I want to know what nurses think about socialized medicine.

Ah yes, get EVERYONE paying into the system. That has made quite a few folks question the costs of this proposed mess. Thank heavens it will never come to pass. It will remain something to debate on www.leftnurses.com .

You complained about 20 somethings who choose not to purchase health care insurance. Reform will get them paying into the system. The current sytem of using the ER for care drives up direct costs to you because it raises your premiums and copayments to cover uncollected medical bills.

What is lost in the noise about reform is that it will lower costs by 2 trillion dollars depending on the structure of the reform package.

at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Cont...enditures.aspx

Hi
I am a RN in the UK and have been for 23 years. I am also in the process of moving to the US (WITH VISA FROM MY HUSBANDS JOB AS ALTHOUGH I HAVE PASSED NCLEX AND HAVE JOB OFFER, GC WAIT IS 3-4 YEARS)

I will do this in bullet points so hopefull clearer

COST

• We pay 6.5% of our salary for health care
• If you don't work you don't pay
• everything,except maybe some cosmetic surgery,is covered
• We don't pay for visits to GP,clinic appointments or anything else,unless you choose to pay privately to be seen either in a NHS hospital or private hospital.
• We pay $12 per prescription item, unless for a child, over 65,or on benefits-then it' free.Also insulin and some other meds (but not many) are free.
• We pay $27 for a dental check up,clean-again not if on benefits a child, but no upper age cut off for dentistry charges.
• Basic dental work-extraction,filling is $75 per extraction/filling
• $324 for a crown or bridge
• cosmetic dentistry ie wightening, veneers not covered by NHS. I think things like replacing silver fillings, or having a white filling rather than a silver one cost about $75 a shot

I also wanted to say that our contributions over there will be about 4% plus the co pays etc.

RN salaries

• Don't vary according to size/location of hospital except for London and surrounding areas
• Are set by the government
• Start at $16 per hour up to $21 after 9 years for staff nurse
• Clinical nurse specialists get from $15 per hour up to $32 as not all Clinical nurse specialists are on the same pay band
• a recent survey showed that on average nurse work 20 hrs per month of UNPAID overtime
• GPs earn more than many hospital consultants ie $150-200,000 per year.

Patient ratios

• on ICU RNs care for only 1 vented pt,BUT we have no techs for monitors or vents, we do all the setting and calibrations ourselves.
• We aslo do all patient transport, cleaning of equipment ,beds and bed areas,ordering of pharmacy supplies,stores etc
• most ICUs don't have many nursing assistants
• on med/surg RNs will have 9-15 patients to look after on days and 15 on nights.There will probably be 2 healthcare assistants on as well, but we don't have equiv to LPNs in the UK-most have either retired or converted to RN and training is no longer available for your equivalent LPN

Private Health insurance

• Private health insurance is available but will not cover you for any conditions you already have! Soem people get it through company they work for, not sure how much premiums are otherwise.

Wait times

• are driven by government targets
• money and resources will be pumped into the specialty wher the targets are (ie overtime available for theater nurses etc but not usually anything for ward staff)
• other areas that don't have targets will suffer as a consequence (robbing Peter to pay Paul) Good eg is infection control at the moment
• My father-in-law had severe knee pain (waking at night, only able to walk 200yds, NSAIDS and codeine not working) and he waited 3 weeks for consultation and then 6 weeks after that for surgery.

Funding

• Is confusing!
• Primary care services pay for secondary care services
• government gives a hospital a yearly budget. If they overspend then the overspend is taken off next years budget-really helpful
• So even though it is a nationalised system it has to be run like a business, so it is neither one thing or another!

Hope this helps

Should have said these are USD -and our cost of living is ridiculous. You cannot buy a home for much less than $200,000, gas is around $8 per gallon and we pay $2000 per year property tax for a 1100 sq ft town home.(just some examples, and we live in the cheapest North east in london you cannot buy a house for less than around $400,000)

Well, that's not true. 46 (or 47 or 50) million minus (17 million + 10 million) = 19 million.

And that doesn't count the 20-somethings who opt out of buying medical insurance.



The '40 Million Uninsured' Myth


By Julia A. Seymour (Bio | Archive)
July 18, 2007 - 18:45 ET

“It’s really indefensible that we now have more than 45 million uninsured Americans, 9 million of whom are children, and the vast majority of whom are from working families,” said Sen. Hillary Clinton in a May 31 speech.

“It’s bold because it does propose to cover all Americans, including the 47 million now who are uninsured, within five years,” said Johnson.

“That’s the only preexisting condition that should exist. I am an American. That’s it,” said Moore in footage aired by ABC’s “Nightline” on June 13.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...th_care_1.html

. . ."Well, there you have it. The savings for taxpayers over three years: Nearly $5 trillion. Not requiring bills hundreds of pages long: Priceless! A few short regulations and we have a viable health care system for the future covering over 99% of the population, devoid of the treachery of Medicare and without dependence on the federal government. It's very simple, very sensible, and so easy even a government official can understand it. It's even short enough for Congress members to read fully, though some may require several days. Oh, yes, Mr. Obama, I want our $600 billion back."

The link won't work.
Can you explain the few short regulations that will cover 99% of the population?

Maybe my links will work.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=245
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/ea...nsur200706.pdf
http://www.iom.edu/?id=19175

Maybe it is my computer.
I can't even open the links to sites I just looked at.
And this is what I got:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...iberalism.html

Not about healthcare at all.
Sorry.
Gonna reboot.

It worked for me.

President Obama made it clear this week that he
was not going to settle for any delay in reforming health care. There are several proposals on the table ranging from government controlled "private" health care plans such as the Wyden-Bennett Health Reform Plan to the plan Mr. Obama prefers, fully government funded health care. All of the proposals are designed so that private insurance will be squeezed out of the market. Mr. Wyden's plan may seem more palatable initially but we must remember that ideologically the plan is the same as Mr. Obama's plan. The end result will therefore be the same; single-payer government controlled health care.

Under the Wyden-Bennett plan, a new federal bureaucracy will be established and a new agency created in each state called the Health Help Agency (HHA) to manage the Healthy American Private Insurance, or HAPI plans. The name itself causes such a nice, warm feeling in my tummy that I can already see the health benefits! HAPI plans will be sold through the state HHA, which will determine the contributions of individuals and employers. Each state will have at least two HAPI plans available so that people can double their happiness.

Mr. Wyden considers them private plans because there will be private insurance companies and private health care providers. They would be in fact as "private" as Medicare. Eventually, private insurance will cease to exist and the government will take over, perpetuating the purposeful dependence that Medicare was designed to ensure.

There are several fundamental problems with all of the plans proposed by the Democrats.

• 1. The plans are cost centered as opposed to patient centered. In other words, the Democrats are not pro-choice. In every case we can see that the Democrats have come out on the side of the government's right to mandate rather than patient choice. This is true in health care and in the abortion issue where the government protects only select choices. The government makes choices and the people abide by those choices.
• 2. The government uses flawed statistics in order to push its health plan proposals. The myth of the 45 million uninsured and skewed life expectancy and infant mortality numbers are examples.
• 3. Democrat proposals are going to cost much more than they will admit. Haven't we seen this somewhere before? Medicare costs are much higher than published with a debt of $38 trillion and fiscal collapse looming by 2018. Now, President Obama wants to add another entitlement program.

Goals of a good health care system:

• 1. Simplicity. (Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi, this means lack of complexity)
• 2. Available to all members of society, including the poor.
• 3. Offers good, basic lower cost health care options.
• 4. Portable. Not tied to employer or the government.
• 5. Prevention of exclusions for those who have had "pre-existing" problems.
• 6. Expandable. Option to purchase more extensive plans according to personal choice and ability. There is no Shangri-La. Wealthier people in Britain buy private insurance and those in Canada come to the United States for care. The Wyden plan proposes options for more extensive plans as well.
• 7. Shared, sustainable cost and some personal financial responsibility for all.
• 8. Patient health centered care. Preventive care with financial penalties for continued poor choices and rewards available for good health practices.

Solution:

• 1. Don't pass any of the Democrat health care plans. Savings of at least $3 trillion over the next five years.
• 2. Immediately do away with Medicare, Medicaid, and The Center for Medicare and Medicaid services. No other major industrialized nation has a separate system for the elderly, disabled and the poor. Scrap the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation. Savings of nearly $1 trillion in federal tax dollars yearly, $1 trillion in savings for states and billions in savings by dissolving the tyrannical Joint Commission.
• 3. People should be responsible for purchasing their own health care, not the government or the employer, making health insurance completely portable. Scrap Hillary Clinton's HIPAA act at a savings of billions yearly. Let's make it HIPAA-posthumous.
• 4. A Health Insurance Company must offer a good basic low-cost health care plan with expanded health savings accounts. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
• 5. No health exclusions for three years. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
• 6. Health plans should promote healthy practices and preventive health. Taxpayer cost zero.
• 7. For the poor, government should subsidize the premiums, not be involved in paying providers. Taxpayer costs by my estimate around $600 billion per year.
• 8. Retired people of lower means should be helped as above but should not have a separate insurance plan run by the government. Sorry, Medicare is dead. Promises were broken, but we are mature people and we need to get over it. Let's not let it happen again! Taxpayer cost around $300 billion per year.
• 9. End tax penalties for individuals purchasing individual health insurance. Taxpayer cost zero dollars as these penalties are merely punitive, designed to make people dependent.
• 10. The health insurance companies in each state should have the option of creating a risk pool from some of their premium funds. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
• 11. Laws should be changed to allow for private health co-ops to be formed as an option for those so inclined. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
• 12. Patients should be free to change insurance plans at least twice yearly and since their insurance would not be controlled by their employer or the government no permission is needed from them. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
• 13. There should be no legal right for insurance plans to dismiss competent and qualified contracted physicians for "no cause", when that no cause is really due to the physician acting as a patient advocate.
• 14. Tort reform with penalties for frivolous lawsuits and the loser paying some of the costs.

Well, there you have it. The savings for taxpayers over three years: Nearly $5 trillion. Not requiring bills hundreds of pages long: Priceless! A few short regulations and we have a viable health care system for the future covering over 99% of the population, devoid of the treachery of Medicare and without dependence on the federal government. It's very simple, very sensible, and so easy even a government official can understand it. It's even short enough for Congress members to read fully, though some may require several days. Oh, yes, Mr. Obama, I want our $600 billion back.

Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D. President of Oregon Right to Life. He blogs at summacontraprobus.blogspot.com

46 million is not a myth Even conservative opponents to reform have claimed that 85% are covered by health insurance. Using 300 million as the population of America, 85% coverage yields 255 million. 300-255 leaves 45 million uninsured. Those who are uninsured and then insured do subtract off that number but with our dynamic economy they are replaced by others who become uninsured d/t unemployment.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/ea...nsur200706.pdf


With a 15% unemployment rate I would venture to guess that we have closer to 75 miliion involuntarily uninsured at this point in time (factoring in uninsured family members). The Commonwealth Fund estimates that there are over 100 million Americans who are un/underinsured at this point in time.

We can't subtract the 12 million undocumented immigrants from those in need of health care. We have a moral obligation to assure access to health care. They still get sick and still need care.

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshot...hots_20081009/

Also: http://epi.3cdn.net/d1b4356d96c21c91d1_ilm6b5dua.pdf