I grew up in socialized medicine, and you get sick, you go to the hospital, they treat you and you leave. There's no step 4. Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems is beyond me. It's all in y'alls control.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2911271-america-and-am...
If you have good health insurance, the healthcare in the US is absolutely top tier.
Many people that complain are getting a plan with a huge deductible either because they are being cheap or can't afford better. But I think in a lot of cases it's the former. People just don't prioritize health care. Many would rather trade in their 2 year old car for a brand new one.
They've been told socialized medicine is evil communist plot to steal their hard earned money. Many Americans have not been outside of the states and have no concept of what life in other countries might be like. There's a good percentage of Americans that are completely ignorant of how the rest of the world does things, and also dismiss this as inferior. They've been told their entire life that the US is the greatest country, so, why would we do it any other way?
One guy I knew went to the doctor complaining about blood in his poop. Was prescribed pepto bismal. Went back a few months later. Same thing. Went back a few months later, same thing. This pattern repeated for a little bit over a year. Eventually, he got a colonoscopy. Stage 4 colon cancer. He passed away a few months later.
A friend of mine went to the doctor with a fucked up ankle. Swollen to the size of a grapefruit. They wrapped it and gave him 800mg Motrin. Week later, same thing. Repeat x4. During the last trip, the doctor was giving him the scrip for another bottle of Motrin, when another (higher ranked) doctor recognized him and ordered the junior doctor to do an x ray. The junior doctor protested but did it anyway because it's the military. Fractured ankle. By this point it was mostly healed, so too late to put a cast on it. Fortunately it hadn't healed wrong, so it didn't need to be rebroken.
Vet communities are full of stories like this. And veterans, people who have had government healthcare for years to decades, are the population group most opposed to government run healthcare.
This doesn't necessarily mean government run healthcare is bad; the military is disfunctional in many ways. But your assertion that opposition to government run healthcare is based in ignorance is absolutely, completely false.
Socialized medicine is in no way equivalent to the VA system or the issues of the DoD and VA. So if you're using that as an example to disprove ignorance, to me that just proves how ignorant people are. Pointing to the VA as an argument against universal socialized medicine is such an absurd take that I'm not sure how to respond.
If anything, your comment proves my point. Americans are completely ignorant on the basics of the topic to the point where they compare a poorly designed military system as some kind of argument against socialized medicine. The incentives of the VA are so radically different from any national healthcare system. I appreciate the debate.
The fact that it's poorly run is actually the point. Few Americans want to replace their experience at the doctor's office with the experience from the government run Post Office or DMV. The point is that many Americans have relatively little faith in the government to design a good system, and association with government run systems correlates strongly with lack of faith in the government to operate smoothly.
Note that my position, not that it really ought to matter, is as a proponent of universal basic income. Cut everybody in the country a check for $1500 a month, keep the ACA requirements that everyone buys health insurance and that insurance companies can't reject coverage on preexisting conditions, and let the market solve the problem. The problem is that healthcare is too expensive, not that it's bad. The government, for everything it sucks at, is really good at sending a check every month.
They are in the technical sense that the US govt "runs it". They are not socialized medicine as every Western country has implemented. They hardly have the scale, participation or political pull.
> I define government run healthcare as healthcare that is run by the government.
This is a bit naive, because the VA and DoD have a strong vested interests in short term solutions to keep soldiers going and back on the field. Also, many of the VA's problems stem from the fact that only a small % of Americans actually use the VA and care about its performance. So politically, it's hardly something that anyone focuses on, despite many promises to the contrary.
> experience from the government run Post Office
The post office is actually really efficient and is an example of a very well run government service. They're on par with any private company, easily, in both price and service. If anything, cuts to the post office have hurt it more than any operational problems or mismanagement.
> The point is that many Americans have relatively little faith in the government to design a good system
This is because many Americans actively vote against their best interest and elect politicians whose sole purpose is to hamstring the government from doing anything effectively. It's the classic conservative self fulfilling prophecy: cripple the government, point to the fact that the "government doesn't work", then privatize and reap the rewards. It's just a political game to make rich voters richer.
The United States is not a free market healthcare system - it's literally the worst parts of both capitalist and socialized systems with none of the benefits of either.
Also: I am Canadian, I spent nearly 50% of my earned income last year on just taxes. I also live in the most expensive city in the country. 90% of my medical expenses I've had in the past 10 years came from private practices that I paid out of pocket with a smidgen of private insurance that cushioned the blow a bit. The Canadian system is nowhere near as great as ignorant Americans like to believe.
I appreciate the value of debate, but i ask that you please do your homework before you start citing the evidence
Can you describe some aspect of US healthcare that you think is good?
A thing that sucks in both systems can not legitimately be used to argue against only one of them.
So, how about all of the not-California parts of the US that have the same kinds of problems (which is, last I checked, more or less "all of them")?
Because, the thing is, only one of my examples was, you know, from California.
... and had no PT within the county with a <10 week wait time.
I guess we're close to Canada though, so maybe it's contagious?
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...
Take 1000 men over 50 and give them PSA screening for prostate cancer for about 11 years.
Take 1000 different men over 50 and don't give them PSA screening for prostate cancer for about 11 years.
For the group without screening about 7 die from prostate cancer. But for the group who do have screening we see the same number of deaths. The screening hasn't prevented deaths from prostate cancer.
The group without screening didn't have any false alarms and didn't have any needless biopsies. 160 men in the group with screening had false alarms and unnecessary biopsies. 20 men in the screening group had treatment (which can include incontinence and impotence) for non-progressive prostate cancer.
https://www.harding-center.mpg.de/en/fact-boxes/early-detect...
Over-testing leads to over-diagnosis which leads to over treatment, and harm is caused at each step.
Margaret McCartney or Gerd Giggerenzer talk about this.
So sure, the amount of patients is pretty much guaranteed to be higher once they can afford the care. If you optimise only for wait times, then the obvious solution is to have no doctors and 0 wait time.
Do you think this doesn't happen in the US?
If you're about to say "but in the US we can pay for healthcare", well that's true everywhere. Anyone with enough money can pay for healthcare.
Yes, like I said, anybody who can afford it can travel to get healthcare elsewhere.
Travelling from US to UK and paying 150% of the English tariff price for health care turns out to often be cheaper than getting care in the US, even if you include the travel costs.
Whether or no wait time varies greatly, the overall quality of care can be assessed in terms of patient outcomes life expectancy which are generally very similar while spending significantly less money. In fact many countries with socialized healthcare actually surpass the US on some factors like infant mortality, in part because the US has a higher poverty rate and those in poverty have less access to healthcare.
I've had a relative with a treatable condition wait so long for a surgery that her condition worsened and it couldn't be fixed and now she is permanently physically disabled.
Private hospitals and health insurance are still allowed. Here in Canada, every public hospital still has a billing department for the uninsured & those with private insurance (foreigners, etc.) (I wonder if you can opt to pay to "skip the queue" here?)
I once worked in the US and in Canada (Connecticut) in the same year.
My tax rate was lower in Canada for the same salary.
For comparison in my income bracket:
Ontario income tax rate: 12.16% Canada federal tax rate: 26% Employment Insurance and Social Security are deducted seperately and made up the rest of my deductions.
Connecticut state income tax rate: 5.50% US federal tax: 22%
Unless social security rates are worse than Canada, I don't see how your situation is possible.
However due to a minimum below which no taxes are paid and other features, the effective rax rate for a $35k salary is ~15%. For a $90k salary it’s about 32%. A median salary is about $70k.
This is excluding pension (the employer pays that on top to a pension fund).
Public services are pretty good and not expensive for me, they are even cheaper for people in lower income levels. (Putting a kid in kindergarten is about $100-200/month for example)
If you take everything into account, I suspect it’s the US system is a much worse deal for everyone except the top 5-10%.
While the US by some measurements has a lower overall tax rate than other developed countries [1], the difference between us and, say, Canada, who enjoy high quality socialized health care, is far from "exorbitant".
There's a very reasonable argument for considering all of the consequences of our systematically broken health care system as a "tax" -- it amounts to a massive financial and quality-of-life burden for most Americans.
Health care in the United States is more expensive than in other developed countries for identical procedures [2]. Medical costs are the worst kind of lottery, where an overnight visit for tonsillitis can get you a nice little $100,000 bill [8]. Do you not consider that a tax? Why not?
Medical bills account for 60% of bankruptcies in the US [3]. High medical costs are literally causing people to commit suicide [4] or to die of entirely preventable causes [5] while others just forego care entirely [9]. For those people who do jump through the hoops to get private medical insurance, there are entire bureaucracies dedicated to denying claims [6]. There are so many perverse incentives involved that some doctors are taking it into their own hands to try to lower medication costs, and pharmaceutical companies are responding by tripling the costs of the medication [7].
Meanwhile tons and tons of Americans stay in jobs they don't like just to maintain their employer-sponsored health insurance [10], strangling their wages and preventing positions from being opened up to more enthusiastic employees.
These things are all taxes. They are taxes on American society, impacting all of us. Anybody that's opposed to socialized health care "because muh taxes" is defending this system, this embarrassing, broken, corrupt system that endangers and kills countless people every year and acts as a massive multi-faceted anchor on our economy.
[1]: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxe...
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/03/15/why-a...
[3]: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bill...
[4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/co21rt/elderly_couple... -- linking to Reddit here because there are a lot of comments there worth reading.
[5]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shane-patrick-boyle-died-a...
[6]: https://splinternews.com/a-glimpse-into-the-bureaucratic-hel...
[7]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/doctors-tried-to-low...
[8]: https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/ngngy/merry_fucking_ch...
[9]: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/06/09/sick-of-high-healt...
[10]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/13/fear-o...
Or you can choose to be unhealthy. Smoking, drinking, drugs, poor diet, lack of exercise. These are by far the biggest contributors to healthcare cost and they cost absolutely nothing to prevent. Many people just don't take responsibility for their health, and many others in the US don't like the idea of subsidizing other people's healthcare for preventable or self-inflicted health complications.
edit: I actually do have access to one of the best single payer systems in the world due to dual citizenship. Single-payer is far from the perfect silver bullet everyone likes to sell it as.
How is that working out? Does the average American eat healthier, do more exercise, consumer fewer drinks, or do fewer drugs?
It's also a downward spiral. The more people are responsible for their own well being, the more they're opposed to "handouts". So those who do take of themselves and do responsibly manage risks I've noticed are the ones more opposed to socialized medicine.
Who cares really?
It costs a bit more to care for people in dollars and cents, but it fosters a better society, which everyone benefits from.
Another case of people wanting to be freeriders.
Why "educated" people in this country still keep voting in the same crooks (dems & reps) is beyond me.
This election cycle is going to be the same thing - this crook or that crook. Pick one that will do less damage. There is no difference anymore. This two party system BS has to go.
This system throws caring-but-unlucky people under the bus.
And even people who really care about their health still have to endure this absolutely bizarre implementation (how can you have an efficient market where prices are secrets or fiction?)