Gov't Provided Healthcare: Workable?

"I disagree. Universal healthcare just means the government IS the insurance. I think it would be a huge, costly, inefficent buearocracy, much like Medicare, public education, welfare, etc."

Well, I conceded that our goverment is too crappy for this to work, but let me ask you this, wouldn't you want universal healthcare if the goverment wasn't going to warp it till the ideal was unrecognizable? The question isn't is America's government too shitty for this to work, it's can it work period...and the answer is yes it can, but I agree that with our government it wouldn't...I would also have to say that America isn't the country everyone wants to come to anymore...we're starting to fall behind

I mean nobody with a heart really WANTS some peope to be excluded right?

 

I DO understand your sentiment, but I kinda have to disagree. I am poor, but I work and take responsibility for myself. I would not want anyone else to have to take responsibility for me. I am a strong believer in personal responsibility.

Now, if you are talking about an extremely costly, chronic illness (cystic fibrosis, cerebal palsey, uncontrollable epilepsy, etc), then yes, the government should help (and they DO, ie, Medicaid). I don't believe we should not be protected from castastrophic healthcare expenses.

Routine care and sick visits, thats another story though. I, again, think individuals should take responsibility for this.

 

Well and I agree with you that adults should take responsibility..absolutely!...I just think it's unfair to make it black and white like that when kids are involved...I'm a very lucky person...if I didn't have my mother I would've had to take my baby to the emergency room and dealt with it...I might as well be rich with the resources I can tap into..lol. But kids cannot take resposibility for themselves..not until they are at least 16, and even the they cannot get an apartment or anything! I believe it is all of our duties to help whenever we can...I don't need the help, I could technically go apply for wic and anything else I wanted, but since I have my resources (mother lol) I don't do it. My problem is knowing that most people don't have the resources I do, and every baby is my marshmallow puff to me, just as precious no matter how lazy or worthless their parents are, so I know I see things differently than a lot of people

"I DO understand your sentiment, but I kinda have to disagree. I am poor, but I work and take responsibility for myself. I would not want anyone else to have to take responsibility for me. I am a strong believer in personal responsibility."

But see I also have to say I believe you SHOULD get help if you were to really need it...sometimes it's just TOO hard in this world, I mean you said you work and all that, so why not get help if you fall behind?...we're just coming at this from slightly different point of view is all

 

ha i just wrote a paper on this very subject-

Health care expenditures in the United States currently outpace inflation (Cochran, 304). The rising costs of health care and the growing gap in access to it proves that our health care system is in need of a fundamental reform that provides availability to all citizens regardless of income or age. To develop such an ideological system we must look at other nations socialization of health care such as the United Kingdom and examine its’ strengths and weaknesses in both access and economics. The United Kingdom’s National Heath Service (NHS) is a universal health care system that provides services to all citizens. The United Kingdom spends six percent of its’ gross domestic product on health care while the United States spends a stratospheric twelve percent (Lancet, 1993) With America’s high expenditures and low accessibility its not surprising that a very high percentage of our population is in favor of significant reform (Cochran, 304).

The reason for the high expenditure and the inadequacies of coverage can be partially attributed to our reliance on a ‘fee-for-services’ system, which has health care suppliers an incentive to treat patients in the most costly fashion (Zuckerman, 1993). Patients do not question the physician’s chosen treatment option because beyond their co-pay the insurance company pays the tab, thus the patients are not made aware of the costs or shown the billing statements foe received treatment. With this system patients have few spending limits as long as the treatments are loosely defined as customary or reasonable; without these limits patients don’t’ face budgetary constraints when buying health care as they would purchasing other goods. In our system both patients and doctors both have incentives to use expensive and sophisticated diagnostic techniques without any regard to the third-party payer
A nationally funded socialized health system may be seen as an obvious solution to our current health care crisis; a way to eliminate the barrier of inaccessibility and minimize unnecessary treatments, thus reducing costs by cutting out the third-party payer, but as we can see with Great Britain accessibility to all does not automatically imply easy access. The NHS was set up in 1949 and is now the largest organization in Europe, it claims to be revered as one of the best health care systems in the world (nhs.uk). Obviously there needs to be some necessary improvements made in order to cope with increased demand and lower expenditure and taxation.
In the United Kingdom patients are expected to wait long periods of time for operations, prosthetic devices or even appointments in addition patients are not able to make appointments with specialists without their doctor’s approval (Sains, 2002). Long waits to see a doctor is the biggest criticism of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (Sains, 2002). The long waits to see a doctor can be partially attributed to Great Britain’s low expenditures on health care. Malcolm Dean Economist for The London Perspective states, “ The root of the problem is familiar enough; the low proportion of gross domestic product spent on health care in the UK compared with other developed nations” (Dean, 1993). Dean affirms that in 1993 the UK was spending only six percent of their gross domestic product on health care, which ranks them as third from last in health care expenditure when comparing them with other developed nations (Dean, 1993).
Unlike The United Kingdom America’s poor health care cannot be attributed to low costs, we spend twice the percentage that Great Britain does; yet not all citizens have access to care; we serve less and spend more. The United States in unique compared to other countries; we treat health care as a market commodity like televisions or stereos, our politicians view it as a discretionary desire. In the United States health care is reserved for those who are fully employed with the exception of the elderly and those with disabilities. There is an astronomical gap of those being allotted the right of medical care when twenty-five percent of our population claims that either they or a family member has gone without health insurance in the past two years (Zuckerman, 1993).
In 1993 there were 37 million Americans without health insurance, yet health care accounts for every one out of seven dollars in the U.S. economy (Zuckerman, 1993). Mortimer Zuckerman writer for U.S. News and World Report claims in his article Why We Need Health Reform that in 1993 50,000 to 100,000 Americans a month are losing their health care coverage and in addition there are millions of Americans who remain underinsured (Zuckerman, 1993). Also, “ Nearly half of all employed Americans report that their employers have cut back on their health benefits in the past two years or…increased co-payments” (Zuckerman, 1993).
We have adopted systems to serve those who are unable to attain insurance due to age, disability or in some circumstances poverty, yet because of current reforms many who should qualify remain uninsured. The Johnson administration passed policy for helping the ‘have nots’, which eventually developed into Medicaid and Medicare (Cochran, 309). Medicare, unlike Medicaid is strictly a federal program and is not related to income level. “It is the largest federal health care program, serving more then 30 million elderly and 3 million disabled Americans” (Cochran, 309). Unlike Great Britain’s NHS Medicare acts as an insurance or third party payer, thus it’s susceptible to paying for expensive and perhaps unbeneficial treatments deemed necessary by fee-for service physicians. Medicare used twelve percent of the federal budget in 1997 and is expected to use seventeen percent in 2008 (Cochran 309).
Medicaid was designed in 1965 to be a government health program for the poor, like Medicare it acts as a third party payer (Cochran 309). Even though it was designed to benefit the poor it does not cover all people of low income, other qualifications have to be met such as being an SSI or welfare recipient, which ultimately means it covers only those with mental illnesses who are not covered by Medicare and those with children.
Because of recent reforms such as Clinton’s Welfare to Work act most families beneath the poverty line are not eligible for Medicaid yet they aren’t skilled enough to obtain a job with benefits. Both Medicare and Medicaid also pay less then private insurance companies, thus physicians often discriminate against those with government funded coverage. A system like the United Kingdom’s NHS would insure that all citizens are provided with equal coverage or at least adequate and necessary coverage. Private insurance is also an option in Great Britain; therefore it’s not a complete system of equality yet all citizens remain covered regardless of income or employment.

When examining both the United States and Great Britain’s health care it makes me wonder whether or not an adoption of socialized health care would be feasible and beneficial for all Americans. There are plenty of failed models of socialized health care such as Canada and France and very few successful models of socialized health care. In the United Kingdom all citizens have access to see a doctor but very few are satisfied with the care and the taxes or the wait for treatment-such high dissatisfaction is not indicative of success.
Many attribute the long waits and rising costs of government care in the United Kingdom to people scheduling appointment for every small ailment because it’s seen as free care, but one can argue that a small ailment could be a symptom of a larger one so seeing a physician may be cost effective preventive medicine. Government health care means higher taxes, perhaps even more bureaucracy and more regulations but it also allots the basic right of health care to all citizens and if socialized medicine is correctly and effectively implemented the negative aspects could be minimized or perhaps even obsolete.
Currently there is more then enough money currently in our system to give Americans the health care they need, seeing as we spend four-thousand dollars per capita on personal health care, about twice as much as European Countries (Cochran 301), but in order for there to be coverage for all we must distribute it differently and look at why our health care system is such a money sink. It’s not because our population is older and sicker as our aging populations and vulnerability to illnesses is the same as European countries, yet by all standard measures of health such as life expectancy and immunization rates we are far worse off then other Western Countries (Lancet, 1993). The only logical explanation for our inadequacies is how health care is financed and delivered while the inadequacies of NHS lies in insufficient funding and taxation rather then the system its’ self.
Currently our health care system is alienated by wasteful and profit driven corporations that offer inadequate care for too much money. It also leaves many citizens uninsured or under insured and is very difficult to navigate or even understand. To solve our problems would require fundamental reform, we would have to look towards other nations with socialized systems like NHS for an example. It would also mean tackling the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, which would be no small feat, but if we wish to have affordable and most importantly universal health care coverage it’s what our administration needs to do, the funding and the United Kingdoms model exist as tools.

 

What, in your opinion, makes the United States so fundamentally different from any other modernized country? While I agree with you that it wouldn't work under the American government, Canada and Northern Europe have proven that it doesn't work well there either. "Warping it till the ideal is unrecognizable" is a characteristic of any government program. I don't think it's a unique problem to America; almost all governments require beneficiaries of government money to meet certain regulations. I don't think there's an easy fix, which leads me to believe that government-controlled health care won't work, since all governments warp the ideal beyond recognition.