Universal Health Care

[The Big Al]

I went to a Democrat meeting last month and met the Democratic candidate for my congressional district. He was talking about Universal Health Care and I told him, if you really want to make Universal Health Care a reality here in America you need to fight tooth and nail that every man, woman, and child in America has access to the best health care available and have full freedom of choice. Government only provides the funds. He agreed.

Now before Mozz comes in and pisses and moans about raising the dreaded taxes and starts spouting textbook economic jargen I'm going to bring in some reality. Japan and Western Europe have government funded health care and the companies from those countries are kicking our ass.

For one thing, Universal Health Care would be cheaper than our current system. So instead of just complaining about paying more taxes, think of the money you'd save in not having to write a check the next time you go to the doctor for a flu shot. Then compare the two. You would likely see the money you've saved outweighing the higher taxes.

Freedom of choice is very important because that allows for competition. If you want to go to doctor A instead of doctor B, doctor A will be paid for you using his survices. So doctors would still work to the best of their abilities to retain patients and gain new ones. The same for the drug companies.

And we're the only industrialized country not to have any form of universal health care. And we're paying for it. I'm always hearing the CEO's of the auto companies bitch about health care (while they're stuffing bonuses they kept in place after boom times in the 90's but that's another debate). Though they believe health care should be abolished. But the Japanese and the Germans have universal health care and they're quite competitive.

Conclusion: Universal Health Care is a good idea but must be done right or not done at all.

 

[Mozz]

February 19, 2004, 9:09 a.m.
No, Not the NHS!
American pols should stop dreaming of “universal health care” and visit Britain.

By Iain Murray

Whenever I hear the words "universal health care" — as I did during Sunday night's Democratic debate in Wisconsin — a shiver goes down my spine. You see, I grew up in Great Britain, where the National Health Service supposedly provides top-quality health care to all Britons, free at the point of delivery. That's the theory, at any rate. Yet you pay for it in taxes, of course, and in practice, the NHS provides below-par service. Sometimes the treatment can be excellent, but more often, you have to wait months or years for operations; equipment is outdated, and doctors are overworked. Britons are beginning to wake up to the idea that the NHS is no longer "the envy of the world," and even Tony Blair's free-spending government has realized that universal, taxpayer-funded health care is an unsustainable ideal.




So I shivered freely yesterday when I read that the Institute of Medicine has issued a report calling for universal health care for all Americans by 2010. The reasoning behind the report is sloppy, and the alternatives suggested for implementation are all problematic. This report deserves to be treated with as much contempt as the Clinton health plan comprehensively rejected by Congress ten years ago, and for much the same reasons.

Part of the reasoning behind the recommendations is that in 2002, 43.6 million people lacked health insurance at some point. That simple figure, however, conceals a much more complicated truth. "At some point," for instance, means that not all of those millions were uninsured at the same time, and many were only uninsured for short periods. What really matters is those who are chronically underinsured, and that figure is much smaller — between 9 and 13 million, depending on whose figures you believe. But even that doesn't tell the whole story.

Many of the uninsured are actually eligible for government insurance programs of one stripe or another, like Medicaid, but they either don't know about them or fail to sign up for them. Others know all about all the options available to them, or can afford private insurance, but still don't bother.

As it happened, I lacked health insurance for several months last year. I had a period of self-employment and, being still a permanent resident and not a citizen, was ineligible for Medicaid. Yet my lack of coverage was a choice: I was making just about enough money to have afforded basic coverage, and there are tax breaks that would have offset the direct cost, but I decided not to take up the option. I weighed the definite cost against the theoretical benefit and concluded that I could live with the risk. While my daughter was eligible for certain programs, my wife and I decided that the actual cost of the one or two pediatrician visits she needed was absorbable. We bore the risk ourselves rather than placing it on the government.

We were not alone in this. A recent study by the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis found that from 1993 to 2002, the number of uninsured people in households with annual incomes above $75,000 increased by 114 percent, while the number of uninsured people in households with incomes under $25,000 fell by 17 percent. The poor are getting more coverage while the comfortably off are choosing to buy less. If rich, young, male software developers working on a contract basis are choosing not to be insured because they reckon the likelihood of them needing insurance is small, then that is an example of labor-market flexibility, not a medical crisis.

So what does the Institute of Medicine recommend to fix this non-crisis? There are three non-costed options, each with its own problems.

First is a requirement for employers to provide health insurance (the federal government would cover those not employed). This essentially amounts to a new tax on business and would have the predictable effect of putting many out of work, making them dependent on the state for more than just health care.

Second, the IoM suggests a requirement for all individuals to obtain coverage, with tax credits to help them afford it. In other words, government tells you how to spend your money. If your judgment is that you could spend your hard-earned cash on something else for more benefit, tough.

Finally — and this is the really frightening idea — they recommend a single-payer system administered by the federal government. This would get rid of the need for insurance premiums and enrollment qualifications. The authors of the report admit it would require a tax increase — and indeed it would. The health sector currently spends 13 percent of American GDP (well over a trillion dollars), with only 8 percent of that provided by the government. The solution would also be equivalent to the nationalization of a large segment of the insurance industry, with the almost certain imposition of health rationing in the form of waiting lists for service, as seen in the NHS.

Yes, there are some poor people who are chronically uninsured, but most of them can be covered by some already existing program, if they want to be. Admittedly, there may be an argument for some additional programs for those who have fallen through the system's cracks. But the solutions proposed — which would destroy jobs, are offensive to individual liberty, or would merely emulate a failed bureaucracy — are not the answer. The tingling in my spine tells me that much.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/murray200402190909.asp

No thanks.

 

[Fig]

Mozz, please don'T post copy-paste like this.

It makes you looks like an idiot. Which you're not.

There are valid points to make against UHS. This article even bothers to make a few. But the utter scaremongering of the opening paragraph just stink of repugant fear-politics.

-"wait months OR YEARS". Yes, sometime you have to wait months for an operation (especially for less important ones). Yes, a year is not entirely unheard of. But YEARS is just ridiculous scaremongering, even in Canada.

-sub-par treatment. Sub-par compared to WHAT exactly? Sure, sub-par to what the top 10% of Americans can afford. But compared to what the Average american lower middle class family has? That stinks of selective comparisons. (and misuse of the word "par", for that matter. Briton healthcare certainly isn't below the average healthcare human beings have access to (of course, this includes Africa),and I honestly doubt it's far below, if below at all, a western average).

And finally, calling Tony Blair's a "free-spending government" stinks of ultra-conservatism, because he's very far from far-left or even strong left, last I checked (not right, no, but nowhere near even strongly to the left), by the standard of anyone but American hyper-conservatives.

 

[Mozz]

We went over this last night

 

[The Big Al]

There's a difference between getting it done and getting it done right. Clinton wan't going to get it done right. For national health care to succeed it has to be done right and to be done right they have to raise the quality of health care for all Americans to the highest quality available instead of lowering it to the median quality and people have to have freedom of choice to ensure competition. Look at the Scandinavian countries. The government provides free health care to all. Granted they have high taxes but they're still some of the richest per capita countries in the world. So something is apparently working there.

And incase you haven't noticed, it takes months and years to get surgery in America anyway. If anything, if they could strealine the process and let people search for doctors, not worrying about the cost, they could get things to run more smoothly.

 

[Mozz]

Poor people shouldn't have life-extending health care on the government dime.

 

[The Big Al]

Poor people shouldn't have life-extending health care on the government dime.

Define poor. Poorer than you? Poorer than me? For one thing, middle class people can be destroyed by medical bills and made "poor". With proper health care the "poor" could become better off. Though that's taking money away from the bosses which is bad.

 

[Mozz]

Fine, how about replacing "poor" with "No non-veterans"

 

[Fig]

And Mozz's notion of economical eugenism strikes back

 

[Mozz]

 

[the gadfly]

I'm all in favor of universal health care, even if it's substandard. At least it's something.

In my case, I lost my health insurance after my employer dropped it as too expensive. I'm too young for Medicare and too rich for Medicaid. Although I can easily pay for health insurance, I can't get it because I have pre-existing conditions. I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, both easily treatable by prescriptions. Yet, that somehow makes me too risky to underwrite.

So, I have to pay retail price to see my doctor and that's more than I can afford.

I guess it comes down to Darwinism. If you can afford health insurance and can get it, you survive and go on to raise families. If you can't, you're removed from the gene pool.

Mozz, no doubt, would approve of seeing me removed from the gene pool. Actually, so would many others.

 

[Toothache]

Living here in the UK, we see the benefits of universal health care. The NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world, so it helps on the job front. It offers people on low incomes the chance to get healed as soon as necessary. Thanks to the pushiness of government targets, waiting lists are cut to around 18 weeks maximum, and they are pushing to go even further once the backlog is cleared.

There are downsides to this however. Some managers of NHS trusts are not so adept in keeping costs down while maximising their service, so the debt they get into increases. There are certain hospitals threatened with closure due to this debt. Also, hospital bugs that are not easy to detect and breed within hospitals like MRSA are on the rise, due to a lack of doing simple things like cleaning and washing your hands (there was an issue about doctors not cleaning their ties recently because they were disease ridden).

Like anything, there are downsides, but I believe the benefits outweigh them. A problem identified is a problem halved after all, you can't change something if you don't know it's there after all.

 

[Aoi Hikari]

Mmm... Personally, I like the fact that I can go to the doctor, flash my medicare card and not have to worry about my parents/myself spending globs of money just to get a perscription for an infection. Yay for free healthcare in Canada!

Mind you, we aren't as universal as the UK, as we still need to pay for the dentist and drugs, but hey, it's nice to know that if I break my arm or suddenly suffer a heart attack and need massive surgery, I won't have to worry about dying because my parents can't pay for it.

A friend of mine in New York was talking about how her and her brothers weren't covered by insurance because they were mysteriously dropped for 3 months, during the time she had problems with her jaw. If she had been infected or an accident had happened, her family would have had to scrap together to get enough money to pay for it. Personally, I think that is bullox. Making money on peoples illness.... it's cruel and inhuman, when you think about it.

 

[Mozz]

Yeah, damn those pharma companies who make money by pouring billions into science to cure disease!

 

[GrnMarvl14]

They only pour in the money to MAKE money. NONE of them do it for some altruistic reason. Pharmaceutical companies are out for one thing: Money. Curing things just means more money. And, actually, it wouldn't be in their interest to cure ANYTHING, just find a way to hold off the symptoms so people are forced to buy their drugs for the rest of their lives (and, honestly, how many things HAVE been cured in the past decade?). That's why there's a million and a half conspiracy theories revolving around the drug companies using their money and influence to prevent the health and food administration from okaying products that could potentially cure certain illnesses. Is it crazy? A little bit. But it's not out of the question, considering some of the crap that really does go on.

Drug companies have as much interest in cures as gas companies have in electrical cars.

 

[Mozz]

So I guess you'd rather leave it to the government to find cures for diseases?

 

[GrnMarvl14]

No. But we have tons of not-for-profit groups and various hospitals working to find cures. These are people who won't be making any real money off of the production of a cure, and are purely doing this because it's the right thing to do. Is that the best way to motivate people? No. But it's the cleanest.

 

[Mozz]

I'll take motivation by money over motivation to do good.

 

[The Big Al]

Yeah, damn those pharma companies who make money by pouring billions into science to cure disease!

Actually, we foot that bill. Most pharma research is done on government grants. So they could at least cut us some slack.

And my biggest problem is that they get these long periods in which they can hold an exclusive patent to prevent generic brands from making a cheaper alternative. I think that would boil even your blood, being against regulation and all for competition.

 

[Mozz]

Competition includes stealing other people's ideas?