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Icky wrote:QUOTE (Icky @ Jun 30 2011, 03:07 PM) How can you claim to be for small government when you are expanding governmental powers to two of the most private places a person has - their bedroom and in their doctor's office? We have folks like Bachman trying to tell doctors how they need to counsel pregnant women, which is profoundly disturbing.

Nice article Bard, and well said Icky.

Bard wrote:QUOTE (Bard @ Jun 30 2011, 03:10 PM) I agree. Currently we have SOME OF THE WORST HEALTHCARE IN THE WORLD and we PAY MORE THAN ALMOST ANYONE ELSE FOR IT. (This is fact. Google can show you cold, hard, factual numbers that rank the U.S. against other countries in almost any dataset you want to look at. They all say the same thing. We're being ripped off. Go look it up.)

The Insurance and Pharmaceutical cartels need to be drug out back and "pruned". The way they work now is simply highway robbery.

Hold up.

1) The US has the BEST healthcare in the world. Unfortunately it has poor preventative and routine healthcare... which leads to overall poorer health of the population. But when things get real bad we have amongst the best... a byproduct of our highly specialized medical force.

2) Our FFS system is so borked it isn't even funny. But the insurers are sorta doin their thing with the ACO style health plans. Keep in mind that the US is definitely NOT a market driven healthcare system. It is a bizarre amalgamation of communistic, socialistic, and capitalistic functions... needless to say it doesn't work in the slightest.

3) Certain non-profit healthcare systems are just as efficient and higher quality than other nations Socialized medicine. For instance, in California we have Kaiser Permanente, a few years back they did a study comparing Kaiser Permanente California against the British NHS. The result? Kaiser was more cost effective and had higher quality outcomes for their patients. They are a CLOSED SYSTEM health plan, their doctors work for the "insurer" much like in a national healthcare setting. This is the sort of direction that conventional carriers are attempting to go with the ACO style plans, however Republicans are complaining that this violates anti-trust laws (boo hoo, like Republicans give a flying ass about anti-trust laws).

4) That being said about 3, I would never personally use Kaiser. And that leads us to problem #4, Americans ABSOLUTELY HATE NOT HAVING CHOICE. Remember in the early 90s with the advent of the HMO? Remember that? Yeah health insurers were all gungho about controlling costs... and the public rebelled something terrible... the result? Insurers backed off and accepted the ludicrous increases that Hospitals and other providers have been demanding... because they are afraid of the backlash.

5) The US doesn't have the correct mentality or lifestyle to have a healthcare system like other nations. Americans are just culturally less healthy and hate being told what to do. Now this is all fine and dandy if Insurers only acted as catastrophic coverage (say you incur $10k of medical claims, then your "insurance" picks up the tab for the rest of the year). But that isn't what we have, we have HEALTH PLANS - markedly different than health insurance.

6) Obamacare does very little to alter the cost structure of US health insurance. However it does require small things like $0 preventative medicine and subsided coverage... the effect is that routine care will be more affordable which is a good thing. However it does almost nothing to actually reduce costs.

7) Pharma and Hospitals need to be re-banned from advertising or for going "doc to doc" to sell their wares. Anti-kickback laws need to be strengthened and enforced so that doctors will prescribe WHAT IS NEEDED instead of what makes them more money.

8) None of my suggestions will actually "fix" our system. Our system is unrepairable, the best we can try for is to bend the trend to near 0% and wait a decade or so so that we are in-line with other nations healthcare costs (which are themselves careening out of control at unsustainable trend level). The only difference is their starting $ is lower so it doesn't appear as bad... right now.

Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Jun 30 2011, 08:08 PM) Hold up.

1) The US has the BEST healthcare in the world.

BULL@#(!S. HERE. HAVE A REPORT BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

(Chart ripped from above, page 18)
Table 1. Overall efficiency in all WHO member states

1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 U.K.
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 U.A.E.
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 U.S.A.
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
40 Brunei Darussalam


I will admit however, that I SHOULD have clarified my statement with:

"SOME OF THE WORST HEALTHCARE IN THE PROSPEROUS, DEVELOPED WORLD"

We're number THIRTY-SEVEN!!! (Try not to suck any dicks on the way to the car!)

$#@!ing Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the U.A.E., Cyprus, Chile, Costa Rica, and OMAN $#@!ing beat us in quality AND WE PAY MORE.

Our health care costs TWO TO THREE TIMES MORE than NZ, Australia, Canada, the U.K. and Germany AND IT'S WORSE.


(edit -- removed the rest of the 191 countries on the list. I hate it when forums don't handle non-breaking spaces from a paste.)

people like cam are the reason we still have @#(!ty healthcare

iirc we have the best specialists and some excellent doctors, but our country as a whole is overpaying and undercovered

Bard wrote:QUOTE (Bard @ Jun 30 2011, 07:03 PM) Random misdirected stats

Hey Bard, wanna re-read what I said in statement #1?

No? Well that's fine, I'm glad you wasted your time showing me numbers I've already seen and have incorporated into my assessment.

I mean its REALLY sad when Broodwich actually reads something and has a more articulate response than you do.

Broodwich wrote:QUOTE (Broodwich @ Jul 1 2011, 09:09 AM) iirc we have the best specialists and some excellent doctors, but our country as a whole is overpaying and undercovered

Yes indeed, and like Camaro and I believe Mr C pointed out earlier when this was discussed, the mountains of money used on all things medical in the states has resulted in a lot of cutting edge medical research.

What cam is trying to say is that the US has a great healthcare system if you are wealthy. Unfortunately, for all the rest of us, we cant afford awesome doctors and tier one care.

I cant understand why people defend our crappy healthcare system by saying "hey if you are wealthy, the US healthcare system is great!" because it doesnt say a single damn meaningful thing about anything. It doesn't matter WHERE you live, if you are wealthy you can get great healthcare.

The meaningful discussion should be about what EVERYONE ELSE gets, which is crap.

Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Jul 1 2011, 02:09 AM) Hey Bard, wanna re-read what I said in statement #1?

No? Well that's fine, I'm glad you wasted your time showing me numbers I've already seen and have incorporated into my assessment.

I mean its REALLY sad when Broodwich actually reads something and has a more articulate response than you do.

Heh. Wow. That post ended up half-finished.

In all fairness, I didn't *actually* read it. I'd been up since the night before at that point and hit the first list item and my brain snapped.

I'm actually in full agreement with your post, I just run into WAY too many people who keep shouting "The U.S. is Best!" on every subject possible without actually looking at the facts.

In my exhaustion, I forgot that you actually have a brain.

My apologies, sir.

I feel that people never read my giant walls of texts and then take my first sentences out of context.

I'm a fan of making a statement, then tearing it apart and coming to a conclusion.

I guess I need to start with the conclusion so people don't rip into me.

Depends on how you define "best health care"

If you have $$ and you want the best treatment money can buy, you come to the US.

If you are an average citizen and just want to get treatment, well.. you're probably better off in europe or canada.