I don't know if it's a bad thing. I suppose it depends on how much health care costs and how many people can actually afford it? If my purchasing better care for myself affects only me, and doesn't make the "free" care less effective, then sure, no problem. But if my paid for higher standard of care causes someone else's standard of care to go down, then we have to weigh that.
Also, this notion that some are depending on others to pay for their medical care assumes very static economic boundaries. Meaning, those who can't afford care now never could and never will. It's more realistic to assume that most people pay in more than what they receive over time.
In other words, someone will always claim that you buying your own care means others will get a lower standard of care.
Also, I have no numbers in front of me, but I believe that higher earners tend to be healthier people. Doesn't that suggest that those who least need health care services actually pay the most into the system and those who most need it pay in the least?
But you are right that we're talking about high and low wage earners as if these are static groups when they are not. So, the question might better be how best to provider for the health care needs of people during periods of impoverishment.
When you think about it that way, you can start getting creative, like requiring those who use more while in poverty to pay more once they are earning above the poverty line. (Just as an off-the-cuff example.)
Free - The issue isn't whether the claim is true, but whether it is inherently wrong to (A) set limits on what we provide for others and (B) expect the liberty to choose the health care we provide to ourselves.
Higher earners do avail themselves of preventive care more than do lower earners, but that's just a piece of the puzzle. Higher earners are also generally people making sound choices. (That's how they become higher earners.) Those choices generally extend to other behaviors such as diet, exercise, smoking and drinking, drug use, etc.. Access to health care isn't the only thing that makes them healthier.
As to the high cost of your health insurance, I think we should take that to your other discussion, as I've touched on that issue there.
Lastly, you wrote of your concern that requiring people to pay back others when they come to us for help would "giv{e} them incentive to stay below {the poverty line}". Doesn't every single free service we offer to anyone in poverty, including free or subsidized health care, act as such an incentive?
A -- it is not inherently wrong to set limits on what we provide for others. We have to do that. B -- it is not wrong to expect the liberty to choose the health care we provide to ourselves.
Scrat wrote:Higher earners do avail themselves of preventive care more than do lower earners, but that's just a piece of the puzzle. Higher earners are also generally people making sound choices. (That's how they become higher earners.) Those choices generally extend to other behaviors such as diet, exercise, smoking and drinking, drug use, etc.. Access to health care isn't the only thing that makes them healthier.
Hate to do it, but I have to call BS on this whole paragraph unless you have some studies to back it up.
A growing body of evidence indicates that rich people live longer than poor people and they're healthier at every stage in life.
http://www.tcf.ca/vital_signs/vitalsigns2003/gap.html
Rich people live longer than poor people, and do better on measures of health around the world. The usual explanation for this has been that rich people have better access to medical care. But even in countries with socialized medicine, where everyone presumably has equal access, they STILL live longer. Someone has finally done the research to arrive at the "duh" conclusion that it's because they're smarter:
"An explanation not presenting these problems has recently been proposed in several papers by two scholars long associated with IQ studies: Linda Gottfredson, a sociologist based at the University of Delaware, and psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh. Their solution to the age-old mystery of health and status is at once utterly original and supremely obvious. The rich live longer, they write, mainly because the rich are smarter. The argument rests on several different propositions, all well documented. The crucial points are that (a) social status correlates strongly and positively with IQ and other measures of intelligence;(b) intelligence correlates strongly with "health literacy," the ability to understand and follow a prescription for disease prevention and treatment; and (c) intelligence is also correlated with forward planning--which means avoidance of health risks (including smoking) as they are identified."
http://jacquelinepassey.blogs.com/blog/2004/05/the_rich_live_l.html
Forbes Article She Cites
I took for granted the bit about higher earners being healthier because it didn't seem like it was a big part of your argument. Now that you appear to be saying that higher earners are just better choice makers in general, I have to challenge. Of all the wealthy people in this country, how many of them started out poor?
A 1992 study done by the U.S. Treasury confirmed this. After tracking before-tax income for 14,351 taxpayers between 1979 and 1988, the Treasury economists found that of the taxpayers in the bottom quintile in 1979, only 14.2 percent (or one in seven) were still there in 1988. Meanwhile, 20.7 percent had moved to the next higher fifth, 25 percent to the middle fifth, 25.3 percent to the second-highest fifth, and 14.7 percent to the highest fifth. Thus, a taxpayer in the lowest bracket in 1979 was about as likely to be in the highest fifth nine years later as to have stayed in the lowest fifth.
http://www.hooverdigest.org/981/henderson1.html
...reverting to a system where only the well-off can have access to health care is not an option, IMO, and immoral at that.
Improving the living conditions of a city's most vulnerable citizens creates a healthier environment for everyone.
According to an analysis of decade-long income trends up to 2001 by economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, relative mobility - the share of Americans changing income quintiles in any direction up or down - slipped during the 1990s by 2% to 62%. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have confirmed this trend. They looked at families' incomes over the last three decades and found the number of people who stayed stuck in the same income bracket - at the bottom or at the top - over the course of a decade increased in the 1990s. Some 40% of families didn't change income brackets over the decade, compared to 36% in the 1970s. Some 49% of families who started the 1970s in poverty were still stuck there at the end of the decade. During the 1990s, that figure jumped to 53%.
FreeDuck wrote:
...reverting to a system where only the well-off can have access to health care is not an option, IMO, and immoral at that.
Can you point me to where I suggested we do such a thing? Wink
From your first source, the very next sentence:Quote:That's pretty much my position on this whole thing.Improving the living conditions of a city's most vulnerable citizens creates a healthier environment for everyone.
...there is enough evidence out there to suggest that those at the top of the economic ladder benefit healthwise from their place there, so I'll leave it at that.
According to an analysis of decade-long income trends up to 2001 by economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, relative mobility - the share of Americans changing income quintiles in any direction up or down - slipped during the 1990s by 2% to 62%. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have confirmed this trend. They looked at families' incomes over the last three decades and found the number of people who stayed stuck in the same income bracket - at the bottom or at the top - over the course of a decade increased in the 1990s. Some 40% of families didn't change income brackets over the decade, compared to 36% in the 1970s. Some 49% of families who started the 1970s in poverty were still stuck there at the end of the decade. During the 1990s, that figure jumped to 53%.
We could argue until the cows come home about why poor people tend to have more health problems than rich people.
No, you've missed this point too. They aren't healthier because they are at the top of the economic ladder, both their superior health and superior economic standing appear to be results of their superior intellect. As I wrote before, these are for the most part people who make good, well-informed choices in their lives, and the end result of those choices tends to be better health and better economic fortune. (I'm inclined to think of it more in terms of the choices we make and less in terms of raw intellect, but the citation I offered suggests the two are linked.)
This theoretical conversation between scrat and free duck is interesting while not really tuned in towhat happens in the real world in Health CAre. As I have pointed out, the Socialized Medicine situation in Canada clearly shows that Socialism in Medicine does not work.
Free Duck- I must entreat you to read the following:
If you have evidence that it is not corect, or exaggerated, please provide that evidence. Until then, I will use Canada's experience as prima facie evidence that Socialized Medicine is a farce.
Baltimore News Column by Steve Chapman Originally published June 20th 2005
quote
"The health care program, said the Canadian Supreme Court, has such serious flaws it is violating constitutional rights and must be fundamentally changed. The dirty secret of the system is that universal access is no guarantee of treatment. Sick Canadians spend months and even years on waiting lists for surgery and other procedures. In 1993, the average wait to see a specialist after getting a doctor's referral was nine weeks. Since then, it has increased to 18 weeks. The typical patient needing orthopedic surgery has time to get pregnant and deliver a baby before being called. The Supreme Court cited the testimony of one orthopedic surgeon that 95 percent of patients in Canada waited over a year for knee replacements with many of them in limbo for two years. In some cases, the delay lasts longer than the person enduring it. Or as the Supreme Court put it:
"Patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care"
end of quotes
Would you want to live under such a health system, Freeduck? I wouldn't!!!
Free - The focus here is health. You posited that poor people aren't as healthy because we don't do enough for them.
Really? Can you cite any statistics with regard to the number of people in the US who have been bankrupted by medical costs?
Can you give evidence that most life threatening conditions are given, as you say, "Priority, as is preventive care"?
To ensure standardized waiting times for heart patients in Ontario, surgeons assign every patient a score of between one and seven, depending on the severity of their symptoms. The scoring system was devised by heart surgeons and cardiologists. Patients are then separated into four categories: emergency, urgent, semiurgent and elective.
For example, a patient who is rated a 2 should wait no more than 48 hours, according to network guidelines, while a person rated a 3.5 could wait as long as 14 days. A score of between 5 and 7 indicates an elective patient for whom a wait of as long as 120 days is considered safe. Hospitals' waiting times, and the percentage of patients treated within the recommended time frames, are posted on the network's Web site.
"Urgent people get treatment in a timely fashion," says Dr. Lee Errett, chief of cardiac surgery at St. Michael's. Today, most urgent and semiurgent heart patients are treated within two weeks. Non-urgent patients wait an average of 49 days for surgery.
If you go to the essay I referenced, you will also find the followingwhich will PROVE THAT MOST LIFE THREATENING CONDITIONS ARE NOT, I REPEAT NOT, GIVEN PRIORITY.
Quote from the Chapman column referenced above:
"Not only does the delay in the public system subject its citizens to painful and even fatal delays, the government bars citizens from seeking alternatives in the private market. It is illegal for private insurers to pay for services covered by the public system."
PRIORITY???
In those areas where modern medicine can make a big difference, the USA does very well. Take Breast Cancer. In Britain, which is famous for its socialized system, close to half of all victims die of the disease. In Germany and France, almost oner third do. In Canada the figure is 28 percent and here, it's 25 percent. Our Mortality rate for prostate cancer is 67 percent lower than Britain and 24 per cent lower than Canada's.
I think taking care of Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer can be said to be taking care of PRIORITIES.
Right? Free Duck.
