Socialized Healthcare?

potluck wrote:

hmmmm???? I dont think I want to pay taxes toward a system that allows patients to roam free in hospitals and make arbitrary decisions about what they need for care. I admit here in the US we need to do something to deal with the rising cost of healthcare but i dont think UHC is the way to go..Farfromglorified has the right idea. Economic solutions for an economic problem.

You don't think patients in the US get to make arbitrary decisions about what they need for care? What do you think all those drug commercials that say "Ask your Doctor about [insert drug name here]" that don't really explain what the drug does are for? I saw a news program once that basically said that a large proportion of the time if you ask for one of those drugs you will get it whether you need it or not. Sounds like a bunch of patients making arbitrary decisions about what they need to me

farfromglorified wrote:

:rolleyes:

If you believe the US system "borders on tyrannical", you're a little crazy. "Flawed" and "tyrannical" are not synonymous.

You need this pill?

what? it hurts? You feel like you're dying?

too bad...wipe the tears...pay up

Yeah, that's a form of torture when you're living it.

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

You need this pill?

what? it hurts? You feel like you're dying?

too bad...wipe the tears...pay up

Yeah, that's a form of torture when you're living it.

Umm...you understand the exact same dynamic happens in Canada, right? Your gauze, bandages, tape, blankets, gowns didn't just magically pay for themselves or materialize out of thin air. Someone, maybe you, maybe your neighbor was forced to pay for those things.

farfromglorified wrote:

Umm...you understand the exact same dynamic happens in Canada, right? Your gauze, bandages, tape, blankets, gowns didn't just magically pay for themselves or materialize out of thin air. Someone, maybe you, maybe your neighbor was forced to pay for those things.

....after all this time I thought it was magic.

There is a certain urgency after you've been sliced open, operated on, and tubes and wires flow into and out of you from various holes.

Not quite the same feeling of urgency I get when I watch my neighbor mow his lawn, or pay my taxes for said services.

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

....after all this time I thought it was magic.

There is a certain urgency after you've been sliced open, operated on, and tubes and wires flow into and out of you from various holes.

Not quite the same feeling of urgency I get when I watch my neighbor mow his lawn, or pay my taxes for said services.

Do you have a lot of data suggesting that American medical patients who have been sliced open, operated on, and have tubes and wires flowing into and out of their various holes who have not had access to gauze or gowns or towels?

scb wrote:

Perhaps I should have phrased it better: I believe "for-profit" and "for the good of the people" are mutually exclusive GOALS. Certainly profit and the good of the people can co-exist. But when the purpose of a company is to make profit first and to provide healthcare only so much as it makes them profit, that's where the problem lies.

I disagree that there's a "problem" there. Absent the profit motive, these companies have little motive to innovate or respond to customer needs. Take away the profit and you take away the direct influence of the customer. Furthermore, government controlled systems and not-for-profit system have no more of a motive to provide "for the good of the people" than do profitable organizations. If one looks at most governmental systems, we see a greater interest in simply maintaining existence than we do in providing high-quality service.

Of course I agree that there are more ways to profit in the world than monitarily. But when we speak of "for-profit" companies - we are speaking of money.

We are speaking of money in those terms. But in terms of their end customers, we're not. For example, let's say that you get cancer. And let's say that I invent a pill that you can take that cures cancer. And let's say it costs me $0.10 to make this pill. Let's also say that no insurance or governmental system exists to provide that pill to you, the cancer patient. You must come to me to buy it. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you're going to buy my pill and give me $10. I pocket a monetary profit of $9.90. Why did I sell it to you in the first place? Because the value of that $10 exceeds the value of the pill I just made to me. Why did you pay $10 for it? Because the value of the pill exceeds the value of that $10 to you. I made a monetary profit. You, however, made a non-monetary profit. That's how most healthcare exchanges do and should work -- those providing a product or service that has little value to them should receive a counterveiling monetary profit relative to the non-monetary benefit you receive from the same product. Absent the monetary ($9.90) profit motive for me, I have little or no reason to make or sell my pill. Absent the non-monetary (cancer-free) profit motive for you, you have little or no reason to buy my pill.

The fundamental problem in a market-oriented system comes from those who need healthcare but cannot afford it, regardless of the price. This is the place where governmental intervention is most appropriate but so often misguided. What we need to do with government in terms of healthcare is not just take existing healthcare from person A and give it to person B, but rather to create new supplies of healthcare such that the price decreases to the point that person B can now access it along with person A. UHC tends to cut against this model by decreasing supply through fighting the profit motive and by increasing demand by arbitrarily giving access to everyone into markets that aren't ready to accept them.

Of course I wouldn't. But I don't buy insurance myself - I'm stuck with whatever insurance my employer provides.

Exactly. And your employer is not likely buying insurance based on what's best for you. They're buying insurance based on what's best for them, which may be entirely reasonable or unreasonable, depending on your employer's goals. What's completely unreasonable is the silly expectation people have that either employers or governments or anyone else for that matter will have an unfailing interest in providing goods or services to people who, by the very nature of the transaction, provide little or no value into the process.

I disagree. When we can't even agree that every person deserves healthcare, the healthcare crisis is first and foremost a philosophical & justice problem.

Well, then we're going to disagree here. The statement "every person deserves healthcare" makes no sense because there are nothing but arbitrary justificiations for it. Simply ask "why" that's the case, and you'll come up with nothing but silly answers that have no actual link to healthcare.

Healthcare, despite its importance, is simply a service. It is a service provided by another person to you. If you "deserve" that service, then the person providing it "deserves" something in return. The fact of the matter is that its only when you ignore the above to you create a justice problem.

Certainly I believe that everyone having healthcare is an ideal. The day that everyone on this planet has access to state of the art medicine, if that day ever comes, will be one of the greatest days in human history. But simply taking that and turning it into a false absolute regarding a "right to healthcare" accomplishes nothing. The better approach is to recognize the economic nature of the problem and then act accordingly.

Once we can agree that our goal is to provide healthcare for all, then we can move on to the details of how best to make that happen. It's at that point that it becomes an economic problem.

The opposite is true, unfortunately. The instant you say that everyone has a "right to healthcare" is the moment you make it a political problem instead of an economic problem. And that is when you go back to the unintended consequences from which we started this discussion.

farfromglorified wrote:

....

This is getting really long. My short response:

1. Healthcare is a basic human right.
2. There are people and systems in this country that would and do provide healthcare because it's a basic human right, rather than for their own profit. (That's not to say they don't receive payment - just that the systems are not set up as for-profit systems.)

When greed bleeds into a society at such a fundamental level, I think it's a prime indicator that circumstances in that society are going not so great.

Actively leveraging people for money (exorbitant rates at that) over life and death matters when they are sick?

yikes...

shame...

farfromglorified wrote:

Why? How?

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

farfromglorified wrote:

And there's nothing I'm saying that precludes them doing this. If this is what they wish to do, certainly no one should stand in their way. The fact remains, however, is that the efforts of these groups will pale in overall comparison to those of for-profit entities. Regardless, no one here is making the argument that not-for-profit entities shouldn't participate in a healthcare system to whatever extent they desire.

I was merely responding to your suggestion that the healthcare system must be profit-driven for people to be motivated to provide healthcare. That's simply not true.