Quote:
Originally Posted by jinx
It is what it is... you're bringing words like "so good" and "deserve" into to it to try to bolster your argument that the goverment will do a good job.
Personally, yeah, I wish buster was getting better care, but that's just one person and I don't have any first hand experience with it.
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I don't need to use words like "so good" and "deserve". I just use the indisputable facts. The government run health care in France, the UK, Canada, Germany, etc. are better from an objective standpoint than health care in America, PERIOD.
By better I mean...
1) Everyone can get medical care regardless of their creed, color, or circumstance or which procedure they need.
2) Lower infant-mortality rate
3) Longer lifespans
4) A fraction of the cost per person than what it costs in America while still paying doctors and nurses very well. For instance in the UK, they spent 1/3 of what Americans pay and they cover everyone while we leave 50-60 million people without any kind of coverage and even those that do have coverage find it gets dropped when they need it most. Less administration costs, less unnecessary procedures, large-scale negotiation for drugs, equipment, and other supplies, and a significantly reduced number of lawsuits and therefore the need to pay for malpractice insurance would reduce the costs enough that the government could easily pay for the program without raising taxes a single penny. This is especially true if we get the U.S. military out of areas it doesn't belong like Germany, Japan, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. America spends a far higher percentage of GDP on health care than any other country but has worse ratings on such criteria as quality of care, efficiency of care, access to care, safe care, equity, and waiting times
5) No family or business goes bankrupt from hospital bills and people aren't forced to make tough decisions between allowing their family member to die, or giving up their house or business.
6) Their government system focuses on preventative care, which means less emergency care and overall healthier people.
7) They actually get something useful from their government when our money is pissed away on things we don't need and which don't help Americans like wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
8) By removing the profit motive for health care, those involved in health care actually care about helping people rather than making money. Our system rewards hospitals and doctors for keeping you sick. There is no money in the cure; only in the treatment. In any system that reimburses physicians on a fee-for-service basis, you will find abuses and doctors doing too many procedures. In one without a profit motive, they will only do what is needed and costs will be greatly reduced. By adopting a single-payer system, we'd no longer have a health care system that avoids helping truly sick people.
9) Neither the government, nor insurance companies would be involved in the decision as to which procedures we would or wouldn't have. That decision would be only for the doctor and patient to make and all options would be on the table; not just the ones the insurance company wants to pay for.
10) A national health care system like that in the UK would actually reduce the burden on businesses to provide health care plans to find and keep good employees. Even if the government didn't close our unnecessary military bases and didn't cut other programs, taxes would increase a fraction of what it costs employers to have health plans for their employees. Businesses would have higher profits
(except for health insurance companies)