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I have no private insurance, I rely on treatment from the NHS. JJ. 
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Quote:
I assume you mean the cost, but privatized basic health care can be provided at little to no cost. There are thousands of free clinics around the nation that provide these services and don't charge a dime. Give me back the huge portion of taxes that goes to healthcare and let me give it to organizations as I see fit that can provide higher levels of service and much lower costs.
I agree and let the nurses, patients, social workers, and therapists figure it out with the business people.
I know of one in all of Ramsey County (ST PAUL MN) As a Social Worker for mentally ill people, I see this issue quite a bit. People in poverty generally can get medicaid from the state or counties. Most are still being excepted (at least in my state) Medicaid funds most of our MI services and assistance. You will always have to have a certain amount of medical assistance to keep the public safe from epidemics that tend to start with the poor. IE TB, Typhoid, Plague, Mental Illness, etc.
However the biggest issue isn't poverty level clients. What I see is people who are working very hard, possible at Min wage, some even 80 hours a week. These jobs don't provide benifits as people are forced to work 20-30 hours at each job. This is because Health care is so expensive, as a result, these people tend to have more health issues from stressful lifestyles, ie obese from eating fast food, smoking, drinking, and other chemically dependent issues from the stress of it all. When they get sick the wait unitl they are deathly ill and go to the hospital. Free clinics are non existent here (TC)anyway, and most are only a few hours during the day in a homeless shelter 1-2 times a week. This is extremely expensive. Generally the people get so sick that they lose there jobs and start the cycle all over again, getting Medical Assitance (which won't pay for the intial ER and hospital visit BTW) and unemployment. This is a worst case scenario but not all too uncommon.
Another issue is preventitive maintenance stuff. I.e. paying for health club memberships and making it a requiremtn to go at least 2x a week to get discounts in benifits and other incentives. It seems that health care agencies don't push these enough. I do like the trend towards using nurse call lines and such. I use these services frequently.
Another complaint I have is directed at Mental Health and CD issues. (sorry have to rant a bit) People who work and do get enough physical benifits often find that thier MH benies fall very short. I have a guy who had a 45 day lifetime MI hospital stay. He had a period of 2-3 wk hospitalizations for over year and ended up with a $60k bill that will most likely get eaten up by the hospital. When he got really sick he was just as sick as any cancer or heart disease patient. Insurance would have paid for those diseases but not MI. Hmmm. I guess they want psychotic people on the streets.
Anyway I heard today on NPR that 2/3 of the average life medical expense is in the last year of a person's life! That's a lot. Sooner or later, we're going to have to figure out what to do and what we shouldn't do. Cost is a major thing. Most of us don't know what anything costs, nor can we chose between prices of anythign in the medical field, (except OTC meds) If something doesn't happen soon, our insurance companies will start to decide what our elderly can and can't have.
Medicine has become a wonderful thing but sooner or later we will have to attach a monetary value to life or it'll price us out of existance.
This will sound really cold but eventually we'll have to determine whether or not a $500k treatment to make grandma live another 6 months is worth it or not.
Anyway I'm done ranting, night.
Last edited by jlanger; 10/20/04 04:20 AM.
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Originally posted by jlanger:
This will sound really cold but eventually we'll have to determine whether or not a $500k treatment to make grandma live another 6 months is worth it or not.
This I'll agree with, but..
Originally posted by jlanger:
we will have to attach a monetary value to life or it'll price us out of existance.
Please please tell me you'd like to rephrase this! 
Derek
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Please share the road with cyclists.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jlanger:
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we will have to attach a monetary value to life or it'll price us out of existance.
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Please please tell me you'd like to rephrase this!
Agreed fairly bad statement (sorry). Although we already attach a monetary amount to life, or we wouldn't be in this predicament, all medication would be free as would food, etc. I meant it in the way that we're going to have to figure out when enough is enough ie, spending 500k on grandma (who might not live another 6 mo.) vs 500k on your child who might live another 60 years. This would be an example of attaching a monetary value to a life.
Again sorry to offend, but I'm afraid that attaching monetary value to life is and has been happening for centuries.
'03 Protege 5
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Originally posted by Pete D:
To me there is something wrong if you are guranteed a college education (for free or quite cheap if you are poor) but you can't afford health insurance.
Originally posted by Tourgasm:
Sometimes you can mess up a word so bad that spell check doens't know what the hell you're talking about.
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Think about it ... what does it say about a nation's values when as a citizen your constution guarantees you the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (life listed first here) and that is translated into the right to vote (change government)
the right to a basic education
the right to bear arms
but not the right to basic healthcare?
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Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
what does it say about a nation's values the right to vote (change government)
the right to a basic education
the right to bear arms
but not the right to basic healthcare?
It seems like "life" and "pursuit of happiness" should imply that you're healthy enough to do both of those, now doesn't it? 
I'm glad there's some opposition, though. I personally don't think this nation is ready to accept the kind of responsibility of nationalized health care, but I hope we work towards it in the future. Without priming ourselves for it, we'd just be stuck waiting in lines and b*tching, instead of trying to take care of ourselves and avoid the line in the first place!
Jlangler - I know what you're saying, I was just jerkin' you for some clarification.  I believe that's a huge reason for skyrocketing health care costs, too. PLUS, sometimes Grandma is ready to go, but the Docs aren't ready to let go. 
Derek
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If we had national healthcare, people would abuse the system. I know people on Medicare and Medicaid who doctor shop to get pain medication. They sell the medication. I went to the trouble of turning one person in and all he got was probation (not one day in jail). The police told me that they had had this person in jail many times for selling drugs. The tax payers would be paying for drugs for drug addicts if we had national health care.
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Quote:
I'm glad there's some opposition, though. I personally don't think this nation is ready to accept the kind of responsibility of nationalized health care, but I hope we work towards it in the future. Without priming ourselves for it, we'd just be stuck waiting in lines and b*tching, instead of trying to take care of ourselves and avoid the line in the first place!
Just asking the question here ... but don't you already have plenty of examples of socialized healthcare inherent to your system?
If you believe what you see on TV there are hundreds of examples every night of gang-bangers (no disrespect intended)who never paid a tax dollar in their lives, being admitted to ERs across the country - all on the taxpayers dime, ultimately. Can you really say that there isn't already an element of socialized medicare built into the system?
And yet, there are probably even more examples of the tax-paying working poor who for one reason or another lose a job and healthcare coverage at the same time (or never qualified for coverage), and are forced into bankruptcy over some curable health problem. And then to add insult to injury, the needed healthcare is then available to them as part of various social safety nets already in place. Considering the above paragraph, can you really say that these folks don't deserve some better access to socialized medicare; access that doesn't involve the loss of everything they have in order to qualify?
Not being judgemental here - just trying to reconcile things that don't make sense to me.
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Originally posted by Dan Nixon:
...I do not want French or Canadian heathcare
I've seen the French socialized healthcare system firsthand in the late '90s when I had to drag a friend into the emergency ward due to the beginnings of pneumonia.
Their "state of the art" facility was a scene out of a vetrenarian clinic of the 1960s. In addition to this, it took 6 hours to get a hold of a doctor who could properly diagnose the symptoms and perscribe what was needed.
This was with a native acting as a translator speaking in fluent French telling them that it was a respiratory issue.
There is also a reason that if anything serious happens, most expatriates try to make it Stateside for treatment. Numerous diplomats and embassy folks that I interfaced with in Spain said it was FAR better to try and get treatment at military bases than anywhere else in Europe (if you had the option available), and better yet, to get back home.
The US healthcare system isn't perfect and does need some serious adjustment done to the malpractice and procedure side of it, but God is it head and shoulders above what most other countries have.
JaTo
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Missouri City, TX
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