Nationalised health care

originally posted by: avgguy
But you can afford it that's the point. You spent your entire life paying an extra 6-14% of extra taxes per year that we don't have. Take a minute and add up all of those taxes throughout your entire life and see if it was really worth it. Unlike the UK we don't have enough people paying taxes to make it work.

Thanks to being poor and having a disability I get Medicaid, so I'm one of those leeches I suppose. A few weeks ago I was extremely sick from pneumonia coughing up blood, coughing to the point I would pass out, and more or less unable to do anything for about 5 weeks straight. I went to urgent care three times during this. The bill for just one of those visits which involved seeing a doctor for 5-10 minutes total, an xray, and some prescriptions was more than an entire years worth of income for me, for that matter the bill was roughly equal to the median annual income for the town I live in.

Paying a few percent in tax vs a single doctors appointment setting a person back an entire years worth of income. I know which one I would prefer if it were an option.

originally posted by: ScepticScot
a reply to: avgguy
The US is a richer country both in absolute terms and per capita, how cant you afford it?
The UK also spends less on healthcare than the US but gets better outcomes.

The spending is a huge issue and there's no easy solutions for it. One of our biggest costs is in drug costs. The US is the one developing all of the new drugs but other countries, the UK included ignore our patents and buy the generics right away. This means our companies can't make back their money without increasing the costs in the US. For the UK or another country to do that makes sense, it's in the best interests of their people. Not every nation can do that though, because if we all flock to the generics there's no way to recover development costs for new medications.

That is one of the big differences. Another big difference is that in the UK you have a single payer system where the government says upfront what they're willing to pay for a procedure and then makes the health care providers find a way to make it work at that price. Each of our health insurance companies has less bargaining power than an entire nation combined, and the system works in reverse. The providers send a bill to insurance, insurance "negotiates" (settling for some percent of the bill), and pays it. This causes the same procedure to be billed at very different rates depending on the provider and the insurance company. For the most part there is no regulation on this, and once you've met your deductible the average citizen has no idea what their medical needs are costing. Markets only work when people are aware of the price and no one here knows that sort of information.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
a reply to: Reallyfolks

No. You force that with your dollars. Why do we continue to feed the beast that is sucking the life blood right out of you. You still at this brief moment in time have a choice in what you spend you money on.

We are not as powerless as we have convinced we are. Does it take conviction? Does it take sacrifice? I know it is outright scary to think that you have to take on the huge, greedy and heartless beast alone, but what does it matter if he is going to eat you anyway. At least give it indigestion.

How do you force it with your dollars? Refuse to purchase the medicine you need? Ok. Good luck with that. There is no way to have pharmaceutical companies take less money if it's not forced. Not a right or wrong answer, but basically if there is no profit not many private companies will exist, so you are talking having the government take over pharmaceutical industry. And while many times you can withhold money to get a point across, you may not have that option with medicine. In that case you are once again talking about government controlling prices for the pharmaceutical industry. May lead right back to problem 1. I see the problem, just curios where you are coming from.

a reply to: Aazadan
Hay Aazadan, "they" will never understand that we have to pull together. "They" think it is communism. Not even knowing what that is. Ignorant beasts.
I've been there, part of my family was in an occupied part of Europe.

"They" will never get it, and the majority of us will suffer. While people still think we are the richest nation on Earth.
I am sorry for your hardship, and I have no words of hope.

I also forgot to mention Cluster headaches, I had them for years, but they just went away in the end, my GP tried all manner of different things over the years, not much worked, but he did try.

Ah-ha! You are an outlier! And Clusters are horrid! You just had to live with them.

My GP took one look at my medical file and concluded he was unequal to the task and referred me to a migraine specialist - a neurologist who specializes in treating migraine. Within a few years, he and I had them under control to the point where I more or less have my life back.

No, simply living with them.

But I have heard from chronic migraine suffers in some socialized medicine countries. They get the short end of the stick because migraine (and cluster) tend to be highly individualized and needs to be treated on an individual basis. The one-size-fits all treatment does not work for many of us. I've heard of sufferers getting turned away from ERs after days of an attack for drug seeking. I've even heard of one sufferer who was turned away only to suffer a stroke from her attack and die.

This is how socialized medicine can be a very scary thing for some of us. We simply fall through the cracks because we don't fit a bell curve and there isn't much flexibility or impetus to treat us.

a reply to: WalkInSilence

And you will never understand that "pulling together" in a herd means that the weak or the sick can be sacrificed to the good of the many.

originally posted by: ketsuko

And you will never understand that "pulling together" in a herd means that the weak or the sick can be sacrificed to the good of the many.

Perhaps I am mistaken but I believe we should be above such mentality. I have seen we are in many instances. But surely I am wrong.
We were certainly mistaken in the care unit I worked in where non of the residence had comprehensible language skills. They should have been disposed of forty, sixty years prior.
Every day we tried to make their sorry life happy. Every day.

Pardon me, we cared for them.

originally posted by: Reallyfolks
Ala carte insurance? Women shouldn't have to have bundled insurance for men's related health and vice versa. Can't have kids? Do you need a package including child birth? Change pharmaceutical grants to loans. Went to hospital for stitches twice. Both times the Dr opens this pack with like 25 items to pull three and toss the rest. Guess they have no option to buy individual items a lot of times and must buy wasteful kits. Why? Cross state insurance? I'm sure there are many great things that can be done but just a few I see.

This doesn't work, I suggest looking into the insurance model for business. It's predicated on the idea that a whole bunch of people are buying coverage they don't need and will never use, in exchange for covering catastrophic costs if they should happen. Insurance, all insurance increases your costs on average. If you made insurance al a carte your bills wouldn't change, instead the premiums for the services you do want would simply increase. Because now each person would be paying for just the risk groups they're a part of, which massively reduces risk pools and thereby makes rates skyrocket.

originally posted by: Reallyfolks
Finally we need to seperate folks. Don't necessarily mind helping a child with cancer, but mean or not. If you made a choice to over eat, doing a lot of drugs, excessive drinking, irresponsible sex, and so on, You didn't care about your physical health and honestly neither do I, and my wallet doesn't either.

So lets put some metrics on it. In order to qualify for you to give them help, what foods are they allowed to eat? How many calories per day? What sort of salt and sugar allotments. How many beers or glasses of wine in a year? How many times can they have sex? What sort of relationship do they need with the person beforehand?

From your other posts I didn't take you to be that type of authoritarian, and that you preferred non intrusive government, yet at your first chance you're wanting to regulate the behavior of people in need.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: WalkInSilence

And you will never understand that "pulling together" in a herd means that the weak or the sick can be sacrificed to the good of the many.

So those who can't afford medical treatment should be sacrificed for those who can? We could have a whole new organ market as the poor people get harvested for everyone else. Maybe we could even stop using infants for medical testing and use poor people instead. We could even do it humanely and bring down drug costs. If you're poor your treatment is experimental medications that may not be safe. You get a medication that does something, for less money and exchange the side effects on you can be studied.

Sounds great.

originally posted by: Aazadan


The spending is a huge issue and there's no easy solutions for it. One of our biggest costs is in drug costs. The US is the one developing all of the new drugs but other countries, the UK included ignore our patents and buy the generics right away. This means our companies can't make back their money without increasing the costs in the US. For the UK or another country to do that makes sense, it's in the best interests of their people. Not every nation can do that though, because if we all flock to the generics there's no way to recover development costs for new medications.


Sorry but this part is totally wrong, the UK does not "ignore" US patents and has its own massive pharmaceutical industry.

edit on 19-10-2015 by ScepticScot because: (no reason given)

a reply to: WalkInSilence

Thanks for sharing that
Though I'm sorry to hear how bad you're feeling, I'm glad you took the time you did. :-)

originally posted by: ketsuko

I also forgot to mention Cluster headaches, I had them for years, but they just went away in the end, my GP tried all manner of different things over the years, not much worked, but he did try.

Ah-ha! You are an outlier! And Clusters are horrid! You just had to live with them.

My GP took one look at my medical file and concluded he was unequal to the task and referred me to a migraine specialist - a neurologist who specializes in treating migraine. Within a few years, he and I had them under control to the point where I more or less have my life back.

No, simply living with them.

But I have heard from chronic migraine suffers in some socialized medicine countries. They get the short end of the stick because migraine (and cluster) tend to be highly individualized and needs to be treated on an individual basis. The one-size-fits all treatment does not work for many of us. I've heard of sufferers getting turned away from ERs after days of an attack for drug seeking. I've even heard of one sufferer who was turned away only to suffer a stroke from her attack and die.

This is how socialized medicine can be a very scary thing for some of us. We simply fall through the cracks because we don't fit a bell curve and there isn't much flexibility or impetus to treat us.

Well, in the time I suffered, I tried Migril, migralieve, caffergot, codeine, capcaiasin (chilli oil) The best thing was 1000mg paracetamol with an anti emetic. Not 100% but better than all the other things. Some folks get oxygen others something else. There is a lot of scope in the NHS for different treatments, things like clusters are just really hard to get to the bottom of, it certainly isn't a case of one single treatment then turning you loose.

originally posted by: ketsuko

I also forgot to mention Cluster headaches, I had them for years, but they just went away in the end, my GP tried all manner of different things over the years, not much worked, but he did try.

Ah-ha! You are an outlier! And Clusters are horrid! You just had to live with them.

My GP took one look at my medical file and concluded he was unequal to the task and referred me to a migraine specialist - a neurologist who specializes in treating migraine. Within a few years, he and I had them under control to the point where I more or less have my life back.

No, simply living with them.

But I have heard from chronic migraine suffers in some socialized medicine countries. They get the short end of the stick because migraine (and cluster) tend to be highly individualized and needs to be treated on an individual basis. The one-size-fits all treatment does not work for many of us. I've heard of sufferers getting turned away from ERs after days of an attack for drug seeking. I've even heard of one sufferer who was turned away only to suffer a stroke from her attack and die.

This is how socialized medicine can be a very scary thing for some of us. We simply fall through the cracks because we don't fit a bell curve and there isn't much flexibility or impetus to treat us.

Well, in the time I suffered, I tried Migril, migralieve, caffergot, codeine, capcaiasin (chilli oil) The best thing was 1000mg paracetamol with an anti emetic. Not 100% but better than all the other things. Some folks get oxygen others something else. There is a lot of scope in the NHS for different treatments, things like clusters are just really hard to get to the bottom of, it certainly isn't a case of one single treatment then turning you loose.

a reply to: ketsuko

and there isn't people falling through the cracks now?? only the ones falling through the cracks now in the US isn't just having to live with their migraines, they have to just lives with anything everything just about without treatment, or shoddy, hit and miss treatment. and well, those who don't actually fall through the cracks entirely, can be left with insane bills that they could throw every paycheck they earn for the rest of their lives at and still not pay the danged thing off in their lifetime!

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: Reallyfolks
Ala carte insurance? Women shouldn't have to have bundled insurance for men's related health and vice versa. Can't have kids? Do you need a package including child birth? Change pharmaceutical grants to loans. Went to hospital for stitches twice. Both times the Dr opens this pack with like 25 items to pull three and toss the rest. Guess they have no option to buy individual items a lot of times and must buy wasteful kits. Why? Cross state insurance? I'm sure there are many great things that can be done but just a few I see.

This doesn't work, I suggest looking into the insurance model for business. It's predicated on the idea that a whole bunch of people are buying coverage they don't need and will never use, in exchange for covering catastrophic costs if they should happen. Insurance, all insurance increases your costs on average. If you made insurance al a carte your bills wouldn't change, instead the premiums for the services you do want would simply increase. Because now each person would be paying for just the risk groups they're a part of, which massively reduces risk pools and thereby makes rates skyrocket.

originally posted by: Reallyfolks
Finally we need to seperate folks. Don't necessarily mind helping a child with cancer, but mean or not. If you made a choice to over eat, doing a lot of drugs, excessive drinking, irresponsible sex, and so on, You didn't care about your physical health and honestly neither do I, and my wallet doesn't either.

So lets put some metrics on it. In order to qualify for you to give them help, what foods are they allowed to eat? How many calories per day? What sort of salt and sugar allotments. How many beers or glasses of wine in a year? How many times can they have sex? What sort of relationship do they need with the person beforehand?

From your other posts I didn't take you to be that type of authoritarian, and that you preferred non intrusive government, yet at your first chance you're wanting to regulate the behavior of people in need.

My point is if spend your life making poor choices about your health have at it. When things start getting bad don't come whining that someone else needs to pay for your poor choices. Don't care what you eat, drink, consume. We all know the results if you take into many calories, excessively drink, do drugs, and so on. Want to do it anyways...knock yourself out. I do not care about your health at that point because you didn't either as far as ala carte insurance , the higher risk groups would go up. The lower risk groups should not. While this alone won't solve the cost issue it can be cheaper from insurance perspective for those in lower risks, and people not paying for services that won't ever be used by them

a reply to: Aazadan

not to mention, what the gov't sees as good for you this year, might be the worst thing for you in their eyes a few years down the line. it seems the more the gov't tells us what is good and not good as far as diet goes, the worst off we end up healthwise.

we didn't have nearly as many asthmatics, or obese people back when I was growing up with our smoke filled bars, our bread buttered in real butter, our food fried in real lard, and eggs as our morning breakfast! oh, and we ate our corn on the cob, not in everything we ate throughout the day!

not to mention every person is kind of different, and thus have different dietary needs. I am rather lightweight, I don't need as many calories as the 200lb man that spends his day lugging heavy bags of cement. I also have weakened bones, so people can yap all they want about how that chocolate milk I drink is fattening, but well, the calcium helps my bones and the doctors are more apt to tell me that I need to put on some weight when I get the honor of seeing them! nope, my guess is that if the gov't actually did start regulating people's diets, they'd harm just as many as they would help....

when people start pointing at people personal habits as the cause of stuff, what they are telling me is that they need a scapegoat, they just can't deal with the fact that the crap that is allowed to be put in our food, our water, our air, is poisoning us because once we all actually have to face that fact, we will all have to make some very drastic changes in our habits!

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: Aazadan

not to mention, what the gov't sees as good for you this year, might be the worst thing for you in their eyes a few years down the line. it seems the more the gov't tells us what is good and not good as far as diet goes, the worst off we end up healthwise.

we didn't have nearly as many asthmatics, or obese people back when I was growing up with our smoke filled bars, our bread buttered in real butter, our food fried in real lard, and eggs as our morning breakfast! oh, and we ate our corn on the cob, not in everything we ate throughout the day!

not to mention every person is kind of different, and thus have different dietary needs. I am rather lightweight, I don't need as many calories as the 200lb man that spends his day lugging heavy bags of cement. I also have weakened bones, so people can yap all they want about how that chocolate milk I drink is fattening, but well, the calcium helps my bones and the doctors are more apt to tell me that I need to put on some weight when I get the honor of seeing them! nope, my guess is that if the gov't actually did start regulating people's diets, they'd harm just as many as they would help....

when people start pointing at people personal habits as the cause of stuff, what they are telling me is that they need a scapegoat, they just can't deal with the fact that the crap that is allowed to be put in our food, our water, our air, is poisoning us because once we all actually have to face that fact, we will all have to make some very drastic changes in our habits!

Not a scapegoat. What it tells me is that people who make personal choices are responsible for the end results.

What it says even more is that people who brush that off believe that people should be able to do whatever they want and someone else should always act as a safety net for those end results. Rather sad, but that is the mentality of many. Live as you want and be prepared for the good or bad of those choices. Other people didn't make those choices and aren't responsible in any way for the end results of others.

No different from seeing someone in a fast food chain, ordering 6000 calories worth of food and a small diet coke to offset it. Have at it, not my problem if you become obese.

I must say that I find the idea of only getting your health care if you eat what the government says to, exercise how and when they tell you and conform to the median safest course in your life to be rather frighteningly dystopian.

For all people bang on about the evils of socialism, this conform or die rubbish is the possibly the worst.

originally posted by: SprocketUK
I must say that I find the idea of only getting your health care if you eat what the government says to, exercise how and when they tell you and conform to the median safest course in your life to be rather frighteningly dystopian.

For all people bang on about the evils of socialism, this conform or die rubbish is the possibly the worst.

That's just it. I don't care what people eat, drink, smoke, whatever. I am all for living as you want. What I am not for is someone making bad decisions and then trying to get someone else to pay for those choices. Don't believe in government controlling any of that. Just don't cry after the fact

In the OP, nationalized medical care was compared with Obamacare, and from what I understand, they don't have much (if anything) in common. That's the part of these debates I don 't get.

I live in France, which has a system that, while not perfect, is so far superior in most ways to the American one, and is something in between that of the US and UK.

In more than twenty years, I have never had any problem with getting quick and high quality care. It has always been better than any I ever had in my first twenty three years of living in the US. I have more choice, and the taxes I pay are lower than what most Americans pay for their taxes added to their insurance payments.

The French health system combines universal coverage with a public–private mix of hospital and ambulatory care and a higher volume of service provision than in the United States. Although the system is far from perfect, its indicators of health status and consumer satisfaction are high; its expenditures, as a share of gross domestic product, are far lower than in the United States; and patients have an extraordinary degree of choice among providers.

Lessons for the United States include the importance of government’s role in providing a statutory framework for universal health insurance; recognition that piecemeal reform can broaden a partial program (like Medicare) to cover, eventually, the entire population; and understanding that universal coverage can be achieved without excluding private insurers from the supplementary insurance market.

Link to source


But like I said, I don't see Obamacare as being anything similar to what the UK, or even Canada has.
I do not, however, feel so sure that even a system that I find great, as it is here, would work in the US.
There are cultural variables that influence how well any system fares in a collective.
The belief that health problems are a result of individual choice making is particular to the US, as is the idea that the sick should rightly be neglected, as a sort of culling, for the benefit of the greater whole.

Personally, I think people in countries with nationalized healthcare systems, that they are very pleased with, should just stop trying to convince Americans that it would be good for them. It wouldn't.
But that is just my personal opinion, which isn't worth anything to strangers.

a reply to: Reallyfolks
Again, it's a daft premise, isn't it?
Rugby is a great sport for keeping you fit, as is boxing, comes with other health risks attached though, as does cycling to work. Pretty much whatever one "expert" touts as the proper diet for a human will be shown as the opposite by some other expert.

I don't know if you drink at all, but there are people who think total abstinence is the only way and others who say moderate consumption can be beneficial.

The point of centralising healthcare is to ensure the majority of the population is happy, healthy and fit for work. dividing it up into saints and sinners kind of defeats the point.