Socialized Medicine: A Short Cut To The Cemetary?

[Bill Call]

Most people agree that the current American health care system is in crisis. Health insurance is expensive and sometimes unavailable to those who really need it. Total health care costs exceed 16% of GDP.

My own policy costs $8,000 per year and comes with a $2,000 deductible. Employees pay 25% of the premium. In other words $10,000 has to be spent before the insurance company pays anything.

Is it the fault of the insurance company? No. Last year the total claims paid by the insurance company exceeded the premiums paid.

Some have proposed a socialized system or single payer system as the solution to our health care problems. Since I support free market solutions I offer up this article as a cautionary tale:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_c ... hcare.html

[Mark Crnolatas]

I spend a lot of time on the net, conversing with people from all over the world. All one has to do, is speak with several random people from Canada, and one will find comments regarding their governmental supplied health care are generally terrible and many horrible, ranging from waiting for simple appointments for rediculous amounts of time to waiting for surgeries that should have been done much sooner.

I'll gladly guide anyone who wants to talk to a number of Canadians online, one on one, anytime, regarding their health care system. It is my understanding that the U.S. has been looking at Canada's system as a model?

It seems to me the people who would attempt to set it up, do not need subsidized health care so they might tend to be out of touch with the reality of it, once put in the hands of beuerocracy.

Mark Allan Crnolatas

[Richard Cole]

So, lets see if I've got this right, Canadians with health coverage are complaining about the coverage they have.

Americans are complaining about the total lack of health care for a sizable portion of the population - even kids are without even the most basic healthcare.

Both systems are in dire need of improvements, but the former is a far better starting point than the latter.

[Jeff Endress]

True Story:

About 10 years ago, my parents were vacationing in France, on a barge trip through Burgundy. My father developed a nasty respiratory infection and the Captain made a phone call, a Physician came to the barge in the town where they were docked for the night, examined, proscribed and furnished the necessary medicines and followed up 3 days later. No valid insurance in France, no premiums paid. Total cost:

$10.00.

He had a similar problem several years later, while at home in Fairview. Couldn't get an appointment with his PCP, had to go to the emergency room, waited 4 hours for treatment and had to go to the drug store for the prescription (same meds. as in France) and then follow up with his PCP a week later. After paying his Medicare premiums, his supplement premiums, his out of pocket here in the good old US of A was:

$675.00


Jeff

[Grace O'Malley]

We have some very good friends who live in Canada. They have two children.

They love the insurance system they have. The boys get regular doctor checkups, all of them wear glasses and they are able to get one new pair a year at no cost, and the mother told me she loves not having to deal with any paperwork and bills.

Although you may hear some complaints, I think much of it is magnified by those in the US who do not wish to see a change in the current system.

[ryan costa]

the hyper-stratification of specialities and overall structure of the healthcare profession means it is going to be prohibitively expensive regardless of whether it is paid for by government insurance, a government blank check, out of pocket by customers, or by private insurance companies.


Dr.quentin young describes this pretty well in an excerpt from Studs Terkel's book, "Coming of Age".

The logic behind insurance is that customers who don't use it subsidize customers who do use it. This parallels most peoples' arguments against socialism.

The sophistication of modern medicine has outstripped any economic paradigm of capitalism or fiscally possible socialism. Without very stoic attitudes and conventions toward mortality and even euthanasia, it is impossible to reconcile modern medicine with either free market or mixed markets; unless taken as a given that most people simply shouldn't have medical services they cannot afford.


That being said, the "horror stories" about Canadian or Western European medicine are frequently exceptions or exaggerations. Likewise, there really is no place other than the United States that doctors could go to practice medicine for more money, even if socialized healthcare lowers their salaries here.

[Stephen Eisel]

True Story:

About 10 years ago, my parents were vacationing in France, on a barge trip through Burgundy. My father developed a nasty respiratory infection and the Captain made a phone call, a Physician came to the barge in the town where they were docked for the night, examined, proscribed and furnished the necessary medicines and followed up 3 days later. No valid insurance in France, no premiums paid. Total cost:

$10.00.

He had a similar problem several years later, while at home in Fairview. Couldn't get an appointment with his PCP, had to go to the emergency room, waited 4 hours for treatment and had to go to the drug store for the prescription (same meds. as in France) and then follow up with his PCP a week later. After paying his Medicare premiums, his supplement premiums, his out of pocket here in the good old US of A was:

$675.00


Jeff

You are forgetting about one little detail.. France has a national sales tax of 19%.

[Jeff Endress]

You are forgetting about one little detail.. France has a national sales tax of 19%.

which would, quite frankly, be a whole lot cheaper than the typical premium a self employed person pays for family coverage. A yearly pemium of 10K is fairly routine. That would translate into taxable transactions of 66K per year.

Jeff

[Stephen Eisel]

You are forgetting about one little detail.. France has a national sales tax of 19%.

which would, quite frankly, be a whole lot cheaper than the typical premium a self employed person pays for family coverage. A yearly pemium of 10K is fairly routine. That would translate into taxable transactions of 66K per year.

Jeff

LOL... Who is doing your taxes??????????????

[Jeff Endress]

Stephen, sorry, misread 19% and figured at 15%. Couldn't afford the vision premium rider.
So the proper answer is still a whopping 55,000 in sales taxable tranactions
to equal the 10,000 yearly premium (which doesn't include vision or dental...)

So, who's paying YOUR hospitalization premium?

Jeff

[Stephen Eisel]

Stephen, sorry, misread 19% and figured at 15%. Couldn't afford the vision premium rider.
So the proper answer is still a whopping 55,000 in sales taxable tranactions
to equal the 10,000 yearly premium (which doesn't include vision or dental...)

So, who's paying YOUR hospitalization premium?

Jeff

If you have self-employment income, then you can take a deduction for health insurance expenses??????

Jeff wrote: be a whole lot cheaper than the typical premium a self employed person pays for family coverage.

My employer is paying my premium.. If you are deducitng the cost of your healthcare then your model for spending $60k vs. the VAT tax is a bit flawed. The VAT in France is on food, tobacco, automobiles and etc.. it is in addition to their income tax rate. For the majority of Ameircans, this would not be a good deal.

[Grace O'Malley]

Looks like we Americans are headed to the cemetery earlier than many others:

http://tinyurl.com/3b4u2k

Some important quotes from the article:

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy,

"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries,

45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care,

The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does."

[/url]

[Stephen Eisel]

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy,

This probably has nothing to to with

http://www.epha.org/a/1279


http://www.epha.org/a/700

[ryan costa]

while Americans have a lower average life expectancy than many countries with lower GDPs per Capita, it isn't really so much a function of our access to healthcare. We probably have a lower standard of fitness or vigor at old age than most of the developed world also.

It is mostly a result of sedentary lifestyles, cheap junk food, too much tv, a socio-economic-residential infrastructure over-dependent on automobile transportation, etc.

A 19 percent sales tax should be compared to the median income of Americans and how much they pay for health insurance, not average income. Considering much of that 19 percent probably doesn't go toward health insurance, it may be considered even lower.

[Jerry Ritcey]

Although I may have complaints about the way some things are done in Canada, I always thought the health care system one thing the US would not do badly to emulate. I am sure there are stories of people getting bad service, but there's something to be said for knowing that getting sick won't mean you'll go bankrupt.

I can't explain poutine, though.