After posting the piece about Nurses traveling to Germany and reading the feedback. I would like to open up a debate on this BB about "Universal Health Care" or "Single Payor Systems"
In doing this I hope to learn more about each side of the issue. I do not want to turn this into a heated horrific debate that ends in belittling one another as some other charged topics have ended, but a genuine debate about the Pros and Cons of proposed "Universal Health Care or Single Payor systems" I believe we can all agree to debate and we can all learn things we might not otherwise have the time to research.
I am going to begin by placing an article that discusses the cons of Universal Health Care with some statistics, and if anyone is willing please come in and try to debate some of the key points this brings up. With stats not hyped up words or hot air. I am truly interested in seeing the different sides of this issue. This effects us all, and in order to make an informed decision we need to see "all" sides of the issue. Thanks in advance for participating.
Michele
I am going to have to post the article in several pieces because the bulletin board only will allow 3000 characters.So see the next posts.
the daily mail has a particular axe to grind , it views itself as a 'conservative ' newspaper but is veerring ever rightward and never lets the truth get i nthe way of a good story ...
The US spends more and gets less for its care. I have posted literally hundreds of links on other threads to reputable sources (Commonwealth fund etc.) that shows how we have worse care at higher cost.
Not much of a waiting period:
Funny how the NHS has better access to same day care than our system.
Freidman is right of course. Destitute poverty has been largely erradicated through economic growth and a myriad of good programs.
Being poor in America means not having a 54 inch plasma tv. Being poor in Rawanda means choosing whether to eat worms, twigs, or locust.
Friedman's ideology has led to bank failures with world wide ill-effects, sub-prime mortgage crisis with thousands of home owners losing their homes, stock market instability with massive losses on global stock prices, a weak dollar, ongoing decline in middle-class buying power and widening gap between the very wealthy and everybody else. We still have destitute poverty with people living under bridges eating I don't know what.
Friedman's ideology has led to bank failures with world wide ill-effects, sub-prime mortgage crisis with thousands of home owners losing their homes, stock market instability with massive losses on global stock prices, a weak dollar, ongoing decline in middle-class buying power and widening gap between the very wealthy and everybody else. We still have destitute poverty with people living under bridges eating I don't know what.
You do not live in the same world I do.
I'm not going to dig through 41 pages to find the post you quoted, but a lot of "poor" people DO have 54-inch plasma TVs - until they're repossessed.
Freidman is right of course. Destitute poverty has been largely erradicated through economic growth and a myriad of good programs.
Being poor in America means not having a 54 inch plasma tv. Being poor in Rawanda means choosing whether to eat worms, twigs, or locust.
Poverty is a relative measure. Read Mountains beyond Mountains for a description of the adverse effects of poverty on health outcomes among the poor whether in Haiti or NY City. The 54 inch plasma screen comment is a variant on Ronald Reagan's welfare queen comment which was pejorative then and is pejorative now.
The real issue facing America is our declining social mobility under policies inspired by Friedman as well as the failure of American workers to share in economic growth with ever increasing economic disparities. Fully 1/3 of American workers are in jobs that pay less than 200% of the poverty line.
The point remains that you claimed americans have better access to health care than countries with UHC. Data simply does not support your assertions about Friedman and his prescriptions for either poverty or health care.
Specializes in ICU, Paeds ICU, Correctional, Education.
Friedman's ideology has led to bank failures with world wide ill-effects, sub-prime mortgage crisis with thousands of home owners losing their homes, stock market instability with massive losses on global stock prices, a weak dollar, ongoing decline in middle-class buying power and widening gap between the very wealthy and everybody else. We still have destitute poverty with people living under bridges eating I don't know what.
This is just I wanted to say but you said it with elegance. Anything the gov runs already is broken except for their own health & retirement plans thank you for the input. Most of us nurses are care givers & have the need fix & repair, but do not look @ how the long term will effect us.
This is just I wanted to say but you said it with elegance. Anything the gov runs already is broken except for their own health & retirement plans thank you for the input. Most of us nurses are care givers & have the need fix & repair, but do not look @ how the long term will effect us.
SS works
Medicare works.
Both actually deliver their services at lower costs than what the private sector can acheve..
Kathy: I appreciate the search for answers, but it's clear you've been exposed to a lot of unfounded propaganda about universal healthcare systems.
quote=kitkat24;647008]Thanks for the articles and opinions and input! It is great.
What is the difference between "government-run" healthcare and "universal healthcare" ? I assumed these were the same thing. If the government did not run "universal healthcare" then who would?
The government always plays some role, but that role varies widely around the world. We need to remember a few things: If we look at say the top 20 countries in the world on income and development level - the countries that are our peers - every one except the US has some form of universal care, all of them achieve results in things like infant mortality and life expectancy and many more directly care related measures that are as good as ours or better, and all of them do it for less money than we spend now. One of the facts many Americans don't know is that the exact model varies widely. Only Britain and Spain have truly socialized systems - where the doctors and nurses work for the Government. Most of the others have some mix of public finance and private delivery. And in quite a few - France, Germany, Switzerland - the system is based on highly regulated non-profit insurance companies. None of them other than us has a major role for for-profit insurance companies.
What about the notion mentioned in the first article about ingenuity and invention? What about the idea that we are motivated by money? We sure are movitated by money, as RN's, come contract time, aren't we? If in a universal healthcare Doctors and nurses make what a bus driver makes, then where is the incentive? Where is the incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invent new drugs to treat cancer and autoimmune disease and HIV and come up with new antibiotics or anti-virals or new vaccines. Has Canada been inventive? Have government run universal healthcare systems displayed ingenuity? When one in 8 of us females develop breast cancer, do we want there to be a newly developed treatment, so that we can survive to raise our children?
I haven't really seen a good study on innovation in other countries, but just anecdotally, I do a lot of journal reading and try to keep up with latest developments in cardiology and cardiac surgery and I note that a lot of new surgical techniques and a lot of new drugs are developed in other countries with universal systems. Many of the journal articles describing new techniques seem to have been written in France or Italy or Germany. The drug market is incredibly international - most of the drugs we use here were made overseas, most of the companies are multi-national and people everywhere else get the same drugs we do for a lot less money.
I am looking for answers for these types of questions. It seems that they are not out there. Even the Harvard study does not show the cons of universal healthcare. The only thing they discuss is a 16 weeks wait for elective surgery. Well, if you need a simply lap chole for gallstones, that is elective surgery. You could be fine and just need the lap chole, right? If you are required to wait 4 months or 16 weeks for an elective lap chole, and a gall stone becomes logded in your common bile duct, and you then develop pancreatitis and need TPN and lipids and IV pain medication before you can even have your surgery, that ends up being far more costly, doesn't it? I am sure a mastectomy is an elective surgery. Do you want to wait 4 months to have the cancer cut out of your breast? Most surgeries are elective, even we patients know and feel that they are not elective. The only surgery that is not elective is emergency or trauma patients. Where are the people to question that aspect?
things like waiting times vary a lot from place to place and procedure to procedure. 16 weeks is nothing remotely like the norm anywhere. On the other hand my mother in law has found that her kidneys are failing and is having a 4 month wait for the first available appointment with a nephrologist here in our part of California. Friends in New York tell me the wait for a mammogram can be several months there. The system I know best is the French, since I like to travel there. What I have learned is that they pay as a nation about 60% of what we do for healthcare, they have less wait time than we do, no limits on choice of doctor, no limits on seeing specialists, all the same drugs and techniques available. And some very smart incentives that encourage people with chronic diseases to maintain them well.
And, paperwork that physicians and nurses do is not soley for administration, is it? Why do nurses chart for hours on five patients? Is it to prevent law suits and cover your butt, or is it simply wasted administration? How would universal care prevent the need for doctors and nurses to thoroughly chart on each and every patient?
Actually, a lot of the charting we do now is not for actual patient care, but to prove that the doctor or hospital did their job so they can get paid. Most of the universal healthcare countries to tend to have shorter and simpler charting than we do. And doctors don't waste time trying to fight for getting an insurer to pay for treatment.
And, what about law suits? Who would be sued in malpratice and who would pay in universal healthcare? Would the taxpayers pay for malpractice suits? Could a patient sue the government (TAX PAYERS) as well?
People in the US sue for malpractice a lot more and malpractice costs are much higher here than in other countries, even though most patients injured by their doctors don't sue. Is this some character defect of ours? No, it's the logical result of our system. In the US we are largely a "you're on your own" society. If you are injured and disabled by medical negligence, your only hope of getting your healthcare and other basic needs met and being able to live with some dignity is to sue someone and prove they're at fault. In most of the Universal Healthcare countries, people who are disabled get their care needs and other human needs met just in the normal course of things. So they don't need to sue, so no big lawyer fees, no court costs, no long delays to settlement. Much cheaper and simpler and more humane.
Where is patient choice in universal care? What are your options and choices versus government run universal care? We think we are limited now by HMO's, I have a feeling we aint seen nothin' yet, until we have the government telling us what hosptials to use etc.
Actually, in most of the universal healthcare countries, and all of the proposals for the US, patients would have complete choice of doctor - any doctor you want, any hospital you want, not just the one your HMO has a deal with.
What are patient to nurse ratios in a universal care system, and what EXACTLY are the wages for say an RN who has worked full time for 5 years in our current system, versus an RN who has worked full time for the same lenghth of time under universal care. These are also things that we need to consider that NOBODY seems to mention or discuss in any of the articles. I want to see figures: EXAMPLE UNiversal care RN makes $26.50 per hour and a RN in US current system makes $28.00 per hour. I want wage hours for comparsion. Do UNiversal care RN's get overtime pay? Do universal care RN's get paid hourly or on salary with no overtime pay?
None of those things are particularly related to whether there is universal care or not - remember, in most universal care countries and in most of the proposals for us here, the delivery system remains the same as it does now. You work for the same hospital, under the same contract. Only difference is that instead of dealing with 50 or more differnt insurers, your hospital business office deals with one. No reason that should change any of the items you mention.
I sometimes feel that nurses are so brain-washed by the democratic party of the US. They walk along like mindless sheep following the pro abortion, pro DFL agenda and just incessantly chant the mantra that the DFL'ers tell them to believe: Universal care, government run healthcare, and they do not submit any of the above questions.
I submit: Look at Medicaid and Medicare and then ask yourself if you want the government overseeing all of your medical care and determining what is best for you!
Medicaid is a lousy system because it is for poor people. Systems set up just for the poor are always underfinanced and poorly run, since the poor have little power to complain. Medicare works quite well actually - pays as well as most private insurance and pays faster and more reliably, and with much lower admin costs. The best insurance of quality in a universal system is that if everyone is in the same system, including the powerful and the government officials, they have a big incentive to make it work well - they depend on it themselves!
Please, keep the information and opinions coming. It needs to be discussed.
Social security is going bankrupt and medicare reimbursement is a joke. How can SS be working if we constantly here liberals decry elderly choosing between (take your pick) gas, medicine, smokes, alcohol, etc... and food? Please don't tell me Liberals are just fearmongering that would be a total shock to the rest of us.
SS works
Medicare works.
Both actually deliver their services at lower costs than what the private sector can acheve..
from page 1/11 kitkat24, thank you sooooo much for your proposed questions on this topic. Now, there is someone using their noggin for something other than a hat rack. If I have put the time in to be an LPN, RN, BSN, MSN etc. There is no way in HADES that I will EXCEPT the pay of a Masters degreed Social Worker....$19,000 a year folks. Can you live on that salary alone? At today's prices....5-10-15 years from now? sure, you may want to learn how to say, "Pass the newspaper i am cold, while your up honey, fix the tape on the cardboard box house door, the wind is blowing in."
ZippyGBR, BSN, RN
1,038 Posts
the daily mail has a particular axe to grind , it views itself as a 'conservative ' newspaper but is veerring ever rightward and never lets the truth get i nthe way of a good story ...