> Take health care as a perfect example. Having studied the issue I personally think it’s impossible to have quality universal health care.
Just out of curiousity: Do you mean impossible in the US, or in general?
Just out of curiousity: Do you mean impossible in the US, or in general?
If that's the case in the U.S. imagine countries like China or poor African countries with even fewer resources.
I'm not happy with that reality from a humanitarian perspective but I don't see how it isn't the case. Being a doctor is hard and there are only so many raw materials out there so I don't see a way around it.
(But the important point here is that it is debatable and that's where the problem comes in)
No, that is a lie. What Universal Healthcare is about is about a better distribution mechanism.
The market is a mechanism for efficiently distributing a limited resource based on people's ability to pay.
Universal healthcare aims to distribute a limited resource based on need not ability to pay. Proponents like this because it is fairer and doesn't leave people suffering. Capiche?
What you're saying doesn't change the fact that the resource is limited. The question is can the limited resource be stretched to accommodated everyone and if so can government create a more efficient distribution method to harness that resource. Because if either of those things aren't true than your "need-based" distribution is going to leave as many if not more people without treatment (it will just be richer people)
That's the debate: Is it possible to give high quality health care to everyone?
You stating that there are enough resources as a certainty is just arrogance on your part.
Yes, as you mentioned, you would certainly see more wealthier individuals that would be denied care. You would also see more poor people getting care they desperately need.
>That's the debate: Is it possible to give high quality health care to everyone?
I don't think this is really the debate. I think the debate is whether or not health care should be portioned out based on how much money someone is willing to/able to spend or based on how badly somebody needs the treatment. Personally, I think that's the only moral way it can be done.
And opponents dislike this because it's impossible. If such a magical distribution method existed then we should obviously be using it for everything, not just healthcare, and that's called socialism.
I consider efficiency to be secondary to the saving of human lives or the general improvement of people's living conditions by curing them of curable ailments.
Long story short: I think your health care market got you the worst possible solution to health care in the world.
An American Red Cross statement was issued saying that 91 cents of every dollar donated specifically for the Hurricane Katrina disaster will go directly to disaster relief. This overhead of only <B>9%</B> is quite low for such a large organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Red_Cross
Social Security is impressive because "the dministrative costs of the U.S. Social Security system are very low--<B>less than one percent of revenues.</B>" She claims this compares favorably with the overhead costs of the partly privatized Chilean system, which she says are "in the neighborhood of 15 percent of revenues." http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-19085869.html
1. DHHS != Social Security 2. The core point is choice. I prefer donating to a neighborhood charity that I can confirm is spending money responsibly. If you believe the government generally provides healthcare with lower overhead and more efficiency than a private nonprofit, one might politely point out that same government has spent several hundreds of billions has been spent blowing people up in Iraq. I don't think even the Red Cross spends its 9% on that...
politicians play no role.
In Canada we have universal health care, and it works reasonably well. Some would argue waiting lines and all that, I've never experienced them to be that bad, I live in a large urban center (Vancouver) and have found the services to be exemplary.
I'd rather hear stories like that then stories about people denied treatment because they got denied by some corporate bean counter.
And your stories aren't indicative of any failing of the Canadian system. Let's not forget the American's that rely on Canada for their health needs.
I have a relative who is an Oncology nurse in a major US city. She sees a lot of patients from Canada who come to her hospital because they can't get the treatments they need in Canada. Of course, it's only the wealthy ones, because they're the only ones who can afford it.
Similar problems exist with the US government healthcare (through the VA). My father was denied a lifesaving transplant because he didn't meet the government board's criteria for a transplant. Mayo Clinic came through with the transplant and saved his life.
On a much lower scale then in the US. I see first hand the realities of the differences between the two systems. In Canada, their is much less worry about health care than in the US. Their are still issues, but not the same fundamental ones that the US has.
This also ignores the fact that Canadian patients often go to the US for reasons other than the one you describe. Often times, they go to a hospital known for being the best in certain types of care. Other times, it's also a timing issue: they want it resolve sooner than what Canada will do for them.
Finally, the same problem exists on the private side as well. Health insurance companies deny lifesaving operations all the time.
Edit: Another problem with your argument is the assumption that Canada doesn't have private insurance on top of public. It does. It sits on top of the public insurance. And while it's great your father got help from a non-profit, I wonder how much help he would have gotten from a non-socialised health care plan?
Isn't that a huge problem though? For cancer and other progressive illnesses, each day's delay can mean the difference between surviving or not.
There may be some short comings to our system, and inefficiencies but I will say I am pretty damn happy that I live in a country that provides that level of coverage to any citizen.
I certainly think the U.S. should try to learn from some of the things Canada has done but at the same time Canadians need to acknowledge they have some kinks to work out as well.
My wife has her issues with the HCS here, but she's scared to death of the US system should we ever move there (being American myself). Their is a reason the guy behind Canada's health care system was made a national hero.
We already have a pretty good K-12 public education system. At least it's pretty good for its original purpose which is to make better workers. I say we overhaul the K-12 system so that by the time each person graduates they'll have the equivalent of 3-5 years of medical school. Then, in addition to college + traditional medschool (or just votech), give people the option of attending a publicly funded quasi-votech-medschool, the graduates of which will be licensed to practice medicine (and these people will have about 7-9 years of training at that point).
So, we would have simultaneously increased the number of doctors and nurses, decreased the need for them (since medical knowledge will be more or less ubiquitous), created some parity in knowledge between health care providers and consumers (the disparity is one of the big reasons a free market can't work). Most importantly, since medical knowledge/skill will be so pervasive we would see a lot more innovation and entrepreneurial activity in that space. Instead of people working on the next Facebook in their garage/dorm room we might have them working on new kinds of equipment, treatment, or even medicine (like that doctor that built a dialysis machine in his garage: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1180628/D-I-Y-dial...). Or perhaps more stuff like this: http://www.wakemate.com/
Simply make everyone a doctor of sorts.
For my particular condition a subcutaneous treatment was developed in Scandinavia and the UK. It costs half as much to treat a patient and requires no care from a nurse to administer the alternative IV. I can give myself my drugs on my own time instead of taking time off work to go into a clinic. The drug is finally making its way over the pond now, but uptake is slow. Not every person with my condition can go on the subcutaneous, but back of the envelope math says at the very least $100 million a year would be saved if all patients who could go on went on it. In addition 150,000 nurse hours would be freed up as well each year.
Let's not forget the personal savings of time being on the phone with the insurance company. In the year before I moved to Sweden I lost roughly a week of work to being on the phone with the insurance company cause things weren't billed right or they just decided that I didn't need my IV anymore or getting them to pay for things they pre-authorized, but decided to deny when the bill showed up. I have spent absolutely no time discussing those sort of things in the last 3.5 years I've lived in Sweden. That's time I spend earning money and paying taxes, which seems to be win-win.