Posted on 02/10/2005 1:20:24 PM PST by quidnunc
Which is better — American or British medical care? If a defender of the National Health Service wants to win the argument against a free market alternative, he declares, ‘You wouldn’t want healthcare like they have in America, would you?’
That is the knock-out blow. Everyone knows the American system is horrible. You arrive in hospital, desperately ill, and they ask to see your credit card. If you haven’t got one, they boot you out. It is, surely, a heartless, callous, unthinkable system. American healthcare is unbridled capitalism, red in the blood of the untreated poor.
For goodness’ sake, the American system is so bad that even Americans — plenty of them anyway, if not all — want to give it up. They want something more like the Canadian system or our own National Health Service. That is what Hillary Clinton wanted and there are still plenty of people like her around. Tony Judt, in a recent edition of the New York Review of Books, was damning about American medical care and glowing about European healthcare. Think of all the money that is wasted in America invoicing patients and administering lots of separate, independent hospitals.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
BTW, it's a damn shame the Speccie now requires a paid subscription to access most of their articles online. I used to just download the whole magazine for free - the best deal on the web.
>You arrive in hospital, desperately ill, and they ask to >see your credit card. If you haven’t got one, they boot >you out.
WHAT? Is this sattire?? This is against the law to not treat you due to no money or credit or insurance unless it is a private hospital (I don't know any in my area that refuses treatment)
Is this what Britains are being told so that they buy this garbage of socialized medicine?
Could you have gotten away with posting the whole article? Would the Limies object?
Socialized medicine doesn't work well unless it is funded well. There's one Norwegain country with a good system. They take 6% from every paycheck.
A study came out re: those who file for bankruptsy in this country. 80% were middle class, insured people and 50% of those folks cited medical bills as the reason for the filing. I have a friend who desperately needs treatment (bad lungs) and she can't get it because she and her husband own a house. His pension is just enough for the house payment and she works a minimum wage job to pay the bills. They will have to sell their home in order to pay for her treatment. More and more small businesses can't afford the health insurance for their employees and it gets worse every year because the cost has skyrocketed. Not due to doctors being sued either, that accounts for 2%. The more people who are priced out of medical insurance, the more poor we will have (outside of illegal immigrants) and more taxes we will pay. What is the solution? Something has got to be done or we will end up like Mexico.
That's exactly what the Canadian state funded media has been peddling for decades now.
Why isn't your friend using Medicaid? Their house is protected as long as one or the other is alive and is able to make the mortgage. How old is your friend? If she is over 65, have her contact Centura Senior Services. It's free and very helpful.
It's funny how so many Europeans actually believe that.
It's no so funny that so many Mexicans know that it's not true.
United Kingdom
Infant mortality rate: total: 5.22 deaths/1,000 live births male: 5.83 deaths/1,000 live births female: 4.58 deaths/1,000 live births (2004 est.)
Life expectancy at birth: total population: 78.27 years male: 75.84 years female: 80.83 years (2004 est.)
United States
Infant mortality rate: total: 6.63 deaths/1,000 live births male: 7.31 deaths/1,000 live births female: 5.91 deaths/1,000 live births (2004 est.)
Life expectancy at birth: total population: 77.43 years male: 74.63 years female: 80.36 years (2004 est.)
Remind me again about the desperate straits of the British NHS? The statistics can be found at this well known Commie organization.
I doubt most Americans would accept a system that rations care. If you are beyond a certain age ...I believe 70.. you won't get heart by-passes or angioplasty. Deaths rates from cancer are higher in the UK than in the US and it is not unusual for newly diagnosed cancer patients to wait weeks if not months for treatment...ditto in Canada. Forget about getting liver transplants or being aggressively treated for certain fast acting or metastatic cancers.
Yep. It's what many Canadians think too. They really do believe you will be dumped at the curb if you don't have insurance.
Isn't our media wonderful?
I think the only "health care crisis" we have involves oppressive Federally mandated paperwork and incredibly excessive "CYA" medicine to ward off the Lawsuit Lottery Lawyers.
Bush addressed both of those issues in his SOTU address. I hope he can get some action on both issues, but I'm sure the Rats will do their best to throw up roadblocks.
Unfortunately, most people in Britain and the rest of Europe believe this bilge. The Spectator is a fairly conservative magazine as well. Friends of mine back in the UK imagine that the poor in the US have to go without treatment; it amazes them when I explain the truth to them.
Those stats, without adjusting for demographics, show nothing.
I'm a year out of college and can't afford a house. Better for your friend to sell his house than to raise taxes on me. Pay your own damn way and be responsible for your own problems. Otherwise tell them to move to Europe where they can trade thier freedoms in return for sympathy for thier sob stories.
And why is medical care so expensive here in the US? Because of billions of dollars worth of regulatory and litigation drag on the system.
I think you have to read the whole article -- the bit excerpted is probably just the lib side. It's a pity quidnunc excerpted it.
Here's a good article from the CATO Institute:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3627
Health Care in a Free Society: Rebutting the Myths of National Health Insurance
by John Goodman
John C. Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, Texas. This paper is adapted from his book Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance around the World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), coauthored by Gerald L. Musgrave and Devon M. Herrick.
Executive Summary
Almost everyone agrees that the U.S. health care system is in dire need of reform. But there are differing opinions on what kind of reform would be best. Some on the political left would like to see us copy one of the government-run "single-payer" systems that exist in Western Europe, Canada, and New Zealand, among other places. Proponents of socialized medicine point to other countries as examples of health care systems that are superior to our own. They insist that government will make health care available on the basis of need rather than ability to pay. The rich and poor will have equal access to care. And more serious medical needs will be given priority over less serious needs.
Unfortunately, those promises have not been borne out by decades of studies and statistics from nations with single-payer health care. Reports from those governments contradict many of the common misperceptions held by supporters of national health insurance in the United States. Wherever national health insurance has been tried, rationing by waiting is pervasive, putting patients at risk and keeping them in pain. Single-payer systems tend to leave rationing choices up to local bureaucracies that, for example, fill hospital beds with chronic patients, while acute patients wait for care. Access to health care in single-payer systems is far from equitable; in fact, it often correlates with income—with rich and well-connected citizens jumping the queue for treatment. Democratic political pressures (i.e., the need for votes) dictate the redistribution of health care dollars from the few to the many. In particular, the elderly, racial minorities, and those in rural areas are discriminated against when it comes to expensive treatments. And patients in countries with national health insurance usually have less access to critical medical procedures, modern medical technology, and lifesaving drugs than patients in the United States.
Far from being accidental byproducts of government-run health care systems that could be solved with the right reforms, these are the natural and inevitable consequences of placing the market for health care under the control of politicians. The best remedy for all countries' health care crises is not increasing government power, but increasing patient power instead.
I just did, it came to decent conclusions... but still trotted out a few old inaccurate saws.
The last paragraph of the article sums the whole thing up pretty well.
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