Do people 'deserve' universal health care?

Letter to The New York Times

To the Editor:

Advocating universal health care, Steven Safyer, M.D., hopes that "the next administration will see the wisdom of acting — not just talking — so Americans get the care they deserve." (Letters, Nov. 6)

What evidence is there that Americans do not now "get the care they deserve"? Material deserts are earned, not given by nature. In the case of health care, the fact that even POOR Americans consume other things so abundantly casts doubt on the supposition that this land is crowded with people who are denied health care that they deserve. Consider, for example, that today 80 percent of POOR households have air-conditioning (compared to only 36 percent of ALL households who had it in 1970); 75 percent of poor households today own a car, and 31 percent own two cars; the typical POOR American has more household living space than does the typical Parisian and Londoner; and nearly 80 percent of POOR American households have a VCR or DVD player.*

Someone who voluntarily purchases X instead of Y - where X is widely regarded as less vital than Y - cannot legitimately be said to deserve Y.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

* Robert E. Rector, "How Poor Are America's Poor?" Heritage Foundation, August 2007

Don Boudreaux is the Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University and a Business & Media Institute adviser.

Don Boudreaux sent this letter to NY Times, Obviously it was rejected.
But the letter raises serious issues.

Do American's really 'deserve' Universal Care, as was promised by President Obama during his campaign?

The difference between Europe and America in terms of 'living space' is purely a land thing. You quite simply have more space build on so you spread out your cities as much as possible. Unlike, for example, Amsterdam where you have buildings that are three stories or more tall but only have one room per floor (because you pay tax based on the building footprint not the number of floors).

From a purely humanitarian viewpoint: yes, all humans deserve free health care. I say this speaking as someone who has benefitted from it for all his life.

FRom a practical viewpoint... I think it is a more difficult proposition to achieve in real life. Our NHS is beleagured and underfunded at the moment and I cannot think how bad the American equivilent would be... probably too impractical to start off now....

From a purely humanitarian viewpoint: yes, all humans deserve free health care.

Is it really a Humanitarian point of view?

What is wrong if it is stated that Everyone is free and responsible for his actions. Nobody is obligated for any other body and every person has to earn his own living and securities By his own Hard-work Honestly?
It is true that there can surely be some very unfortunate cases who just cannot earn a good living for some reason or other. For that, voluntary charity is the answer.
But how Humanitarian is it to force a compulsory tax on all citizen to bear the Universal Healthcare security for others incuding his ownself?
I mean, the government won't be creating money, it will be created by the citizens, the Individual citizen.
It should be his freedom to chose whether to give a voluntary tax (or charity) to some Non-Governmental-organization, or a Governmental one, to provide health securities to the needies who need it genuinely. It should be his freedom if he Do not want to pay his earned money for such project.
Why should he be taxed under Compulsory taxation for such project which basically is not worthy to be supported.

Why is it, in USA, that if a person is poor, he mustn't have worked hard enough? Why is it that people in USA only "deserve" what they can pay for?

Why is it that the worth of a US citizen can be measured in dollars, but not in generosity or humanity?

No-one chooses to be poor or a burden on society (ok - a few exceptions, but the general assertion holds good), and it is callous in the extreme, to my way of thinking, to allow an unfortunate person to suffer more when is is within my power to help him.

Thank you, MMI. I was groping for the words but you've hit the nail on the head.

Why is it, in USA, that if a person is poor, he mustn't have worked hard enough? Why is it that people in USA only "deserve" what they can pay for?


So you want it to be like canada? where people prays that USA may not start Universal health care programe?
There is a report on Canadian health care system
Canadians urging Americans to not to Apply Universal Health Care System
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=H4u5x9XAsAs&

Health care isn't a natural resource floating around accessible to everyone -- it's not air, water, whatever. In order for someone to be provided health care, someone else has to do something -- there's a cost involved in that, either the time of the health care provider or money to compensate for that time.

The problem with "universal" health care is that people don't make that connection or understand the implication. It means the police-power of government, the government's unique power of acceptable lethal force, must be used to take from one citizen and give to another -- either by forcing the health-care provider to use his/her time or to take money from someone else to compensate.

I think I'm a generous person. My family gives quite a bit to charity -- more than Joe Biden does, despite the fact that he makes tens of times more than I do. I might donate to someone who needed an operation they couldn't afford or to an organization that provides health care to those who don't have insurance and can't afford it -- but I have a significant objection to the government using its power of lethal force to threaten me with imprisonment or death so they can take money I earned and plan to spend on my family for the benefit of others. That should be my decision.

Found this post by a 31 year old female in the United State, afterrding her short but specific rational of Universal Health care it made sense, as she says
She can go 2 ways, as a taxpayer have other pay for her needed surgery, recover and go back to work because her private insurance is to expensive OR l do hnot have the surgery, remain disbaubled and lve off th system the rst of her life

her are her exact words:

I am a 31 year old American female that has been working since I was 14 years old. I have a family and a decent job, but my insurance is astronomical in cost and doesn't' even cover everything. I am facing the possibility of having to have surgery to remove a growth deformity in the heel of my feet. If I don't have it done, I will do more damage to my tendons and ligaments and ultimately end up disabled. I want to have the surgery so that I won't have to face disability and that I will be able to work, but sadly my insurance will not cover the surgery. So here I am at 31, now facing the fact that I might have to apply for disability because insurance is outrageous.


Now tell me, and don't forget I am a taxpayer too, would you rather help pay for my insurance so that I can have surgery and go back to work, or would you rather me end up on disability, then on public assistance and food stamps for the rest of my life?
Which makes more sense?

My personal view is that health care should be available to everybody - irrespective of whether they can afford to pay for it or not. Our Natioanl Health Service in the UK caters for that although, as fetishdj says, "Our NHS is beleagured and underfunded at the moment"

From another personal perspective, if I'd had to pay for the treatment and medications I've received over the last 2 year, I'd have gone up in smoke out of the crematorium chimney a year ago!!

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Originally Posted by Muskan

From a purely humanitarian viewpoint: yes, all humans deserve free health care.

Is it really a Humanitarian point of view?

What is wrong if it is stated that Everyone is free and responsible for his actions. Nobody is obligated for any other body and every person has to earn his own living and securities By his own Hard-work Honestly?
It is true that there can surely be some very unfortunate cases who just cannot earn a good living for some reason or other. For that, voluntary charity is the answer.
But how Humanitarian is it to force a compulsory tax on all citizen to bear the Universal Healthcare security for others incuding his ownself?
I mean, the government won't be creating money, it will be created by the citizens, the Individual citizen.
It should be his freedom to chose whether to give a voluntary tax (or charity) to some Non-Governmental-organization, or a Governmental one, to provide health securities to the needies who need it genuinely. It should be his freedom if he Do not want to pay his earned money for such project.
Why should he be taxed under Compulsory taxation for such project which basically is not worthy to be supported.

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None of us can foresee all the results of our actions, not even within our own family or our own neighbourhood or business (I'm writing "family" rather than "one's own life" because I guess most of us do not really want a liberty that has a substantial risk of putting our kids on the street, lead to our partner being killed or maimed for life, acted upon them in the nick of time, without them or us (personally) having done anything much to get there or "deserve it"). No child, except the kid of a millionaire or a king, is born with the resources to take it safely up to adult life. We all depend on parents, schools, employment and on the community around us!

If we think all people must take "every consequence of what they do", then we shouldn't have any trouble with seeing unarmed men and women being raped, killed and tortured - or who see their children killed or forced into slavery - because they happened to live in a city that's taken by enemy forces (this was the regular thing in many places for most of written history, and still happens today in some parts of Africa). They could have moved out in time, or they could have declared they didn't want to have any part in the conflict, couldn't they?

Of course sometimes people make bad choices, they invest money in a poor way, your kids may start using drugs or people go into insane projects. But it would be nutty to presume that all kinds of misfortune are generated from willful choices, or that the one who makes the choice is most often the one who has to suffer. The banking crisis gives you sacks full of proof: the banks that are pulled down are not the ones who have made the most lousy transactions to begin with, but the ones where the crap ended up, because many kinds of business lead to secondary transactions, futures or insuring that can be very hard to break off.

So banks like Merrill Lynch end up with bad (and hastily written?) papers and obligations that represent business that was generated some place else. In theory, we should let all those fall, and Fannie and Freddie first of all, but in reality, that's not a path that you can take without breaking down society and worsening it all.

I do think there is a kidn of universal human right not to live in detitute onditions, not to have to die early or suffer unneeded, wasteful diseases. That's not to say that everyone has a right to free care at the most expensive clinics or that the presence of diseases is a negation of humanity. It's an expression of where we want to go.

Taxes? yes, you could make it voluntary to be joining or standing outside, but countries where basic health care insurances are fully voluntary (like the USA) invariably have a large chunk of people who are not able to get on the ladder (same with houses). The costs of actually getting an insurance may not always seem prohibitive, but the difficult part is getting the free money to ease past the bump in an existence where you're always scrounging, always pulling and squeezing to make ends meet somehow - with low wages or being on the dole, or no means at all.

It's no accident that poor people are the ones who get the really grave diseases; they don't have the money to go to regular health controls, to eat in a nourishing way or to see a doctor when something seems suspicious. Taxes are really the only way to get all on board - the state funds don't always have to carry the full costs but using taxes as a grounding for public health is the superior way to create an overall health care system.

Just adding that some people go from disease to disease, and the illness keeps them from really getting a job or realizing their gifts. I don't see how that could count as "a just outcome of what they deliberately chose to do" at some junctures in their life. The costs of actually getting them free of it, rstoring a decent health for them and their kids, may be minute compared to what it will cost if they are forced to live off crime or simply the working life they are not able to bring to society.

I live in a country with free universal healthcare, for which i am incredibly grateful, especially since becoming a mother.

The problem with government funded healthcare is that it easily becomes a bottomless pit. You can always spend more. Science is constantly discovering new treatments and drugs, and every one of them is of vital importance to the people they can help. Hospitals can always be improved, more staff will always help.... the list goes on. What was considered a complete health system a generation ago is very basic compared to the system we have now. The costs grow yearly, and once committed to the principal of universally accessible healthcare they will always continue to grow.

I think the question that needs to be asked is "Is healthcare delivered to most of the population more effectively through taxation and government provision or through a privately operated user pays system?"

And i think that the answer varies from society to society. While government provided health care works relatively well in a small country like Australia (21 million people) it seems to become less efficient in larger countries such as Britain, with it's notoriously troubled NHS.

I guess what i am trying to say is that being committed to accessible health care for all doesn't necessarily mean a commitment to any particular ideology, be it free marketism, socialism, or anything in between.

Yes I agree L_27 that the "bottomless pit" of rising possibilities is often a threat to a general public health care system. Sixty years ago old people (in particular) were snuffed out in a week by pneumonia and rarely spent many months in a hospital ward or lived till 90 with a frail health (on the other hand we don't have to keep up TB sanatories in the way they did back then - I hear TB is making return inroads though). Prolonged cancer therapy barely existed a few generations back, nor did core organ transplantations and heart surgery. The more that medicine learns to do, and the longer people will live, in general, the more hospitals and elderly care risk being weighed down.

But I don't think that's a good argument against at least a solid and well-stocked groundwork of public health, free and funded mainly by taxes, to make sure that people donm't have to keep a 30.000 bucks fund as a safety net for common diseases, prescription drugs or surgery (prescription drugs are not free under public health systems either, they just receive a price cut by state subvention). Whatver the textbook tells you, many hard working families can't keep a bin of fifty grand for illnesses and other costs stashed away over time.

Universal health care is affordable health care coverage which is extended to all eligible residents of a governmental region. These programs vary widely in their structure and funding mechanisms, particularly the degree to which they are publicly funded. Typically, most health care costs are met by the population via compulsory health insurance or taxation, or a combination of both. The US is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and others. Universal health care is provided in most developed countries, in many developing countries, and is the trend worldwide. Its one of those things that marks how civilized a certain society is.

While the US government provides health insurance for veterans, the elderly, poor and disabled, there has yet to be a system that ensures coverage for every citizen. In the U.S., health insurance is typically provided to workers and their families by their employers. The U.S. government offers a tax reduction to employers offering health benefits in what is referred to as a 'tax expenditure'. The exclusion of employer contributions for medical care amount to the nation's top tax expenditure at $102.3 billion in 2004, which is nearly twice as much as the next highest tax expenditure- mortgage interests.

According to the OECD 2003 Health Data report, the United States tops the OECD ranking for overall health care spending at $4900 per capita in 2001, more than twice the OECD average of $2100. Though more than half of the cost is private funding, the U.S. government spends the most out of all OECD countries (except Norway, Luxembourg and Iceland) per capita even though only about 25 percent of the population is insured through public programs compared with 90 per cent in other OECD countries. I suggest to my American friends, especially those who oppose Universal health care, to read this twice....and in case you need translation.....it means, you got screwed.

There are many different ways to organize universal health systems. A single-payer health care system is typically a government-run organization that collects and pays out all health care costs. Germany has a universal multi-payer system with two main types of health insurance: "Compulsory health insurance" and "Private." The French health care system, rated the best in the world by the World Health Organization, has private and public health care providers and universal access funded by taxes and co-fees. The United States is the only developed nation without a universal health care system.

Proponents of a universal health care system point to the global trend of industrialized countries with providing health care. Administrative costs would be drastically decreased. The U.S. government spends more than all other countries per capita without receiving proportional health benefits and more than 47 million people are uninsured.

Opponents cite that income taxes would increase and private insurance companies may be put out of the health care administrative business, a result that would fly in the face of laissez-faire capitalism the US was founded upon. Considering how inane their argument is, my guess is opponents are those who are selfish ie. “it cant happen to me” types, those who form their judgement on hearsay and heads of extortionist insurance companies.

The World Health Organization has carried out the first ever analysis of the world's health systems. Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan.

WHO's assessment system was based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system's financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).

The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance. The data about the number of U.S. residents without health insurance varies between 44 and 48 million people. Many of those people lost their jobs — and their insurance — because of the struggling economy. For some, insurance was lost when double-digit premium increases caused employers to stop offering coverage. Some of the uninsured opted not to enroll in coverage offered by employers, as the amount taken from their paychecks to cover the cost rose.

The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18 th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy.

Dr Christopher Murray, Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy. says: "Although significant progress has been achieved in past decades, virtually all countries are under- utilizing the resources that are available to them. This leads to large numbers of preventable deaths and disabilities; unnecessary suffering, injustice, inequality and denial of an individual's basic rights to health."

The impact of failures in health systems is most severe on the poor everywhere, who are driven deeper into poverty by lack of financial protection against ill- health.

"The poor are treated with less respect, given less choice of service providers and offered lower- quality amenities," says Dr Brundtland. "In trying to buy health from their own pockets, they pay and become poorer."

One key recommendation from the report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible. WHO says that it is better to make "pre-payments" on health care as much as possible, whether in the form of insurance, taxes or social security.

While private health expenses in industrial countries now average only some 25 percent because of universal health coverage (except in the United States, where it is 56%), in India, families typically pay 80 percent of their health care costs as "out-of- pocket" expenses when they receive health care.

"It is especially beneficial to make sure that as large a percentage as possible of the poorest people in each country can get insurance," says Dr Frenk. "Insurance protects people against the catastrophic effects of poor health. What we are seeing is that in many countries, the poor pay a higher percentage of their income on health care than the rich, (and that includes the US, “the greatest nation in the world”, shame on you)."

In many countries without a health insurance safety net, many families have to pay more than 100 percent of their income for health care when hit with sudden emergencies. In other words, illness forces them into debt.


I find the question whether there should be universal health care system available completely redundant. The legitimate question is which system of it works best for each country, but everyone has the right to decent health care. If you think that the worth of a human life is measured by their earning power, I have only two things to say to you 1) You are going to burn in Hell, and 2) Vive le socialisme! :icon176:

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Originally Posted by damyanti

I find the question whether there should be universal health care system available completely redundant. The legitimate question is which system of it works best for each country, but everyone has the right to decent health care. If you think that the worth of a human life is measured by their earning power, I have only two things to say to you 1) You are going to burn in Hell, and 2) Vive le socialisme!

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Exactly my feelings. Especially in a country like America, which often displays itself as the spearhead of civilization (at least that's the impression i sometimes get in Europe), that shouldn't be a question. There are different ways to provide all people with health care, so far noone has proven to be the perfect one.

However, spending almost 15% of the gross national product on health care, how America does, and leaving out a substantial part of the population seems to be a very bad deal.
Those 15% are, btw, by far the highest percentage worldwide, second is Switzerland with about 13% of the gnp.

The discussion that needs to be led is not IF everybody should have access to health care, but WHAT should be paid for. Because obviously it won't be possible to pay everything medically possible for everybody. And even less so in the future, with life extectancy in most of the countries which are members of the OECD (not in America, though, where life expectancy is actually sinking. That's some food for thought too...)

One more thing: There are middle ways between free universal and privately funded health care systems.
In Switzerland, every person pays the same amount for his health insurance. Insurance companies are private enterprises. Poor people get a refund which is paid directly to the insurance company (otherwise it would probably be spent on booze, babes and cars). It works pretty well, however, the costs are on the rise, so there needs to be a strong mechanism to keep people from running to the doctor with every cold, expecting to get the best possible treatment for almost no money.

And as various others have said before me: It's bound to get more expensive with people getting older and with treatments getting more expensive.
My Master works in the research division of a Swiss pharmaceutical company, and according to him in the future drugs will become extremely accurate to deal with a specific health problem, but also extremely expensive.
For example, Roche has built a whole factory in Germany to produce one single drug that is very effective in treating breast cancer. Unfortunately, only about a third of breast cancer victims respond to this drug. I don't remember what he said what a treatment costs on average, but it was more than i earn in two years.
But then again, i'm heavily underpaid and work only part time :D

Just a quick note on prescriptions in response to gagged_Louise - in Australia low income earners (and the thresholds are pretty generous, especially for families with children) get prescriptions for a flat fee of $4.90 each (which isn't very much, it's even less in American dollars). That pays for administering the scheme and the government pays for the drugs.

Not quite free, but anyone can afford it.

And pensioners (not just aged, but disabled, single parents etc) get a fortnightly pharmacutical supplement, i think it is the cost of 2 prescriptions.

I've always found the public health system here fantastic.

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Originally Posted by l_27_australia

Just a quick note on prescriptions in response to gagged_Louise - in Australia low income earners (and the thresholds are pretty generous, especially for families with children) get prescriptions for a flat fee of $4.90 each (which isn't very much, it's even less in American dollars). That pays for administering the scheme and the government pays for the drugs.

Not quite free, but anyone can afford it.

And pensioners (not just aged, but disabled, single parents etc) get a fortnightly pharmacutical supplement, i think it is the cost of 2 prescriptions.

I've always found the public health system here fantastic.

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Here in UK, those on low income or claiming state benefits don't pay for precriptions. People suffering from certain illnesses are also exempt from charges

The thing that makes the prescriptions here expensive is that they make a charge of £7.10 per ITEM (US$11.12) Now, I usually have 12 different drugs prescribed each month...so you can see how it mounts up!

There is the option to pay a yearly fee of £102 / US$159.70 (which is what I do) for a 'pre-payment certificate' to show that I have paid the fee and have to show it when I go to collect my medicines from the pharmacy.

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Originally Posted by Tufty

Here in UK, those on low income or claiming state benefits don't pay for precriptions. People suffering from certain illnesses are also exempt from charges

The thing that makes the prescriptions here expensive is that they make a charge of £7.10 per ITEM (US$11.12) Now, I usually have 12 different drugs prescribed each month...so you can see how it mounts up!

There is the option to pay a yearly fee of £102 / US$159.70 (which is what I do) I receive a card to show that I have paid the fee and have to show it when I go to collect my medicines from the pharmacy.

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hi Tufty :wave:
in Wales prescriptions are free... i have a spare room if you want :)

LOL thanks Angela :)

Actually, was just reading about free prescriptions in Wales.

^^ yw

actually we don't even have to visit the doc - just ask a pharmacist for simple medicines
plus we have nice beaches and shopping... good place to live, eh?

Do they have new hearts as well? :D

perhaps that would be expecting too much of the poor pharmacist lol

Who says pharmacists are heartless?

I agree with Tufty, the free prescription rules in England are crazy (and I remember paying 2s. 6d. (12 1/2 p) for prescriptions in the good old days, regardless of how many items were on it).

I had a serious illness once - on drugs for the rest of my life. I had to buy a pre-payment certificate. More recently my wife also became seriously ill and she is now on drugs for ten years at least. She has to buy a prepayment certificate.

(Even so, the cost of a prepayment certificate represents a huge subsidy from the state.)

Then I got another illness - the kind you get when you're fat and lazy, the kind you can put off or avoid if you eat sensibly and look after yourself just a little. Boom! I get free drugs forever - not just for that illness, but for anything else I want to go down with too. Where's the logic?

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Now, reverting to Muskan's post and his reference to a video clip on YouTube, I can do no better than copy a couple of the comments made by people who watched that disgusting, one sided clip:

ArtificialCleverenAI said: "Nice agenda-driven expose of an apparent socialised healthcare failure. From my own personal experience within the UK and France, serious cases are referred to consultants within days. Having had a relative survive cancer, upon suspicion of the disease they were in specialist care within four days. It's a matter of record that the UK's health system is orders of magnitude better than the US's by survival count for such diseases and operations."

And povmcdov said: "In the NHS (UK) all patients with a suspected cancer are referred to a specialist within two weeks. The rural county I live in has at least 5 MRI machines covering 800K people. No waiting weeks for scans here. As a healthcare professional I would feel safer in the NHS than in the local private hospitals. If you want to skip the insignificant wait the NHS hospitals also provide private care, but you get the same treatment.

The NHS is not perfect but I would take it over the US system anytime."

I would add that it is totally fallacious - a deliberate lie - to say that the Ontario system of healthcare has crumbled away, simply because one person was dissatisfied. And, to be honest, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the people featured were put up to say what they did. People will lie for money, you know.

I don't know, but I've been told that the Canadian system is even better than UK's NHS.

However, SCGATOR2001 posted the following (on YouTube): "But make sure the GOVERNMENT stays out of your health care or else we'll get this OR WORSE! Government is the problem, not the solution. The gov't made mortgage companies lend to risky people (led by ACORN and the like) and they "almost" wrecked the economy.

Get them in US Healthcare and it will be more of the same. The gov't will make sure NONE of us have decent healthcare. That's socialism, CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN!"

I think those remarks are echoed above by people here who oppose free healthcare. A few points then. If government is the problem, and it's staying out of healthcare, then surely it should get involved.

But that's just me being flippant.

What I don't understand is why Americans think that their Government will deliberately try to provide the lowest possible standard of healthcare, when you only have to look at the countries that do have subsidised or free systems to know that governments do their damnedest - and for the most part, with considerable success - to provide a first rate health service.

If they are right about the American system of government - and Americans should know, I suppose - then don't vote for politicians who say they will make sure only the richest will get medical treatment when they need it. Vote for someone who cares about his country and his countrymen's health, and who will promise to make free healthcare work.

And as for saying, "I give to charity, that's enough," let me remind you that there are very few social needs anywhere in the world at any time in history that have been satisfied by charitable donations. Often, social needs can only be met by the state. In my view, healthcare is one such need.

Free (or subsidised) healthcare is the jewel in the crown of any caring society, socialist, capitalist, or mixed. The absence of such a system tells me the society doesn't care at all. To turn the original question round, is it the case that each country gets the healthcare system it deserves?

As a former med/surg floor nurse I have seen first hand our own proplems with health care and heard about different issues in systems some of my peers were much more familuar with.

Most of which were here in the states practicing medicine, but many were from countires other than the United States such as Canada, The Phillipines, England, and Mexico in paticular.

We had in our few off hours, and somtimes while charting, many many conversations about this topic.

The only conclussion we could ever mutually agree too was:

That regardless of how the system was set up, or which system was used in our respected countries of origin, (socialist, captitailist, comunist what have you) it basically had a lot about it that sucked.

I have heard and seen the insurance companies and lawyers ruin what was the best health care system in the world for a while. I have heard how other systems are so good on the news etc etc, I have however never heard that from my fellow nurses that came from those systems.

Am I for universial health care?

Yes. I wish we could help everyone that ever got sick or needed medical attention with the best possible care accross the board.

Do I see it happening anytime soon if ever?

Unfortunately no.

It is sad, but I believe too many will stand in it's way, not just individuals that fear the governements involvement in thier medical system, but also the governments themselves etc etc, it would litterally require a world wide con-census to provide heath care of a certian standard for all equally regardless of economic provision. Fully cooperating consensus mind you. Something we cant even get a few people to agree to on an internet chat site, let alone the world.

In fact my only hypotheisis as for how this would possibly work would be through the organiazation of a seperate opererating entity that is divorced from societal influeneces that all governements and people submit thier authority too regarding the consideration of rescources and disposition of medical dispensation including legality of medical issues and cost etc etc,.

I sadly wonder if it will ever be within our organzational abilities as a species to preform such a task.

The ideal of universal health care is a grande utopian ideal to strive for, but not yet within our grasp in a practical sence to achieve at this time.

I'm not big on these kinds of political wrangles, personally, but I do have a comment regarding governments taking over health care systems.

I won't trust any such takeover unless ALL government employees and, most especially, ALL elected officials are enrolled completely in the same system as everyone else must use. No special perks for fat-cat Congressmen, no private clinics for bureaucrats, no sweetheart prescription deals for anyone. Everyone gets treated the same. There are too many instances in this country, and especially in the communist countries, where the people who make the rules are exempt from them.

If I know that I'm getting the same level of care as a Senator, at the same cost, then I'll trust a government controlled system. Otherwise, it's just another panacea to help control the masses.

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Originally Posted by Thorne

I'm not big on these kinds of political wrangles, personally, but I do have a comment regarding governments taking over health care systems.

...

If I know that I'm getting the same level of care as a Senator, at the same cost, then I'll trust a government controlled system. Otherwise, it's just another panacea to help control the masses.

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Scaredey-cat nonsense, Thorne. Why do you assume free (well, paid-for by taxes, actually) health treatment will be so inferior that your rulers will avoid it? Why do you pefer a system that cures its sick only if they can pay for it? Over here in the UK, many of our "rulers" do use the NHS. And many don't. The reasons they usually cite for not using the NHS (especially the left-wing politicians) include, they must avoid the waiting lists because they are "very important people", or they are using their freedom to choose, or because of the security risks. But no matter what, they have a vested interest in keeping the NHS going because they would be voted out of office if they didn't. Here, everyone has a right to the best healthcare possible, even if he is poor.

In the UK we have a private healthcare system as well as a state-run system. The "private" doctors are mostly NHS doctors moonlighting after a hard day's work in the state-owned hospital. Often they use NHS facilities to supply their "private" services because the private sector cannot afford them, or it's not commercially viable to purchase them.

Staffing is worse in the private system, too, because, once the doctors have gone home, only a few nurses are left. If there's an emergancy at night, doctors have to be called in, or the patient taken to an NHS hospital, where there are doctors (if ony junior ones) available at all hours.

Private operations are usually only of the less complex kind because of the lack of facilities, and, perhaps, because it would be too dangerous to let a surgeon who has already been operating all day in one hospital loose on a paying patient in a private one. So the major operations are carried out by the NHS anyway.

When operations go wrong in a private hospital, the patient is frequently brought to an NHS hospital for corrective surgery. I doubt it ever happens the other way round.

NHS has its faults, like any other system - as denuseri points out, they all do. And in the majority of cases, the reason is funding, not training - although standards may vary a bit, not staffing, nor the will to heal. In the UK, funding problems have lowered the standard of healthcare considerably. Everything has to be costed now. We have dirty hospitals because we skimp on cleaners, some drugs are not available on the NHS because cheaper, less effective ones are available. The administration is top-heavy because the overpaid fat cats at the top are more intersted in their careers than in their patients. And lawyers are getting in on the act too, so more and more funds that could go into health care are lining solicitors' pockets instead. But we have considerable success too. In the US (so far as I know) you have superb facilities that even we Brits will travel to use if we have the money and the NHS can't deal with our problem. But there's the rub. We - and Americans - need money to be treated in the US system. Americans who don't have money, can rely on health insurance schemes. Except they are costly, and there are so many exclusions, such as, if you're likely to fall ill, you won't be covered. If you do fall ill, you won't be covered again. And whatever happens, you're only covered for so much. After that, I gather you have to rely on the government-funded or charitable systems that are no better than a third-world country would provide.

Isn't that a mark of shame for the world's richest country?

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Originally Posted by Thorne

I'm not big on these kinds of political wrangles, personally, but I do have a comment regarding governments taking over health care systems.

I won't trust any such takeover unless ALL government employees and, most especially, ALL elected officials are enrolled completely in the same system as everyone else must use. No special perks for fat-cat Congressmen, no private clinics for bureaucrats, no sweetheart prescription deals for anyone. Everyone gets treated the same. There are too many instances in this country, and especially in the communist countries, where the people who make the rules are exempt from them.

If I know that I'm getting the same level of care as a Senator, at the same cost, then I'll trust a government controlled system. Otherwise, it's just another panacea to help control the masses.

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When they even fails to provide Food for All, how can they dream of something like Universal Health program?

Even Now people like the socialistic dystopian dreams.

Any Collective-Welfare program, be it American or British or Indian always fails because of the natural corruption collectivism causes.

Isn't that a mark of shame for the world's richest country?

The recent economic turmoil is constantly proving that American "richness" is overhyped, and it was alluded by previous government's bid to keep printing dollars. Thats the Major reason of meltdown.

About corruption in America,



Fed refusing to say where the $2 trillian went
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...efer=worldwide
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
...

Economic meltdown or no, it's still shameful that the world's richest nation has a third rate public heath care system.

Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with socialism. American fear of the concept is depriving its underprivileged citizens of a decent living while its wealthy capitalist czars gorge like parasites off them and their labours. Competition and free enterprise are mere shibboleths propounded by those who stand to benefit from them. They have no intrinsic value themselves. A state that co-operates with its citizens to provide the basic essentials of life is a much better ideal, even if that means the very rich have to pay more. What does it matter? Most of them got it by cheating or from inheritance anyway. Even in USA, there are very few who have "made it" without resorting to underhand methods at some time.

As for all welfare programmes being doomed to failure, name me one that has failed. And before you say "Britain's NHS" I would remind you that the NHS started on 5th July, 1948 and is still going strong. It is now the world's 3rd biggest employer - so not only does it provide a valuable health resource, but it has a fantastic economic contribution to make, too. It has its faults, but so does the US private care system, whose worst fault is declining to treat those who cannot afford it, while its medical insurers refuse to cover treatment of any condition they have had to pay out on before, or to price that cover out of anyone's reach.

I would mention that other welfare programmes were introduced in Britain at about the same time: unemployment benefit, old age pensions, industrial injuries benefits, and family allowances, to name a few. They are all valuable and they are all still in effect.

State services - even inefficient ones - win over individual wealth, private insurance or meagre charity almost every time. Dystopian dream? I think not: give that honour to extreme capitalism.



---- WOW!!! I've just noticed I can type the word "socialism" withpout getting edited out> Thanks to the people who made that happen! ----

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Originally Posted by MMI

Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with socialism. American fear of the concept is depriving its underprivileged citizens of a decent living while its wealthy capitalist czars gorge like parasites off them and their labours.

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The problem with socialism, as I see it, is that you wind up with an underpriveleged class who feel that they deserve everything they can get without working for it. They become true parasites, sucking from the government teat, which is kept full by the hard work of the middle class. The wealthy, in any society, will always reap disproportionate rewards, but they generally provide at least some jobs. The welfare class provides nothing but more mouths to feed and strident calls for free everything.

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Originally Posted by Thorne

The problem with socialism, as I see it, is that you wind up with an underpriveleged class who feel that they deserve everything they can get without working for it. They become true parasites, sucking from the government teat, which is kept full by the hard work of the middle class. The wealthy, in any society, will always reap disproportionate rewards, but they generally provide at least some jobs. The welfare class provides nothing but more mouths to feed and strident calls for free everything.

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You're free to view people who don't own their house and almost never have the money to go abroad as white trash who show they've never had the guts to make it into the middle class, but quite often, where people are landing in terms of work, and how fast they'll take off, is limited by restraints they don't control themselves and cannot "vote with their feet" to avoid. Lousy schools, outdated models of work, lack of a billfold of useful connections or "getaway money" isn't stuff that people choose to live with, they may not ven be aware of it.

The idea that people who are rich always deserve it would be reasonable if folks like Bill Gates or Nelson Rockefeller had dug their riches out of the barren rock, just by using their own ingenuity and hard work. Of course they didn't: Bill Gates or Larry Page (Google) may be businessmen of genius but they would never have got very far if they had had to work in a "free" economy without powerful public programs for engineering and computer facilities, libraries and education (how would Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have assembled a team or formulated their ideas if they'd had to literally go door-knocking and putting in small ads for money gathered from delivering the morning papers, instead of being at home in, and allowed into, a business and research community that was around before they came along?)

Of course if you treat the "underclass" (in America often the descendants of black slaves or of illiterate farmers from Asia and eastern Europe) as parasites and dumbheads and block their way to the good future, they are likely to keep on being criminals, hustlers, shirkers and liars - at least some of them - because that's all they get the place to do and that's the image of them projected everywhere. But it doesn't say much about their real potential. It's shortsighted to think that people from South Gate, LA and people from the Hamptons start from nearly the same baseline when it comes to education, money, health and exercise - or ability to get advanced work and get on the career ladder.

Gagged Louise, whom I'm becoming more enthralled by with every post she makes, says it all. What more can I add?

There are leeches in the "lower" levels of all forms of society. But they are relatively few in number. As I said in another post, very few people actually want to be a burden on society, and those who are have usually fallen on hard times through no fault of their own, and will do almost anything to get back on thier feet again as quickly as possible. Dole is rarely sufficient to give anyone much more than a basic standard of living, even in welfare states.

No. I'm sorry to say it, but people who reject the provision of social assistance to the needy on the basis that it encourages the indolent to demand more and give less are wilfully blinkered if not totally blindfolded, and argue out of selfishness rather than any morally defensible position.

I should also add that any society that loses its working classes will cease to exist much more quickly than if the middle classes disappeared. It would probably benefit from the loss of its upper/ruling classes, because it could easily replace the jobs they provided by forming co-operatives or state-owned corporations. But I'm not arguing for communism, simply social conscience in the form of a health service accesible to all who need it.

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Originally Posted by gagged_Louise

You're free to view people who don't own their house and almost never have the money to go abroad as white trash who show they've never had the guts to make it into the middle class, but quite often, where people are landing in terms of work, and how fast they'll take off, is limited by restraints they don't control themselves and cannot "vote with their feet" to avoid. Lousy schools, outdated models of work, lack of a billfold of useful connections or "getaway money" isn't stuff that people choose to live with, they may not ven be aware of it.

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It was never my intent to label these kinds of people as trash, white or otherwise. Sure, there are many people who, perhaps through no fault of their own, are always on the bad end of every deal, unable to pull themselves up. And programs which help them, which give them the opportunities to get out of that rut can, and should be, of high priority in any society. But there are many who are more interested in what the government can give them rather than in learning what the government can do to help them build their lives. I have no problems with programs which teach people. I only question the efficacy of programs which give away benefits and priveleges to those who do not want to earn them and who will actively oppose anything which might force them to earn it.

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The idea that people who are rich always deserve it would be reasonable if folks like Bill Gates or Nelson Rockefeller had dug their riches out of the barren rock, just by using their own ingenuity and hard work.

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Rockefeller, of course, is one of those who inherited his wealth. While less impressive than someone who's earned it on his own, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Should we force people like that to give away all their money and start from the bottom? That's ridiculous!
But Bill Gates used existing infrastructure, the same kinds of things that anyone else could use, to identify a need, build a product to fulfill that need, market that product and create an empire from it. As far as I know, he didn't have any more to work with than anybody else could have access to, other than his own intelligence and abilities. Shall we condemn him because he was smart enough to recognize potential? Shall we strip him of his money, just because he did something we didn't think of? Also ridiculous.

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It's shortsighted to think that people from South Gate, LA and people from the Hamptons start from nearly the same baseline when it comes to education, money, health and exercise - or ability to get advanced work and get on the career ladder.

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Of course they don't start at the same baseline! And yet, there are many who manage to crawl out of the jungles of LA and become successful business men, or athletes, or even just good, hardworking middle class citizens. Sure, it takes more work than starting with money, and perhaps some lucky breaks. But it can be done. But if they're not willing to try, not willing to do the work, they will be stuck where they are, and they will teach their children to accept what they are, rather than work to make themselves better.

Do people deserve universal health care? No.

People do NOT deserve medical coverage simply because they're alive and breathing. I as an individual have no obligation to keep another person alive and that is what my tax dollars would be going to. No one deserves the tax money I worked for, it's mine.

As you may be able to tell I'm a financial conservative... very conservative.

Regardless of if people DESERVE universal health care or not I do feel that as a country we have no reason to insure the health of all of our residence. As was pointed out, a healthy citizen is a working citizen.

I do *not* believe that the politicians in office can possibly do this without skimming off the top, taking their do's, being corrupt etc. Earmarks? seriously.

I believe in almost 100% privatized society. This is my *one* area that I believe should be socialized and it's not because my birth control cost me $50. It's because there is no reason why the poor in other countries should expect a healthier life than the middle class in this country. It's a matter of pride.

Also. I agree that most people don't want to FEEL like they are a drain on society but I think at this point (especially in American culture) there is an entire sect of our population who do not believe that's what they are. You have to first realize that you *are* a drain on society before you can feel some sort of remorse for that.

Most of this isn't going to be directly about health care or health spending but I'm taking the time to reply on some points from -mostly - Thorne's latest post because we're running into issues of social equality and the chances to realize your gifts in a modern society here, and these kind of underpin our reasoning about if public-funded health care.would be desirable or not.

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Originally Posted by Thorne

Sure, there are many people who, perhaps through no fault of their own, are always on the bad end of every deal, unable to pull themselves up. And programs which help them, which give them the opportunities to get out of that rut can, and should be, of high priority in any society. But there are many who are more interested in what the government can give them rather than in learning what the government can do to help them build their lives. I have no problems with programs which teach people. I only question the efficacy of programs which give away benefits and priveleges to those who do not want to earn them and who will actively oppose anything which might force them to earn it.

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Handing out money on a charity basis or earmarking small sums to be used for rent, food, children's allotments etc - while putting medical and education aid at a bare minimum - is one thing, empowering people to really get gping and kicking off the limitations of living in a chaotic, run-down neighbpurhood or having to accept working for 6 bucks an hour is another. You won't get poor people from the gutter to rise up by handing them fifty bucks a week and then keeping tabs on them every moment and treating them like they're stupids who are liable to toss away the cash on liquor or toys and then just ask for more, like they're children. The trend of policies in Amrica has been to push the wealth to the top - the finace crisis and the recession of late has made that really clear I think. And most American (or European) small businessers and artisans do not earn many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and are not in a position to expand their firms a lot. Joe the Plumber is not any plumber. ;)

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Rockefeller, of course, is one of those who inherited his wealth. While less impressive than someone who's earned it on his own, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Should we force people like that to give away all their money and start from the bottom? That's ridiculous!
But Bill Gates used existing infrastructure, the same kinds of things that anyone else could use, to identify a need, build a product to fulfill that need, market that product and create an empire from it. As far as I know, he didn't have any more to work with than anybody else could have access to, other than his own intelligence and abilities. Shall we condemn him because he was smart enough to recognize potential? Shall we strip him of his money, just because he did something we didn't think of? Also ridiculous.

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No, of course Mr. Gates isn't to be stripped of most of his money, it's a more interesting issue if he (or Microsoft) should be allowed always to set their own prices no limits and exploit their advantage - and that's why they got those hefty penalties from the European Union competition overseers.

Bill Gates and his likes were able to concentrate on computers from an early age - to take just Gates, the mothers' association at his school bought a computer for him and he was able to take time off from regular classroom hours getting acquainted with computing and software from his early teens onwards.

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Originally Posted by Wikipedia

At thirteen [ca 1968] he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students.[12] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.

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I doubt they'd have done that for a black pupil who was at the school as a free charity guest and whose dad was an assistant plumber. And Silicon Valley or Stanford University aren't places that came into being from a bunch of empty-hands geeks standing outside the fold of the established economy; that's just the legend. To give Gates added credit, I think he's very aware that one can't sit around and wait for the market's invisible hand to do the trick, he made that plain in a tv interview I saw recently.

The internet, too, has been helped massively by public spending both in America and Europe - departments of defense, CERN (where the html language was developed), university pc networks, state telephone companies, the space programmes which freed up lots of resources and forced engineers to take on new challenges of developing faster chips and btter signal capacities, and so on.

I see we're moving onto the "spreading the wealth" tag here. I was trying to avoid any general discussion about socialism, I'm not an ideological socialist and it seems many Americans simply throw together social liberals, social democrats and stalinists. Planned command economy isn't my rallying cry (though it's a delicious irony that the private spending spree economy of the Bush era ended in the biggest socialization moves of modern American history: the buy-up of Fannie and Freddie and the bail-outs of banks, possibly of the big three car companies and then what...)

I'd agree with MMI that the American fear of everything that could remotely be called "socialism" is a leftover from the 19th century, and it's used as a tool by the fat cats who stand to gain from a highly moralizing attitude to money, a belief that society is about the survival of the fittest. Most companies today don't handle their budget planning as if it were a household budget, they plainly assume that they can get money - public money, by loans or from risk investors - if they need to expand. So it's not really about clawing a share of the market with what you got from the start, rather about what you can corner through alliances with other people, other companies. If they'd all started in a garage some of them would have foundered very soon, no matter how good the ideas.

It's an illusion I think that you can have a society that's 85% middle class. Neither the pure free market nor a state bolstered by ebullient welfare programs (which, by the way, isn't exactly how it looks in Sweden these days either) will lift everybody into the gilded middle class where your kids feel they can become anything, you have a year's wages on the bank, a stack of cd's and dvd's and a thriving pensions savings account. You seem to assume that the free market will perform that feat, and if some people don't get into the middle class it's a sign they were soft bags and deserve to be looked down upon or stepped on. Look, any modern society has a large working class, it's just that they don't always work in assembly-line factories or sweatshops..

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Originally Posted by Thorne

Sure, it takes more work than starting with money, and perhaps some lucky breaks. But it can be done. But if they're not willing to try, not willing to do the work, they will be stuck where they are, and they will teach their children to accept what they are, rather than work to make themselves better.

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Yes, there are leeches in any social class, or simply people desperate to cling to what they have. There's lots of children of the rich who take it for granted that they inherently deserve their handbags and jewellery, their designer clothes and their expensive education because they were born into it or because they think "Dad started from the bottom and now he's a CEO - and I've inherited his stamina so I have a right to that kind of respect". I'll just say Paris Hilton, she truly gave this arrogance a face when she got nailed for drunk driving and was sentenced to a brief prison term. There's many other examples.

George W Bush is reputed to have told a professor at Harvard Business School in the mid-1970s who showed the film The Grapes of Wrath to his students - he did this in order to show an angle of the 1930s depression that he realized many of them might not know from their own home background: "Why are you showing this commie movie? Look, people are poor because they're lazy!" Point taken. Of course the hobos in the film could have cut their beards and got a job, or if it were today, their children could have enrolled with the army and then had some of their college years paid for. So?

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Originally Posted by voxelectronica

Also. I agree that most people don't want to FEEL like they are a drain on society but I think at this point (especially in American culture) there is an entire sect of our population who do not believe that's what they are. You have to first realize that you *are* a drain on society before you can feel some sort of remorse for that.

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Excuse me vox, what kind of a height would that kind of condamnation be issued from? "Many people need" to have it rubbed into their minds that they "are a drain on society"?? I don't see what gives a corporate CEO, a senator, a US president, or even a bishop,a wife or a "staid middle American man" the right to spit people in the face like that. And for sure, some of the gist of those words was aimed at people you do not know. Everyone of us has a right to choose whom we want to mix with (though not all are in a *position* to make that choice freely, it's often about money and work) but there's no general right I think to just heave slop on a group of people you don't know.

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Originally Posted by voxelectronica

Do people deserve universal health care? No.

People do NOT deserve medical coverage simply because they're alive and breathing. I as an individual have no obligation to keep another person alive and that is what my tax dollars would be going to. No one deserves the tax money I worked for, it's mine.

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Of course it's not your money. If it were yours, it would be on your bank account.

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Originally Posted by voxelectronica

I believe in almost 100% privatized society. This is my *one* area that I believe should be socialized and it's not because my birth control cost me $50. It's because there is no reason why the poor in other countries should expect a healthier life than the middle class in this country. It's a matter of pride.

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If it's a matter of pride, then your pride is taking a bad beating right now. Because the poor in many other country within the OECD ARE in fact living a healthier life than the middle class in America.
Oh, did i mention that life expectancy and average body height (two of the easiest to measure and very informative indicators of wellbeing of a society) in America actually are sinking, whereas they are still growing in most other OECD countries?

Of course it's not your money. If it were yours, it would be on your bank account.


it was his/her money before government confiscated it from him and termed that loot as TAX.

He was forced to sacrifice because he has the ability to earn more than others.

Such sacrifices can bring doom alone but no good.

Well, it's more or less agreed upon that governments need money (of course there's much debate about how much and how to get it and even more about how to spend it, tho. And those debates are necessary.)

If you can't agree with that, well, then you're living in the wrong world. Sorry, can't help you there.

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Originally Posted by Muskan

[I]
Such sacrifices can bring doom alone but no good.

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As far as i know taxing is not new, i bet there were taxes in ancient Babylon already. So, what about doom? Where? When? Did the whole world miss it's doomed for the last 5000 years?
Or is it just doom, but never doomsday? Then it wouldn't be that bad, i guess, since we live with it for the last 5 millennia.