SS, I was hoping you would ask for verification from more posts since you have done so in a few other threads. Since you didn't ask, I willl. We cannot just state that America has the best health care system in the world out of blind patriotism. We don't get to be the best just because we're Americans. I'm from Missouri...SHOW ME!!! Don't take this post as me calling BS on anyone, but I want some proof.
Bear with me as I will ask for verification from a lot of posters, including myself, on their posts on the health care discussion we are having. Obviously the
blue text is the quote and the
red text is the poster.
1.
"Universal health care works in other countries so it should work here." Posted by
kcbigpapa. I posted in another thread about the Frontline story regarding health care in United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan, Switzerland, and Japan.
Frontline's "Sick Around the World"
2.
"It upsets me to know that poor people will die because of a lack of health care." Posted by
kcbigpapa. First google link about...
"how many people die yearly in america from no health care"
3.
"The idea proposed about allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines has been proposed by the Republicans for many years, but has been rejected because it allows free market forces to bring down the cost of insurance through competition rather than through regulation." Posted by
Fritz. Not so much of asking for proof as my saying do you really think the government is stopping this because they want to be the ones to lower rates through legislation rather than rates dropping because of competition? Is there not already competition in MO? KS? Or do the insurance giants just want to try to run the smaller insurance companies out of business such as banking giants wanted with the banking reform signed under Clinton?
4.
"Prescriptions are far more expensive in the U.S. than in other countries because we subsidize the deals their governments negotiate with drug companies." Posted by
Gryphon. I wasn't aware we subsidized health care for other countries. Please show me. If you are referring to the result of them paying less because we pay more, that really isn't subsidizing as much as it us getting screwed.
5.
"A couple of things; universal healthcare works in other countries... Not the ones that I visited (most of Europe, Canada, the Middle East, and the Carribbean)." Posted by
John Galt. Did you experience the health care system in all of these countries or is this opinion. It smells of opinion and not fact to me. I have also been to countries with universal health care, but I never had to use it while traveling.
World map with countries' health care status
6.
"In England and Canada healthcare is rationed and can be denied if you have not given up smoking or lost weight to their satisfaction." Posted by
Gryphon. I didn't find much on this, but could you add some more verification. What I did find about smoking concerning Canada. They only have to quit smoking 4 weeks prior to a surgery;
"Smokers told to quit or surgery will be refused."
7.
"Tort reform (trial lawyers hate this one) will save an estimated 120-150 billion dollars." Posted by
John Galt. Seems high. Anything to back up these numbers or were these numbers of minority leader McConnell? What I found;
Interview with Tom Baker, professor of law and health sciences at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. I have heard before that about 1% of health care costs are because of lawsuits. Tom Bakers numbers seem about right then. US GDP is roughly $13 trillion and health care is roughly 16% of US GDP. Represents a little over $2 trillion, with the 1% being about $20 billion. Still a lot of money, but probably not the only reason for high insurance rates.
8.
"Competition between insurance companies like your car insurance. Now you can only choose among the insurance companies that have access to your state." Posted by
John Galt. Same question to you as to Fritz above. Do we not have insurance competition right now?
9.
"Many took offense when I said America had the best health care providers in the world." Posted by
Ampad. Verification. Seems like ethnocentrism to me, in the cultural (American) sense and not the racial sense. This is what I found out about it.
Wikipedia quote, "The debate about U.S. health care concerns questions of access, efficiency, and quality purchased by the high sums spent. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000 ranked the U.S. health care system first in both responsiveness and expenditure, but 37th in overall performance and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study)." I know this is a decade old study, but I do not think we are number one. Don't ask me for more recent WHO rankings as the WHO stated they didn't think they were going to do any more rankings because of the cost involved.
Ampad, you're description of the Dutch system sounds like the German system from when I watched the Frontline video above. Private not-for-profit insurance companies handled the health care there.
10.
"The Candaians, the English, the French all seem to be happy with their health care." Posted by
Starry69. Did you actually talk to people of these nations?
11.
"America does have the best health care and health care providers in the world." Posted by
Fritz. Same question to you as Ampad above? Is this just your opinion or do you have anything to back up your statement.
12. "
Then why is it when Canadians, English, French need to have a medical procedure or medical care (cancer treatment, for example) that is denied by their socialized health system, or if they are put on a waiting list for that procedure, come to the USA to have that procedure or care performed?" Posted by
Fritz. Proof please. Here's what I found;
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism"]Medical tourism[/ame]
In the above article, "A report from 2008 found that a plurality of an estimated 60,000 to 85,000 medical tourists were traveling to the United States for the purpose of receiving in-patient medical care." This is much less than the number of Americans traveling elsewhere for health care. Look at # 16 for those numbers.
13.
"Under the Democrat plan for universal health coverage, no one in the US would have had the option to go outside the system to have a denied procedure performed or avoid a waiting period. You would have been arrested, fined and/or taxed for opting out of the system - sounds a bit draconian to me." Posted by
Fritz. No where in the article did it mention being arrested. Did you have any evidence of this? Sounds like a fear tactic to me.
14.
"I can tell you from personal experience that the Canadian health care does in fact have issues with long wait times to see the doctor (many times at least 5 or 6 hours, maybe more) and then the time with the doctor is only a few minutes." Posted by
Tomcat. How is this different than here? This is partly said in jest. But, we only see doctors for a few minutes when we do see them, and I really wouldn't consider 5 or 6 hours a long wait. I would think this would happen often in ER's. It would be a long wait for a physical or check-up though, as opposed to what we are used to currently. I think the long waits are normally described as surgeries with wait times of a few months. But I do not know if this is just for non-life threatening surgeries. I couldn't imagine that life threatening surgeries would have a wait.
15.
"I have the advantage of having a healthy family so no pre-existing conditions to worry about. The people that do have pre-existing conditions can easily pay $1500 to $2000 per month for reasonable health insurance if they have to get it on their own,,, if they can get it. Those people need some help. And if they only make $30k or $40k a year, well they are just out of luck." Posted by
Tomcat. I don't even know where to start with this. You're right, "if they can get it," is an issue. I don't know if you saw in my original post that it is unfortunate that not all of us can have good jobs as there just are not enough good jobs to go around. If so, we wouldn't have an employment issue or a health care issue. So I would have to disagree that anyone could afford monthly insurance premiums of $1,500-2,000 easily. Maybe if they choose to not put food on the table or have a roof over their head. I am hoping what you wrote is a typo. And if they earn $30-40K per year they are out of luck. $1.5-2K monthly premiums represents $18-24K per year for the out of luck $30-40K earner. You have got to be kidding me. I'm happy your family is healthy, but are you really essentially saying, "tough shit" to everyone else as long as "you got yours?" I hope I am misreading the intent of your post.
16.
"I have never heard of anybody traveling out of the US for their health care (with the exeption of experimental procedures)." Posted by
Swarmyone. I cannot ask for facts about what you have heard, but my question is if you've been asking about the topic? Here's what I found;
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism"]Medical tourism[/ame]
Here is a quote from the article above, "A forecast by Deloitte Consulting published in August 2008 projected that medical tourism originating in the US could jump by a factor of ten over the next decade. An estimated 750,000 Americans went abroad for health care in 2007, and the report estimated that a million and a half would seek health care outside the US in 2008."
Best countries for medical tourism? Pretty cool link.
17.
"Our health care, like our overall quality of life is better than the rest of the world because of capitalism." Posted by
Swarmyone. Same question to you as to Ampad and Fritz. Evidence please? Quality of life issue as well. This is what I found about quality of life;
Quality of Life Rankings. Our numbers are very close to France's with the exception of health care. Better health care and we are number 1.
18.
"Also, it is a total fallacy to say that ANYBODY has died because of a lack of health insurance." Posted by
Swarmyone. See what I posted above in #2.
19.
"The democrat's proposals are a disaster that wouldn't fix the problem and would destroy our economy and life as we know it." Posted by
Swarmyone. I know this one is just opinion and not provable, but if you could, please elaborate.
20.
"For the Dutch question, Starry and amp - can you support those statement with data for us?" Posted by
SS. SS you really cannot ask for data on discussions they have had with others. It is them relaying discussions they have had with people in those countries.
Lastly, I thoroughly enjoyed posting this as it forced me to look up a lot of what others posted. It took awhile, but I actually had fun doing it. Of course it took longer because I'm watching TV as well as doing this.
Sorry, I had to post this smiley since I just saw it while responding. LOL.
