thx1139 said:
Viper1 said:
thx1139 said:
OK osamanobama,
If WHO is so bad name a study that says US healthcare system is the envy of the world.
OK since you wont find that name 1 other 1st world country that has the same system as the US? You know good things are usually copied.
Sure if you are rich you can get great healthcare. I for one am very well off, but the #1 fear I live in is that the nest egg I have built up can be wiped away by a family healthcare crisis. Particularly if I wanted to move on and be a "medium chiller" as the article I posted about. Our healthcare system holds back people from the way they want to live. Be that someone who just works for freedom or someone who wants to be an entrepreneur. The only entity our system does wonders for is the middleman health insurance company. |
The quality of US healthcare is #1 in the world. There is a reason the wealthy travel to the US for major medical issues.
The cost of healthcare in the US is ...well, that's a disease unto itself.
But when debating healthcare as a ranking or against other healthcare systems, it's good practice to either separate these two factors or ensure context in your debate. Otherwise people could easily be debating 2 very different factors and never know it.
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Oh sure I agree the worlds best specialists are probably in the US. But those people rarely are available for the vast majority of the populace. So is the goal to have the select few best Dr's in the world or to have the overall best healthcare system for the US populace. I firmly believe that we want the best healthcare system for the US populace. Nothing would stop the best from continuing to be the best and charging a premium for their services. The rich that can afford them now will continue to use them. It isnt like the average joe in the US has access to most of these people anyway.
Also Canadian use of US healthcare is vastly exagerrated. A study by the Canadian National Population Health Survey found the following:
These findings from U.S. data are supported by responses to a large population-based health survey, the NPHS, in Canada undertaken during our study period. As noted above, 0.5 percent of respondents indicated that they had received health care in the United States in the prior year, but only 0.11 percent (20 of 18,000 respondents) said that they had gone there for the purpose of obtaining any type of health care, whether or not covered by the public plans.
Also dont forget (maybe you havent heard) some US Insurers have started sending patients abroad to have surgery done.
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0.11% in a year may not sound like a lot but when you look at it over the average lifetime of 75+ years it does become a significant portion of the population ...
While painfully unaccessable, for the most part Canadian healthcare is adequate for most people's needs because most people don't need much in the way of healthcare in a given year. When a person's life or quality of life is threatened, and they're faced with a long waiting list to see a specialist only to be put on a long waiting list for surgery they start evaluating their options. If they have the financial means they seek out medical tourism, and the favoured destinations tend to be the United States due to quality, India due to a balance of quality and cost, and Mexico because it is extremely affordable.
