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COMMENTS:
Bravo Counciltucky, excellent ballot! :)
Kick the old farts out of government.
Told you I'd put my good ballots on this address Tads! lol
and it already paid off!
The problem we have is a flawed implementation of Capitalism, IMO. Currently, we focus on individual, direct costs and profits, but ignore costs and profits that are just as real, but harder to measure (e.g., societal).
Ask any other 1st world country
by ABC on Fri Aug 20, 04 2:14pm
[+]
Chop the HMOs, whack the doctors' salaries down to a realistic level (but give them a decent working week) and get back to proper accountability and patient care. Also, encourage doctors to stop being obedient pad-scratchers for the Big Giant pharmaceutical cos.
You won't get the same quality of care in any of those other countries.
Getting rid of frivolous lawsuits will go a long way in bringing down healthcare costs. Getting rid of excessive regulation and government red tape will do even more.
The quality of care in the UK, Canada and Australia is excellent and patients there have a choice of either the NHS or private insurance if they so prefer.
One more thing... squelch special interests with Congress. That's a must.
Eliminating frivolous lawsuits would help. Directly by lowering the cost somewhat, and indirectly by encouraging more people to become doctors. The reason most people become doctors is for the money right? Well if a good doctor makes on average 200 grand a year, that's a good encouragment. But if that same doctor has to give half his salary to an insurance company because it's a certainty he will be sued at some point in his career no matter what, well that doesn't look so good. That and the risk of one big lawsuit totally ruining his career and all of a sudden dedicating 13 years of his life to medicine doesn't look so appealing.
It's not a coincidence that those fields with the highest insurance rates, neurosurgeon for instance, also have the greatest shortages. Get rid of these lawsuits and the problem will solve itself in a few years.
Of course the main reason medical bills are so high is that everyone who can afford it is also being charged for everyone who can't. You walk into a hospital with some lifethreatening condition and demand treatment then refuse to pay because you don't have insurance, guess what? The next guy that walks in who does have insurace get's stuck with both bills.
MrTroche: Actually, it is an American myth that non-American healthcare is low quality. I know of no other 1st-world country that has inferior healthcare ... do you?
All other advanced nations have healthcare that is inferior to what we have here in the states. They have high quality care but not of the same caliber as what we have here.
All the canadians who can afford it come here to get their medical treatments. I think that says something. That and we have the best research facilities in the world, and we don't kill 10,000 people every time it gets a little warm out.
Guys, while it is true that we have some leading edge stuff, you are seriously deluded if you think that is what is available to the average American.
The cutting edge stuff isn't available to everyone, but that's the case in every country. However, in the US it goes from cutting edge to commonplace faster than in other countries, because we have the money and technology to research and develop these things, everyone else simply follows suit.
Penicillin was once cutting edge, now it's available to everyone. Same with MRIs, CAT scans, organ transplants, etc.
"The cutting edge stuff isn't available to everyone, but that's the case in every country"
Sorry herzog, have to disagree. And what's more, it doesn't cost a dime (or a brass farthing) for anyone who needs it, either. I'm talking UK NHS.
So you're going to say that britain is better off, even though they have a shortage of 15,000 doctors, and an estimated 5,000 patients die every year due to these shortages? Given those stats I don't see how britains could claim a superior access to any medical care, let alone 'cutting edge' medical care.
Or is it britons?
herzog
They may have shortages but ALL their citizens ARE covered.
There is not such thing as "the perfect system". You will always find flaws of some sort (take Capitalism for example) It's just some systems are better than others. Universal Healthcare is the best system available if you want your entire population covered.
** karma **
There is (NO) such thing as "the perfect system".
"...it doesn't cost a dime"
That's correct, it costs much more because of higher taxes.
Capitalism isn't perfect but a larger proportion of the population will recieve quality healthcare under capitalism than it will under socialism.
MrTroche:
What would you rather your tax dollars went towards: Universal healthcare or endless war?
I agree with you on that one. I'd rather see my money spent on healthcare than on the war. The money still goes to Americans but with the war, a lot of it wasted and the rest goes to rich Americans who own the companies that get the contracts backed by the money given to Iraq by the USA and stolen from Americans by the government. Ideally, the money shouldn't be spent on either, it should stay in my pocket.
Haha, let us know if you ever work out a way to re-route all that dosh then, OK?
Zig makes a good point ... translate all of the "doctor shortages" to those who lack any coverage at all and see who comes off better.
Waiting rooms in the US are less crowded than in britain, the doctor shortage is less severe in the US. And we don't have 10,000 people drop dead due to every slight climatic variation.
herzog
You avoided the point regard no coverage vs over long waits.
Secondly no emergency room on the planet can handle an influx of patients on that type of massive scale. If you believe the U.S can you are delusional.
Those 10,000 people didn't need emergency care; they needed an air conditioner.
MrT: If the same climate problem hit many area sof the US, we'd have had a similar outcome. Besides, you're playing ping pong with the responses ... one person throws out this situation as an exampel of why non-US healthcare isn't as good, it gets a response, and you reply that it wasn't a real medical crisis.
Seems to me that many of you are in denial and talking around the topic.
How bad was the heat? We have hot summers here all the time.
MrT: It was *bad* and in heavily-populated areas.
Don't be fooled into thinking every American family has an air conditioner, too. When the US has a heat wave that hits a poor area, we have people die, as well.
We've never been hit that hard in that populated an area, though.
I seriously doubt it was any worse then heat waves we've had here before. Some people always die in heat waves but 10 thousand, that is inexcusable.
MrTroche
Choose any natural disaster that effects millions of people. There is no emergency room on the planet that can handle it. They're not setup to. Disaster triage rooms are not a good way to determine the state of a coutry's healthcare system.
Heat waves don't typically escalate into natural disasters here.
I'm not anti-France, but they really should have done better.
re check some herbal remedies most of them work and it's a lot cheaper than modern medications
Voted : Revamp our system
** karma **
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