cost. When you perform a medical service, the claim is paid in 19 days unless you fucked up as a healthcare provider.

They don't pay as much as the private insurers, but they are by far the most consistent and fair. People always like to toss out the fact that a universal program would leave a burecrat in charge of your healthcare as if the financial number crunchers and thier profit/loss statements that decide your care now is any better.

It happens... it's not well documented because if it were, heads would roll, but it happens.

You won't have a voice in that one once the snake gets in the yard.

Perhaps we should make it a law that drug companies can't charge us such huge amounts for the medicine forcing them to raise the prices for the foreign countries out there who get cheap drugs thanks to Americans.

In fact I think Obama would go for that in a heart beat......

I wonder how hard Canada and the others would scream.......

US Postal Service.

If that is true, then you already have a universal health care system. Who's paying for that right now?

Bad idea. Who defines healthy? Is it lifestyle-only health, since that's all we really have control over? I'm eating well and getting more exercise than I have in years, but I'm still overweight, so therefore 'not healthy' - shouldn't someone making a positive stride toward that goal qualify as well?

Tax breaks should be based on quantifiable data, not qualitative opinion on someone's well-being.

Why not execute health insurance execs who refuse to pay for treatments there suppose to pay. That's the best way of getting them to do it. None of this slap on wrist ceo resigning crap. At least negligent homicide and ban the guy from any management related jobs down the road.

Of course it helps that they get no money from Congress. At all.

All their money comes from people using them so *gasp* they have to act like a real business.

Especially now that they have to compete against Fed-EX and UPS.

Competition is a good thing. The free market works.

Now can you show us a government run program that is not separate from the government like the postal service and was ever cheap and effective?

"our nation's character" is largely a convenient fiction which is a tool to support whatever position one personally believe in. There is a great deal in our nation's history that violates "our nations character" and did at the time but the nation both propspered and developed more character while doing so.

I prefer the absence of nebulous feel good empty rhetoric in my discussions.

I would contend that all private enterprise has, by nature, an element of victimization which is balanced by an element of necessary restraint (since pure victimization tends to be bad for business.

It is an inherent component of capitalism. The problem is, non-capitalist solutions tend to swap that weakness for other weaknesses - in general terms bigger weaknesses (or so experience tells us).

In any case, I reject out of hand the simplistic characterization of "big bad business evilly steps on poor helpless victims" as an operating thesis.

YES there are examples - and not just in the insurance industry - of abuse....and yes that demands we be vigilant.

It doesn't necessarily follow that the whole system is evil and should be shitcanned though.

Finally I offer the counter premise that if you are basing ANY of your thesis on what Michael Moore has told you then you are hopelessly crippled right out of the box.

You REALLY expect to have a logical debate by casting such aspertions on your opponent?

Frankly, that's incredibly poor form.

and that is EXACTLY the sort of emotional bullshit that is displayed just often enough on the left to make it to give all liberals a bad reputation.

Argue the fucking facts man, or don't start threads like this.

Shit like what you did here ought to embarrass the fuck out of any rational poster.

But since there aren't very many of them on the board, this is (unfortunately) Standard Operating Procedure Number One. Very poor form, inexcusably bad logic, but widely employed.

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What I can show you is a universal health care system that is paid for only by those using it, who have free choice, and create strong competition. So don't paint any of those things as arguments against universal health care.