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Forums - Politics Discussion - I believe the victims here would appreciate some "socialism" - as in Medicare for all.

Kantor on 04 August 2012
Mr Khan said:
HappySqurriel said:
Soleron said:
HappySqurriel said:
While I'm against universal healthcare, having government provided health insurance for all citizens to cover non-preventable illnesses and injuries is reasonable ...

After all, preventable illnesses and injuries represent the bulk of healthcare costs which means this insurance would not be that expensive; and since they couldn't prevent the illness or injury the moral hazzard is fairly minimal.

What is the difference between those two? Do you mean everything except smoking and obesity related illnesses? I don't think people choose to do those things based on whether the state would pay for treatment or not.

No, non-preventable illnesses and injuries are actually relatively rare ... Most illnesses and injuries have a large element of preventability to them.

So you mean a safety net for medical injuries incurred through freak incidents of mass murder or a train crash or something?

Sounds good to me. It would certainly be more politically realistic to pitch than universal care, at least.

Those sorts of things are so rare that it ends up happening anyway, at least in the early stages.

I suppose Obamacare goes some way to ensuring that people have adequate protection for when these sorts of things happen, but I'm not a fan of the methodology. 



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Kantor on 04 August 2012
hsrob said:
Kantor said:
haxxiy said:
Medical care is so overpriced on the USA my aunt once considered opening an agency on Orlando in order to bring people to Brazil to start their treatment / have their surgery on private clinics here. Hell, for a single check-up it is cheaper to pay an extra $1000 for the flight.

Solution: kill all your physicists and import new ones from India. Surely it would ruin less lives in the end.

The quality of care in the USA is pretty much the best in the world if you can pay.

That's a big 'if' from what I hear and there are a number of other countries that provide care that's about as good and it's free or heavily subsidised for all citizens.

Australia has a mixed public/private system, the public system is essentially free but there are advantages in the private system, primarily direct consultant care and shorter waiting times for elective surgery/procedures.  The government provides incentives, for those that can afford it, to take out private health insurance to free up resources in the public system.

All medical training though is done in the public system though so it still retains much of the expertise and many consultant doctors work both in the public and private systems. The up-shot is that you receive a comparible level of care in the public and private systems but care is quicker to access in the private system (often nicer facilities too).

Treatment for emergency or life-threatenig conditions in the public system can be accessed without delay and for free.

The system is very good if not perfect, but we do pay for it through our relatively high tax rates.  My experience is that many Americans have this fear of socialised healthcare based on the belief that the standard of care must suffer and can't possibly match the costly healthcare in the US. I have met any number of US doctors who have come to Australia and leave with a very different impression, quite staggered by the standard of care delivered in the public system. 

Again it's not perfect but an example that sociliased healthcare is not always the demon that some people make it out to be.

My god.

Please write to the British government and explain this to them. Explain to them that the NHS, while great for routine procedures, is vastly inferior to private care, and therefore that private care should not be treated like the embodiment of Satan on earth.

It sounds to me like this would cost you less than the NHS costs us, and it's the best of both worlds. 



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S.T.A.G.E. on 04 August 2012
Kantor said:
haxxiy said:
Medical care is so overpriced on the USA my aunt once considered opening an agency on Orlando in order to bring people to Brazil to start their treatment / have their surgery on private clinics here. Hell, for a single check-up it is cheaper to pay an extra $1000 for the flight.

Solution: kill all your physicists and import new ones from India. Surely it would ruin less lives in the end.

The quality of care in the USA is pretty much the best in the world if you can pay.


You can get great healthcare in many countries as long as you're willing to pay. Socialized medical care is the alternative for the majority elsewhere, thats all. America is just the country a medical doctor can go to if they want to buy a boat and two houses. Ive been charged $400 before just for sitting down for two hours in a private hospital and having the doctor see me for fifteen minutes. My insurance paid for it but when I found out how much they covered I laughed at how much of a joke our private medical system is.



Kantor on 04 August 2012
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Kantor said:
haxxiy said:
Medical care is so overpriced on the USA my aunt once considered opening an agency on Orlando in order to bring people to Brazil to start their treatment / have their surgery on private clinics here. Hell, for a single check-up it is cheaper to pay an extra $1000 for the flight.

Solution: kill all your physicists and import new ones from India. Surely it would ruin less lives in the end.

The quality of care in the USA is pretty much the best in the world if you can pay.


You can get great healthcare in many countries as long as you're willing to pay. Socialized medical care is the alternative for the majority elsewhere, thats all. America is just the country a medical doctor can go to if they want to buy a boat and two houses. 

The very word "socialised" is poisonous to Americans, so "universal" is probably a better term to use, though it can mean multiple things.

The thing about national health insurance is that either you force everyone to pay in, in which case if you want high quality care you need to pay for insurance twice, or you allow people to opt out, in which case it can't be funded because the wealthy who provide most of the funding opt out and get private health insurance.



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S.T.A.G.E. on 04 August 2012
Kantor said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Kantor said:
haxxiy said:
Medical care is so overpriced on the USA my aunt once considered opening an agency on Orlando in order to bring people to Brazil to start their treatment / have their surgery on private clinics here. Hell, for a single check-up it is cheaper to pay an extra $1000 for the flight.

Solution: kill all your physicists and import new ones from India. Surely it would ruin less lives in the end.

The quality of care in the USA is pretty much the best in the world if you can pay.


You can get great healthcare in many countries as long as you're willing to pay. Socialized medical care is the alternative for the majority elsewhere, thats all. America is just the country a medical doctor can go to if they want to buy a boat and two houses. 

The very word "socialised" is poisonous to Americans, so "universal" is probably a better term to use, though it can mean multiple things.

The thing about national health insurance is that either you force everyone to pay in, in which case if you want high quality care you need to pay for insurance twice, or you allow people to opt out, in which case it can't be funded because the wealthy who provide most of the funding opt out and get private health insurance.


If everyone is willing to pay a tax its fine (Tax is a dirty word over here just like socialism as you know). Most of the healthcare most people have in other countries like Germany, Britain, France, Japan, etc is an archetype of a medical care system built by FDR in the New Bill of Rights in the US. Sadly he died before it couldbe finalized (The private corporations loved that part of the story), but after WWII when nations were being rebuilt they got to enjoy the healthcare and job security that was initially meant for us. The point of it all was to protect American citizens from the arm of the private sector that didnt care about the rights of the workers. I've gone to medical centers outside of the US and many countries get some of the same medicine and healthcare for far less. The vein of the American system is too broken to give it socialized medicine now. Something major would have to happen.



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SamuelRSmith on 04 August 2012
Kantor said:

My god.

Please write to the British government and explain this to them. Explain to them that the NHS, while great for routine procedures, is vastly inferior to private care, and therefore that private care should not be treated like the embodiment of Satan on earth.

It sounds to me like this would cost you less than the NHS costs us, and it's the best of both worlds. 


This will never happen in the UK. The powers that be will see this as an acceptance of failure and a drop in control. The BMA is also violently opposed to any kind of competition.



Soleron on 04 August 2012
SamuelRSmith said:
sethnintendo said:
"Caring for a gunshot wound victim who is hospitalized for four to seven days can cost up to $56,000,"

Pretty good deal considering the hospital I went to for my appendectomy charged 20,000 for one night stay in hospital which they wrote off to the government. I did pay (with parents help) the surgeon, anesthesiologist, pathologist, and the MRI scan.

And "boom", goes the dynamite.

Yep, the irony of the American system is that most of this care gets paid for by the government in some way anyway, whether as an employer who provides health insurance (and the US govt employs a LOT of people), or military, or emergency care exceptions, or Medicare/aid. I would bet the total /real/ outlay per person by the US govt is higher than a fully universal system.



SamuelRSmith on 04 August 2012
Soleron said:
SamuelRSmith said:
sethnintendo said:
"Caring for a gunshot wound victim who is hospitalized for four to seven days can cost up to $56,000,"

Pretty good deal considering the hospital I went to for my appendectomy charged 20,000 for one night stay in hospital which they wrote off to the government. I did pay (with parents help) the surgeon, anesthesiologist, pathologist, and the MRI scan.

And "boom", goes the dynamite.

Yep, the irony of the American system is that most of this care gets paid for by the government in some way anyway, whether as an employer who provides health insurance (and the US govt employs a LOT of people), or military, or emergency care exceptions, or Medicare/aid. I would bet the total /real/ outlay per person by the US govt is higher than a fully universal system.

You're 100% right, unfortunately, nobody will ever do anything about it, and the current administration seems hell-bent on making the system worse.



the2real4mafol on 06 August 2012
Kantor said:
hsrob said:
Kantor said:
haxxiy said:
Medical care is so overpriced on the USA my aunt once considered opening an agency on Orlando in order to bring people to Brazil to start their treatment / have their surgery on private clinics here. Hell, for a single check-up it is cheaper to pay an extra $1000 for the flight.

Solution: kill all your physicists and import new ones from India. Surely it would ruin less lives in the end.

The quality of care in the USA is pretty much the best in the world if you can pay.

That's a big 'if' from what I hear and there are a number of other countries that provide care that's about as good and it's free or heavily subsidised for all citizens.

Australia has a mixed public/private system, the public system is essentially free but there are advantages in the private system, primarily direct consultant care and shorter waiting times for elective surgery/procedures.  The government provides incentives, for those that can afford it, to take out private health insurance to free up resources in the public system.

All medical training though is done in the public system though so it still retains much of the expertise and many consultant doctors work both in the public and private systems. The up-shot is that you receive a comparible level of care in the public and private systems but care is quicker to access in the private system (often nicer facilities too).

Treatment for emergency or life-threatenig conditions in the public system can be accessed without delay and for free.

The system is very good if not perfect, but we do pay for it through our relatively high tax rates.  My experience is that many Americans have this fear of socialised healthcare based on the belief that the standard of care must suffer and can't possibly match the costly healthcare in the US. I have met any number of US doctors who have come to Australia and leave with a very different impression, quite staggered by the standard of care delivered in the public system. 

Again it's not perfect but an example that sociliased healthcare is not always the demon that some people make it out to be.

My god.

Please write to the British government and explain this to them. Explain to them that the NHS, while great for routine procedures, is vastly inferior to private care, and therefore that private care should not be treated like the embodiment of Satan on earth.

It sounds to me like this would cost you less than the NHS costs us, and it's the best of both worlds. 

At least we have the NHS, sure we have to pay such high taxes for it but most people can't afford private healthcare services like bupa. i would rather continue to pay for the NHS than suddenly fall ill with cancer for example, then worry that i can't get treated as i can't afford it and die, although Australia's healthcare does sound better managed than Britain's (yet another thing they do better at than the UK!) anyway, the way i see it, "obamacare" is a good start for those who can't afford healthcare in the US. 



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Troll_Whisperer on 06 August 2012

Don't want to start a debate because they bore me, but here's my two cents.

I don't see how universal healthcare is any more socialist than a universal police force, fire brigade... I don't see any American complaining about not being able to choose what police "company" provides them security.

It could have some justification (not for me, but for some) if they saved a lot of money on healthcare, but the thing is the USA stills manages to be the country that spends the most per capita on healthcare. I just don't get how that's possible.



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