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This is why many in the US do not favor a UK style plan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=1

It is hard to see how the nation as a whole can remain competitive if in 15 years we are spending nearly a third of what we earn on health care, while other industrialized nations are spending far less but achieving health outcomes as good as, or better than, ours.

with a national health service akin to that of the UK.

Catron asked whether we really deserve a health care system in which “soulless bureaucrats arbitrarily put a dollar value on our lives.

. You already are living in a situation like that.

He estimated that those who had no health insurance received 20 percent less care and had a death rate 37 percent higher than those with health insurance. This difference held up even when those without health insurance were compared with those without automobile insurance, and with those on Medicaid — groups with whom they share some characteristics that might affect treatment. The lack of insurance seems to be what caused the greater number of deaths.

and then we get..

there is little evidence to suggest that extending health insurance to all Americans would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the United States. That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t; we simply don’t know if it would.

hmmm.

last year the Gallup organization did ask Canadians and Brits, and people in many different countries, if they have confidence in “health care or medical systems” in their country. In Canada, 73 percent answered this question affirmatively. Coincidentally, an identical percentage of Britons gave the same answer. In the United States, despite spending much more, per person, on health care, the figure was only 56 percent.

I don't see how this article is supposed to argue against "socialist" docterin'.

It's entire premise is built upon some notion that americans won't stand by and let some random person asign a value to medication/similar... even though this is already what happens...? Prices currently being just magically assigned by love pixes and never ever set at a level to make a profit for their manufacturers.

Yes America, don't let a Govt. appointed bodt make informed decisions, let your access to healthcare be decided by the stockmarket and those trustworthy insurance brokers, that's clearly much fairer.

No one denied my father any medicine when he had kidney cancer.

Not quite. Your father was free to pay for the meds.

Just like, in the Uk for example, you could still pay for that drug if you could afford it.

If the treatment for your Pa had cost.. oohh..... $4,000,000 would he have got the meds still... or, suddenly, would he have been "denied" it ?

I can't answer an outlandish hypothetical but can say the stuff they tried was more than several salaries worth.

Yes. And, believe it or not, the treatment you'll get for *seriousillnessofyourchoice* on the NHS is also likely to be several salaries for the average person.

... and..?

So.... sometimes there are drugs that the NHS can't afford and you can't get with them.... and there's treatments that are too expensive or not covered by the current American healthcare system for a lot of people too. NO WAI !

I don't see how this is an argument.

If your Pa-- whom I'm assuming is better/not at risk aymore, best wishes to him whatever-- hadn't had a (work based ?) insurance coverage would he have still got the treatment ? Or would he *gasp* have been "denied" it then ?

Medicare actually, which is being cut under current proposals to fund this plan.

I should be clear. I'm not saying the current system is great, but I am saying this is one of the things people are afraid of.

But that's what already happens now though ?

All it should mean-- if it works/ed anyway -- is that less people are "denied" access to certain drugs.

I'm not claiming our system is perfect, won't ever be, is ran by humans after all, and we're looking at long term issues like every other nation, especially to do with long term care for the elderly and costs for that and population %s and so forth.

I just find it astonishing that when someone even talks about looking into a different model than the current one, they are immediately shouted down as "socialists" or some such, rather than realists who are acknowledging a problem.

Besides, your drug companies are so wealthy and entrenched in DC they can keep this from happening for years !

EDIT : gotta go anyway, sorry.

..can we lose the extra G in the title please ?

Free healthcare for all where some treatments are rationed or inferior treatments are given instead is better than healthcare where unless you have the cash (or are plain lucky) you don't get treated.

I work for the NHS and whilst it is far from perfect, it is far better than nothing. The things that are currently wrong with the NHS could be solved simply by cutting out about 90% of its management.

Most of the clinical staff are fantastic, despite how they have to work.

It is a shame that clinical and admin staff alike are chained by upper levels of management and their will to work is sapped on a daily basis because of their actions (or generally inaction).

I would not feel comfortable living in America knowing that if my circumstances changed, I may not be able to be treated if I became ill.

Free healthcare for all where some treatments are rationed or inferior treatments are given instead is better than healthcare where unless you have the cash (or are plain lucky) you don't get treated.

But thats not how it currently is in the US. If you're working full time legally you pretty much have insurance. If you're not you have medicaid.
Its interesting to note the intiial studies reflected several million people would LOSE coverage under the current proposals.

“No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.

Guess I think it should be rationed

I think people are looking at this from the wrong side of the equation.

We tend to think, "healthcare is universally expensive, how can we afford it" and then expect either employers, insurance, or the government to foot the bill on our behalf.

The reforms that will go the furthers to correcting this are those that don't seek to figure out the second part of that statement, they're the ones that seek to address the first part.

Healthcare is expensive. Why? Where does this money go? It doesn't matter nearly as much where the money come from (taxes, corporations, your own pocket) if the amount that goes there can be controlled.

Most dollars spent on "healthcare" aren't spent on anything of the sort. Most dollars spent on healthcare go to line the pockets of insurance companies, lawyers, and pharmacutical conglomerates.

The article linked above indicates that some drugs cost $40,000/year. Holy crap, that's more than the average person makes in a year.

What reforms we need to see are those that make a town doctor able to practice medicine at a reasonable price again. Where the doc doesn't need to charge $1000/hour to be able to pay his insurance premiums.

Cap malpractice awards. It's called "practicing medicine" - you should know going in that the doctor's job isn't perfect, and that he's going to do his best to help you. When he makes a mistake, we should accept that he's human, rather than viewing it as a personal lottery.

Get insurance companies out of the drug industry. Drug companies are reporting "record profits" year after year. They're obviously price gouging, and they're able to do so because insurance companies foot the bill for most of the drugs. If insurance will pay for a drug that costs $3000/month, companies will charge $3000/month for it. If insurance companies stop agreeing to the outlandish prices for the drugs, the drug companies will have no choice but to lower the price to something people can afford (or not sell anything).

But the insurance companies don't care about that, because they pass the bill for this on to everyone else (just like the government would do) in the form of premiums, and so we all foot the bill for outrageous pharmaceutical greed.

I really don't think that getting the government involved paying the established medical prices will help at all. The problem in the medical industry isn't who should be paying, it's how much is being paid to satisfy the greed of relatively few.

Frazzled wrote:But thats not how it currently is in the US. If you're working full time legally you pretty much have insurance. If you're not you have medicaid.
Its interesting to note the intiial studies reflected several million people would LOSE coverage under the current proposals.

I don't know all that much about healthcare in the USA. I do know that a lot of companies include healthcare plans within their wage and benefits packets though. Would that be due to the relative expense of health cover in the USA do you think?

Although would you not agree that a lower wage which includes private health cover is already tantamount to paying increased taxes in order to fund... dun dun dah... public heath care? In addition to the portion of your taxed wage which goes to fund Medicaid (which I assume is state funded health care for those who cannot afford medical cover?).

Healthcare plans are considered as a basic part of a full time employment package. If you're working a full time non contract job, you're going to get some sort of health insurance option.

A problem though is that not all options are created equal. People worry that any sort of public "solution" would create a poor care system or one similar to a poor health care plan.

An additional problem is that, and this is only referencing the US, most of our government entities absolutely suck at everything and cost gobs to do it. It may be UK countries have better government entities and can therefore put more faith in that. Ours are just this side of banana republic (ok sometimes straight banana republic).

Redbeard wrote:Costs of medications

Although drug companies etc make a lot of profit, they also have huge expendatures (excluding legal costs). Only a tiny fraction of their products will make it through to market, for every drug which they sell, there will be 100 or even 1000 others which have failed at some point in their development cycle.

In the medical devices field, the individual components may not cost much, but because so few (relatively) are required, the price that must be charged in order to keep a company afloat is often massive. For example, custom made footwear for people with diabetes and who are at risk of amputation can cost upwards of £500, simply because there are (relatively) so few orders for such specification shoes that the company must charge such high prices in order to keep going.

Whilst drugs companies make huge profits (and admittedly sink lots of that into lawers and management pay cheques), a lot of what they make goes back into creating new products.

Frazzled wrote:
A problem though is that not all options are created equal. People worry that any sort of public "solution" would create a poor care system or one similar to a poor health care plan.

Don't we already have a poor health care system?

Thats highly debatable.

46.6 uninsured Americans is a pretty good sign

I think you need to compare the cost of medicines between countries. For example how much would a common item like an inhaler for someone with asthma cost in the states? Over here in the Uk you get them in a prescription for just over £7.
Mind you the NHS here is turning more towards the US style and being run like a business. I have been working in the NHS as a care worker for adults with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour for eight years now but the part of the Trust I work for has made a 'business' decision to close the seven homes in it. There supposed reason is that the NHS cant supply the proper care needed for the 20+ residents even though they have all shown a great in improvement in their quality of life and behaviours over the last few years. What it really comes down to is they are trying to save money so they are auctioning the residents off to the lowest bidder...
The stupid thing is they still have to find work in the NHS for the 90+ staff though.
Mick

It would cost all types of different amounts depending on the insurer and lack of insurance.

Thats a stat figure.

Really look at it and you're talking about 8mm - 12mm. Current plans are relfecting the impact of the loss of several mm who are currently insured as a result of the plan.

Makes you wonder what the actual cost of the inhaler is...
Mick

$.37?

Regardless we still have people in our country with no insurance.

Although I think America has a relatively good idea when it comes to running its hospitals to make sure they keep the costs down and the number of treatments up, I do not particualry think it would suffer overmuch if it adpoted a national health service to cover the costs of treatment for all Americans (with the option of private treatment for those who want to pay for it, as there is that option in other countries with a national health service) by simply "taking" the shortfall in wages that are currently taken up by employers contributions to health plans to pay for the USHS (United States Health Service.. trade marked to me by the way... don't steal it!).

If you think about it, most people will pay a broadly uniform proportion of their wage towards health plans and since I don't imagine that suddenly more people will become ill, the books should more or less balance anyway.

Though I do get your point about useless government type bodies... we have them running the NHS (and most other state run institutions, and a good few private ones too).

SilverMK2 wrote:Although I think America has a relatively good idea when it comes to running its hospitals to make sure they keep the costs down and the number of treatments up, I do not particualry think it would suffer overmuch if it adpoted a national health service to cover the costs of treatment for all Americans (with the option of private treatment for those who want to pay for it, as there is that option in other countries with a national health service) by simply "taking" the shortfall in wages that are currently taken up by employers contributions to health plans to pay for the USHS (United States Health Service.. trade marked to me by the way... don't steal it!).

If you think about it, most people will pay a broadly uniform proportion of their wage towards health plans and since I don't imagine that suddenly more people will become ill, the books should more or less balance anyway.

Though I do get your point about useless government type bodies... we have them running the NHS (and most other state run institutions, and a good few private ones too).

Even though I use my company health care and it costs me very little but my company a lot I am all in favor of universal because even if they raise my taxes my company will refund the 13k that they pay per year on average on each employee. I am sure my taxes will not go up that much and if they do big deal, everyone pays them so it will even out in the long run.

I am sure my taxes will not go up that much and if they do big deal, everyone pays them so it will even out in the long run.

I agree. I take at full faith and credit the statement that taxes or fees will not be raised at all to cover this.

It's a bit of a straw man argument. Obviously healthcare is rationed because resources are never as much as would satisfy all demand. Someone has to make rationing decisions.

In the USA the rationing is done by the individual's ability to pay. Rich people can get whatever treatment they want. People on good insurance plans are probably OK. The rest of the population make do with what they can get.

The USA's problem is that insured healthcare is becoming too expensive for many companies or middle-income individuals to afford. Do you want your life to be decided by a soulless bureaucrat in the government, or a soulless bureaucrat in an insurance company? At least you can vote on the government.

It should be noted that in the UK, the NHS in no way prevents people from using private healthcare. If you are rich, you can buy your own Taligent or whatever cancer drugs you want. If they are not licensed for use in the UK you can go to the USA and buy them.

I trained for 2 days in a hospital as a health care assistant in England and I was let loose on the hospital wards. Sure, it wasn't handing out drugs but they barely showed me how to help a patient with walking difficulties how to safely get to the toilet. I left after 2 months because I was so distraught with the situation. The people who worked there were lovely, but completely over-worked, stressed-out and very tired with zero time to spend showing me how to do things in the correct manner.

Every year we pump more and more money into the NHS but where the feth does it all go?? Hospitals are labelled a success nowadays if they have the time to clean the toilets out, wipe down the surfaces, and keep killer hospital-generated super-viruses under control!

The NHS is a noble idea that needs something, just something, to sort it out.

I wish the Health Minister would stand up in prime ministers question-time and rip his suit off, exposing his superman outfit, kick the PM in the gut, uppercut David Cameron in the face, and just SORT OUT THE MESS!

ha, I must get 7-8 emails a week offering me "cheap online medication" from America.

I forward them all to the NIgerian finance minister who...