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Post Number: 11
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jimhanson
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Posts: 8491
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Posted on: Jun. 24 2009,12:59 pm |
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ICU asks "How much SHOULD it cost?"
Japan has a much-vaunted private/government system. Everybody must purchase health care. The problem--the government pays hospitals and physicians so little that they have to resort to vending machines in the lobby and charging for parking at their clinics. Leave it to the government to muck up a good thing. From the reliably leftie NPR My Webpage
Here's another link--this time from an Obama supporter. For being naive enough to support Obama, he has a pretty good outlook on the health care issue. My Webpage QUOTE One might even say Japan has a robust private insurance industry, with over 2,000 private insurers who offer a variety of plans. But no one would ever mistake this for the American system. As already mentioned, community rating is the law of the land. Your premium is about 8% of your salary regardless of your health history, your family genetics, your pre-existing conditions, or how much money you have. It is illegal to refuse to sell an insurance policy based on pre-existing conditions, and also illegal to deny a claim so long as the normal procedure is followed. The rates for service are set by the government with no variance. A minimum set of benefits is also required, including ambulatory care, long-term care, dental and prescription drugs. [
EIGHT PERCENT OF YOUR SALARY. If you make $40,000 a year, that's $3200 per year--FROM EACH WAGE EARNER!
Feeling good about government health care yet?
Like all regulated health care systems, it inevitably leads to rationing. QUOTE They have an equivalent number of doctors, meaning there is a shortage compared to their population. But its effects largely haven’t been felt yet because the very low rates of compensation compel doctors to take as many cases as possible. According to an article in Health Affairs from 1987, the average workload per day for outpatient clinicians at that time was 49 patients, with 17% of doctors seeing more than a hundred.
Suffice to say, there’s no way you can see one hundred patients in a day and not have your quality drop precipitously. As I mentioned, quality is the main factor left to judge providers, which means teaching hospitals – perceived to be the best in terms of quality – are flooded, leading to lines and delays for care.
Government intervention to set uniform rates have been great for the federal budget, great for patients, great for businesses, and great for the elderly. But it continues to cause problems for providers. When you consider that hospitals are required to be not-for-profit to begin with, it’s no surprise that Japan shares another trait with the U.S. – hospital going bankrupt during tough economic times.
Doctors seeing 100 patients a day. Vending machines in the lobby. Charging for parking. Bankrupt hospitals. Insurance that takes 8% of your paycheck FROM EACH WAGE EARNER.
Think about that. In the U.S.--health care is 17% of the GDP. In Japan, a two wage-earner family would pay 16%. Where is the savings in THAT?
Yet ANOTHER way to look at it. The government already takes 7.65% of your paycheck for SS/Medicare. It also takes the same amount from your employer--no, your employer does NOT pay that--YOU do--in the cost of every good or service you buy. Now add ANOTHER 8% for health insurance--a total of15.65% of your paycheck (23.3% if you include the extra cost of your employer's "contribution"). Nearly a quarter of your money gone before you even see it. Add an additional 7% sales tax, and you are at 22.65 to 30.3% of your money gone--you are working for the government more than 1/4 of your time.
No take out State and Federal income taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes, telephone and utility taxes, local taxes, school district taxes, tire taxes, government fees, and the hidden tax of corporate taxes that are added to everything you purchase--and you are working more than half the time for the government.
No thanks, I'll keep what I have.
-------------- "If you want to anger a Conservative, tell him a lie. If you want to anger a LIBERAL, tell him the TRUTH!"
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Post Number: 12
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Post Number: 13
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Post Number: 14
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jimhanson
Group: Moderator
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Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Jun. 24 2009,6:44 pm |
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Libbie would like to have the same health care system as his sister.
If you would open your eyes, you would find it isn't just me that thinks that socialized medicine doesn't work--but then, if you opened your eyes, you wouldn't be a liberal, would you? nullMy Webpage
Regarding your sister's passivity and acceptance of her fate--this may explain it. QUOTE Bartholomew reports that Peggy was "surprised at how ‘accepting' her boyfriend's family was." What she saw was an unexpected passivity, a lethal submissiveness to systemic incompetence and tragedy, a reaction that seemed poles apart from how things happen in the United States. Explains Bartolomew: "She didn't say too much because she did not want to come across as a pushy, arrogant American but she was thinking that ‘in America we'd go nuts if we were told we would have to wait six weeks to see a specialist. Expectations are so much higher.'"
I guess if you have LOW EXPECTATIONS, you wouldn't complain, would you?
QUOTE Among women with breast cancer, for example, there's a 46 percent chance of dying from it in Britain, versus a 25 percent chance in the United States. "Britain has one of worst survival rates in the advanced world," writes Bartholomew, "and America has the best."
If you're a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, you have a 57 percent chance of it killing you in Britain. In the United States, the chance of dying drops to 19 percent. Again, reports Bartholomew, "Britain is at the bottom of the class and America is at the top."
Explains Bartolomew: "That is why those who are rich enough often go to America, leaving behind even private British healthcare." The reason isn't that we sue more in America, and scare doctors into efficiency, or that our medical schools are better. It's more simple than that. "In America, you are more likely to be treated," writes Bartholomew, "and going back a stage further, you are more likely to get the diagnostic tests which lead to better treatment."
More specifically, three-quarters of Americans who've had a heart attack are given beta-blocker drugs, compared to fewer than a third in Britain. Similarly, American patients are more likely than British patients to have a heart condition diagnosed with an angiogram, more likely to have an artery widened with angioplasty, and more likely to get back on their feet by way of a by-pass.
On the availability of equipment, explains Bartholomew, Britain has only half as many CT scanners per million people as the United States, and half as many MRI scanners. With lithotripsy units for treating kidney stones, the United States has more than seven times the availability per million of population than Britain.
Not only is the British equipment in short supply, but much of what's there should be loaded up and carted off to the nearest scrap dump. An audit by the World Health Organization, for instance, found that over half of Britain's x-ray machines were past their recommended safe time limit, and more than half the machines in anesthesiology required replacing. "Even the majority of operating tables were over 20 years old --- double their life span," reports Bartholomew.
Taken as a whole, Britain's universal healthcare system has evolved into a ramshackle structure where tests are underperformed, equipment is undersupplied, operations are underdone, and medical personnel are overworked, underpaid and overly tied down in red tape. In other words, your chances of coming out of the American medical system alive are dramatically better than in Britain.
"Having a diagnosis test beyond an x-ray in Britain tends to be regarded as a rare, extravagant event, only done in cases of obvious, if not desperate, need," writes Bartholomew. "In Britain, 36 percent of patients have to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery. In the U.S., five percent do. In Britain, 40 percent of cancer patients do not see a cancer specialist."
On how things worked in an individual case, Bartholomew writes of Peggy, an American radiologist, who went to Britain to meet her English boyfriend's family. While she was there, her boyfriend's father found blood in his urine and went to a local National Health Service hospital in which no CT scans or cystoscopy tests were done. The patient had asthma and laid in his hospital bed with breathing difficulties but still didn't see a specialist. He was told it would take six weeks. Short of the six weeks, he was discharged from the hospital. Back home, before his appointment with a consultant came up, he died of an asthma attack.
I've commented several times on the experiences of our friends in Canada on "free" health care--they come down here and pay for it. From the same article QUOTE As a footnote on Canada, the average wait for a simple MRI is three months. In Manitoba, the median wait for neurosurgery is 15.2 months. For chemotherapy in Saskatchewan, patients can expect to be in line for 10 weeks. At last report, 10,000 breast cancer patients who waited an average of two months for post-operation radiation treatments have filed a class action lawsuit against Quebec's hospitals.
Your sister might be quite accepting--but it seems that many OTHERS with life-threatening illnesses would rather pay than put up with "free" health care in the Socialist Paradise."
Then there is that "free" dental care--the object of jokes all over the world--including Canadian Mike Myers--with his character Austin Powers and his bad teeth. From the BBC My Webpage
Hey, this is fun! Let's have some MORE discussion on how good Britain's socialized medicine is!
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-------------- "If you want to anger a Conservative, tell him a lie. If you want to anger a LIBERAL, tell him the TRUTH!"
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Post Number: 15
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hymiebravo
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Posted on: Jun. 24 2009,7:15 pm |
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I remember watching this on TV a few years ago. According to Weir socialist oriented societies tended to be smaller countries. And they lacked a lot of diversity, in terms of having a lot of different races present. And according to him; basic human nature, made people more willing to opt for a society like Denmark because they all looked the same.
He claimed the U.S. is too big and diverse and would have to be more like Singapore. Which was apparently sited as a great place to live.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=4086092&page=1
What about healthcare in Germany? I haven't seen them mentioned yet.
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Post Number: 16
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Botto 82
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Posts: 6293
Joined: Jan. 2005
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Posted on: Jun. 24 2009,7:23 pm |
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Here's a thought: Maybe if we didn't have 11,000,000 illegal sacred cows using the emergency room as their primary care provider, health care would be cheaper.
Here's another: Maybe if governmental bodies like the FDA weren't so easily influenced by big corporations, we wouldn't have all these dangerous substances and drugs (e.g. aspartame, oxycontin) and people would be healthier.
I pay around $200 a month to insure me and my two kids. My employer kicks $250 into my HSA every month. It should be at least that easy for everyone.
-------------- Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
- Kurt Vonnegut
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Post Number: 17
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Post Number: 18
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Botto 82
Group: Members
Posts: 6293
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Posted on: Jun. 24 2009,11:08 pm |
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Well, I dunno...
Let's see... a bunch of rich guys who are set for life, and are more worried about Glaxo-Smithkline's happiness than that of the middle class, making decisions about a system they'll never have to deal with.
Seems trustworthy enough...
-------------- Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
- Kurt Vonnegut
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Post Number: 19
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Post Number: 20
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Common Citizen
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Joined: Jul. 2006
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Posted on: Jun. 25 2009,9:05 am |
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Tell us the details Ned. How much were your deductibles and what did you have to use it for?
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