Question: there is a lot of talk here about people who don't have healthcare, but why don't they? I assume because they can't afford it? What are the average premiums, that they are so beyond the reach of the working class?
Because insurance is expensive, so if you're reasonably healthy, don't have a lot of disposable income, and your job doesn't provide it, you don't bother with it.
Of course, this means that those who use the insurance least don't bother getting it. Which, of course, drives up costs from insurance companies. Which then prices further people out of the market. Ad nauseum.
Thanatos on
0
Options
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
I would say that issues of speed and availability are so closely tied together that you can't really say that one matters, while the other doesn't.
Hey, it's a good thing that nobody said anything even sort of like that in here, huh?
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Here we have universal healthcare, with the option of private cover.
It works fairly well.
Now I am in the army. If I want to see a doctor, its about a 30min wait on average, I get all my drugs just handed to me with handwritten instructions, and if I need a bed in the military hospital (had a chest infection) it was there for me immediately.
Now if only we could scale that up :P
MrIamMe on
0
Options
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Question: there is a lot of talk here about people who don't have healthcare, but why don't they? I assume because they can't afford it? What are the average premiums, that they are so beyond the reach of the working class?
Because insurance is expensive, so if you're reasonably healthy, don't have a lot of disposable income, and your job doesn't provide it, you don't bother with it.
Of course, this means that those who use the insurance least don't bother getting it. Which, of course, drives up costs from insurance companies. Which then prices further people out of the market. Ad nauseum.
It's expensive enough that even young and healthy folks who could pretty painlessly afford might choose not to. I mean, would you rather drop a couple hundred a month on health insurance you'll likely never use? Or drop it on video games or dinner out or vacations or something? For a whole lot of people, the first choice sounds kinda lame.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
0
Options
Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
Question: there is a lot of talk here about people who don't have healthcare, but why don't they? I assume because they can't afford it? What are the average premiums, that they are so beyond the reach of the working class?
Because insurance is expensive, so if you're reasonably healthy, don't have a lot of disposable income, and your job doesn't provide it, you don't bother with it.
Of course, this means that those who use the insurance least don't bother getting it. Which, of course, drives up costs from insurance companies. Which then prices further people out of the market. Ad nauseum.
It's expensive enough that even young and healthy folks who could pretty painlessly afford might choose not to. I mean, would you rather drop a couple hundred a month on health insurance you'll likely never use? Or drop it on video games or dinner out or vacations or something? For a whole lot of people, the first choice sounds kinda lame.
But then is it fair to blame the entire system for sucking if these people didn't feel the need to get insurance and ended up screwed because something happened to them?
I mean, should we make insurance mandatory but not paid for by the government, so that people with alternative priorities are forced to rethink those priorities? In my state, for example, car insurance is required if you want to drive a car. Should health insurance be required if you want to, I don't know, live?
Edit: Please note that I am not being sarcastic or facetious, I am genuinely trying to puzzle through this issue.
But then is it fair to blame the entire system for sucking if these people didn't feel the need to get insurance and ended up screwed because something happened to them?
Perhaps if people like that made up the majority of the uninsured, but they don't. There is a very large number of people who genuinely want insurance and cannot reasonably afford to get it, or who want good insurance and have to settle for shitty insurance.
The 40 million number that gets bandied about is heavily inflated and misrepresented, but that doesn't mean there's not a serious problem. Especially given that the majority of people who are insured are only so because their jobs offer insurance. This trend has all sorts of negative effects, and not even just pertaining to health care. For example, it makes employment at small businesses less desirable, because small businesses can't typically offer the same benefits as massive corporations can. It makes the employment market, in general, less liquid, because people are terrified of being without insurance and so don't want to risk quitting a job they don't like.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Because not defending everything American is un-American. And that makes you a communist.
No no, the cold war is over. The buzzword today is terrorist.
Socialized medicine isn't all roses either. Wait times in Canada for all kinds of things can take upwards of 8 months to a year.
That's what everyone says, but according to stats canada, the wait times for non-emergency surgery is 4-1/2 weeks on average.
I got scheduled for a non-emergency surgery less than a month from when I saw the doc. This was 3 days ago in Newfoundland, where our Health Care system is in dire straits.
While our system is not perfect by any means, people still fall through cracks and wait for way longer than they should for important ailments, I do think that some of the waiting times proposed to 'counter' UHC are exaggerated just a bit.
Out of curiosity, if we're talking about people not being able to afford it, doesn't that mean that "speed of care" approaches infinity? Like, if you never get it, doesn't that mean the average wait is forever?
I see this cute little point made in every health care thread, and it's invariably stupid.
We're talking about how to get everyone into the system, so the rhetorical points from that observation are kinda nil. When we're discussing average mileage for cars, should we figure in electric cars? They get infinite gas mileage, so that means that our average gas mileage is infinite! Oh wait, no, that's retarded.
I would have thrown this into the RP thread, but that was A. a multi-subject cluster-fuck and B. LOCKED, so..not happening, :P
I'd like to know where the popular conception of "Well, at least in the US system you don't have to wait X weeks to have something done!" comes from. Because in my experience that's straight out bullshit.
With my last insurance company, in order to get anything done with my feet I had to:
-make an appointment with my physician. Since my previous doctor wasn't on the list, I had to switch to a new one. It takes a MONTH, on average, to get in to see him.
-Go to that appointment, get a referral.
-Use that referral to get an appointment with the person I really needed to see, my podiatrist. Another month, on average.
Now, followup-visits do get to skip the bullshit middle steps, but that's a different story.
It didn't get any better with immediately-needed care. I had gout last summer. Couldn't get in to see the doctor, went to an urgent care. They decided I was "too young" for it, and had a broken foot.
Later, AFTER it had passed, I got in to see the aforementioned podiatrist. He looked at their X-rays and shook his head. Nope, no broken foot. Of course, by this point he couldn't DO much for me, other than general advice. So I had to live with ~week of limping, and two days of screaming at the top of my fucking lungs whenever I moved my foot.
I now have a relative who urgently needs to see a specialist. Of course, the nearest open appointment is in February.
So, one more time: where'd that "the US is faster" thing come from again?
It's faster because I have insurance, call a doctor that is in my PPO network (about 90% of them) and find a doctor that will take me as soon as possible. When one doctor says they can't get me in tomorrow then I keep calling doctors in my PPO network until I find one who can. This probably takes a whopping 20 minutes of my valuable time.
When my foot hurts I call a podiatrist and not a general practice physician since I know what a podiatrist is and I wasn't a fuck-wit when I signed up for healthcare at my work and wisely chose PPO care over the HMO option. It cost me all of 5 extra dollars a month and lets me see pretty much any doctor I want whenever I want.
I guess if you're a moron who doesn't know how to use a physician directory and doesn't know the difference between and HMO and PPO you will have problems getting healthcare in the United States.
I guess if you're a moron who doesn't know how to use a physician directory and doesn't know the difference between and HMO and PPO you will have problems getting healthcare in the United States.
Does every employer provide both HMO and PPO options? Just curious, because I don't remember really having any choice at the last civilian job I had that offered a health plan.
I would have thrown this into the RP thread, but that was A. a multi-subject cluster-fuck and B. LOCKED, so..not happening, :P
I'd like to know where the popular conception of "Well, at least in the US system you don't have to wait X weeks to have something done!" comes from. Because in my experience that's straight out bullshit.
With my last insurance company, in order to get anything done with my feet I had to:
-make an appointment with my physician. Since my previous doctor wasn't on the list, I had to switch to a new one. It takes a MONTH, on average, to get in to see him.
-Go to that appointment, get a referral.
-Use that referral to get an appointment with the person I really needed to see, my podiatrist. Another month, on average.
Now, followup-visits do get to skip the bullshit middle steps, but that's a different story.
It didn't get any better with immediately-needed care. I had gout last summer. Couldn't get in to see the doctor, went to an urgent care. They decided I was "too young" for it, and had a broken foot.
Later, AFTER it had passed, I got in to see the aforementioned podiatrist. He looked at their X-rays and shook his head. Nope, no broken foot. Of course, by this point he couldn't DO much for me, other than general advice. So I had to live with ~week of limping, and two days of screaming at the top of my fucking lungs whenever I moved my foot.
I now have a relative who urgently needs to see a specialist. Of course, the nearest open appointment is in February.
So, one more time: where'd that "the US is faster" thing come from again?
It's faster because I have insurance, call a doctor that is in my PPO network (about 90% of them) and find a doctor that will take me as soon as possible. When one doctor says they can't get me in tomorrow then I keep calling doctors in my PPO network until I find one who can. This probably takes a whopping 20 minutes of my valuable time.
When my foot hurts I call a podiatrist and not a general practice physician since I know what a podiatrist is and I wasn't a fuck-wit when I signed up for healthcare at my work and wisely chose PPO care over the HMO option. It cost me all of 5 extra dollars a month and lets me see pretty much any doctor I want whenever I want.
I guess if you're a moron who doesn't know how to use a physician directory and doesn't know the difference between and HMO and PPO you will have problems getting healthcare in the United States.
Or if, y'know, you can't afford either an HMO or PPO. Or if your employer doesn't provide one. Or if you can't find one that will accept you, given that most insurance companies reject pretty much anyone who has an outside chance of actually needing medical care.
But yeah, I'm sure it's just the fact that people are morons. :roll:
I guess if you're a moron who doesn't know how to use a physician directory and doesn't know the difference between and HMO and PPO you will have problems getting healthcare in the United States.
Does every employer provide both HMO and PPO options? Just curious, because I don't remember really having any choice at the last civilian job I had that offered a health plan.
No, but like most Libertarians, KevinNash just assumes that whatever applies to him applies to everyone else, too.
I guess if you're a moron who doesn't know how to use a physician directory and doesn't know the difference between and HMO and PPO you will have problems getting healthcare in the United States.
Does every employer provide both HMO and PPO options? Just curious, because I don't remember really having any choice at the last civilian job I had that offered a health plan.
No, but like most Libertarians, KevinNash just assumes that whatever applies to him applies to everyone else, too.
Yeah, I knew that. I was just going with the more subtle rhetorical question rather than your "off the turnbuckle chair to the head" style. ;-)
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course.
The average wait time in a US ER is 3 hours 42 minutes, boy-o.
And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
AGAIN, the average is 4.5 weeks, and even that's misleading; many common procedures have non-existent wait times. The average is consistently being held up by a relatively small number of complicated procedures that address non-life-threatening issues which relatively few doctors are specialized in.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
I dislocated my shoulder in High School. I'm not sure how long I was waiting, but it was a long ass time for a very simple procedure. Then, I had to have X-rays taken. While it was still separated I had to move it all around and hold it in a variety of terribly painful positions. Then, after atleast 2 hours of all this bullshit, the doctor comes out, gives me some morphine and pops it back in place. The actual popping took about 2 minutes (and only because he decided to be all elaborate about it).
I asked him "Why the fuck couldn't you have done that an hour ago?" (morphine speaking, but I would have thought that regardless).
My point is this- I had to wait almost as long or as long as anyone in Canada probably would've, I got charged an assload, and it was a simple procedure that got fretted over to no point.
From what I'm reading here, a Canuck doc would've looked at me askance, pulled my arm in the proper way and sent me home. I would've been extremely happy with that. Especially if I hadn't had to have paid for this "premium" treatment.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Because walking around with severe pain for a month and destroying your liver due to daily intake of painkillers is totally cool since you're not dying.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Because walking around with severe pain for a month and destroying your liver due to daily intake of painkillers is totally cool since you're not dying.
Equally crappy health-care for everyone!
So wait since Canada doesn't have enough doctors which raises wait times, socialized health care doesn't work?
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Hahahahhhahahahahha
Yes
*guffaw*
Triage is such a socialist thing.
In America, I hear there's one ER doctor for every citizen. Triage is unheard of
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
I dislocated my shoulder in High School. I'm not sure how long I was waiting, but it was a long ass time for a very simple procedure. Then, I had to have X-rays taken. While it was still separated I had to move it all around and hold it in a variety of terribly painful positions. Then, after atleast 2 hours of all this bullshit, the doctor comes out, gives me some morphine and pops it back in place. The actual popping took about 2 minutes (and only because he decided to be all elaborate about it).
I asked him "Why the fuck couldn't you have done that an hour ago?" (morphine speaking, but I would have thought that regardless).
My point is this- I had to wait almost as long or as long as anyone in Canada probably would've, I got charged an assload, and it was a simple procedure that got fretted over to no point.
From what I'm reading here, a Canuck doc would've looked at me askance, pulled my arm in the proper way and sent me home. I would've been extremely happy with that. Especially if I hadn't had to have paid for this "premium" treatment.
The reasons the ER's suck so much ass is because they have to treat everybody regardless of whether they can pay or not. It's basically a socialist free for all. As I said when cost is not an issue then resources become one.
The last time I went to an ER I had to same experience. The waiting room was filled with a bunch of morons who called an ambulance because their baby was crying or who had scraped their knee and had never heard of a band-aid. There was also some homeless schlep lying in the corner. He was apparently a regular who went there nightly.
Since none of these dregs had to pay real live money to get healthcare they decided to waste everyone's time at the ER instead of putting an ice pack on their pretend injury and staying home.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Because walking around with severe pain for a month and destroying your liver due to daily intake of painkillers is totally cool since you're not dying.
Equally crappy health-care for everyone!
So wait since Canada doesn't have enough doctors which raises wait times, socialized health care doesn't work?
They don't have enough doctors because they all came to the united states where they actually make a good living.
The reasons the ER's suck so much ass is because they have to treat everybody regardless of whether they can pay or not. It's basically a socialist free for all. As I said when cost is not an issue then resources become one.
The last time I went to an ER I had to same experience. The waiting room was filled with a bunch of morons who called an ambulance because their baby was crying or who had scraped their knee and had never heard of a band-aid. There was also some homeless schlep lying in the corner. He was apparently a regular who went there nightly.
Since none of these dregs had to pay real live money to get healthcare they decided to waste everyone's time at the ER instead of putting an ice pack on their pretend injury and staying home.
Oh, you must go to that hospital all the other libertarians go to.
Today I walked into the doctors' on my lunch break and asked for an appointment. They had a slot free at 3.50 pm. I went back at 3.30 pm and was seen by a doctor at 3.45 pm. I walked out five minutes later with six months' worth of the pill for a grand total of $0.
I will miss the NHS; been nothing but good to me.
Want to know why it cost you 0 dollars? Because your pharmaceutical industry is subsidized by the U.S. one. A majority of drugs are produced by American pharmaceutical firms, which spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a drug FDA approved and ready. They then only have a few years to make up the costs because of patents-->generic drugs are then made and sold throughout Europe so they can have their 10 price limits or "free" drugs. Europe used to have a vibrant pharmaceutical industry but it has diminished because of government regulation/loss of profit motivation.
And "wait times" is used wrong all the time. You are right when you say that making an appointment and seeing a doctor isn't going to be much different between private vs. socialized medicine. The real issue is wait times for surgery and major procedures (chemo etc.). Wait times for Americans who can afford it are practically nonexistent except for procedures that require a donor. On the other hand socialized countries often have to wait 6 months to 2 years for most major procedures, which is why middle class and wealthy canadians come to America for many procedures.
Katholic on
0
Options
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
The last time I went to an ER I had to same experience. The waiting room was filled with a bunch of morons who called an ambulance because their baby was crying or who had scraped their knee and had never heard of a band-aid. There was also some homeless schlep lying in the corner. He was apparently a regular who went there nightly.
Since none of these dregs had to pay real live money to get healthcare they decided to waste everyone's time at the ER instead of putting an ice pack on their pretend injury and staying home.
Which part of "triage" are you not getting?
If someone comes in and says, "I scraped my knee," assuming they're not told to gtfo, they will sit in the ER until every person with something more serious has been treated first. In a triage, they basically take the most pressing issue in the waiting room at the time and treat him. I mean, figure that 90% of the nation has health coverage, and so - unless you're assuming that people without health care are more likely to stab themselves in the eye, or whatever - at least 90% of the people in the ER are able to pay by some means. Which means that your argument about how ERs are clogged because nobody has insurance is fucking retarded.
If you went to the ER and had to wait for twelve hours, it means either you went when there was a horde of people getting seriously injured, or you yourself went for a stupid reason.
Oh, also, ER visits generally aren't free. And when they are, it's usually on the condition that something is actually wrong with you. In other words, if you go to the ER because you bumped your toe, they will charge you up the ass for it.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
0
Options
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Wait times for Americans who can afford it are practically nonexistent except for procedures that require a donor. On the other hand socialized countries often have to wait 6 months to 2 years for most major procedures, which is why middle class and wealthy canadians come to America for many procedures.
Depends. My wife needed to have minor wrist surgery to have a painful cyst removed, and it took months to go through the GP -> specialist -> schedule an appointment -> have the surgery process.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course.
The average wait time in a US ER is 3 hours 42 minutes, boy-o.
And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
AGAIN, the average is 4.5 weeks, and even that's misleading; many common procedures have non-existent wait times. The average is consistently being held up by a relatively small number of complicated procedures that address non-life-threatening issues which relatively few doctors are specialized in.
I guess I'm a bit less dumb now. But still, don't you think it's unnaceptable that a few specialized operations have waiting line of many months?
And the problem isn't just a lack of doctors. In Quebec at least there's a definite lack of staff in the hospitals, like nurses. I have a friend nurse that basically pulls crazy hours on most weeks because there just isn't enough nurses to cover all the shifts. There's also crappy stuff like having hospitalized patients resting in hallways because there's not enough rooms for everyone.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Because walking around with severe pain for a month and destroying your liver due to daily intake of painkillers is totally cool since you're not dying.
Equally crappy health-care for everyone!
So wait since Canada doesn't have enough doctors which raises wait times, socialized health care doesn't work?
They don't have enough doctors because they all came to the united states where they actually make a good living.
I don't think it's the Canadian UHC's fault that doctors in America make obscene amounts of money because of your Money > People system.
Indeed. Once I get out of school I'm going to have to pay for my prescriptions. All five of them.
I'm going to Canada.
Prescriptions aren't free here. You'd have to pay or find a job with a health plan.
The free things are doctor's vists, surgery and the like. When I had my appendix out this summer the only thing I had to pay for was a semi-private room (which my work health care covered). If I needed drugs afterwards I would have to pay or get work to cover me.
Yeah, but isn't it easier to get an appropriate health plan there? That's what I was told.
And "wait times" is used wrong all the time. You are right when you say that making an appointment and seeing a doctor isn't going to be much different between private vs. socialized medicine. The real issue is wait times for surgery and major procedures (chemo etc.). Wait times for Americans who can afford it are practically nonexistent except for procedures that require a donor. On the other hand socialized countries often have to wait 6 months to 2 years for most major procedures, which is why middle class and wealthy canadians come to America for many procedures.
Bullshit. Median wait time here, from first booking an appointment with an oncologist to referral by the oncologist to chemo to receiving chemo is 2 weeks.
Is it too much to ask that people in this thread not pull random numbers out of their fucking ass?
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course.
The average wait time in a US ER is 3 hours 42 minutes, boy-o.
And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
AGAIN, the average is 4.5 weeks, and even that's misleading; many common procedures have non-existent wait times. The average is consistently being held up by a relatively small number of complicated procedures that address non-life-threatening issues which relatively few doctors are specialized in.
I guess I'm a bit less dumb now. But still, don't you think it's unnaceptable that a few specialized operations have waiting line of many months?
You know what the big three wait times are?
Knee replacement, hip replacement, and cataract surgery. They're all up in the 9 -12 month range.
You know why the wait lists are so long? Because they're things that lots of old people need (high demand, but low priority), they aren't life threatening(low priority), and they're not considered cutting edge or a sexy specialization for doctors (low supply).
So I guess what you need to do is go tell med students that they need to be fair and specialize in low priority gruntwork.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Because walking around with severe pain for a month and destroying your liver due to daily intake of painkillers is totally cool since you're not dying.
Equally crappy health-care for everyone!
So wait since Canada doesn't have enough doctors which raises wait times, socialized health care doesn't work?
They don't have enough doctors because they all came to the united states where they actually make a good living.
Doctors are among the highest-paid professionals in this country you right-wing fuckwit
Azio on
0
Options
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
And "wait times" is used wrong all the time. You are right when you say that making an appointment and seeing a doctor isn't going to be much different between private vs. socialized medicine. The real issue is wait times for surgery and major procedures (chemo etc.). Wait times for Americans who can afford it are practically nonexistent except for procedures that require a donor. On the other hand socialized countries often have to wait 6 months to 2 years for most major procedures, which is why middle class and wealthy canadians come to America for many procedures.
Bullshit. Median wait time here, from first booking an appointment with an oncologist to referral by the oncologist to chemo to receiving chemo is 2 weeks.
Is it too much to ask that people in this thread not pull random numbers out of their fucking ass?
Can you just make an appointment with an onc there, or do you have to be referred to one by a GP first? I'd imagine that to be the case, since a GP would have to tell the person, "Huh, maybe you have cancer." How much time does that add?
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I... I've been to a hospital once as an adult here in socialist Sweden. I made an appointment on a monday and went there on the tuesday and had an ingrown toenail fixed for free. So I guess I don't have much say in the matter. But that one time the service was fast and uh, free.:oops:
Zzulu on
0
Options
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Doctors are among the highest-paid professionals in this country you right-wing fuckwit
Well, that's just because your socialisms has driven all the wages way down to the point where the $5/hr that doctors make seems like a lot of dough.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Well, if you think it's slow in the US, come and see how it is in Canada. If you go to an ER or a medical clinic waiting for 2-3 hours or more in the waiting room is pretty commonplace, unless your life is at risk of course. And specialized treatments or operations for non life-threatening issues can have waiting times of multiple months, even sometimes close to a whole year.
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Because walking around with severe pain for a month and destroying your liver due to daily intake of painkillers is totally cool since you're not dying.
Equally crappy health-care for everyone!
Woah, are you capable of thinking?
Wait-times exist because there is higher demand for services than doctors available. Would you prefer if it was the other way around and there were far more doctors than people needed? Because that would be ungodly expensive for a socialist system to pay for, and surprise surprise, you would probably then be ranting about the innefficiencies of socialist systems.
To have no wait-times, you need to have doctors all the time idle ready to serve people who come. Wait-times also serve as an implicit cost that must be paid to access medicine, most people willing to wait 3-4 hours to see a doctor actually have an issue. The implicit cost is one that anyone at any level of poverty or wealth should be able to afford.
Honestly, as a Canadian, I prefer knowing that our healthcare system is relatively efficiently run, secure in the knowledge that if my life is threatened by anything I will be able to access the healthcare quickly enough to save my life, or live unimpaired, full-knowing that if I need a specialist surgery to increase my quality of life I will need to wait months for it, as resources are instead distributed to take of people whose lives hang in the balance.
Of course I'm not sure if you would be able to understand that, as your political philosophy seems to declare that you usually don't think of anyone beyond yourself.
Of course you'd probably never be able to commit to that,
The last time I went to an ER I had to same experience. The waiting room was filled with a bunch of morons who called an ambulance because their baby was crying or who had scraped their knee and had never heard of a band-aid. There was also some homeless schlep lying in the corner. He was apparently a regular who went there nightly.
Since none of these dregs had to pay real live money to get healthcare they decided to waste everyone's time at the ER instead of putting an ice pack on their pretend injury and staying home.
Which part of "triage" are you not getting?
If someone comes in and says, "I scraped my knee," assuming they're not told to gtfo, they will sit in the ER until every person with something more serious has been treated first. In a triage, they basically take the most pressing issue in the waiting room at the time and treat him. I mean, figure that 90% of the nation has health coverage, and so - unless you're assuming that people without health care are more likely to stab themselves in the eye, or whatever - at least 90% of the people in the ER are able to pay by some means. Which means that your argument about how ERs are clogged because nobody has insurance is fucking retarded.
If you went to the ER and had to wait for twelve hours, it means either you went when there was a horde of people getting seriously injured, or you yourself went for a stupid reason.
Oh, also, ER visits generally aren't free. And when they are, it's usually on the condition that something is actually wrong with you. In other words, if you go to the ER because you bumped your toe, they will charge you up the ass for it.
They are still taking up resources for check in procedures. It took me almost an hour to talk to the receptionist because I was sitting behind people with crying babies. Also, people who are carted in on an ambulance are given priority no matter what even if they don't need it.
They also ask you what your "pain level" happens to be to determine your priority. Most people lie and just say 10 since that ensures treatment ASAP.
In the United States they usually don't send you away for any reason because if they assume one thing and tell you to gtfo and there is legitimately something wrong with you they are looking at 2 years in court. They generally can't make a call unless a doctor actually looks at you since he's supposedly the only person qualified to determine this. That takes up more resources.
They might bill these people but they are still not obligated to pay. They can come back in a month and do the exact same thing and still escape payment. This is part of the reason why ER's are going bankrupt.
It all comes down to cost. If people don't have to pay for something they are generally going to exploit it.
Note despite my ranting I don't believe the health care system in the United States is perfect and I realize part of the problem with the ER's is they are going bankrupt specifically because there is no money set aside to keep them running. However, the OP mentioned that wait times in the US are just as bad as in single payer systems and I pointed out that isn't the case.
The suggested solution people have around here of turning our health care system into a giant HMO is totally insane.
Posts
That's what everyone says, but according to stats canada, the wait times for non-emergency surgery is 4-1/2 weeks on average.
took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like rootbeer
Of course, this means that those who use the insurance least don't bother getting it. Which, of course, drives up costs from insurance companies. Which then prices further people out of the market. Ad nauseum.
Hey, it's a good thing that nobody said anything even sort of like that in here, huh?
Here we have universal healthcare, with the option of private cover.
It works fairly well.
Now I am in the army. If I want to see a doctor, its about a 30min wait on average, I get all my drugs just handed to me with handwritten instructions, and if I need a bed in the military hospital (had a chest infection) it was there for me immediately.
Now if only we could scale that up :P
It's expensive enough that even young and healthy folks who could pretty painlessly afford might choose not to. I mean, would you rather drop a couple hundred a month on health insurance you'll likely never use? Or drop it on video games or dinner out or vacations or something? For a whole lot of people, the first choice sounds kinda lame.
But then is it fair to blame the entire system for sucking if these people didn't feel the need to get insurance and ended up screwed because something happened to them?
I mean, should we make insurance mandatory but not paid for by the government, so that people with alternative priorities are forced to rethink those priorities? In my state, for example, car insurance is required if you want to drive a car. Should health insurance be required if you want to, I don't know, live?
Edit: Please note that I am not being sarcastic or facetious, I am genuinely trying to puzzle through this issue.
Perhaps if people like that made up the majority of the uninsured, but they don't. There is a very large number of people who genuinely want insurance and cannot reasonably afford to get it, or who want good insurance and have to settle for shitty insurance.
The 40 million number that gets bandied about is heavily inflated and misrepresented, but that doesn't mean there's not a serious problem. Especially given that the majority of people who are insured are only so because their jobs offer insurance. This trend has all sorts of negative effects, and not even just pertaining to health care. For example, it makes employment at small businesses less desirable, because small businesses can't typically offer the same benefits as massive corporations can. It makes the employment market, in general, less liquid, because people are terrified of being without insurance and so don't want to risk quitting a job they don't like.
I got scheduled for a non-emergency surgery less than a month from when I saw the doc. This was 3 days ago in Newfoundland, where our Health Care system is in dire straits.
While our system is not perfect by any means, people still fall through cracks and wait for way longer than they should for important ailments, I do think that some of the waiting times proposed to 'counter' UHC are exaggerated just a bit.
Besides, this is why God invented Medians.
It's faster because I have insurance, call a doctor that is in my PPO network (about 90% of them) and find a doctor that will take me as soon as possible. When one doctor says they can't get me in tomorrow then I keep calling doctors in my PPO network until I find one who can. This probably takes a whopping 20 minutes of my valuable time.
When my foot hurts I call a podiatrist and not a general practice physician since I know what a podiatrist is and I wasn't a fuck-wit when I signed up for healthcare at my work and wisely chose PPO care over the HMO option. It cost me all of 5 extra dollars a month and lets me see pretty much any doctor I want whenever I want.
I guess if you're a moron who doesn't know how to use a physician directory and doesn't know the difference between and HMO and PPO you will have problems getting healthcare in the United States.
Does every employer provide both HMO and PPO options? Just curious, because I don't remember really having any choice at the last civilian job I had that offered a health plan.
But yeah, I'm sure it's just the fact that people are morons. :roll:
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
Sigh. Again. It's called Triage. If your not dying, you can wait behind the people who ARE.
And wait times, as was stated earlier, are on average 4.5 weeks.
The average wait time in a US ER is 3 hours 42 minutes, boy-o.
AGAIN, the average is 4.5 weeks, and even that's misleading; many common procedures have non-existent wait times. The average is consistently being held up by a relatively small number of complicated procedures that address non-life-threatening issues which relatively few doctors are specialized in.
I dislocated my shoulder in High School. I'm not sure how long I was waiting, but it was a long ass time for a very simple procedure. Then, I had to have X-rays taken. While it was still separated I had to move it all around and hold it in a variety of terribly painful positions. Then, after atleast 2 hours of all this bullshit, the doctor comes out, gives me some morphine and pops it back in place. The actual popping took about 2 minutes (and only because he decided to be all elaborate about it).
I asked him "Why the fuck couldn't you have done that an hour ago?" (morphine speaking, but I would have thought that regardless).
My point is this- I had to wait almost as long or as long as anyone in Canada probably would've, I got charged an assload, and it was a simple procedure that got fretted over to no point.
From what I'm reading here, a Canuck doc would've looked at me askance, pulled my arm in the proper way and sent me home. I would've been extremely happy with that. Especially if I hadn't had to have paid for this "premium" treatment.
Triage results when there are not enough resources to meet the demand of people who need treatment. These people are put into a queue like lemmings. This happens because socialism doesn't work and when cost is not an issue resources become one.
Because walking around with severe pain for a month and destroying your liver due to daily intake of painkillers is totally cool since you're not dying.
Equally crappy health-care for everyone!
So wait since Canada doesn't have enough doctors which raises wait times, socialized health care doesn't work?
Hahahahhhahahahahha
Yes
*guffaw*
Triage is such a socialist thing.
In America, I hear there's one ER doctor for every citizen. Triage is unheard of
The reasons the ER's suck so much ass is because they have to treat everybody regardless of whether they can pay or not. It's basically a socialist free for all. As I said when cost is not an issue then resources become one.
The last time I went to an ER I had to same experience. The waiting room was filled with a bunch of morons who called an ambulance because their baby was crying or who had scraped their knee and had never heard of a band-aid. There was also some homeless schlep lying in the corner. He was apparently a regular who went there nightly.
Since none of these dregs had to pay real live money to get healthcare they decided to waste everyone's time at the ER instead of putting an ice pack on their pretend injury and staying home.
They don't have enough doctors because they all came to the united states where they actually make a good living.
Oh, you must go to that hospital all the other libertarians go to.
Want to know why it cost you 0 dollars? Because your pharmaceutical industry is subsidized by the U.S. one. A majority of drugs are produced by American pharmaceutical firms, which spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a drug FDA approved and ready. They then only have a few years to make up the costs because of patents-->generic drugs are then made and sold throughout Europe so they can have their 10 price limits or "free" drugs. Europe used to have a vibrant pharmaceutical industry but it has diminished because of government regulation/loss of profit motivation.
And "wait times" is used wrong all the time. You are right when you say that making an appointment and seeing a doctor isn't going to be much different between private vs. socialized medicine. The real issue is wait times for surgery and major procedures (chemo etc.). Wait times for Americans who can afford it are practically nonexistent except for procedures that require a donor. On the other hand socialized countries often have to wait 6 months to 2 years for most major procedures, which is why middle class and wealthy canadians come to America for many procedures.
Which part of "triage" are you not getting?
If someone comes in and says, "I scraped my knee," assuming they're not told to gtfo, they will sit in the ER until every person with something more serious has been treated first. In a triage, they basically take the most pressing issue in the waiting room at the time and treat him. I mean, figure that 90% of the nation has health coverage, and so - unless you're assuming that people without health care are more likely to stab themselves in the eye, or whatever - at least 90% of the people in the ER are able to pay by some means. Which means that your argument about how ERs are clogged because nobody has insurance is fucking retarded.
If you went to the ER and had to wait for twelve hours, it means either you went when there was a horde of people getting seriously injured, or you yourself went for a stupid reason.
Oh, also, ER visits generally aren't free. And when they are, it's usually on the condition that something is actually wrong with you. In other words, if you go to the ER because you bumped your toe, they will charge you up the ass for it.
Depends. My wife needed to have minor wrist surgery to have a painful cyst removed, and it took months to go through the GP -> specialist -> schedule an appointment -> have the surgery process.
I guess I'm a bit less dumb now. But still, don't you think it's unnaceptable that a few specialized operations have waiting line of many months?
And the problem isn't just a lack of doctors. In Quebec at least there's a definite lack of staff in the hospitals, like nurses. I have a friend nurse that basically pulls crazy hours on most weeks because there just isn't enough nurses to cover all the shifts. There's also crappy stuff like having hospitalized patients resting in hallways because there's not enough rooms for everyone.
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
I don't think it's the Canadian UHC's fault that doctors in America make obscene amounts of money because of your Money > People system.
Yeah, but isn't it easier to get an appropriate health plan there? That's what I was told.
Bullshit. Median wait time here, from first booking an appointment with an oncologist to referral by the oncologist to chemo to receiving chemo is 2 weeks.
Is it too much to ask that people in this thread not pull random numbers out of their fucking ass?
You know what the big three wait times are?
Knee replacement, hip replacement, and cataract surgery. They're all up in the 9 -12 month range.
You know why the wait lists are so long? Because they're things that lots of old people need (high demand, but low priority), they aren't life threatening(low priority), and they're not considered cutting edge or a sexy specialization for doctors (low supply).
So I guess what you need to do is go tell med students that they need to be fair and specialize in low priority gruntwork.
Can you just make an appointment with an onc there, or do you have to be referred to one by a GP first? I'd imagine that to be the case, since a GP would have to tell the person, "Huh, maybe you have cancer." How much time does that add?
Well, that's just because your socialisms has driven all the wages way down to the point where the $5/hr that doctors make seems like a lot of dough.
Woah, are you capable of thinking?
Wait-times exist because there is higher demand for services than doctors available. Would you prefer if it was the other way around and there were far more doctors than people needed? Because that would be ungodly expensive for a socialist system to pay for, and surprise surprise, you would probably then be ranting about the innefficiencies of socialist systems.
To have no wait-times, you need to have doctors all the time idle ready to serve people who come. Wait-times also serve as an implicit cost that must be paid to access medicine, most people willing to wait 3-4 hours to see a doctor actually have an issue. The implicit cost is one that anyone at any level of poverty or wealth should be able to afford.
Honestly, as a Canadian, I prefer knowing that our healthcare system is relatively efficiently run, secure in the knowledge that if my life is threatened by anything I will be able to access the healthcare quickly enough to save my life, or live unimpaired, full-knowing that if I need a specialist surgery to increase my quality of life I will need to wait months for it, as resources are instead distributed to take of people whose lives hang in the balance.
Of course I'm not sure if you would be able to understand that, as your political philosophy seems to declare that you usually don't think of anyone beyond yourself.
Of course you'd probably never be able to commit to that,
They are still taking up resources for check in procedures. It took me almost an hour to talk to the receptionist because I was sitting behind people with crying babies. Also, people who are carted in on an ambulance are given priority no matter what even if they don't need it.
They also ask you what your "pain level" happens to be to determine your priority. Most people lie and just say 10 since that ensures treatment ASAP.
In the United States they usually don't send you away for any reason because if they assume one thing and tell you to gtfo and there is legitimately something wrong with you they are looking at 2 years in court. They generally can't make a call unless a doctor actually looks at you since he's supposedly the only person qualified to determine this. That takes up more resources.
They might bill these people but they are still not obligated to pay. They can come back in a month and do the exact same thing and still escape payment. This is part of the reason why ER's are going bankrupt.
It all comes down to cost. If people don't have to pay for something they are generally going to exploit it.
Note despite my ranting I don't believe the health care system in the United States is perfect and I realize part of the problem with the ER's is they are going bankrupt specifically because there is no money set aside to keep them running. However, the OP mentioned that wait times in the US are just as bad as in single payer systems and I pointed out that isn't the case.
The suggested solution people have around here of turning our health care system into a giant HMO is totally insane.