Socialism, or anything resembling it, is bad. Why?
-
Obama's individual mandate is only for children, which makes sense both morally and practically. Obviously, these kids shouldn't develop chronic, preventable illnesses because their parents didn't purchase insurance for them. And because children are generally cheaper to cover, it's a more readily-attainable goal.
And I agree, cmac, that it'd be a good thing to have health care innovation start at the state level. For instance, it's good that economists & political scientists got to see how the Massachusetts health care mandate worked before taking it to other states (or even the federal level). That way, the states serve as "laboratories of democracy" whereby new policies are enacted, rehashed, and turned into even better solutions.
That's part of the reason why McCain's health care plan worries me. A key plank in his proposal is to turn the health care market into a national market, which effectively means that Oregon couldn't require insurance companies to do things like have open application periods or cover preexisting conditions.
While that may drop the cost of health insurance for healthy people, I worry about how it'll affect those who need health care the most, i.e. those who are already sick.
-
Japan has an excellent Health Care system. My wife is Japanese and she always tells me how much better the system is there. We now fall under TRICARE since I am retired from the Navy which is also a very good system, at least so far.
-
Yeah. Japan and, to a lesser extent, France are the examples single-payer advocates give when they want to show how their preferred system can actually work effectively.
I looked up the MRI statistics that I mentioned before, and they're pretty interesting. At the low end, you have Canada & the UK, which have 2.5 and 3.9 MRI's per million people, respectively.
In the middle, you have the US, with 8.1 MRI's per mil.
And then way at the top you have Japan, with 23.2 MRI's per million.
Obviously, the number of MRI's isn't the sole determinant of how good a health care system is, but it does signal that you can have a national health care system without having to ration expensive diagnostic tests & procedures.
-
Man that's a lot of MRI's in Japan.
The main thing that concerns me about the socialization of medicine is if its designed without "skin in the game". Whether its in the form of co-pays, taxes, or points for meeting preventative medicine goals. Something. Anything.
Here's why.
Say there was a co-pay free national car insurance. No skin in the game whatsoever. We'd all take our cars in to the shop for every ping, ding, and scratch. Why? Because its free. But with a deductable to meet, you think twice, weigh your options, and decide if its worth it to you. Maybe even try to fix it yourself, look it up on Car-MD, call your friend for advice, etc. In medicine, skin-in-the-game would help the worried-well from flooding the system and overall cost down.
-
I don't much about this, but apparently France's health care system includes a co-pay system to help reduce the "skin of the teeth" moral hazard problem.
Here's an interesting article/blog post on the subject.
-
\ said:
I don't much about this, but apparently France's health care system includes a co-pay system to help reduce the "skin of the teeth" moral hazard problem.Here's an interesting article/blog post on the subject.
Interesting read. Especially the low pay, yet free medical school. That's the primary care threat in the U.S. It's common for student to come out of med school with $150K-$200K in school debt. So, if the average primary care physician makes $140K annually, but already has $200K in debt, then where's the room for a mortgage loan? Now you might say there is enough room there to get a reasonable mortgage, and there is, but then you can be a dermatologist and make $300K+. What would you do? Most are opting not to become internists, pediatricians, and family docs and go into a specialty.
-
Ahh here is where I miss tupa...
I still think looking at the efficiency of Tai-wan and their card /electronic billing and pay system to start with is a must. The second part is tackling the for-profit health care middle financial industry. We DONT NEED THAT the money should basically go from consumer to health care provider. We need to start tackling the cost side of this problem along with inefficiency issues before we realistically can look for a better system.
-
go into a specialty.
Where you can tack on another $200k of debt & at least 4 more years of no income to pay it off.
But those sick bastard doctors are just evil
-
If you are an Illegal working here you already get Free Health Care. they hand out the Free Health Care cards like its Trick or Treat.
100% payed for by our Taxes, so lets add everybody and see where the Taxes will Go.
If you Tax Large Corp. they will leave the country, If you tax small and Medium Businesses they will pass it along to the consumer and cut there own Benefits and along the way will have to eliminate Jobs to cover the costs. and if they dont they will be out of business.
So you have a Catch 22 here, Nothing is Free it will cost someone somewhere
-
\ said:
Why would it be 200 thousand dollars?I was brought up to pay for my bills if i have to work 10 hours more a week to do it
then so what I was helped.
By the way hospitals already set up payment plans for the poor.
Med school can be $30-$50K/year before you pay your rent and buy groceries. You may have a loan or two from undergrad. In undergrad, you can work some, but in med school, you go to class until 4 or 5, then study until 10 or 11p every day. No time to work.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login