Why you folks continue to tell the world you have the best health care system in the world continues to amaze me
I recently had a minor stroke on my left arm and hand
I went to emergency, and after being lectured about not coming sooner these events followed
I was given an X-ray, and put on the list for follow up by a larger hospital
I was given a time, the following morning to show up that day for more follow up procedure. Then, after the follow up at the hospital, had a doctor visit me, explain what they knew thus far, was asked to follow with an office visit, after receiving an ultra sound procedure
I had the Ultra sound today and my follow up doctor visit will be next week. My stroke was not serious but was investigated as if it was serious, until it was deemed not so serious.
I also, last week fell and hurt my wrist. I continued to drive the tractor that afternoon, but finally the pain was too much
Off to emergency again we went, I had my wrist X-rayed and was told to follow up at the larger hospital. The next day I was called and given a date for a surgeon to look at my X-ray and in the mean time to go back to emergency for a splint, which cost me 30.00.
As it turned out the X-ray and doctor visit for my wrist was this morning and the surgeon deemed my wrist injury, was not in need of surgery but to continue with the splint, on my wrist, plus some excercises so my fingers would not stiffen up.
This afternoon as luck would have it was my date for the ultra sound
So I did all of that follow up today, my stroke and injury was quickly deemed not serious, thus my follow up was a week later. Now I have one vist left for my minor stroke, after the doctor views my ultra sound.
I spent a total of 30.00 for this health care
What would that cost in your country??? Would you consider the cost for follow up X-rays and ultra sound plus a total of 4 doctor visits in the two hospitals.
You have one hospital that has sued 36,000 different individuals for payment. You attach liens on wages, property, bank accounts etc. for payment
The CEO of this hospital makes 750,000/yr plus bonus
The hospital has investments of 1 bln. This highway robbery cost is all totally legal. In fact when are you told the cost before any procedure. What do you do if you have a broken leg.
A friend of mine broke his wrist in Maryland while unloading his trailer. He was told a wrist cast would cost 12,000.00. He was smart to ask 1st. He drove home with a broken wrist, to avoid the cost. [that wrist had to do the shifting of gears, which is considerable shifting in an 18 wheeler, coming out of Maryland]. Needless to say the pain was considerable, and possibly a danger to others on the road.
Aren't you folks really proud of your health care.???
According to one study fully 66% of all BK in the USA starts with a hospital visit. 100,000.00 plus is common for any kind of surgery. 12,000 for a simple wrist cast. plus additional cost for pain pills.
If I lived in the USA and at my age, I would seriously consider not owning any assets. I suppose I would have to trust a family person to dole out my weekly allowance. Sure would hope the person, holding my assets in a trust fund, would agree if I wanted to buy a new truck.
Golly, who would be the registered owner of the truck??? The trust fund?? I dunno
We buy health care insur, plus we have our usual health care card, when ever we cross into your country.
Cost more every yr as we get older.
And yet Mick Jagger, and other wealthy people, come to the US for treatment all the time. Why would they do that when they already have socialized medicine in their home countries?
I would guess Mick Jagger can do most anything he wants
Mike Jagger is cherry picking and you know this
You do know that some people choose between drugs and food
It is the middle class that is not being well served and you also know this
You must really like your system, if it is good enough for mick and you have the money Mick does
You know you are a heart beat away from a heart attack
We all are
Studies show that worry about such major hospital bills such as heart attack which any one of us could have contribute to more sickness in the USA than other western countries,
I suppose worry could make some people feel sick and it seems your country qualifies in the sickness worry dept.
I don't ever worry about 100,000 hospital bills or even think about it, so that is one worry I don't have. My worries are more like: do I burn the garbage today or tomorrow. It's not windy today but I want to wash the truck. Will it be windy tomorrow??? Don't want to burn the work shop down, and too lazy to do both today..
That little diddy doo dop makes as much sense as your reply
Your claim was that we in the US are wrong when we say our healthcare is the best in the world. yet, it's the healthcare of choice for those who can afford it.
So, by your argument, oatmeal is a much better food than lobster..... Cost is not the best determination of quality. In the US, we don't have a quality issue, we have a cost issue. And for some reason that totally escapes me, a growing number of people seem to think the government is the best possible solution.
Government does not control cost with improvements to quality and efficiency. They control costs by rationing, which has become a huge problem with the healthcare in UK, the oldest single payer system in the world, and is a growing problem in the rest.
I will concede that overall, single payer is superior to what we have, thanks to the crony capitalism between big pharma, healthcare, insurance and government, but it's by far inferior to what we could have.
Purely anecdotal, but I question my chances of survival in my medical scrape earlier this year in a government managed healthcare system. Granted, it cost me and my insurance about 300k. But I'm here to talk about it.
Adding a reference. If you don't like this one, there are countless others.
"NICE". the name of the agency in charge of rationing in the UK stands for National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Ever notice when government attempts to put lipstick on it's assorted pigs, they come up with the "Nicest" names that generally mean the opposite of what they actually achieve. Refer to our "Affordable Health Care" (AHA) bill, AKA Obamacare.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2010-12-17/how-uk-rations-health-care
"We have a limited budget for health care, voted by Parliament every year, and we have to live within our means," said Michael Rawlins, chairman of a government agency called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
NICE decides which drugs and other treatments can be prescribed by NHS doctors.
NICE was created in 1999 to clarify the reasons why certain drugs are approved and others are rejected. "In the old days it used to be done in secret, behind closed doors, in smoke-filled rooms," Rawlins said. "Now it's explicit. Everybody knows what the rules are."
"We do recognize that the end of life is a very special time," Rawlins said. "[It] allows people to attend weddings, see a grandchild born, seek forgivenesses."
But he argued that if Britain spends a lot of money at the end of life, "we're going to have to deprive other people of cost-effective care." Rawlins said that might mean spending less money at the beginning of life -- and might result in a higher infant mortality rate."
How very very nice. Who wouldn't want some unelected government bureaucrat deciding which health treatment they deserved?
I read you loud and clear Wayne!
So MM, you are perfectly fine with some government drone somewhere deciding whether or not you deserve treatment.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
Tim,
You should reread our discussion.
You want to dwell on this being a private healthcare insurance vs government insurance issue............which is just a small part of the problem and what everybody else is looking at.
Our corrupt politicians want you to keep thinking this, including the hyper hypocrite Bernie Sanders who is for government healthcare.
Obama care/government healthcare is even more broken when our insanely corrupt FDA and politicians takes bribes, often in the form of legal contributions to allow the bribers to maintain high drug and medical costs.
ONLY GOVERNMENT can stop government corruption and force prices down.
Sadly, one thing this means is that politicians and government in the USA is more corrupt than most other countries in many realms, especially this one.
I read our discussion and I recall what was said.
Whether you talk about full government single payer, or partial government price control, you are not talking about a solution. Government price controls = rationing, in one form or another. That's the way it has always worked and the way it always will.
Government is largely responsible for the problems we face and their attempts at "fixing" them will only make it worse.
Tim,
From our previous discussion:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-u-s-pays-3-times-more-for-drugs/
"LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. prices for the world's 20 top-selling medicines are, on average, three times higher than in Britain, according to an analysis carried out for Reuters.
The 20 medicines, which together accounted for 15% of global pharmaceuticals spending in 2014, are a major source of profits for companies including AbbVie, AstraZeneca , Merck, Pfizer and Roche.
Researchers from Britain's University of Liverpool also found U.S. prices were consistently higher than in other European markets. Elsewhere, U.S. prices were six times higher than in Brazil and 16 times higher than the average in the lowest-price country, which was usually India.
The United States, which leaves pricing to market competition, has higher drug prices than other countries where governments directly or indirectly control medicine costs.
That makes it by far the most profitable market for pharmaceutical companies, leading to complaints that Americans are effectively subsidizing health systems elsewhere."
metmike: Facts are facts. This is not about private or government healthcare. Both will fail are failing catastrophically because health care insurance companies must pay these price gouging costs and pass them on, even if their profit margins were a bare minimum.
Politicians and the FDA don't want you to know this real reason because they get bribes(usually legal/lobby money) from drug companies and they personally, benefit from this arrangement.............screw the American people and make them think its the health insurance industry's fault.
Just so we're clear...I have never claimed that we in the US are not paying too much. That's been the starting point of just about every health care debate I've been part of.
It even appears we agree on the cause... Government and providers working together.
Where we disagree is on the solution.
You believe that the primary cause, Government, can now be the solution, in spite of a long history in many instances that indicate the contrary.
OTOH, I believe the solution involves far less government, which has a history of success.
I realize that we will never agree on some of this and was just responding to Wayne on the topic but always welcome your intelligent thoughts and am grateful for the many contributions on so many different things, most of which we do agree on and some of which, like economic numbers you share expertise generously that is beyond my ablility.
Tim said
"You believe that the primary cause, Government, can now be the solution, in spite of a long history in many instances that indicate the contrary.
OTOH, I believe the solution involves far less government, which has a history of success."
I'm in the same belief as Tim on this one. Nothing is ever free. I want control of my health destiny. I want to decide if I want better quality or cheaper price, or if I want to do something different. We need more choices that can only be delivered by competition. AKA a truly free market.
JMHO
Hi cutworm
Unfortunately, as in many times of our life what we want and what we get is two very different animals. I may be wrong but this is how I see your system looking in from the outside.
Until you actually have more competition between insur providers and until these same insur providers truly offer competition, you will be stuck with your existing system
As near as I can see there is no incentive for competition. The insur folks almost act as one big monopoly and the hospitals as legal highway robber, price fixers. 2000.00 for a 20.00 feeding tube?? Give me a break. The back office, or CEO [who knows??] must sit up nites thinking about the next price increase.
Not saying I know for sure but if it walks like a duck well???
True story:
I worked for a Co that sold Ag products. We had the worst product on the market bar none. But a shortage developed with the same raw material we all used
Our Co. was always the 1st to raise prices. And of course our retail price list made it's way into the competition offices. Lo and behold. We sold ziltch for about two weeks and then the competiton came out with an increase that was almost the same carbon copy, as our product line. So we sold based on the same price and the sales staff were under the gun to produce. A monopoly, maybe not, but there were only 3 of us selling this product, but it sure was very close to price fixing, separated by a mere two weeks and a couple minor items nobody bought.
I see much the same thing, only on a much larger scale.
The hospital has no incentive to offer cheaper service. The insur Co. has no incentive to offer cheaper insur. options.The industry is so big, who can do a start up and offer competition. The insur Co know they will get their share of the customer pie. So why lower prices
Everybody has an incentive to increase price, not lower price. And the BK rate increases as price goes up
Now that is not a system I would want, nor do I have any idea how it could be changed.
If it could be changed it would be changed. Your stuck with a very bad and costly health care system.
Quality may be good but who can afford all the legal highway robbery. Only the very rich and those who get free health care. That leaves about 50% plus with a bad system and no way to change the legal highway robbery, you will all need some day.
No wonder socialism has such a strong following among the many. Are we a socialist country. Not by a country mile if your Dems ever gain power.
I need hospitals and doctors, often, and I have no worry with walking into emergency with my problem, getting a flue shot or seeing my doctor on a regular basis or more often if I get sick. I don't abuse the system but I never have to worry about cost...My doctor even asks me if I want to see her more often, but I tell her I will, if the need arises. In the mean time use her time for those who have more need of her service. Actually she is from Illinios. USA
How interesing. My entire argument has been that our cost problem is directly due to a lack of competition in health care. And that lack of competition is direclty due to crony capitalism.
You folks could debate health insur until the cows come home
What you need is an affordable solution
Most times when people come to an agreement. both sides think they gave some thing away. That is usually the best solution for both sides
You folks want it all, your way, every one of you, with no middle ground and that will never happen
I have read too many different view points to think you will ever come to an agreement
Would some body care to count the number of different ideas in this post alone??
Did anybody agree with anybody???
Might as well give it up and stop trying
Your doomed to high cost health care