This is the Government that You Want to Run Health-care?
- Thread starter JEROME DA GNOME
- Start date
Can I help?
[JDG]
Why would anyone want to collect that? Those people have made their choice, and have to live with it.
[/JDG]
dubitoergocogito
New Blood
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Your point is not valid as shown by the fact that many Americans buy their prescription drugs from Canada.
JEROME DA GNOME
Banned
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The Canadian government places price controls on the drugs. When America also places price controls on drugs, what is going to be the incentive for research and development of new drugs?
Thank you for your kind offer, zooterkin. ;-)
Jerome, are you going to explain how people on $6/hr are going to afford medical care in an entirely free-market situation.
I would like some breakdown of where I have overestimated the costs, because I can't see how they could.
First question: What is the maximum that someone on $6/hr could afford? Will this change if they have $4k of assets?
Second Question: How much will a 5-hour coronary bypass cost in a complete free market? - Explain how you arrived at a breakdown of the figures.
Third Question: For most people, is it going to be cheaper to be insured or uninsured?
Jerome, are you going to explain how people on $6/hr are going to afford medical care in an entirely free-market situation.
I would like some breakdown of where I have overestimated the costs, because I can't see how they could.
First question: What is the maximum that someone on $6/hr could afford? Will this change if they have $4k of assets?
Second Question: How much will a 5-hour coronary bypass cost in a complete free market? - Explain how you arrived at a breakdown of the figures.
Third Question: For most people, is it going to be cheaper to be insured or uninsured?
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Fourth Question: You pay more for a service which, measured on life expectancy and infant mortality, produces tangibly less benefits that the unversal healthcare systems in the UK and Canada (amongst others). These systems provide, as a minimum, comparable standards of healthcare to everyone regardless of insurers. How can paying less but getting more be a bad thing?
Rolfe
Adult human female
There was a radio programme item this morning about the inadvisability of omitting travel insurance when going on holiday (apparently people are now going snowboarding and bungee jumping on Saga holidays, and need the appropriate cover).
The biggest scare story was about a woman who went to the USA on a short break, and didn't take out insurance (very very silly move). She had a heart attack. The bill was £250,000, and she had to sell her house to pay it. Presumably she ended up having to be housed and supported by the state, as she was left with no assets after paying the medical bill.
This tells us nothing but that it is very very silly to go to the USA without insurance in place. Oh, and that treating a myocardial infarction is likely to cost £250,000.
Rolfe.
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dubitoergocogito
New Blood
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So you admit that your point about USA having a better health care system due to Canadians crossing the border for our product is invalid? Thanks.
Ohmer
Muse
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See, the problem is, she was thinking like Brit. The American way is to simply ignore the bill and get a decent lawyer to handle a "medical bankruptcy". She would have gotten to keep most of her assets just taken a hit to her credit rating.
My father worked as a handy man in a trailer park in Nevada. He was paying about $250 per month for medical insurance. He was the only employee of the company so they couldn't get a cheap plan like large employers. In January 2007 he had a hemorrhagic stroke that required 2 weeks in the ICU and 2 months in the Hospital. The bill? $400,000. His insurance maxed out at $50,000.
His is doing pretty well now and may be able to work soon. The medical bills simply will not get paid. The hospital will eat the cost and pass it on to the next patients. He doesn't own anything that the bankruptcy courts can take so it won't have that much effect on him. They can't touch his family.
This is how it works in America. Socialized medicine implemented in an absurdly stupid way. Oh, and Medicaid, the government insurance that he has been paying for all of his life decided he wasn't qualified to receive their benefit.
balrog666
Eigenmode: Cynic
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But we are not proposing that the UK or Canada or anyone else take over health care in the USA.
The government currently runs Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, the NAHCS, the military health care system, etc. Why would any sane person want that demonstrably lousy coverage expanded?
balrog666
Eigenmode: Cynic
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Yes, exactly, the only whelks in the stall would be 10-days-dead and would cost 10 times more.
Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
Maybe you should?
Blue Mountain
Resident Skeptical Hobbit
Balrog, what in your opinion is demonstratively lousy about the programs you mentioned? (I ask partly because VA seems to be doing pretty good overall, after an overhaul in the past decade.)
balrog666
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Can you staff 60,000 hospitals on 30 days notice? Please?
You've forgotten the Walter Reed mess and "medical holds" already? Although, yes, improvements have been made in the last ten years in the military and VA systems with the push for modernizing both facilities and support infrastructure. Similar improvements were made in the private systems a decade earlier and continue to be improved upon.
Medicare and Medicaid suffer from heavily bureaucratized and incredibly inefficient administration (or are those the same thing?) and a refusal to allow either state competition or effective improvements in the process.
Nationalizing all that, even if it were possible, would just put more pork power in the hands of the Parliament of Whores.
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Ohmer
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No fraud, just bankruptcy. It's not the solution, its reality. It's also part of the reason medical bills are so absurd. When someone like my dad who does not and never will have the money to pay his hospital bill, it's gets passed along to the next patient and the spiral continues. Insurance goes up, more people can't afford sufficient insurance, more bills go unpaid, prices go up. It's an absurd death spiral.
Dad lives near one of the practice bomb sites at Nellis Air Force base. Last time I was there I got to see some awesome low level bombing runs. The jet dove, dropped it's payload at shot straight up like a rocket, releasing flares as it went. It was moving so fast it didn't look real. It is absolutely amazing what the US government can accomplish when it makes it a priority.
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