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 goal of Republicans is to aid the most individuals as possible. To say otherwise is useless hyperbole. Even Kennedy worried that the result of improving the lot of citizens is that it served to make them Republican.
And me wanting to keep my money is not selfish. I'm entitled to the fruits of my labor. It's not the government's money, that's the bottom line.
there is a positive value to our society in having a strong social insurance net. the system we have in the us does not work as well or as efficiently as it could. there is a powerful social value in having a dedication to mutually shared prosperity which i think has been deliberately distorted by my friends on the right. the reality is that social mobility has decreased in the us over the past 40 years since the conservative devolution started and i have posted numerous links to illustrate why conservative ideology is bad for the broadly shared interests of our society.
taxes are the prices we pay for living in a civilized society.
"everybody does better when everybody does better" jim hightower
• americans who work hard should have a living wage, basic health and retirement security, and the tools they need to prosper in this new economy.
• american workplaces and employment practices should support healthy and secure families rather than make workers choose between being productive workers and good family members.
• in this increasingly unstable global economy, workers must have an adequate safety net that supports workers and families as they move across jobs and/or in and out of the labor force as their life and job circumstances change over time.
one pragmatic and creative option that we believe fits well with the other elements of the new social contract discussed here is called "health care for america,"12 which would create a public insurance pool linked to medicare to cover those not insured through an employer-provided plan. employers would have a choice to either pay into the public fund or substitute their own equal or better health insurance for the public plan if they prefer. employees would pay premiums to the public plan and non-employees would be required to purchase coverage on an income-based scale. other options are being tried at the state level. massachusetts, for example, has introduced a program that requires individuals to purchase health insurance and employers to either provide coverage or pay a small annual fee. california is considering a slightly different approach.
...
from our workforce and labor market perspective, the key design feature for both health care and pension reforms is that plans should be fully portable. most important, however, is that the plans provide health care coverage to all working americans and their families and that workers, at the end of their careers, have the needed resources to retire with basic dignity.
Don't you realize that universal healthcare will be even more rationed? Whether rationed by dollars or rationed by long waits, the result is rationing.
If your insurance company refused vital surgery then you had the wrong insurance. You can always shop around for another policy. Of course, when the gov't makes you wait 9 months to deny that same surgery, where ya gonna go?
Don't think it'll happen? The U.S. does twice as many open heart surgeries per capita as Canada and four times as many as Britain. THAT is even after new and improve stents reduced the number of open hearts in the U.S. from 500k/yr to 350k/yr.
Interesting that you have brought this up -- I saw in the New York Times over the weekend that CBS News is doing a special on stents vs. bypass on March 1st. It did not mention Canada but I thought it might be of interest to you. Supposedly, there is a trend of going back to bypass surgery instead of stents because studies are now showing that there is a long term risk of clots with stents. Definitely will be tuning in -- i think it will be an interesting special.
moreover, the government should permit corporations to receive taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, and contracts only if they comply with labor and employment laws and regulations and provide family-sustaining jobs. taxpayer dollars at the national, state, and local levels should not subsidize corporations that fail to respect their workers' basic rights and interests.
for example access to affordable health care and decent wages.....
america's $2.2-trillion-a-year medical complex is enormously wasteful, ill-targeted, inefficient, and unfair. the best medical care is extremely good, but the rube goldberg system through which that care is financed is extremely bad—and falling apart. one out of three non-elderly americans spend some time without health insurance every two years, and the majority of those remain uninsured for more than nine months.1 meanwhile, runaway health costs have become an increasingly grave threat, not just to the security of family finances, but also to corporate america's bottom line. the united states spends much more as a share of its economy on health care than any other nation, and yet all this spending has failed to buy americans the one thing that health insurance is supposed to provide: health security.
health insecurity is not confined to one part of the population. it is experienced by all americans: those without insurance as well as those who risk losing coverage; those who are impoverished as well as those with higher incomes who experience catastrophic costs; those who are sick or injured as well as those who are just one sickness or injury away from financial calamity. as health care costs have skyrocketed and the proportion of americans with stable benefits has eroded, health insecurity has become a shared american experience, felt by those who thought they had it made as well as those just struggling to get by.
The goal of the Republican party over the past 100 years has been to concentrate as much wealth as possible into the fewest number of hands.
This kind of broad generalization isn't constructive. This is like saying the goal of the Democratic party is to punish financially successful people by taking their money and giving it to lazy people who sit around waiting for government handouts.
There may be certain factions or individuals in the Republican party that have nefarious goals, but I'd imagine the majority of Republicans aren't in on such grand schemes.
I think discussing possible health care reform measures is important and I hate to see it sidetracked.
added later: I don't mean to pick on you specifically HM2Viking; it was just an opportunity to express my frustration with that type of generalization; I appreciate all the information you have brought to the table
In the United States, where 85 percent of renal dialysis centers are for-profit,
death rates for dialysis patients are 47 percent higher than in Canada, and more
than one-half of American patients are treated with reprocessed dialysis
(an unsafe practice). Twice as many patients in Canada get kidney transplants
as in the United States
Wow, is this accurate? Do you have a government source for this information? Considering the dialysate I've seen dumped down the drain, I wonder how they are recapturing it. Also, does Canada really do twice as many kidney transplants as the US or is that on a per capita basis? What are their rates for kidney disease and organ donation? Perhaps that has an effect on the difference.
Thanks for posting the information. Good information is useful as long as it's accurate.
Wow, is this accurate? Do you have a government source for this information? Considering the dialysate I've seen dumped down the drain, I wonder how they are recapturing it. Also, does Canada really do twice as many kidney transplants as the US or is that on a per capita basis? What are their rates for kidney disease and organ donation? Perhaps that has an effect on the difference.
Thanks for posting the information. Good information is useful as long as it's accurate.
Its a very good article with academic references. Just follow the link to find the reference.....
39. Himmelstein, D. U., et al. Bleeding the Patient: The Consequences of Corporate
Health Care, pp. 137–138. Common Courage Press, Monroe, Me., 2001.
pickledpepperRN
4,491 Posts
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