BF2S Forums Health Care Comparative: Americans Pay 2½ times More &are Less Healthy

HollisHurlbut wrote:

Ty wrote:

As for long waits the only thing you have to wait for is organ transplants, and that's mostly because matching donors aren't easy to come by.

O RLY?  Perhaps we could take your statement as true if we consider people who get denied treatment because the medicine is just too durned 'spensive or the patient is due too old as not having to "wait".  But oh shucks, we can't do that either because people (SHOCK!) do have to wait under commie health care, sometimes with potentially lethal results.

Oh, and let's not forget the fact that Canada's "excellent" system of government-only health care, with private care being illegal, was declared a violation of human rights recently by the Canadian Supreme Court because the waiting lines were so long and the care was so crap.  But let's not let a piddly little thing like that ruin our vision of government-run health care as a panacea for all our ills, shall we?  Press onward, young soldiers!

You'll say, I'm sure, that some care is better than no care. Perhaps that's true, for those who have none to begin with. But the rest of us who do have it will be subjected to rationing and waiting queues that we don't have now. The biggest problem with socialized health care isn't that it would (supposedly) improve the lives of the minority who are uninsured, it's that it would do it at the cost (health-wise, not just money-wise) of the rest of us who are insured now.

If you have a major accident and need immediate medical attention you will get it. They won't shove you out the door as soon as you're stable either, they'll make damn sure you've recovered first. I think it's perfectly reasonable for Americans to want this kind of sevice, the truth is they're certainly not getting it.

Oh, that is the truth, is it?  From a car rollover to ACL reconstruction to fucking cancer, I've had nothing but positive things to say about US health care.  And those are just the major things I've had to deal with.  I see no reason I should be compelled to dumb down the quality of my care for the benefit of someone else.  Am I being selfish?  Yeah, I probably am.  But it's my health we're talking about here, so why shouldn't I be selfish?

If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco who studied the matter. Got a knee injury? A 2004 survey by medical recruitment firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates found the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days. "Waiting is definitely a problem in the U.S., especially for basic care,"

There is no systemized collection of data on wait times in the U.S. That makes it difficult to draw comparisons with countries that have national health systems, where wait times are not only tracked but made public. However, a 2005 survey by the Commonwealth Fund of sick adults in six nations found that only 47% of U.S. patients could get a same- or next-day appointment for a medical problem, worse than every other country except Canada.

PureFodder wrote:

HollisHurlbut wrote:

Ty wrote:

As for long waits the only thing you have to wait for is organ transplants, and that's mostly because matching donors aren't easy to come by.

O RLY?  Perhaps we could take your statement as true if we consider people who get denied treatment because the medicine is just too durned 'spensive or the patient is due too old as not having to "wait".  But oh shucks, we can't do that either because people (SHOCK!) do have to wait under commie health care, sometimes with potentially lethal results.

Oh, and let's not forget the fact that Canada's "excellent" system of government-only health care, with private care being illegal, was declared a violation of human rights recently by the Canadian Supreme Court because the waiting lines were so long and the care was so crap.  But let's not let a piddly little thing like that ruin our vision of government-run health care as a panacea for all our ills, shall we?  Press onward, young soldiers!

You'll say, I'm sure, that some care is better than no care. Perhaps that's true, for those who have none to begin with. But the rest of us who do have it will be subjected to rationing and waiting queues that we don't have now. The biggest problem with socialized health care isn't that it would (supposedly) improve the lives of the minority who are uninsured, it's that it would do it at the cost (health-wise, not just money-wise) of the rest of us who are insured now.

If you have a major accident and need immediate medical attention you will get it. They won't shove you out the door as soon as you're stable either, they'll make damn sure you've recovered first. I think it's perfectly reasonable for Americans to want this kind of sevice, the truth is they're certainly not getting it.

Oh, that is the truth, is it?  From a car rollover to ACL reconstruction to fucking cancer, I've had nothing but positive things to say about US health care.  And those are just the major things I've had to deal with.  I see no reason I should be compelled to dumb down the quality of my care for the benefit of someone else.  Am I being selfish?  Yeah, I probably am.  But it's my health we're talking about here, so why shouldn't I be selfish?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-b … 55749.html
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co … 042072.htm

If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco who studied the matter. Got a knee injury? A 2004 survey by medical recruitment firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates found the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days. "Waiting is definitely a problem in the U.S., especially for basic care,"

There is no systemized collection of data on wait times in the U.S. That makes it difficult to draw comparisons with countries that have national health systems, where wait times are not only tracked but made public. However, a 2005 survey by the Commonwealth Fund of sick adults in six nations found that only 47% of U.S. patients could get a same- or next-day appointment for a medical problem, worse than every other country except Canada.

The argument that the US system doesn't suffer from large waiting times may not be as true as you think. By far the main reason for the belief in the US system not having long wait times is that unlike other countries, the US doesn't collect and publish them, leading to the assumption that they don't exist. Oh, and when you hear (true) stories about how fast the US system gives hip replacement surgeries, remember that the vast majority of those are done via medicare, showing how good that is, not how good the private system is.

As far as rationing goes, remember that the current US system cannot continue, unlike other countries, the US system has to change in the next decade or so or it will cripple the US. The debate around US healthcare is not 'the currents system vs. a nationalised system', but 'which system that will cost over a trillion dollars a year less than the current system will the US change to'.

Spark wrote:

So you would not object to turning away a cancer patient, just because they're poor?