IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

They get told what to do like the rest of us.

If you already knew that then your argument makes no sense.

Health care is rationed now. Arguing that it will still be rationed isn't much of an argument, is it?

parados wrote:

If you already knew that then your argument makes no sense.

Health care is rationed now. Arguing that it will still be rationed isn't much of an argument, is it?

It makes perfect sense. The fact that my PRIVATE insurance plan doesn't cover certain things isn't "rationing". I get what I pay for.

As I said before, I'm speaking about Medicaid and Medicare and the "free government healthcare" types.

Is that because they think they know what's better for you?

sstainba wrote:

parados wrote:

If you already knew that then your argument makes no sense.

Health care is rationed now. Arguing that it will still be rationed isn't much of an argument, is it?

It makes perfect sense. The fact that my PRIVATE insurance plan doesn't cover certain things isn't "rationing". I get what I pay for.

As I said before, I'm speaking about Medicaid and Medicare and the "free government healthcare" types.

It IS rationing. The rationing is simply done by money, instead of by proportion of population.

Medicare and 'aid are not 'free government healthcare.' You pay taxes to support the system your whole life.

Look, you don't think we can measure the quality of a HC system by life expectancy, and you don't think we can do it by cost either - even though these are the two easiest and most universal ways to measure. Exactly how would YOU propose measuring success of HC systems?

The other countries I listed earlier have longer lifespans, lower costs, and universal coverage regardless of ability to pay. This makes their systems superior to ours, period. You haven't shown any way that our system is superior; can you?

As for the insurance industry, they are parasitic. Their purpose is not to help people but to provide an ever-growing return for their investors. I don't give a **** about them losing their jobs at all.

Like most right-wingers you seem primarily concerned with people getting HC who didn't pay for it. It all seems to come down to money in the end for some folks.

Cycloptichorn

I don't know a good way to "measure" healthcare. That's my entire point. It's way more complicated than the stupid one-dimensional measurements you're making.

Again, lower cost doesn't mean anything. That can easily be attributed to lower obesity rates, simply providing less to each person or any number of other things that you conveniently ignore.

I mean, given that, why not just measure it in rainbows and unicorns? You know, there is a graduate student thesis that shows a correlation between global warming and the decline of pirates.

It makes perfect sense. The fact that my PRIVATE insurance plan doesn't cover certain things isn't "rationing". I get what I pay for.

As I said before, I'm speaking about Medicaid and Medicare and the "free government healthcare" types.

That's three dimensions of measurement right there. You haven't even shown a SINGLE dimension in which the US is supposedly superior.

How does 'providing less' lead to longer lifespans and Universal coverage? How exactly are other countries providing less then ours does? I think you are basically making this up.

What are the 'other things' I'm ignoring? I find your 'genetically healthier' argument to be specious.

This is not exactly correct. The 'Pirates vs. Global Warming' meme was created by the prophet of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

http://www.venganza.org/

If you're going to use cultural memes, take the time to get them right.

One way or another you are Appealing to Extremes and making a poor argument simultaneously: that we can't measure relative success of different health care systems. I do not accept this conclusion, because I think it is one that did not arise out of a study of the data, but instead your unwillingness to see the current system change.

What you think of my motivation is irrelevant to my point that you cannot provide actual evidence of your claims. I NEVER ONCE said I do not want the system to change. And I'm certain that I said it absolutely SHOULD change - just NOT in the way you want it to. I believe that the changes you would have made would end up scuttling the entire system and leave it in worse shape than it is now. Your suggestions only result in the consumption of the system, not the replenishment.

And actually, I think I've made a good argument that you are making a poor argument. You cannot provide a single piece of empirical evidence of these measurements.

Find two patients with the same disease, undergoing the same treatments who have the same outcome in our country and one of the NHS countries. If you can do that and show that the care cost less (to both the individual and the government) for the person in the NHS country, you will have proven me wrong.

sstainba wrote:

It makes perfect sense. The fact that my PRIVATE insurance plan doesn't cover certain things isn't "rationing". I get what I pay for.

As I said before, I'm speaking about Medicaid and Medicare and the "free government healthcare" types.

Ah, the perfect sense of claiming no one has to pay for Medicaid or Medicare.

You should ask a person on Medicare if they have never paid a dime for the coverage. You seem to not know the answer.

But we vote for who tells them, and us, what to do

Infant mortality is always a way to measure health care and you boys are ignoring it

That's not what I said. I suspect you know that. Someone does pay for Medicaid/Medicare, but it isn't necessarily the person consuming it.

Arguing over the quality of our arguments is boring and I'm not responding to any of that. Suffice it to say that you have dropped several of my points, and if this were a debate, your failure to respond to them would be putting you in the losing column at the moment.

I have claimed that our system is not the best and shown that there are several factors in which other countries beat us. Your claim that there is no possible correlation between these factors and 'quality of care' or 'best system' is farcical; of course there is. It's just highly inconvenient for your argument to use these metrics, so you claim they are invalid.

Patients who have major operations on the National Health Service (U.K.) are four times more likely to die than Americans undergoing such surgery, according to a new study.

The difference in mortality rates was blamed on long NHS waiting lists, a shortage of specialists and competition for intensive care beds.

The joint study, carried out by University College London and a team from Columbia University in New York, found that patients in Britain who were most at risk of complications after major surgery were not being seen by specialists and were not reaching intensive care units in time to save them.

The study followed 1,100 patients at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth and compared them with 1,000 patients who had undergone similar major surgery at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

The results showed that just under 10 per cent of the British patients died in hospital after major surgery, compared with 2.5 per cent of the American patients.

Exactly what changes do you think should be made? And please, don't be trite and say Tort reform or selling insurance across state lines. Please.

Want to bet? I can provide you reams of data showing that the outcomes in other countries are comparable to ours and cost less money per person, per year. The 'genetically superior' argument you throw around doesn't explain this.

What more, we don't only pay a LITTLE more, we pay DOUBLE what most industrialized countries do for health care. How do you account for this fact in your theory for why our care costs more?

Ok. Let's see it. I don't think I "threw around" the argument, I only pointed out that it is a factor that you are willfully ignoring.

So... you say I failed because I don't respond to some of your points *right after* saying that you're not going to respond to mine? Yes... clearly I'm losing the logic battle.

They are several pages back. You can go read them if you actually want to know what I think. I suspect you do not.

No, it is absolutely not. It should be ignored because the medical protocols for dealing with infants and even the definition of "infant" is different between countries. Further, that statistic has zero meaning if it is separated from the statistics for premature birth rates.

Quote:

Find two patients with the same disease, undergoing the same treatments who have the same outcome in our country and one of the NHS countries. If you can do that and show that the care cost less (to both the individual and the government) for the person in the NHS country, you will have proven me wrong.

Do you not agree that a person taking a drug for high blood pressure in Canada would pay less than one taking it in the US?
http://www.house.gov/cummings/pdf/intl.pdf
Do you not agree that a person in Canada would respond the same way as a person the US do that drug? Or are you arguing that Canadians are genetically different from US citizens?