Is there any form of Government HealthCare you could get behind? - Page 4

You write this.

But in France they have a better health service than they do in the United States of America.

So there are solutions. They've been tried, and honed, and they work.

How much more proof do you need?

Your problems aren't material, or practical. They're ideological. And in the meantime people are actually dying and things aren't as good as they could be.

Like in France.

I agree that it is unfortunate that this is happening (anywhere). But I am trying to move beyond my emotions about the situation to figure out the causes. Do I personally have any reason to be embarrassed? Let me say it this way, the ones who should be embarrassed are those whose actions (and their supporters) have led to this problem. So I am trying to get to the root of that.

But if you want to simply toss out "you should be ashamed" and end it there...fine. That doesn't really accomplish anything, but if it makes you feel better...feel righteously indignant...knock yourself out.

I'm so glad I live in Canada.

Yes I have heard these claims.



Actual proof (vs. anecdotal stories...because I hear just as many bad anecdotes about places like France, UK, Canada, etc.) would be a start. And proof that examines the entire picture, all of the costs, not simply a narrow perspective that is sliced to make things look good.



Mostly agree.

What, do you really think nobody reads your links?

From the link you posted:

I guess you only value accuracy when it agrees with your preconceptions?

Done several times, completely ignored each one.

No question we can afford it, since we already spend twice as much of our GDP on health care as any other nation on the planet. The problem is we throw a great part of it down various rat holes.

Will Business Week do for a start?


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...8/b4042070.htm

Apparently 60% of the country is satisfied with their healthcare compared to America's 40%

Face it, your problems aren't do with the standard of the care but with ideology. The French system has a whiff of the evil sharing-for-the-commonweal about it. Even though it serves more people better and cheaper and people are happier with it and France has a right wing government, it's just too much like Russia.

I agree with you that that would help but things are going the other way. A serious question. Do you know what role the government played in allowing this to happen? I would expect it of repubs but what about dems?

" Negligible Competition in the Private Insurance Market = Higher and Higher Premiums

94% of All Markets Have A Near Monopoly When It Comes to Individual Insurers. “The American Medical Association reports that 94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated. Shrinking competition among health insurance companies is a major cause of these spiraling costs. In the past 13 years more than 400 corporate mergers have involved health insurers, and a small number of companies now dominate local markets…Contrary to industry assertions, these mergers have undermined market efficiency; premiums have skyrocketed, increasing more than 87 percent, on average, over the past six years.” [American Medical Association, 2008]"
~ http://www.americansunitedforchange....50helpfulfacts



I particularly liked this one-

"California Insurers Deny 1-in-5 Medical Claims for Insured Patients, Even When Recommended by a Patient's Doctor: “More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient's physician, are rejected by California's largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation's biggest state, according to data released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.” [Press release, California Nurses Association, 9/2/2009]"

The problem you have is that all of the good stuff everyone wants to cite boils down to three basic statistics: cost per person, infant mortality rate and life expectancy. All three of these statistics have problems with them. Not the least of which is that these numbers are often calculated differently in every country leading to distortions and problems in using them comparatively.

Primarily I would say the barriers to entry they create through regulatory and licensing schemes that significantly limit the number of competitors in the market.

Additionally, tax law creates distortions that funnel most people that do have health insurance toward employer based plans and plans that create a large 3rd party payer problem not to mention an employment/insurance coupling problem.

I don't know what's been happening with "regulatory and licensing schemes". Could you explain to me how this has been able to impact this industry and whether you regard the repubs or the dems as being the main protagonists behind it?

Not to worry, in the future we'll all be rich enough to afford whatever health care we'll ever need, but only if we remain pure of heart and deed. And remember, all statistics are tainted if they don't report what you expect.

Well it not like it has been a recent phenomenon. It has been happening progressively for decades as the industries (medical care and health insurance industries) have carefully and cleverly achieved what is called "regulatory capture" and basically own the regulatory apparatus to their own benefit such that they reduce, limit or eliminate competition.

As for which party is the main culprit? Both.

Both are "owned" by special interests of various kinds that lobby for (and get) various laws passed that create these problems).

In fact most people operate under the delusion that we actually have two separate and independent political parties in this country. No, what we have is two wings of the same bird of prey.

Yes there's a lot of "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" going on behind the scenes. There has to be, with so many fingers in the pie, as you point out.

So am I right in thinking you see government as like a rotten apple (at the moment and no doubt extending quite far back in time)) that business is attracted to for their own gain? But by diminishing government, businesses would no longer be able to be in cahoots with them creating more competition and a more level playing field for businesses and citizens alike?

Yes. That hits the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. I would only add that it isn't just businesses that are attracted to it for their own gain but special interests in general whether they are business/corporate or not.

Government has become an epicenter of power. It attracts those who are hungry for and lust for power. I don't think it is a complicated algorithm.

Well, if it's any conciliation, I'm now (because I live in Scotland) a part of Europe, who's law makers aren't even elected by the citizens. That doesn't bode well for Europe, but it may not bode well for the US voters either at some point in the not too distant future. I can't imagine that happening in the US, but I couldn't imagine that happening here either, not long ago!

No. It is your preconceptions that places greater value on one single polling company, which leans right in your direction.

Rasmussen has been a favorite of the right, as their polls are biased toward the right. That much we do know for sure as the link I posted clearly points out.


So apparently you take their polls and shift them to agree with the others, which suggests that, as is, Rasmussen polling data is not as accurate, but is right biased, and the right bias must be removed.

Rasmussen is known for asking leading questions in their robocall polls. They also don't have full transparancy, as in releasing the entire questionaire of their polls. I've posted this in previous threads. Zogby, Gallup, and Harris are also known for these tactics. These polls are also not random samples, but graded to a preconceived curve (meaning they don't tell you how they massaged the raw data). Bottom line? They're all in it for the money and to generate various levels of shock value.

Full transparancy requires releasing the entire questionaire, the raw data, and any adjustments to the raw data that results in altering said raw data (e. g. their final numbers).

Finally, anyone who answers oral or verbal polling questions should be aware of what exactly they are getting into. I myself will only fill out a written questionaire, but only after I've read it fully through, and I am unable to decern any suspicious underlying theme, if so, then I walk away.

Who cares what the polls say, really? Polls don't change facts, and the polling numbers are at best a reflection of the steady drumbeat of misinformation about what the various plans under consideration would actually do.

You want 'real evidence' but reserve the right to reject that evidence if it doesn't accord with your political beliefs.

In the meantime, France has a better healthcare system that America by any objective measure.

Your objections are ideological, not practical.

Because polls reflect the will of the governed.

because it is not a dictatorship?

tftfy

That explains a lot.

Yes, that's exactly how my statement should be interpreted.



At this point it's starting to look like you are projecting.

No, votes do. Polls are polls, not democracy. I should have to explain such a thing? Wow.

You asked for evidence. I gave you some. You rejected it.

According to the the World Health Organisation:


The French system has better facilities and more doctors per head of population and has generated for the French higher longevity and lower infant mortality than America and has a 60% patient satisfaction rating.

That is according to the WHO.

You don't like the WHO's statistics, so just tell me which international, independent organisation you do trust.

I pointed out that there are flaws in the evidence you presented, but not because of my political beliefs you have fallaciously claimed.

No.

You objected to cost per person, life expectancy and infant mortality, for reasons you didn't specify

You totally ignored the quality of the facilities, the doctors per head of population and patient satisfaction.

So you refused to even discuss my evidence.

You pretended I didn't write it.

If you don't trust and refuse to discuss the World Health Organisation's statistics and index, I don't believe you are interested in a serious discussion of any statistics. I know your economic ideology and I can infer that you won't discuss statistics you find inconvenient because of it. I'll be delighted to be surprised.

In the meantime, your health care system is pretty shit in international terms and it could be fixed. You have the opportunity to make it better than France's. Instead of wasting time here you should be emailing your Republican representatives and telling them to find an interest in good governance.

And he pretended he read any of the links I posted regarding free health care diverted from the intended to the US.
Then wondered why he should be personally embarrassed, ashamed.

Reminds me of SDW saying to a poster here that it sucks his provider doesn't allow him to choose his doctor or hospital, because mine does.
Guess it depends on the employer, union.

The old I'm alright, sucks to be you, but I don't give a shit mantra.

Not at all. Tell you what. You are hanging your hat on these statistics, then let's dive into them (this will be your responsibility). Show us all that:

1. cost per person includes all costs (both monetary and non-monetary) and is measured and calculated the same way in the comparative countries.

2. life expectancy and infant mortality is measured and calculated the same way in the comparative countries and corrects for factors unrelated to the health care system.

3. "quality of the facilities" is objectively determined and measured and calculated in the same way in the comparative countries.

4. doctors per head of population is a meaningful measure of actual health care provided.

That's all you have to do to make sure your evidence is actually proof of what you claim.

Finally, since we're being all objective and all that. Are there any measures at all (e.g., cancer survival and mortality rates, access to treatment for chronic diseases , access to preventive cancer screening , wait times, etc.) in which the U.S. out ranks these other countries that should be included so as to have a complete picture of health care in each country?

*Patient satisfaction is fine but not especially objective measure and is clearly subject to the subjective whims of who was asked, when and what questions they were asked to determine their "satisfaction".

To be clear, you posted a link to Google search. I read the first couple of articles. Then proceeded to break the problem down for discussion which you refused to engage in because, apparently, you'd rather just sit there in righteous indignation and tell me how embarrassed and ashamed I should be for something I have no personal responsibility for or involvement with.

You made it personal.
What I gave you'all a reason to be shamed for was your question,

You'all should be.

Let's check in with that ideological right-wing extremist Camille Paglia:




And here's the money quote:

I made it personal because embarrassment and shame are personal, individual things that derive from embarrassing and shameful actions. The ones to be embarrassed and ashamed are those who have caused these circumstances to come about by their actions (or support for those actions).

Americans, you are one right?

Furriners don't give a rats ass if you agreed to an action by your government or not.
Just like a lot of Americans don't give a rats ass if you're a friendly Muslim.

See how it works?

I can easily predict that you won't be surprised. You will also never get any direct answers to any direct questions. Skepticism is fine, but at some point, skepticism turns into full scale evasion. That line was crossed a long time ago in this discussion.

If you're a dedicated market force mystic, you have to be practiced at evasion, since the system you believe addresses all issues to perfection will never actually exist. Consequently, every practical question about why it doesn't seem to work in any given case, must be answered with abstract theory and otherwise ignored. In the end, this produces nothing of course, but as I've pointed out many times in this discussion, production of results is not the goal of this tactic. Victory is found in jawboning the thing into the ground and producing no results at all.

That you choose to blindly follow such prejudicial thinking wherein someone identifiable as part of some group or class is entirely inseparable in every way from the others in that group speaks volumes.

Yes, I am an American. Am I responsible and do I support all or even many of the actions by those in power in the American governments? No. And I will not be made responsible for them. Many of those actions, that I view to be harmful and detrimental, I oppose and vote against and do my best to speak out against hoping to convince others to vote against as well.

But ultimately individuals are responsible for their own actions and bear the burden of embarrassment and shame if those actions are embarrassing and shameful or result in embarrassing and shameful results.

I've heard many stories of bad care and bureaucratic disaster, not too mention lower quality of care than in the US. That said, even if what I've heard and read is all wrong, let me ask: Can we have the same system here in the US?

I'll answer: No, we can't. For one thing, we've been spending trillions defending the Free World since WWII. We've been your Army and Navy, as well as Western Europe's. In other words, we don't have the money. We also have a much larger population. All this, not to mention that the current House bill is like Canada's system on steroids, mushrooms and cocaine.