There are no "free" health care systems,
the debate is on who pays & who has access
and even then access & standard of treatment is never the same for all citizens

Nothing is free. Definitely not healthcare.

That being said. How f'ing difficult is a single payer system? I don't hear a lot whining and moaning about healthcare in Canada.

Yes they pay a price in the form of massive overwhelming sales tax. But the US system is get your health care and then go to bankruptcy court. Pretty GD dysfunctional if you ask me.

Just my 3 cents.

Actually, the American system has no such issue. Healthcare providers must treat everyone regardless of ability to pay and they have grants and subsidies so that the poor will never have to pay for their healthcare. And if someone else is stupid enough to not have coverage to care for an extreme condition, then they are just stupid enough to have to go file bankruptcy. I have a maximum out of pocket of $2500 per year for my family. I put $2500 per year a way in an FSA. Guess what? My wife's seizure last year combined with her stay for an intestinal blockage was a huge bill. I paid $1250 for it (my individual cap is $1250) and the insurance company paid the rest of the nearly 6 figure bills.

Yes, despite Democrat hysterical cries supported by their lapdog press, the American health care system is pretty stellar.

The problem is all the asshole the refus to buy insurance so they can have excess in other parts of their life -- buy your insurance BEFORE you buynthe laptop, smart phone withdata plan, big screen tv, more car and more house tha you need, weekly booze bill,eetc.

In short, Americans tends to be self-centered, economially illiterate jackasses who mostky COULD afford health care, but refuse to. They aso eat like shit, don't exercise, etc.

The problem isn't our health care system - it's assholism in America.

But with Hussein Obamacare, it is rapidly deteriorating, starting witg already dramatically increased costs and the beginning stages of rationing.

There are a couple things in that travesty of a bill that he did get right. Not allowing annual and lifetime caps, not allowing denials ever, and setting up a system for people who can't get *affordable* insurance. I was denied and they wanted $1000 a month to cover my wife when I was self employed, but I found a way to get it through the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce by registering myself as a consulting company with them so still managed to get it for both of us. But the rest of that dreck should be thrown out, especially anything that tells an employer they *must* cover birth control. Birth control is optional. If you don't want to get pregnant and can't afford birth control, don't have sex!

+1 to Draugnar and +.5 to Krellin. There's another side to the coin: those who choose not to purchase insurance for perfectly rational reasons. If you're a healthy young adult starting a career, it may actually be far more beneficial for you to spend your money elsewhere (paying off student loans, paying rent/utilities, gas for your car, etc.) and take a temporary risk because, depending on your lifestyle, it could be highly unlikely you'll be needing insurance for a few years. That rational choice has now been taken for you and you pay a penalty for not purchasing insurance. If that's not coercion, I don't know what is.

"take a temporary risk because, depending on your lifestyle, it could be highly unlikely you'll be needing insurance for a few years"

Do you drive a car? Health insurance is a must. What if a drunk hits you and drives off. You could be stuck with a *huge* medical bill. If you are that young and healthy, the cost is minimal anyhow. Rate is based on risk. Young and healthy and sinlge is the lowest risk, therefore the lowest rate. Hell, I bet a 23 year old starting their career fresh out of college pays less for health insurance even if they are buying it privately than I pay for my car insurance.

Oh, yeah, I'm not advising this course of action, but I firmly believe that it should be an individual choice nonetheless. The government has no business telling you what you need to purchase.

"The government has no business telling you what you need to purchase. "

Except liability insurance. It has every business telling you that you must buy liability coverage to cover damage you may do to someone else. That said, I agree but I also agree that the young and stupid who don't carry coverage and find they need it should be forced to go bankrupt for their stupidity. And I honestly think they should not have that debt eliminated in bankruptcy as it was their own stupidity cost them and we, the public, shouldn't have to foot the bill (which we will by the cost of healthcare going up and therefore our insurance rates going up).

Agreed. The safety nets that are slowly but surely bankrupting our future do nothing but enable the young and stupid to go about their merry way without considering consequence or fiscal responsibility.

Other problem with health insurance is the lack of consumer input. If I need my car fixed, I get an estimate. If I have a medical issue, I flash my card and don,t ever ask what they will charge.

How does a hospital bandaide cost $20 when it costs ten cents from the drug store? But nobody ever questions.

Auto insurance doesn't cover oil changes, but we demand our health care cover every sniffle and fart.

Put the consumer conscience back in to health care costs and I guarantee theynwill drop when the *customers* tell the Doc or the lab to fuck off and find a cheaper source for services

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/30/romney-praises-health-care-in-israel-where-strong-government-influence-has-driven-down-costs/

Time to bring up my favorite Romney gaffe that everyone forgot about as soon as it happened.

How is it possible that healthcare can be distributed at a lower cost with additional government thumbs on the market scales? It's almost as if profit is a hell of a budget item and several fundamental assumptions of the ideological "free-market" right are not at all based in reality.

Imagine that. I mean, how else does Israel's statist healthcare system consume a smaller portion of their GDP than the MURRICAN healthcare system? It makes even less sense when you take into account the fact that the U.S. has a higher per capita GDP than Israel. We have more money, we pay more, and we get less.

I know that the Right is particularly nativist and almost robotically ideological when it comes to health care distribution, but do you guys pay ANY attention to the results that other countries get from their health care systems?

Also, the fact that Dassarri blames the "safety net" for bankrupting the country and not the military industrial complex leads me to believe that he has no sense of scale and no math abilities.

You mean the long waits in *free* systems for what are common, routine no-wait services in the US, such as Cat scans? Or are you talking about denial of service and rationing in the "free" services?

Yeah, they hand out free aspirin very well. I'll keep my immediate access to cat scans, thank you very much, which diagnosed a ootentially severe ailment in me lat year which was treated that day, inted of becoming somthing that would have required traumatic, life-changing surgery. The US system is pretty fucking awesome as far as my experiences go. In Canada, I'd stil be waiting for my diagnoses, if I was alive.

"You mean the long waits in *free* systems for what are common, routine no-wait services in the US, such as Cat scans? Or are you talking about denial of service and rationing in the "free" services?"

You mean the hour-after-hour long waits in France for federally and locally licensed doctors that will drive to your house fully equipped even in the middle of the night at no extra charge? Or how about the emergency doctors in Germany that are on call whenever they are in the country? Or even the spread out regional services across Iceland all equally funded by the federal government and of equal quality all around? Shall I continue or is it going to fall on your deaf ears like everything else?

krelin, I'm sorry but consumer input is the biggest crock of crap.

"Doctor, I don't have diabetes, I have PTSD. If you don't prescribe ativan I'm gunna complain to Medicaid that you don't care about consumer input!"

Yeah, why don't we just get rid of all the doctors and nurses, and all the dumb ass patients can diagnose themselves and prescribe whatever they want? Is that the system you advocate??

That would be awesome. We'd just prescribe marijuana for everything, everyone would be happy and healthy, and the FDA could go commit suicide.

exactly. self diagnose. self prescribe marijuana. Do-it-yourself brain surgery. Create and treat your own multiple personality disorder.

Utopia.

(Sarcasm.)

Though marijuana seems to work for a lot of things, including cancers.

"The problem isn't our health care system - it's assholism in America."

krellin is 100% correct here, even if he didn't put it - well - eloquently. In an overwhelming majority of circumstances, it really is people just being stupid with their money. Healthcare is expensive in America because of a large variety of small, uninteresting reasons. The real issue here is government intervention in healthcare.

"It’s time to rethink the whole system of HMOs and managed care. This entire unnecessary level of corporatism rakes off profits and worsens the quality of care. But HMOs did not arise in the free market; they are creatures of government interference in health care dating to the 1970s. These non-market institutions have gained control over medical care through collusion between organized medicine, politicians, and drug companies, in an effort to move America toward “free” universal health care."
- Ron Paul

GunF if people are irrational in their healthcare planning and investments, should we consider the possibility that humans are naturally irrational and perhaps a functional society needs a healthcare system that functions in spite of human irrationality?

I sympathize with the libertarian philosophy (Ron Paul) except that it perfectly supports the interests of the economic elites in our capitalist feudal system.

GunF - but surely everyone knows Ron Paul is an intellectual dwarf, why would you believe any shit that guy speaks.
Still haven't worked out if you are just pretending to be real thick, if so you had me fooled

@ dirge

"should we consider the possibility that humans are naturally irrational and perhaps a functional society needs a healthcare system that functions in spite of human irrationality?"

Why do we need a "healthcare system" at all? Doctors offer their services and pharmaceutical companies offer their goods in a free and unrestricted market. America functioned just fine without a healthcare system well into the 1960s, and healthcare wasn't exactly primitive back then. Healthcare in the 1950s and today's healthcare isn't all that different in absolute terms. Today's healthcare could function (and I would argue *would* function well) without any outside intervention or regulation. With as fucked up as the current system is (and as fucked up as a hypothetical single-payer system would be), I believe the libertarian approach is worth a shot.

"I sympathize with the libertarian philosophy (Ron Paul) except that it perfectly supports the interests of the economic elites in our capitalist feudal system."

Explain. I believe that the elites *are* elite *because* of the corrupt politicians who they have in their respective pockets. A small federal government and an unbiased, principled media would purge Washington of all corruption. Bureaucracy and unscrutinized lobbying are safe havens for corruption.

@ NigeeBaby

"GunF - but surely everyone knows Ron Paul is an intellectual dwarf, why would you believe any shit that guy speaks.
Still haven't worked out if you are just pretending to be real thick, if so you had me fooled"

You're really good at discrediting and insulting people. You're not very good at conducting a logical, respectable argument.

"Also, the fact that Dassarri blames the "safety net" for bankrupting the country and not the military industrial complex leads me to believe that he has no sense of scale and no math abilities."

Note that the topic is about health care, not military spending. But making unfounded assumptions is tons of fun, have at it.

gunF, I respect your take on this. But I don't want to live in a Ayn Randian / Spencerian society of the the rich-live-long-and-the-poor-die-of-tuberculosis. Just my opinion.

And yes the libertarian view of society is naive and completely plays into the interests of the economic elite. Without regulation we have a cleptocracy. Essentially, today's Russia. Instead of government controlling your life, you support google and GE, etc. ruling over you and turning you into a powerless slave.

Sorry, but I don't like that. We need a balance of powers.

I still have krellin muted, so this thread looks marginally more intelligent to me than it really is.

As you can see, the Right doesn't think it needs to examine reality when it's got all that media-supported ideology to work with.

Bosox: I guess it's easy to assume that state-sponsored health care would fail if you only look at instances where it hasn't worked and assume that policymakers are incapable of learning from failure.

Dassari: if you think you can talk about the country being run bankrupt and NOT talk about military spending, then you might as well talk about everything that went wrong with the Titanic except the iceberg.

' A small federal government and an unbiased, principled media would purge
Washington of all corruption.'

Naieve, but think about what it means to have an unbiased media - we have a judicial system which is free from political influence (with life-time appointments) and free from corporate influence (with salaries paid for by taxation)

So clearly media should be run in this way, and the corruption will just dissappear; oh wait lobbiest are both legal in America AND encouraged, they are a vital part of the democratic process, helping politicians hear what industry has to say...

They say that power corrupts, and the more powerful a government the more room for corruption (and the further from their population they are the harder it is for any democratic accountability - ie smaller states have more democracy, this remains an issue of scale)

No mention of the UK's National Health Service? Surprising.

Up until the late 90s this was a service respected around the world (recently it has become something of a bloated pit). They even put it in our Olympic opening ceremony!

If the argument is that people should be responsible enough to buy insurance for themselves before indulging in other luxuries then isn't a mandatory system of contribution functionally the same? Obviously there's the choice argument, but if you're going to say everyone should have insurance or deserve to go bankrupt is that really a choice? Just make people contribute as they do in the UK and be done with it.

Or not. What do you think?

Insurance has flexibility that mandatory contributions systems don't. For instance, I have a $250 per person deductible and a $1250 per person max out of pockets ($500/$2500 per household as well, ntot hat it matters in a household of 2). But I could go to the lower one with $500/$2500 per person and $1000/$5000 per household or even the really lowe end HSA based one which is great for young folks wanting to cover real emergencies but not wanting to "spend" money as the new HSA allows them to put money aside pre tax and, if they don't use it for healthcare, it gets converted to retirement funds for later in life (unlike an FSA which is a spend it in the year or lose it deal).