Thanks for the red herring, strawman argument. Single payer/nationalized/socialized healthcare doesn’t take away choice from those who are not poor. If you have the money, you will still be able to buy your own private, supplemental insurance or pay a doctor from your very own bank account for whatever it is that you want done. Works that way in Canada, the UK, France, etc. afaik.

Suffice it to say that I had a family medical history that indicated a 1 in 2 chance of having a chronic medical condition. I asked for the test. Because I had decent insurance and a good wage, I got the test. I didn’t have to hock my furniture or live on only beans and rice for a month to do it.

So far as I’m concerned, everyone and anyone has that same right. Not merely folks living in mansions and folks living in cardboard boxes, but everyone. Indeed, society is both more humane and more efficient when this happens. Otherwise, you have people suffering dangerous symptoms that nobody has tried to find a cause for. You have people being treated for a symptom with drugs that may aggravate their undiagnosed condition further. At the very worst, you have a treatable, curable ailment disabling and killing people because they can only afford substandard care, or had to sacrifice most/all of their material possessions and assets to afford care. Or worst of all, they can’t afford treatment at all.

That’s acceptable to you. It’s not acceptable to me.

As for those who think there should be no public funding of health care, I have a few words for you - polio, smallpox, german measles, mumps, and rubella. And a whole lot more.

What I am objecting to here is the idea that it’s wrong to make a business out of providing things to which people have a “right.” So, again, if it’s wrong to make a business out of providing health care, isn’t it at least as wrong to make a business out of providing food, or shelter, or clothing, since those things are arguably even more important?

Any predictions on the rate of outright frauds that accompany
ALL such legislated socialism?

It isn’t a question of being “worthy of care”. It’s a question of being a proper recipient of charity.

[snort.] Thanks for reminding me why I don’t take folks like you seriously when you go on and on about how much you despise waste and worship efficiency. Creating more poor, sick, people before you deem them worthy of care is not efficient by any stretch of the imagination.

Thanks, I will.

A system that allows this [avoidable suffering is] short-sighted and inhumane.

I quite agree.

Our national health care system ought to make lavish provision for the well-being of those who are too poor to pay for their own care.

That does not require taking away choice from those who aren’t that poor.

I have gone into my issues with our current system numerous times on this board, so I’ll just cut to the chase today. Your idea of “freedom” is a joke. You can keep it.

But people making a profit are people earning a living; I am not comprehending the distinction you’re drawing.

It’s just that the way you spend your money is extremely inefficient.

Depends on what you mean by efficiency.

Looking at general numbers, the US spends $4631 per cap on health care, total, while New Zealand spends $1623. But if you look at private spending on health per cap, the US is dropping $2580 compared to your $357. The actual public spending is $2051 vs. $1266.

So what are we paying for with our $2580? One of the single biggest components is that our elderly are free to spend their life savings buying a couple more years of life, and generally do. Its this type of private expense, based on individual choice, that accounts for the differences in our health care expense ratios.

That expense is “inefficient” - from the point of view of someone running a state enterprise. If I owned all the economic product of the nation, it would indeed be unacceptable to drop 200 grand to keep one elder alive for a year, when instead I could give pre-natal care to 500 young mothers.

But from the point of view of individual utility, it’s a very efficient use of the money. The old person uses the resources that they accumulated over their life to spend another year with the great-grandkids - from their point of view, priceless, and an outstanding use of the privately-held resource.

It seems that your objections to our health care system are actually objections to a private economy, where people make their own choices about how to use their resources, instead of the state overriding those individual desires.

New Zealand has socialised health system (not as good as it used to be, but it does exist) and our top tax rate isn’t 50%. America spends far more on healthcare than any other OECD countries as a percentage of GDP and per capita, but it’s outcomes aren’t that good. It’s just that the way you spend your money is extremely inefficient.

The study is interesting, but somewhat limited in scope, in that it examined only four factors and dealt only with Medicare patients. Also, I’m not sure what the methodology was.

Michelle:
Why should insurers be forced to cover elective procedures like infertility treatment? If insurance companies want to offer it to attract customers, that’s fine. But I see no reason why the state should step in and force insurers (and ultimately consumers) to subsidize this sort of thing. Let them adopt if they can’t pay for it themselves.

I have a rheumatoid inflammatory disease. We don’t know exactly what it is - mainly because I have chosen not to spend thousands of dollars on bloodwork. I won’t die because I haven’t chosen this option. I won’t even suffer more because of it. The only thing that spending the thousands of dollars would do is give us a name for something that doesn’t have a cure - just treatment options, which don’t vary from a fairly standard regimen of care for rheumatoid conditions.

I don’t find it worth spending $5000 to know that for absolute optimum pain reduction I should be taking medication X instead of medication Y which does 95% of the job. If the pain was fifty times worse, though, I certainly would spend the money in the hopes of even a minor improvement in my condition.

If I lived under a system like Britain’s NHS, the decision would be made for me. Perhaps the system would decide it’s really best that we nail down what this is; perhaps the system would decide that there are higher priorities. Either way, it wouldn’t be my call - it would be someone else’s call.

And that’s unacceptable to me.

Housing is at least as important as medical care, isn’t it? Food certainly is. I assume you consider them rights, too…do you also believe that it’s wrong to run a grocery store or home-building company for profit?

Indeed, what novel and absurd concepts. Food as a right. Pshaw. Why, what are you suggesting? That the government should issue some sort of credit that people could use to buy food? What would you call them? “Food stamps”? Pshaw, like that would ever work.

Your assessment that Americans don’t have a universal health care system

Because not everybody agrees that security is the ultimate value. A plurality of Americans - a plurality that legitimately controls, at least for now, the political machine - believes that individual freedom and choice are the ultimate values, which trump the desire of the state to control and provide security for its citizens.

is a prime example of letting ideology cloud what might otherwise be a nice point. I think a review of the actual history of how health care came to be delivered primarily through employers in the U.S. would show that (like a lot of policy) it happened because an enterprising company took advantage of a loophole in IRS regulations that allowed it to offer a fringe benefit without being taxed as it would have if it had offered a commensurate salary increase. Able to offer $X amount of health insurance gave it a competitive advantage–the IRS gave its blessing–and other companies followed suit.

50 or some odd years later, we’re now faced with a system that is thoroughly entrenched, and like many entrenched systems, it’s a hell of a lot easier for a highly-motivated minority voice in the system (read: the people who benefit from the current arrangement, including health care providers and the companies they serve) to be able to keep it in place when the more diffuse majority doesn’t particularly feel one way or the other about it, even if a better alternative exists. (I’m not sure that I consider a single-payer system better–particularly when in my opinion the political will does not exist to impose a realistic way of rationing benefits–but I think my point still stands.) There are undoubtedly many people screwed by the current system, but a huge number of people probably just don’t think that hard about it–they get insurance through work, it’s not so expensive as to prod them to demand a better system, and most people don’t actively think about things like “but what will happen if I lose my job or try to start my own business or become poor?” because, realistically, who has the time?

I just have a hard time believing that most Americans have seriously sat down and thought about the inherent trade-offs of universal health care through a single-payer system vs. the current flavor we have now.

Having access for everyone to basic medical services is a noble and good mission. Doing so by forcing everyone to pay for it, because laws are generally rather black and white and hard to apply circumstancially, is not noble and good. It will create a system in which those who are trying to get ahead - by working overtime, 2nd or 3rd jobs, or choosing to put all their money into education, will be penalized for making just slightly too much.

Honestly, that’s what happens now with medicaid - you don’t work, you can go to the doctor. You try and support yourself with whatever crappy temp job you can manage to get, and suddenly no more medicaid for you. What the hell kind of system is that???