Posted on 09/05/2006 7:54:28 AM PDT by aculeus
[snip] If Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, reaches the Oval Office, she likely would take another crack at socialized medicine, as she did so disastrously in 1994.
Amy Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research sees this model more as a poisoned chalice. Her Washington-based free-market think tank (with which I am a "distinguished fellow") has begun educating Americans on the massive belly flop that is state-sponsored health care. [snip]
It would be bad enough if national health care merely offered patients low-quality treatment. Even worse, Ms. Ridenour finds, it kills them.
• Breast cancer is fatal to 25 percent of its American victims. In Great Britain and New Zealand, both socialized-medicine havens, breast cancer kills 46 percent of women it strikes.
• Prostate cancer proves fatal to 19 percent of its American sufferers. In single-payer Canada, the National Center for Policy Analysis reports, this ailment kills 25 percent of such men and eradicates 57 percent of their British counterparts.
• After major surgery, a 2003 British study found, 2.5 percent of American patients died in the hospital versus nearly 10 percent of similar Britons. Seriously ill U.S. hospital patients die at one-seventh the pace of those in the U.K.
• "In usual circumstances, people over age 75 should not be accepted" for treatment of end-state renal failure, according to New Zealand's official guidelines. Unfortunately, for older Kiwis, government controls kidney dialysis.
• According to a Populus survey, 98 percent of Britons want to reduce the time between diagnosis and treatment.
(Excerpt) Read more at insider.washingtontimes.com ...
I kept it in the original register. I've never been the same since.
This is sarcasm, right?
Presumably you are aware of the waits in France, the different definition of infant mortality and the differences in definition of health care spending in the national accounts structure?
You have read the OECD papers on this, correct?
big, big, big BUMP.
Wait times in France?
There isn't much in the way of that, except for MRI machines.
My comparison of the French and American system is based on experience with both. They are comparable, if you're insured in the US. If you are not insured in the US, the health care system is terrible.
ping
Thank you again for reasoned and interesting posts which add to the quality of the conversation.
De rien.
Socialized medicine is what the dems want to legislate here in the USA. Anyone thinking about sitting this election out needs to consider the plight of people like Emily Morely.
Bump.
>>That's why the body count in the 20th Century by your friendly neighborhood communists exceeds 125 Million!!!
Actually, it now is 150 million+. Rummel has updated his numbers, and the big thing that affects this is accounting for Mao's famine.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Amazing that America is become MORE not LESS socialized..
ALL under an Republican Administration.... (PUSHING IT)...
Indeed, Socialism is Slavery by Giverment.. caused by democracy, which is MOB Rule..
--------------------------------------------
Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx
Just like in France the "state" will set pricing for medical professionals. (Making them state employees). Recently Health Care professionals went on strike because the payments received by the state did not cover their malpractice insurance premiums.
Under Hillary Clinton's health care bill, there will not be a multi tier provider system. (It wouldn't be fair if you were allowed better care if you could pay for it.) We would all be treated the same.
I don't think we can hold off Universal Health Care of some sort. The masses want it for free. But I want to take this opportunity to thank GW for my Health Savings Account. I get to pay for what I need. No more, no less.
Actually, my experience with the American system is that if you are uninsured, you get great treatment for anything short of major surgery. My wife had several lithotripsy procedures and two were uninsured. The clinic worked out a payment plan the same day we scheduled the operation. Diagnosis and treatment were all accomplished within four days--and this was back in the early 90s when lithotripsy machines weren't found everywhere like they are now.
Of course, living very near the Houston Medical Center (truly one of the hidden wonders of Texas) didn't hurt our situation.
Thanks for the update on the figures. I wonder about the word democide. Most of the regimes mentioned were dictatorial and or socialist/communist. Might Dictocide or sociopathicide be more descripticide? (to wit a killer of a definition!! wakka wakka)
"Just like in France the 'state' will set pricing for medical professionals."
The French state does not set the pricing for medical professionals. Just like American Medicare, it sets the price that the government will reimburse for a given service. If doctors charge more, and the patient wants to use that doctor, the patient (or his private insurance) foots the bill for the "gap".
Just as with US Medicare, in France the state does not pay 100% of medical costs. It pays a percentage; the patient pays the rest (about 20%) or covers the gap with private insurance.
France's medical system is the same thing as US Medicare, but it covers everybody, and not just people over 62. That's why it's so expensive relative to other state-funded medical programs in other countries: it is universal INSURANCE, but leaves patients free to select their doctors, and doctors free to set their rates, just like in America.
France's medical system is identical to the American system for everyone over 62 (or whatever the Medicare eligibility age in America is now). American doctors are not at all rendered state employees by Medicare.
Sure.
The fundamental trouble with health care is that the horrendously expensive maladies strike randomly, and impose crushing costs on particular individuals. For them to be treated, the cost has to be spread somehow, through insurance, with the government providing the final-resort backstop.
National health care systems in the developed world all grapple with this problem differently. The French and the Americans have come to the same conclusion for the most expensive part of medical care: old people (who have most of the expensive diseases) are covered by single-payer government insurance plans (Medicare in the US, Social Security in France).
The difference between France and America is that everyone else is ALSO covered by the Social Security medical insurance, while American coverage only starts at age 62.
The result is that the French system is supported by general taxation, is comprehensive and effective, and is EXPENSIVE. However, the lack of profit motive in the government insurer, and the different tort systems (and relative lack of "defensive medicine" in France as a result) makes the overall per capita cost of French universal health care a LOT less per capita than the cost of US health care, for about the same standard of care.
To get to French levels of efficiency, though, Americans would have to be willing to limit their legal system. Lawsuits are so fundamental to the American concept of civil rights and government that true reform is akin to a constitutional revolution: Americans probably can't do it.
So, the result for the forseeable future will be that American health care and French health care will be comparable in quality, the French will have more universal coverage, and the French will pay about half of what the Americans do, per capita, for approximately the same standards of care. But when an American doctor screws up and a kid dies, the parents in America will get $20 million. The French parents will get $40,000. That is the real driving difference, which dwarfs even the profit percentage and duplication of effort of American private insurance. The American legal system makes American care cost multiples of even its closest homologue. It's not hard to find a French obstetrician - they are not buckling under malpractice costs. Americans are avoiding entering that practice now, especially at the low end, because the legal risks outweigh the economic benefits, and they cannot pass along the costs of adequate insurance to lower-income patients or health insurers.
Friggin' terrifying. I imagine that the number would be even higher without technology developed by American capitalist concerns...
Gee I'm many years past 62 and I've paid thousands of dollars for my own insurance and for medical care not covered by the government or my insurance policy.
"Gee I'm many years past 62 and I've paid thousands of dollars for my own insurance and for medical care not covered by the government or my insurance policy."
If you were French, you would have been paying into Social Security from the time you started work, and you would have had Social Security provided medical insurance coverage from the time you were in the womb.
When you saw the doctor, you'd pay the doctor's fee up front, and then be reimbursed by Social Security for the portion that is covered by "le Secu". Notice that French doctors do not have to wrestle with the reimbursement system. THEY get paid by the patient. The patient gets reimbursed by Social Security and private insurance (to the extent they have any). To the extent there is a gap between Social Security coverage and the amount reimbursed by the Secu, individuals who have purchased private health insurance coverage are reimbursed that amount. Those who haven't, aren't.
So, a few key differences between the US and French system are that everybody is covered by the Social Security medical insurance in France, from pre-natal care to death, as opposed to only Medicare and welfare recipients being publicly covered in the US; and in France the doctors are paid in cash or check by the patient before or during service. Government reimbursement comes afterwards, to the patient. Doctors in France do not have vast billing departments that struggle to get reimbursed by the government. Individuals are reimbursed for the care they have paid for. Obviously this is a significant reduction of burden on doctors.
Given the American and French proclivity for independence, and preference for insurance products as opposed to ham-handed government control of doctors, the best system for Americans to study isn't the Canadian or British, but the French.
There are at least two political reasons why nobody ever does the French comparison. On the Democrat side, it means NO CONTROL OF DOCTORS. The French system leaves the doctors free, in private practice. They can work for state-run hospitals if they want to, but they aren't forced to do so. Obviously the likes of Hillary Clinton want to use the wedge of health care to gain direct control over the medical profession. The British and Canadian model would let the Dems do that; the French model won't at all. So the Democrats and socialists in general IGNORE the French model when calling for US health reform.
Why does the RIGHT in the US also ignore the French model in their comparisons? Because the French model is of comparable quality to American health care, with comparable results under a government insurance system. Ideologically, the success of the French model of health insurance is a slap in the face to rabid free-marketeers. So they ignore it. They even make up things about it which are absurd, because the facts of the case are that the French model is pretty much the solution to the US problem...at least it would improve it. There are plenty of folks who, for economic reasons, don't want the current gravy train to end. And there are plenty of others who, for ideological reasons that don't have a thing to do with health care, simply cannot accept or deal with the success of the "socialist" French health insurance model.
It's a pity, but there you are.
A serious health insurance reformer in America, someone who was interested in maximizing coverage and care without going on a power trip to control the doctors, would key on the French model. But there is also the language barrier. It's just plain EASIER for most politicians and researchers to read the Canadian, Australian and British data, so that's what they anchor on, not for reasons having to do with health care, but because of language barriers.
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