Topic: "Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs..." - page 2. (Read 6075 times)

You do realize that noting the fact that Americans are, on average, much wealthier than other nations tempers some of the differences in actual monetary costs, right?  For example, if I make the American median income (around $31K per year, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income) even a rate of 3 times the cost of care means that, as a realtive percentage of my income, my health care costs less of my income than literally half or more of the planet, even if I had no insurance at all and paid every dime from my own pocket.  New Zealand rings in at about $20K per year, while the Netherlands rings in at about $24K.

The median income of the entire planet is only about $7K per year (http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/10/07/average_earnings_worldwide/) and that includes Americans.  That means that Americans near the poverty level (In 2009, in the United States of America, the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was US$11,161; -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold) earn almost twice as much as half the population on Earth, while also being with public transit distance of some of the best hospitals on Earth.  As has already been noted, they get 'mandatory' treatment whether they can pay for it or not.  You can't honestly expect that the lower half of the rest of the world could have access to nearly the same care, even if they could tax their own citizenship to pay for it at a third the cost that the US pays for.

Im sure thats what the insurance and pharmaceutical companies want you to believe. Yet somehow European and other nations have government controlled health insurance yet are 3x as efficient. So, follow the money. Who pockets all that money? Maybe your doctors make a better income than ours, but thats not going to explain it.  So who wins? If not you the taxpayer, if not the government, if most likely not or not in a meaningful way the medical professionals. AFAICS, that leaves insurance and pharma companies. Let check that theory and google on it:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/prof-f19.shtml

$12.2 billion in profits for the 5 biggest US insurers. Not bad. That buys you a few senators no doubt.  And if you give everyone the same insurance, whats the point of these companies, what value do they add? None, they just make your life hard trying their damnest not to have to pay or get sick customers.

Then the other suspect; big pharma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry

Top 20 companies, $110 billion net profits. Granted, globally, but there you have it nonetheless.
Mind you, big pharma is an actual industry that does provide very obvious added value, its not like Im oppososed to them being commercial and making profits, but those kinds of number tell you you are paying WAY too much.
And they are paying way too much to your politicians.


What a nonsensical argument. Are you measuring the quality of your health care by "invented in the US" advertisements of pharma industry on tv or what? Gimme a break.


Actually, you dont on a lot of important metrics, like child mortality:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/05/us-lagging-behind-much-of-europe-cuba-chile-and-united-arab-emirates-in-child-mortality.html
Despite comparing the worlds richest country to one of the poorest third wold countries thats under half a century embargo.

As if that would explain the stats, common get real. From the above link:

The U.S., which is projected to have 6.7 deaths per 1,000 children this year, saw a 42% decline in child mortality, a pace that is on par with Kazakhstan, Sierra Leone and Angola.
"There are an awful lot of people who think we have the best medical system in the world," said Dr. Christopher Murray, who directs the institute and is an author of the study. "The data is so contrary to that."
Even many countries that already had low child mortality rates, such as Sweden and France, were able to cut their rates more rapidly than the U.S. over the last two decades.
[..]
Although the U.S. spends nearly twice as much per capita on healthcare as most other industrialized countries, researchers are finding substantially higher levels of preventable deaths from diseases such as diabetes and pneumonia.
[..]
Another recent study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that the rate of deaths among women giving birth has actually increased in the U.S. over the last two decades




Always useful to check the source. From the about page:
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983. Our goal is to develop and promote private, free-market alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial
private sector.

That sounds like an objective source.Lets see what medical scientists have to say on that:

http://www.otohns.net/default.asp?id=8832

Looks like you dont live any longer than europeans (in fact, your life expectancy is substantially shorter) you just know sooner you will die. I guess thats something.

I'm pretty sure I already acknowledged the payment system was horribly inefficient. However, we pay that 2 or 3x you refer to for health care, not for insurance coverage. People get care, whether they are covered or not.



I can only presume you live in one of those six countries. Otherwise your argument about quality of care would be moot. Which one?



The point wasn't of scale. The point was our "costs" you keep referring to include paying for free healthcare for illegal immigrant populations the size of the countries you are referring to. But you knew that. We are obviously such bastards that way.



We have universal care in Massachusetts. The other 49 haven't expressed interest. But if it works out there others may take notice. Interestingly the folks in Massachusetts were pretty strongly against the latest federal plan.



We eat more then you smoke. And curiously, smoking seems to kill people less expensively than obesity. (tongue in cheek)

But curiously, have you looked at our birthrates by demographic group? Unlike Europeans that simply don't breed at all. In the US the poor out breed the rich by quite some margin. And if you saw the kids you would see that many are indeed born fat or at least get that way remarkably quickly.

But even so you may find that is not such a scandal as you are led to believe. Cool Graph The lines are actually all pretty close together. If you figure that many of our births come from recent Mexican immigrants, the numbers start to make a little more sense.

By the way, I'm quite certain you will find we die in more car crashes (because we drive 10 fold more than Europeans). We also have many different types of "death by misadventure". Sometimes crazy people drown their kids in cars. Other times teenagers shoot each other. Mostly this excess mortality isn't a result of a poor medical care. It's because lots of us are a bit less "civilized" then in other countries.



I'm also pretty happy with my healthcare system, my costs, and the results I receive. I wouldn't switch places with anyone. However, I don't remember calling anything socialist.

So I have to support my claims while others do not?

Not only that, the US is far wealthier than New Zealand and the Netherlands combined:

United States GDP - $ 14,660,000,000,000

New Zealand GDP - $ 117,800,000,000

Netherlands GDP - $ 676,900,000,000

And to boot: Monaco, highest listed life expectancy, had a substantially lower GDP compared to the US: $ 976,300,000 (2006 est.)



No, you didn't address it. You need to show how they are different in Canada from the US, rather than assuming it is. Do the needful and back up this so far unsubstantiated claim.

No contest there, the question then is why is it so inefficient?  I may be too close to see the big picture, but from where I stand it's because of government regulations into the medical industries, not despite them.


The "worse quality" meme is provablely false.  The vast majority of medical advancements over the past 50 years or so came from American doctors and scientists working for companies with a profit motive, whether the doctors themselves were motivated by money or not.  There is literally nothing that you can get medically that I don't have access to, even if you can get it cheaper.  Your high quality care is a direct result of our highly inefficient system.


We do way better than Cuba, too; on average.  Even Casto's health has benefited from American capitalistic medicine.  Which is, itself, and irony; considering that our federal representatives have repeatedly tried to kill him.


Have you bothered to follow this thread?  I addressed this already.  The methods of record keeping is different.  For example, if an infant is born dead, but there was no evidence that the fetus was dead before labor began, that baby is counted as a infant in the US, but not in many other nations until it survives for several minutes outside the womb.  Many other stats are skewed in similar ways, because the standard methods of record keeping is different between countries.  In the US, if a pregant mother is murdered, it's recorded as a double homicide.


You're happy with it because you're ignorant of what the costs are, and I'm not talking about monetary costs.  Pray you never have to find out.

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596

"Underinsured" is not remotely uninsured.  It's also a vague term.  In the case of this report, it means that 25 million Americans "had inadequate health insurance to cover their medical expenses".  In other words, 25 million Americans no longer have insurance that pays for all their medical costs.  I have no doubt that I will soon be added to this metric, since I will be switching to a health savings account soon.  By my own will, BTW.  My prior health insurance falls under the 'cadillac plan' tax in Obama's health care law, so the company can't afford the costs anymore.  This past year, the average plan value was just under $16K per employee.  Thanks for that promise that I wouldn't have to change plans if I liked mine, Obama!

Someone pays. Thats the funny thing, you pay 2 or 3x more per capita than other countries while only covering part of your population. The cost per insured person is therefore closer to 4x what other industrial nations pay, yet you get worse healthcare for that. You have to be some ideologue with blinders on to defend the US system when all the numbers show so clearly its not just bad, its horribly inefficient.

No matter how you slice it,  or how you spread the cost, the US system is ridiculously expensive while offering worse quality.


Okay, so you probably do better than Zimbabwe. Is that your benchmark? Try Cuba.


So what, the bigger the scale, the more efficient you could make it. Its harder to get costs down on small scale, a country like the Netherlands has no leverage over pharmaceutical companies compared to the US.  If you can do it on a scale as small as that, surely you could do it on a state level in the US?


Yeah those cliches again. While they may have some truth, they dont explain the results. Read the article. US smokes a whole lot less than europeans, and you are younger.  I also dont think your babies are born fat, so how do you explain child mortality?

Anyway, its your health and your tax dollars. If you are happy spending 3x more for worse quality just so you dont have to call something "socialist", then thats your choice. Im sure happy with my healthcare system and I dont care what you call it.

Approximately 42 percent of adults aged 19 to 64 years old -- 75 million people -- were either underinsured or didn't have health insurance in 2007

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/articles/2008/06/10/25-million-americans-are-underinsured


Traveling, no. Living here, yes.

You seem to take things a little more defensively than I intended. I'm not calling your system bad. Indeed, I don't even know what system you use. I'm saying the US system doesn't operate as it is perceived to operate from afar.

However, no matter what system you use, no one should ever *be required* to give up the right to decide exactly what level of care they want to receive. Sometimes, it really matters. Sometimes those decisions are life and death.

Some countries with universal health care do require people to relinquish these rights. Canada prefers one tier for everyone. The UK is reputed to make it difficult to switch counties for care. (I am not an expert on foreign care) Most countries, however, do not require one size fits all healthcare. Most countries allow people to buy "supplemental" insurance or to pay for extra services beyond those automatically afforded to others. However, being responsible for your own additional medical services doesn't make you evil.

The US fits into this second category. We call this optional supplemental insurance, "medical insurance" because the initial tier requires no insurance at all. Indeed the US does have a level of care afforded to everyone without cost. We don't call it "insurance" though. It is called mandatory care. Many people want the bar for mandatory care to be set higher but indeed there is a bar.

Outside of emergencies, often times to receive this free level of care, you are required to stand in lines with people you wouldn't normally associate with. People often find this demeaning. They argue the bar should be set higher so they don't have to associate themselves with such people. To avoid having to be associated with mandatory care, or to avoid having to pay for their own care or to avoid purchasing insurance, many people choose to go to regular for-profit medical providers then just don't pay their bills. This drives for-profit cost up for those that do want to pay.

Where did you find that bs?  We have roughly 3 million adult citizens that are uninsured, half of which still have access to subsidized health insurance.  That's about 1% of the population.  There is not a single child citizen that doesn't have access to subsidized health care, including those not born in the states themselves, such as Puerto Rico.  For that matter, all US citizens have access to subsidized health care, regardless of age, including felons; for anything immediately threatening.  Illegal immigrants don't, but you weren't counting them, were you?  After all, I wouldn't have a right to your taxpayer funded health care simply by traveling there, would I?  Are you saying that all those funds that I pay for international health coverage while out of country is a waste of my money?  Great!  If I get brain cancer, a plane ticket is far cheaper than health insurance anyway!  I can drop my coverage altogether!  Hey, can I stay with you?

That's kinda funny.  You have basicly an annual deductable, like so many Americans.  Yours is just a tad higher than my family deductable.  A notable fact that I find incrediblely amusing.  What country is this, anyway?

Yes, €500 is on top of taxes. You pay a token amount for your visits and medication. Once you hit the ceiling the rest is free (subsidized, stolen by force by honest hard working non leeching people who really shouldn't be forced to pay for anyone but themselves) or whatever you'd like to call it.

I'm happy for your anecdotal evidence and I too have similar stories. I have friends with cancer who have undergone major surgery and are currently on drugs which would make a rather large hole in anyone's wallet. One pill he takes daily costs around $15 and that's just one. $450/month and no income since he can't work while undergoing treatment. Oh, the chemotherapy isn't billed to him. Just the drugs he takes at home. He's quite happy that his only concern is to get well, not how expensive it will be to get there.

I've been hospitalized about 5 times. Great care every time. Same with my wife. My mother in law more times than I can count. Transporting her 500km by ambulance to a hospital closer to her home from where she was hurt, cost €0.

A friend got sick while pregnant. Airlifted to specialist care in the city next to us. Free of charge. Specialist? Free.

Another friend have a chronic disease that should have killed him years ago. He goes to a specialist in another town for treatment. Treatment he could not possibly afford by himself.

I've never heard the term "medical bankruptcy" until I visited the US. I wish the term didn't exist.

It is really an interesting statistic depending on how you spin it. That means 50 million people tend to get healthcare without paying anything. Sometimes it comes from government run health facilities. Often times they get care and just decide not to pay the bills. We have no debtor's prisons for such things. (Nor am I suggesting that we should)

So if you are suggesting that more people in the use should be responsible for paying for their healthcare costs, I couldn't agree more. It would bring the overhead down substantially for those now paying the bills. However, nothing proposed so far aims to make this imbalance better. That is the really sad thing.



Out of 191 countries on the planet. "The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found."

Come on New Zealand had 4 million people. The Netherlands has 16 million. California and the US are pushing those respective numbers in illegal immigrants alone.


But the study is clear about one thing, we are fat and nobody likes to go to the doctor. We are fat because we are very efficient and productive in feeding ourselves. Even our poor are fat. Our food tends to be good, cheep, and restaurant service is fast. Even Europeans get fat when they come here. Should we take better care of ourselves? Yes we should.



I'm pretty much all over these forums saying health insurance is the cause of our problems not the solution. Employer based health insurance is the stupidest concept of them all. I'm quite convinced that nobody should have health insurance. I am however in favor of people receiving proper health CARE. (Feel free to review my other posts on this subject)

Well, I never said no one in the US got good healthcare or free/subsidized/insured healthcare. I guess much depends what state you live in, but the fact remains you have over 50 million people with no insurance and over 25 million with inadequate insurance. Thats 42% of your population under 65. Forty two %!

The other facts are just as glaring. Child mortality is among the highest of industrialized countries, life expectancy among the lowest. Cost is at least twice that of other countries. Or to quote this study:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-last-idUSTRE65M0SU20100623

"U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study".

Look, Im all for free markets and market competition, but for some things it just doesnt work, and it shouldnt surprise health insurance is one those things. Keeping people alive just isnt economical and the incentives are perverse and constantly conflict with morality.

Keep in mind all of my examples happened in the US. None required extra costs. Most of them involve medicare (public healthcare).

I had a friend who was shot in the face. (Not accidentally.) It was treated completely free including follow up plastic surgery to remove a dimple. If I lined up my friends you could not tell who it was. Again, this was done 100% free for someone who has never worked a day in their life. No insurance, no co-pays, no judgement, no threats of lawsuits, no bill collectors. It just gets done.

Somehow the rest of the world has gotten the view that the US has some kind of 3rd world healthcare. It is simply not the case. We have expensive healthcare because of rampant irresponsibility and wackko billing systems. But the actual care is top notch. The rest of the world hears about "high infant mortality" but we walk through hospitals where they regularly save 1 and 2 pound pre-mature babies that would die elsewhere and never having been recorded as a "live birth". This sort of pre-infant care turns out to be very expensive and it runs up all of our cost averages. But quite frankly, absolutely no one is interested in average care.

You have good, bad and fantastic specialists everywhere; it doesnt depend on what sort of healthcare system you have or who pays for it. Its just that some people are more gifted than others, and you cant teach certain gifts at a university. But if healthcare system makes any difference in that regard, perhaps its the fact I can afford to go see the same surgeon that makes international football stars travel here for their treatment as he happens to be a world authority when it comes to knees. For me its not more expensive than any other hospital or any other knee specialist, although obviously, I may have to wait a while as no healthcare system in the world can make him work 20 days per week.

Having affordable healthcare also means you can get second and third opinions and not have to worry too much about the costs. And all too often its a good idea to get second or even third opinions on complex issues. Even doctors are mere mortals, and as you rightly point out, not all of them equally qualified or experienced. And even the gifted ones get it wrong on occasion.

I don't know where "here" is but €500/year seems pretty in inexpensive. I imagine that is on top of your normal taxes.

Without making an specific accusations, I do want to point out something that you can only learn through experiences. There is a dramatic difference between "good" care and between "great" care. All doctors are not alike.

For example, my Aunt is 95 years old, and has a blood disease. She was expected to die 5 years ago. However, she so vibrant and active that her doctor thought he should put some extra effort in her treatment. She got blood transfusions almost twice a week for several years. She still gets them every couple of months now. However, if she needs help when her particular doctor is on vacation, the other doctor's best medical judgement is to treat her very basically. She is 95 years old, they think. Why waste good blood! This cause her to spiral downhill until her doctor comes back and treats her properly. Then in less than a day she is up walking and out in the world again. Keep in mind, both of these "standards of care" come from within the same hospital and are provided using standard government medicare insurance for the elderly. She does not pay extra to be treated properly.

I can give you other personal examples of a father in law receiving "good" care in two different local hospitals while remaining near death, but then being "life flighted" three states over to a noted hospital for "optimal" care. He recovered in less than a day.

My own father is 10 years past a stroke and 5 years past colon cancer. You would never know to look at him. He went to the cancer research hospital where they invent the drugs and treatment processes. His doctor sees 500+ colon cancer patients a year. The practical reality is a doctor who sees 5 colon cancer cases a career may still be a good doctor. But there are "better" doctors, and there are clearly "best" doctors for any given medical problem. Again this was medicare, not out of pocket premium care.

I learned this problem most clearly by sitting on a jury. A guy was injured an a car accident. He broke his leg. His doctor testified that it was the most complication leg operation he'd ever had to do. There were multiple screws and pins. It was a horrific injury and this poor gentleman would be on crutches and in constant pain for the rest of his life. The doctor seemed competent and serious.

Then the defense asked another doctor to testify, he said "My name is... I'm the head of sports medicine for...". They asked him if he had seen an injury like this before. He said, "Yes, I do 300 of those a years. It is very common in high school and professional sports." And when they asked him what was the expected recovery rate was, "100%" he said. He was dead serious. I really felt bad for the guy who went to a "good" doctor when he really needed to go to the "best" doctor. And this was just for a broken leg!

Most people know instinctively that you should hire the "best" lawyer you can find. After all, your freedom may be at stake.
Doctoring they think, "is a noble profession" I can trust them, they all look out for my best interests. After all, it's not like I'm risking my freedom, it's only my life.

Perhaps I shouldn't use any -ism words at all as they do in fact have many different interpretations by many people. However and notwithstanding that, if your modus operandi is to force a man to relinquish his property for a purpose other than self-defense (or for restitution), you would be stealing, injuring or enslaving. Frederic Bastiat described this as the difference between legal plunder and extralegal plunder.

Legal plunder was where you could legislate laws or statutes which could expropriate another man's property for purposes other than lawful defense. Examples of this would be: government health care, welfare programs, unemployment insurance etc.

Extralegal plunder was more obvious, but neverthess equivalent in its effect. These were things like stealing, murdering, raping, kidnapping, etc.

I'll leave you with one of his quotes as that would be very apropos to this thread, considering the fact it actually began with someone paraphrasing him.

"Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.

For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in contradiction to our premises. For who will dare to say that force has been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren? And if this be not true of every individual force, acting independently, how can it be true of the collective force, which is only the organized union of isolated forces?

Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all."

I'm in the first category. I think the system works wonderfully, although I don't feel I get "better" care by paying extra. I get "speedier" care. I can bypass some queues. This is something my company pays for me to have me back on the job quicker. I guess it pays off for them.

The comfort in having a baseline service in healthcare is wonderful. And I think the maximum fee for healthcare is about €500/year here, that includes both treatment and medication.