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Originally Posted by roachboy
interesting perspective, rahl.
someone else already said this, but the difference between your viewpoint and that which should logically be informing the debate about the healthcare system and what should be done with it is that of the anecdotal to the systemic.
roughly 40 million people without healthcare insurance of any kind in an advanced post-industrial society is a political and ethical problem. it is a systemic problem. what it really cuts to is the american class system and its inequities, but rather than talk about that, we're instead assuming, as conservatives long have, that the american class system is a fact of nature and not a matter of social choices and history and so produces "natural" outcomes that may not be wholly swell and which may require certain adjustments be made once people figure out--and god knows why it's taken this bloody long--that there are both political and ethical problems which follow from the existing arrangement in the states.
i would think something like the french model would be pretty well suited to the united states--basic health care is universal and provided free to everyone---more advanced health care is covered by mandatory insurance which is subject to a sliding fee scale--so that for the poorer segments of the population, it is free as well, but not for the more affluent. this is not a problematic situation from any viewpoint so long as you keep in mind that the objective is not to allow a so-called advanced society to have it's less affluent members subjected to poor-to-non-existent health care because of their income---or if you want to use a conservative trick--for the children of the poor to find their lives socially valued less than the lives of the children of the more affluent.
medical schools are state operations, there is no mountain of debt that you acquire to go through it.
doctors are state functionaries, so do not command whatever the market will bear as salaries.
pharmaceutical prices are strictly controlled
and whaddya know, france has one of the best health care systems in the world, and there is no compromise on research etc.
why this kind of model is not an option and only the vastly inferior english one is, i have no idea.
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I already stated that I don't know what the best answer is, my opinion is that switching to a single payer over night would make things infinately worse for quite some time. But like I stated earlier as well unless you work directly in the insurance field or medical field you really have no clue as to what you are talking about
---------- Post added at 03:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratbastid
In case you're not aware, that's what justification sounds like.
And your "partners" in providing health care say the opposite.
Who is a consumer supposed to believe?
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I will also concede that Malpractice insurance PREMIUMS play a factor in health care costs as well, but as long as a doctor is on the hook for several million dollars, and an insurance company is needed to help cover those costs, the premiums are going to be extremely high.
I'm very hesitant to say this next part because it is a very synical way of looking at it, and I'm sure I will get hammered for this but please keep in mind this is just one way of looking at it. Some people complain that their insurance has caps on it, usually around1.5 million lifetime benefit. If there is a government plan it will almost certainly have a cap as well, because your typical american doesn't warrant the spending of 1, 2, 5 or 10 million dollars to keep alive because if it costs that much to treat it is most likely a terminal illness, and the few years you may be kept alive your monitary contribution to society will never justify that sort of expenditure to keep you alive.