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Socialized Communist Healthcare (Canadians, Brits, et al)
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to be honest I haven't researched it in any way, and can only go after my own experiences
I feel pretty safe in saying, as someone who had a family member go through cancer care in Canada for 13 years that the latter part is nonsense, or at best a gross generalization.
However, Canadian cancer care will vary by province. If you live in BC you have better odds than if you live in some other places.
Living in the province which likely has the worst cancer care in the country, I'm happy to say that a number of my family members who have been afflicted have received exceptional and fast care. My family owes a great debt to the cancer centre here, who quickly and effectively treated my mother.
So yeah, fuck what you've heard... it's bullshit.
Pretty sure Thatcher was using the word "neighbour" in the wider sense, there; not literally the people who live next door. There's still no "obligation" one has to meet in order to receive healthcare, of course. (also, there's 60 million people in the UK!)
Really though, Willeh.. there's a reason people riot over poll taxes. They're just not fair.
The irony of that report is that US has better breast cancer survival rates overall (I'm aware of the internal disparities). It's hardly a ring of confidence for the Canadian system. The US system is an inefficient, bloated disaster, but the Canadian system is not without its problems.
Both the Canadian and American constituents seem to suffer from a peculiar form of psychosis when it comes to health care. The Americans are worried about the federal Government coming in, and making everything suck. The Canadians are worried about allowing private practice, because that will degrade the healthcare of everyone else. Canadians call it 'two-tiered' healthcare, and its become a bad word in Canadian politics, much like "socialized medicine" is in the States.
Both of these ideas are clear examples of FUD, and nothing else. There is absolutely no truth to either claim.
For the Americans, things could hardly get worse. Americans spend more than anyone else in the world, in absolute terms and per capita. The system is inefficient, and current health insurance suffers from a problem of adverse selection. There is little evidence that a Federal system would be any worse, and every single other nation in the OCED has some form of standard coverage.
The Canadians believe that allowing doctors to practice privately will hurt the standard of care. This is manifestly untrue. Keeping the pay uniform in Canada does not retain talent, as skilled doctors in Canada are drawn to private practice in the United States. Every other nation with a higher health services ranking allows for private practice, including every European state. Canada and Cuba are the only nations where single-payer healthcare is the hard and fast rule.
Sorry for the rant.
Thatcher is actually being perfectly rational. She is stating that first you meet your obligations to society, then you can expect society to help you out. If you are poor, you may only have limited obligations but they do still exist. You must try to get a job, not commit crimes, not vandalize property and so forth. Once you fulfill your part of the social contract, then society will do it's part. She is saying that there is nothing special about society that you wouldn't apply to a normal business or personal transaction, except for the fact society tolerates an imbalance of payments. Society however does demand to be paid in advance that amount that you do owe it.
Here's some data for you. We pay more than everyone else in the world to get some of the worst care among first world nations.
The government should provide health care. Health care is an inelastic good. If we let the market (i.e. private corporations) control access to health care and set prices, then the price will be far above what many people can afford.
The problem with health insurance is not that it is inelastic, but rather that it suffers from adverse selection. It is simply not economical to provide health insurance as it currently stands, as only those who believe that they are going to be sick at some time in the near future buy it voluntarily. Think of it like car insurance - if it was not required, only bad drivers would get it and car insurance would not exist (and we would pay out of pocket whenever someone hit our car).
A few people have talked about their countries in this thread from the above countries, inc. other EU states, and I've also talked about my country, also not on the list. Everytime this thread comes up (this is at least the 2nd one of the same kind in the last couple of months) we get a good response, but end of the day it seems most people are from US/Canada and UK on these boards so the discussion always reverts to that.
Anyway - yes, there are some very cool ideas out there that relate to healthcare. Like in New Zealand there is no personal injury litigation whatsoever - it is banned by law and instead a state run corporation compensates all victims of accidents regardless of cause. You get an injury caused by accident then you make a claim and it gets sorted out straight away - healthcare costs and compensation for loss of earnings. It isn't perfect but it seems to work
Hi 5 on the ACC! It is so awesome, so very awesome if you get covered by it. The ambulance ride, doctors' time, hospital visits, checkups - all potentially paid for. There are fringe cases which makes the news on how certain people aren't covered by it, though. We do pay for it through everything we do - ACC is part of our taxes and levies, but all in all, it seems to work okay.
Fun factoid: ACC will also potentially cover foreign visitors who have an injury while in New Zealand!
The price for health-care or the price for top of the line health-care? One major hurdle is that health-care is considered all or nothing and "bargain health care" isn't allowed to exist. There would always be a market for inexpensive health-care in a real free market. The problem is the heavy regulatory standards on who can actually practice and prescribe drugs erodes competition, locks out inexpensive health care options and basically increases prices by decreasing choice.
Note I'm not suggesting that people who read about medicine on the internet should be everybody's primary care physician I'm just illustrating one of the major flaws of any health care system. Another major flaw is that we consider systems where nobody actually has to actually pay for anything as a quality system. People who don't pay for things often exploit the fact it is free. Recurring prescriptions of drugs they don't need is an example of this.
I have a number of concerns about nationalized health care, one of them being is that it just gives the government yet another excuse to tell me what I can or cannot eat or drink and what high risk behavior I can or cannot engage in.
I'm one of those people who lives in the United States and has fantastic health care and it costs me nothing. I can see a physician whenever I want with less than 24 hours notice. I can call up a specialist and see them immediately. If I am hospitalized I have access to the best medicine and doctors in the world who have free reign to perform just any treatment that science has to offer. It will cost me a small deductible.
I'd prefer to insure my car and shield myself from a major law suit in the event I hit anybody. I would gladly buy health care to protect myself and my family. If I run up a major hospital bill, I want my insurance to pay for it and not ruin my finances for the rest of my life.
We clearly rock. I was reading the regular audit of the ACC the other week as a friend wanted more information on it and it still blows my socks away that the government of the day took such a bold step. I wonder if it would be worth having a thread about it and the alternatives - full personal injury or some sort of mixture. The audit document has quite a good break down of this which I'm sure some people would be interested in here.
does not compute
Not to sure about the US goverment, but all the german goverment does is saying "Don't smoke, its bad for you" and thats it. You don't get thrown into jail or are denied treatment if you do smoke.
Thatcher and the conservatives are well known for their hate for the NHS, hell.. during Thatchers years the conservatives took an axe to the budget of the NHS.
Today the NHS has an annual budget of about £100 billion (in the region of $200 billion) for a population of 60 million people.
Whenever I have been to a hospital or seen my local gp it has always been fast and I've gotten the care I needed.
Simple fact is some things work best socialised, police, fire service, health service etc. Could you imagine that for example your house is burning down and after the fire brigade have put the fire out they then charge you for services rendered? Of course not, so why should it be any different for something that's for your health rather than your personal property?
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
At no point did I advocate a flat poll tax, or say taxes were wrong, I merely think that the middle class are taxed disproportionately, allowing know room or incentive to excel whilst the truly upper class pay no taxes. But then I guess if people are going to riot to get there way over a poll tax then I'm not going to feel bad swindling the tax man should I see fit.
Sorry, are you saying someone who earns £235,000 pounds a year is middle class?
To be fair however, you did then undercut your point by then suggesting progressive taxation before complaining that the middle class are taxed disproportionately, so I'm not going to knock you for being inconsistent.
How would a flat tax solve any of these problems better than simply closing the loopholes which allow the super-rich to exempt their earnings?
Also, taxes for schools and public services usually (mostly) comes from property tax/school tax that's. Aren't property taxes equitable/proportionate to size of the property? More property means more tax, but doesn't go up exponentially because "Hey you're rich, pay more in property taxes." I may be wrong for that.
They do that in the US system too. It's not a NHS issue at all.
You can argue that in a system where someone is paying for the service, they will feel more justified in demanding what they think they need, rather than whats needed. And that first assumption wrongfully assumes that a Doctor would prescribe anything that wasn't needed.
I think Kevin has a rather distorted view of how a socialized medical system actually works. For one thing, we actually have to pay for our prescriptions, unless they are administered while in the hospital. Actually, I would bet money that the incidence of prescription drug use in the US is higher than what it is in most other western countries, largely because it's perfectly acceptable for a doctor to be on the take from one of the large pharma's.
Pfff.
I've got BUPA insurance for something like £35 a month. That's about the same amount I pay for National Insurance (Which is basically the mandatory health insurance levied against wage earners to pay for national health care, with the added bonus that unemployed people are still covered). It's hardly a crazy sum of money, most people my age in the UK probably spend more than that on alcohol. Per week.
Plus there's basically a price list for operations, so if you needed something done and didn't want to wait but aren't paying for private health insurance, if you have the money in savings then you can just pay for the treatment. Of course, the cost can vary from a few hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.
I would literally fight on the streets to keep our national health care system, but private health care isn't exactley the sole preserve of 40 year old investment bankers (haha, not that that expression has much weight now). A lot of companies also provide various health packages as part of their benefits packages. I think ours has a certain allowance for things like Dentists and Opticians which aren't necessarily covered by the NHS, for example, and some employers will go the whole hog and pay private health insurance too.
A healthy work force is a productive workforce. This expression justifies both companies paying for private healthcare and the populace contributing to a national health care system available to all.
Yeah the resistant bacteria are originating from hospitals, but as a whole, supplying antibiotics for a viral infection is exacerbating the problem.
For instance VRE, where enterrococci are common in the intestines, would arise from an overuse of antibiotics. Supposedly VRE originated in sewage water. However, agriculturally they are more often found in stock animals used in food consumption. So you're right, bad sewage treatment and agriculture tend to be the origins of the disease, but I'd think (I can't find any proof of this right this moment) that using antibiotics while not sick would end up destroying the natural flora if your body and allowing these other things to take hold. A compound effect of sorts.
Did hospitals just give patients antibiotics when they came in for surgery, or anything, just in case? I seem to remember reading that somewhere.
In any case, its been four weeks now of cold turkey. Though I switched from my parents doctor because he was a tad on the cold side, his advice to reevaluate my reasoning was just the push I need.
But, this is anecdotal. Has anyone seen any studies concerning over-dosage?
Good, overall. The Canadian system has numerous flaws, buts its a good idea.
Fuck no.
Paid for by tax dollars, which for someone like myself means its essentially free. They treat everyone, which is awesome. Quality of care is overall very good. Per capita people pay significantly less for health care than in the US.
Money has been sucked out of the system over the past 20 years or so. Then people start to wonder why waiting lists are so long, and why hospital beds are so hard to come by. Socialized healthcare is good, but it needs to be properly funded and managed. Europe does this part much better than Canada I believe.
That first sentance doesn't even make sense as far as I can tell. People get individual treatment in order to cure what ails them. The treatment for a broken bone and cancer are obviously going to be different, I dont really understand what you're getting at. Waiting times can be bad here, especially in emergency rooms. I've personally never had to wait for a doctor.
Here its a lack of nurses, I've never heard of a lack of specialists. As far as I know doctors get paid quite well here, I've never heard differently.
That is certainly not true. You would invariably go to jail. Higher prescription drug use is caused by direct marketing to people. If you ever watch CNN, you get those really funny ads for drugs with side-effects that far-and-away outstrip the meager benefits. You have restless-leg syndrome? Take this, but it has been known to cause death in rare cases.
Prescription drugs should not be allowed to be advertised to the general public.
Died fucking laughing, had to post without reading the rest of the thread. Companies give reasonable rates on stuff?
REASONABLE?
edit:
Dislike the system here since our minsiter of health took a lesson in New Labour, but they didn't completely dismantle it yet.
Biggest issue is our mental health care, handicapped care, rare afflictions, etc. where they could cut easily without the general populace seeing the results.
Would vote for anyone proposing more socialism economicaly, with outsourced quality control.
Well, lets be honest here, Canadian doctors aren't above getting free trips to "conferences" given to them by pharma companies either.
No, intact if you read back in my very simplistic and drug educed quick thought out tax plan I advocated that £60k would be the limit at which a higher tax bracket would take effect.
If you read all of what I said without taking anything out of context, you can see that a flat tax rate is what one would start off with, it was far from flat after taking into account the tax credit for the poor and taxing income above £60k.
A flatter tax with more room for the middle class to earn money they have rightfully earned without being punished for there success would provide incentive and growth in that area for those people, it would also be more fair in my view. I would also make sure I would close the tax holes that many people currently use to avoid paying any taxes what so ever, however that bit is probably impossible.
(still on allot of drugs right here holla at me dawg
If you flatten the tax then the poor pay (proportionally) more and the rich pay (proportionally) less. If you then give the poor tax credits and have additional tax for the rich then you have unflattened it and are back to a progressive taxation scheme.