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off shoot of the Ron Paul thread.....USA the worlds police force.....

  • #41
if you can come up with a system that actually works ill go for it but i have yet to see such a system actually work without killing the populous tax wise.

Finch as far as me saying screw the guy who falls on hard times, im not. i dontate time and money to service organizations and charities that work to help out such ppl. why? because ive seen those work. our government is good at making and keeping jobs and growing ever bigger. they are not very good at finding actual, workable solutions on large scales such as a nation wide health care plan. part of the problem is cause the US is to big. to much land area to cover, to many ppl involved. what would work better is break it down and have the states in charge....smaller numbers of ppl, smaller areas to cover. less ppl needed to make things work. more importantly when someone decides they are going to screw something up its FAR more easy to track down the person and hold them accountable for their actions. every time the schools here ask for more money through taxes i vote to give it to them, why? cause i know the school board and if they do stupid chit, i can inform them of their stupidity face to face. much easier to give up part of my pay check if i know who i can yell at when it comes down to it..........when ever im unhappy with the fish and game..........i know where to go and get the answers. when things go wrong i cant make the drive to DC to beotch at my congressman and president but i can make the 7 hour drive to talk with the state ppl in Helena who are the cause of the problem.

i have no problem increasing state governments but ill e damned if im for increasing federal government. there are 300 million ppl in the US, my vote dont mean squat........there are 950,000ish ppl in Montana.....not only does my vote count...its easy to be known at a state level. someone in LA or New York has no clue what its like to live in Montana, let aloe northeast Montana...........dont like them making desisions for me. less federal government is a good thing.
 
  • #42
You keep mentioning plans that kill the populous tax-wise. I keep trying to tell you that we spend more than anyone on the planet for health care. Every other system in the world costs less. Every single one of them! How is it any different if it comes off the paycheck or the tax bill? Either way we pay, and boy do we ever pay in the USA!

Capslock
 
  • #43
The quality of care isn't as good anywhere else though. The only reason are system is "bad" is because there is unequal access. We have the best trained doctors on the planet, and the best medical technology and rate of development in the world. Germany and Japan are pretty close in terms of med tech, but their doctors are not as good, especially as I mentioned earlier, German doctors, who are idiots.
 
  • #44
How would you measure or quantify that quality deficit? In most measures of mortality, we fail pretty badly. Many doctors from all over the world go to Universities here (we have the best Universities) so how could there be so much of a gap? But specifically, what facts can you produce to show that the quality of care is better here?

Capslock
 
  • #45
The reason there is a gap is because of unequal access, and the HUGE amount of working uninsured (which is entirely their fault). The government doesn't need to carry someone from cradle to grave, especially when that person is working, and especially when it must tax a large amount of citizens a considerable amount of money to cover one person.

Our quality of care is better because we have the most specialized and highly trained doctors in the world. People come to the US to get crap surgeries fixed they got for 40 bucks in Peru. Would you rather have some backwoods "doctor" in rural India operating on you, with tools that may not even be clean, and maybe 0 training, or would you rather a doctor who was trained in the US to do say...neuro-spine (which takes about 18 years)? The choice is clear, and obvious. Pick up a Popular Science and look were all the medical advances tech wise are coming from. Most are coming out of here, some from England. Germans are good at pharmaceuticals, but tech wise...they're better at making cars. If we could somehow have a system where there wasn't unequal access, but conditions were favorable for doctors (i.e., they were still allowed to make good money), we would far and away be number 1. The problem is thats not going to happen. Our doctors are trained longer and with better equipment than anywhere else. Educating a doctor costs thepublic about 1 million, and costs the doctor himself about $160,000, if not more. With the interest rates on that much money, the only way a doctor can ever afford to pay that off is by making $400k a year or whathaveyou. Socialized medicine could only work if we don't put as much into training doctors, which, as aforementioned, would make the quality of care plummet.
 
  • #46
That's still just anecdotal, PK. I want figures that show the quality of care is better in the USA than elsewhere. And I mean like Europe, not Peru. Real, first-world countries. Places like Scandinavia, where the care is excellent, the doctors are fantastic, and their standard of living is HIGHER than ours. Like I said, many of them went to school here.

And again, we pay MORE than they do. That "tax burden" is lower than our health insurance premiums. Our is the most wasteful system in the world because of the insurance industry in great part. Do away with them and we win two ways: Cheaper care and everyone is covered. It astounds me that people cling to our failed and wasteful private insurance model - I'm not talking about the doctors now, just the economic model to pay for it. It should be obvious that giving billions of dollars to an industry that seems to exist to deny payments is not the way to go about it - and I've shown the numbers to prove it.

Now, the challenge is still open - SHOW that the overall quality of care in the USA is better than elsewhere. With real facts and figures - things like infant mortality rates. It's a myth!

Capslock
 
  • #47
you want an example of the difference between a socialized health care system and ours? i live in BFE, we all agree on this correct? i have access to 5 MRI's and 7 CT scanners within 100 miles of me. do you have any clue how far you have to travel to find one in Canada? most of the decent sized population centers(say 20,000 ppl) do not have them. i got in an arguement over on a hunting forum with some canucks about their system versus ours....it flat out floored them to learn how easily i could get an MRI living where i do. most of them have had to travel long distances and had a weeks wait for something non life threatening like a fall that tweaked the knee.......with a lead foot i could have 3 in one day at 3 different hospitals.......thats the difference between the government pencil pushers running things and private organizations that actually understand supply and demand.
 
  • #48
I don't know about Canada's system, and don't recommend we use it. You could do just as boneheaded a socialized system as you can do a privatized system. Many systems that are "socialized" are a combination of public and private insurance, like Switzerlands. But look at the facts - the rest of the world does universal systems for a reason - they're far more efficient as an economic model for something that everyone needs. We're the only ones not doing it, and we have ridiculously many people without coverage, and we pay more than anyone else. With our University system and medical technologies, we could have the best quality in the world with the efficiency of a universal system. We all need health care in the end, so it's not like we're saving money by having people without insurance.

Capslock
 
  • #49
because i have yet to see anything run by the USA government run smoothly and efficiantly. especially something as large as a nation wide health care system. it would a a worthless hell hole of beurocracy inside 20 years.
 
  • #50
That’s not a reason - its an excuse. Don’t try to improve the system because we will inevitably screw it up because other countries are more "efficient" than ours?

There is nothing inherently better about their governments, there is no inherent flaw in ours that makes it “screw up” everything. I don’t see why we should trust private companies any more than they government because they exist to make money, and that and total coverage conflict. Private insurance organizations understand “supply and demand” very well – cut supply by restricting coverage so more money can stay in pocket. I dont trust the government to have our best interests out either, but, the two together might be better than one or the other on its own.
 
  • #51
The proof is in the product. Like you said, our universities/medical schools are the best in the world. Ergo, they produce the best doctors in the world. Sure, you could go find a list of countries with the "best" healthcare systems, but since they all factor in unequal coverage, the US is ranked low. If someone did a study only on the efficacy of new med tech, at what rate its being developed, and the competancy/knowledge of our doctors, we would be number #1, with a huge gap, then #2, etc. Yeah, the system is pretty decent in scandanavian countries, but they also pay 50% taxes, and cap doctor salaries. Doctors are in the top 3% of brainpower in the country....they're all smart enough to make a ton of money doing other jobs. If we had something like New Zealand, where there is a 50% tax, and doctor salaries are capped at 250k, how many people do you think would be doctors? Not very many....and there's already a shortage...
 
  • #52
That’s not a reason - its an excuse. Don’t try to improve the system because we will inevitably screw it up because other countries are more "efficient" than ours?

There is nothing inherently better about their governments, there is no inherent flaw in ours that makes it “screw up” everything. I don’t see why we should trust private companies any more than they government because they exist to make money, and that and total coverage conflict. Private insurance organizations understand “supply and demand” very well – cut supply by restricting coverage so more money can stay in pocket. I dont trust the government to have our best interests out either, but, the two together might be better than one or the other on its own.


it is a legitimate reason Finch. once we have a program going no matter if it f's up we cant get rid of it. everyone knows the welfare program is broken but we do nothing about it, we are paying into social security which we will never see, yet no one fixes it. if we bring in some sort of socialized medicine, and it doesnt work, no one is going to fix it, we will keep throwing money at it, hope the majority dont notice to bad but do nothing to fix the problems. show me that we can fix welfare so that we can get rid of 90% of the leeches, show me that we can fix social security so that im actually likely to see a return by the time im 65. THEN i might be interested at looking at some sort of socialized medicine program. Our government has a history of not fixing things to get rid of freeloaders because it might screw with there chances of getting re-elected. your right Caps i may be paying more for what im getting now but atleast i have options including one to completely opt out of paying any insurance at all. once we have a socialized medicine program i dont get to opt out. even if its not 100% socialized, and i choose to go with insurance, my taxes will still go up to pay for the program im not using.
 
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