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The French and German national medical programs are quite highly rated and produce a level of care comparable to or better than our own at a much lower per capita cost. (Some small countries with national medical care spend HALF of what we do per capita and have equal or better life expectancy.) The British system gets lower marks from most observers, but the current Labour government blames that on cutbacks under Thatcher and are promising improvements. My British friends say it is working better these days, but that is just their opinion, I guess. The Canadians seem to get a lot of complaints about their system, primarily having to do with scarcity of treatment resources and waits for help with non-life threatening ailments.
The single thing that puts our system at a cost effectiveness disadvantage is the multiplicity of insurances and the fact that 30% or our medical budget goes to take care of the resultant paperwork. By eliminating that disadvantage, we just might be able to adequately take care of ALL our citizens like the other advanced nations of the world.
Cheers,
Jerry
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Unless you are Bill Gates, every American family is one just catastrophic illness away from involuntary bankruptcy and calling a cardboard box "my home sweet home". At least until that is declared an asset, seized, and sold to pay creditors.
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I ought to know. I have worked hard my whole life. One major accident & I was out of work for several years. Wiped out my savings, maxed out loans/credit cards=bankrupcy. Anyone who has even the slightest negative thoughts about free healthcare for all is someone who is very ignorant.
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Please forgive me if I start ranting. The whole medical nightmare has got to change. I work in an emergency room and see the stupidity and abuse on a daily basis. We need to find a better way but it is such a complex problem. The insurance companies have no business dictating patient care and what they can and cannot have for treatment based on what they are willing to pay. But in a universal system which I think everyone should be entitled to decent health care we need to educate people also. Nothing is free it all is paid for from somewhere,usually us working stiffs pay for those who wont.But we are overworked now and too busy with long wait times. We have doctors who send us patients because they cant see the patient for 3 weeks but they are sick now so they send them to the ER,we have young girls who come to the ER for a pregnancy test and when you explain to them that they can get the same test at the drug store for $10 they say but I dont have the money buy I have free medical care from the state so we get charged an emergency room visit for this, last week we had a man who took an ambulance to the ER for a toothache.He didnt have cab fare and we paid for that. There are no easy answers.Our doctors will prescribe a medicine and then we have the pharmacists calling saying their insurance wont pay for that. We have more people reaching the age where more care is needed and a shortage of doctors and nurses everywhere. People in the healthcare industry are getting burnt out and something needs to change.We should definitely look at Europes plans.We deal with a lot of Canadians in the summer and they are not all that happy with their plan and they all complain about the taxes they pay to fund it. Sorry for such a long rant,
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In these socialized-medicine countries, you go down on the priority list as you get older.
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The major reason we have the health care system we do is that some people are making a lot of money from the current setup and, to a large degree, they control the conversation on this topic. Our basic corruption, in terms of good health, is insertion of the profit motive. It is essentially a very large overhead cost added on to providing the actual healthcare. In addition, private insurance focuses on relatively small "groups." Health insurance, like any insurance, works best the larger the risk pool. That is why single payer national health insurance is the only option that makes fiscal sense for everyone.
Health insurance is not hard to analyze. There are basically five parts. The first four are simple. Accounts receivable to collect our payments, accounts payable to pay the doctors, hospitals, etc., actuarial to calculate rates of illnessness, cost of various courses of treatment and local cost variations among other issues, and, finally, administration/security to deal with fraud, privacy, computer systems, efficiency of paperwork and so forth.
The fifth part, policy, is the hard part. Here you have to decide how far to take treatments, what sort of treatments to support, such as more experimental treatments, whether distinctions should be made between the young and elderly and so forth. All this results in how payment rates are set. Reducing treatment results in lower payments, expanding treatment costs more. Policy is the aspect that needs to be as transparent as possible to society as a whole.
Medicaid supposedly runs on a 3 percent overhead cost. This is basically what health insurance should be costing us to run.
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aline "Nothing is free it all is paid for from somewhere,usually us working stiffs pay for those who wont."
When I said free, I meant like our public schools. I am not stupid, obviously funds will need to come from somewhere. In addition, all working stiffs have a possibility of becoming a NON working stiff once a major accident/illness comes out of nowhere and you lose your health insurance because you no longer work for the company. [and Cobra is either too expensive or runs out] NO ONE IS SAFE UNLESS YOU ARE A MULTI MULTI MILLIONAIRE. Nothing aggravates me more than people who have no experience in being down on your luck passing judgement on those of us who have.
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What's strange, aline is hospital profits.. We hear a constant strain of complaints from hospitals, however it does not take much research to uncover their profit records. While many who work in the industry say they are over worked it's no doubt true. However hospitals not only get tax benefits from not-for profit and Non profit corporation entities, their end of the year profit and loss statements reveal surprising profits!
I was especially surprised of the St. Johns in my mainland town.. After years of commercial advertisements and programs where this hospital is continuously asking for donations and the like. Telling of how they badly need money to continue helping the community..
Their profit and loss statement reveled tremendous expenses, major improvements. However this corporation claims to be helping the needy.. In that year they had spent some 60K helping the needy, or paying, lost or unrecoverable dept for those who could not pay.
YET, their profits, you know monies left over after everybody got their far share of the cuts? Moreover cash in the bank? Profits were $120,000,000. 120 million in profits!! 120 mil. in tax free tax exempt under the guise of a catholic church, 'St. John's' free and clear..
It's like those who will their estate, and many people do this, donated cash or their time as volunteers were suckers!
I never knew this until a friend of mine got a sever sinus infection, had a hole drilled in his eye socket to relieve the pressure of fluids, and stayed one night.. He got a bill for 22k. Was so irritated for his one hours worth of attention, checked this hospitals statements..
What's the cost for having a baby these days? a otherwise perfectly natural human occurrence?? something we been doing for millions of years? 15-30-120 thousand dollars?? My neighbor across the street had a premy for 140k.
WHEW!!! It's beyond reasonable and profits like that (after doctors get their cut, after board of directors get theirs) should be, would otherwise be criminal..
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There is an excellent discussion of this topic at http://bitchingandmoaning.com 
Aloha
Richwhiteboy
“Saddam Hussein has raised the amount going to suicide bombers from $10 thousand dollars to $25 thousand. What's next, a health care plan?” -
Jay Leno
“Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.”
- Henry Rollins
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Nanawalejulie,I am not putting down anyone who is down on their luck. I think everyone is entitled to health care,what I object to is the abuse of the system by people and that includes doctors.How would you like to be a patient who your doctor says go to the emergency room because I cant get you in. Then you are charged for an emergency room visit and if you have insurance your copay is usually double. I was self employed for many years and could not afford the insurance,and yes there should be protection for catastrophic illness and injury.You are right you can get wiped out by one major illness or accident. I dont mind people getting help but with it I think there should be some level of responsiblity of not abusing the system.You dont need to come to the er by ambulance for a toothache,or a splinter in your hand,or because your toe hurts.These really happened. That is abuse and that is what I object to. Also think about it the next time you wait for hours in an emergency room and you are really sick.Sorry,ambulances get taken first.
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