Universal Health Care

[GabiandVi 34]

I also believe health care should be a right, not a privilege.

Let me ask you something. What else do you see as a "right"? A home? Food? A job? Clothes? If so do you think the government should also take care of that? At what point does a persons own responsibilities kick in?

I agree with Gary. I don't think it should be considered a "right". But I do think it is in the best interest of the country that everyone have access to good healthcare, and I think that it is what a developed, civilized country provides.

I do have a concern about this overwhelming sentiment that we give over all our responsibilities to a paternalistic government. But I see healthcare as something different. And when everybody is paying for it, we are all taking responsibility for it. There will be abusers, no doubt, and there will be all sort so issues that the loudest mouths demanding UHC haven't even considered and that those mouths will whine about if UHC is ever a reality, but I don't think that is a reason to not do something.

[GaryC 7]

I also believe health care should be a right, not a privilege.

Let me ask you something. What else do you see as a "right"? A home? Food? A job? Clothes? If so do you think the government should also take care of that? At what point does a persons own responsibilities kick in?

Do you think education is a right? (This isn't a rhetorical question.)

It's a necessity. For our country to work we need an educated population. No, I don't mind paying for education. I do disagree with the way they teach our kids and they way they pay for it though.

[Heracles 417]

Yes, I would be willing to pay extra taxes; I have to pay taxes now for a war I disagree with. Why not free heath care, and as for waiting in line, I was in the military and a military wife, and waited many times in line, but one thing I did know, I didn't have to put out $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to be seen. Ask someone from Canada and ask them if they like their health care. Of course the big insurance companies don't want you to want universal health care, they tell you the old myths of what it will be like, long waits, bad doctors, ok, compared to what, no health care period. There was this family, man and wife and one son, the man gets cancer, they are fully insured, the wife works at the hospital for the city. The insurance company denied and again denied drugs and life saving treatment, calling experimental. The man died, left his wife and son, the whole story is typically of the big insurance companies. What a waste, and the doctor that was treating him stated that if he would have had the Bone Marrow Transplant, he would still be alive. Health care should not be a profit making business.

Canada has 33,000,000 people not 303,000,000. Canada is also a federally centered government. So whatever works there will not work here.

The other thing is UHC systems usually do not pay for medications.

[SaadBell 0]

American who claims to be this great country of loving people, as long as you don't cost us a thing. I just get crazy, tonight there will be children, old people, going to bed sick, and they can't go to the doctor, can't afford it. Yes that is a national disgrace, but we can make a fighter jet in a second and not think two seconds about the millions of $$$ it took to make it. Senior citizens making choices either to eat or get medicine, but we keep the war machine going, what does that say about us as Americans.

[panamania79 2]

Who is going to pay for this? Are you willing to increase your taxes by 5 to 10% to pay for it? Are you willing to wait in line for service?

*wave* I am!

I'm not looking forward to spending 10K on having a baby.

In Canada, I don't wait to get into my doctor, just last week I had to get in to see him and he took me the same day.

Universal health care rocks, I don't mind spending the extra money on taxes so that everyone is covered and taken care of....not just the rich people who can afford it.

THANK YOU ! In the USA the first thing they ask you when you walk into the doctor's office is "Do you have insurance ?" If not,you can just forgetaboutit.And that's messed up.So many people are walking around sick because they have no coverage.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

Yes, I would be willing to pay extra taxes; I have to pay taxes now for a war I disagree with. Why not free heath care, and as for waiting in line, I was in the military and a military wife, and waited many times in line, but one thing I did know, I didn't have to put out $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to be seen. Ask someone from Canada and ask them if they like their health care. Of course the big insurance companies don't want you to want universal health care, they tell you the old myths of what it will be like, long waits, bad doctors, ok, compared to what, no health care period. There was this family, man and wife and one son, the man gets cancer, they are fully insured, the wife works at the hospital for the city. The insurance company denied and again denied drugs and life saving treatment, calling experimental. The man died, left his wife and son, the whole story is typically of the big insurance companies. What a waste, and the doctor that was treating him stated that if he would have had the Bone Marrow Transplant, he would still be alive. Health care should not be a profit making business.

Canada has 33,000,000 people not 303,000,000. Canada is also a federally centered government. So whatever works there will not work here.

The other thing is UHC systems usually do not pay for medications.

The US pays the same amount of public money as the Canadians as a % of GDP, however. They have UHC, we do not.

[GabiandVi 34]

I also believe health care should be a right, not a privilege.

Let me ask you something. What else do you see as a "right"? A home? Food? A job? Clothes? If so do you think the government should also take care of that? At what point does a persons own responsibilities kick in?

Do you think education is a right? (This isn't a rhetorical question.)

NO!!!!!! I think when we started considering education a right is when education started going down the drain. The public provides education because the public needs an educated work force and an educated voting population. The public pays for it so it is the public's right. NOT the individual's. The needs of the individual have to be met in order for the public to be served, but the system should answer to the public, NOT the individual.

[Heracles 417]

The US pays the same amount of public money as the Canadians as a % of GDP, however. They have UHC, we do not.

Canada's tax system is quite different to the USA's, so % of GDP is irrelevant.

[Empress of Groovy 373]

I also believe health care should be a right, not a privilege.

Let me ask you something. What else do you see as a "right"? A home? Food? A job? Clothes? If so do you think the government should also take care of that? At what point does a persons own responsibilities kick in?

Do you think education is a right? (This isn't a rhetorical question.)

It's a necessity. For our country to work we need an educated population. No, I don't mind paying for education. I do disagree with the way they teach our kids and they way they pay for it though.

But you don't classify health care as equally important? Sick people who are terrified of going to the doctor because of cost are not productive members of society.

I classify education and health care together. They are two services that should be provided to everyone in a civilized society. If you want a private hospital room and are willing to pay for it, why not? If you want to send your kid to a private religious school, it's your right. But a decent basic level of both should be provided to everyone. I don't think too many people disagree on this point, just how to make it a reality.

Our system hurts many more people than it benefits if you compare it with with those of other industrialized nations.

If Jon (my husband) and I end up moving to England, health care costs would be a major driver. His stepfather had a kidney transplant last year and didn't pay a dime. (Yes, I know all about taxes in the UK.) He was on home dialysis for two years before that. I cringe when I think how much that would have cost him here. He wouldn't even have been able to enjoy his newfound health for all the bills he'd need to worry about!

My husband broke his collarbone eight weeks ago. He has decent insurance through his employer. He's going to end up paying something like $300 out of pocket for various fees. He's already amassing a stack of insurance notices and bills for a two-hour emergency room visit (most spent in the waiting room) and two very brief follow-up appointments with an orthopedic doctor. He is finding this absolutely bewildering. If he'd not had insurance, he would have paid about $1500 out of pocket for a total of 10 minutes seeing a doctor, and X-rays.

Imagine if he'd been really sick! Stories like this are probably in the millions in this country.

[SaadBell 0]

[mawilson 2,133]

Is the health coverage an issue that will affect your vote for a new president? Do you want universal health care? I think we need to something in this country about the health care system. How can the richest nation in the world, and we have people who go without any kind of heath care.

It is my aspiration that health finally will be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for.

Think of it as natural selection.

If the poor or unemployed cannot afford medical care, they are more likely to die of some sort of disease,

thus solving the problem of poverty and unemployment.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

The US pays the same amount of public money as the Canadians as a % of GDP, however. They have UHC, we do not.

Canada's tax system is quite different to the USA's, so % of GDP is irrelevant.

It's not how the money is collected that is at issue, it's how it is spent - the US system is the most expensive in the world, and huge discrepancies exist. Medicare spends more than twice as much on people in Miami than in Minneapolis, for example. Results are better where spending is lower. And about 30% of Medicare spending is wasted.

Medical inflation also far outstrips inflation in general

there needs to be a huge overhaul

[Pooky 3,844]

Yes, I would be willing to pay extra taxes; I have to pay taxes now for a war I disagree with. Why not free heath care, and as for waiting in line, I was in the military and a military wife, and waited many times in line, but one thing I did know, I didn't have to put out $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to be seen. Ask someone from Canada and ask them if they like their health care. Of course the big insurance companies don't want you to want universal health care, they tell you the old myths of what it will be like, long waits, bad doctors, ok, compared to what, no health care period. There was this family, man and wife and one son, the man gets cancer, they are fully insured, the wife works at the hospital for the city. The insurance company denied and again denied drugs and life saving treatment, calling experimental. The man died, left his wife and son, the whole story is typically of the big insurance companies. What a waste, and the doctor that was treating him stated that if he would have had the Bone Marrow Transplant, he would still be alive. Health care should not be a profit making business.

Canada has 33,000,000 people not 303,000,000. Canada is also a federally centered government. So whatever works there will not work here.

The other thing is UHC systems usually do not pay for medications.

The US pays the same amount of public money as the Canadians as a % of GDP, however. They have UHC, we do not.

..... and that's quite a telling observation right there.

Every day, I hear on the radio that "Medical Claims Specialist" is one of the fastest growing careers in the medical field. The administrative overhead and bureaucracy in the medical industry is unreal, and the profits being made by the pharmaceutical companies are downright obscene. Relaying the company line that they need to make money to invest in research overlooks the fact that their reported profits come after all the research money is taken into account and that the profits are there to make the shareholders happy and the CEO's as rich as Croesus.

Yes, your tax burden would rise to fund a UHC, however it was structured. But the private medical insurance cost would disappear, and mine now is about 5%, but has been up around 20% at an old job. And I currently have a co-pay for medication, so that's not free on insurance either. Plus, there is the small matter of not having a "claim" rejected because a first appointment with a new doctor happened to coincide with a renewal of a prescription for an existing condition, so making all the bloodwork, etc. chargeable.

The US system of healthcare has the potential to shame the rest of the world, but instead is viewed by many as shameful for the lack of coverage for those who should benefit from it. When people who have health insurance are afraid to visit their doctor because the cost, for WHATEVER reason, would be more than they could bear, there is something seriously wrong with the system.

P

Edited April 16, 2008 by Pooky

[GaryC 7]

I also believe health care should be a right, not a privilege.

Let me ask you something. What else do you see as a "right"? A home? Food? A job? Clothes? If so do you think the government should also take care of that? At what point does a persons own responsibilities kick in?

Do you think education is a right? (This isn't a rhetorical question.)

It's a necessity. For our country to work we need an educated population. No, I don't mind paying for education. I do disagree with the way they teach our kids and they way they pay for it though.

But you don't classify health care as equally important? Sick people who are terrified of going to the doctor because of cost are not productive members of society.

I classify education and health care together. They are two services that should be provided to everyone in a civilized society. If you want a private hospital room and are willing to pay for it, why not? If you want to send your kid to a private religious school, it's your right. But a decent basic level of both should be provided to everyone. I don't think too many people disagree on this point, just how to make it a reality.

Our system hurts many more people than it benefits if you compare it with with those of other industrialized nations.

If Jon (my husband) and I end up moving to England, health care costs would be a major driver. His stepfather had a kidney transplant last year and didn't pay a dime. (Yes, I know all about taxes in the UK.) He was on home dialysis for two years before that. I cringe when I think how much that would have cost him here. He wouldn't even have been able to enjoy his newfound health for all the bills he'd need to worry about!

My husband broke his collarbone eight weeks ago. He has decent insurance through his employer. He's going to end up paying something like $300 out of pocket for various fees. He's already amassing a stack of insurance notices and bills for a two-hour emergency room visit (most spent in the waiting room) and two very brief follow-up appointments with an orthopedic doctor. He is finding this absolutely bewildering. If he'd not had insurance, he would have paid about $1500 out of pocket for a total of 10 minutes seeing a doctor, and X-rays.

Imagine if he'd been really sick! Stories like this are probably in the millions in this country.

I don't link them. Health care is like anything else in the world. If it's important then you should do what you need to do to have it. Health insurance has always been important to me. So no matter if I had a lousy job or a good one I always made sure my family had insurance. There have been several times in my life where my job didn't offer it. You can get low cost insurance that covers the big things. I know it's there because I have had it.

Oh and BTW. When Luz got sick a month ago? I had $1050 out of pocket costs that I have to pay. I am not looking for anyone else to pay it for me. I called them and asked if they had a payment plan. I got a zero interest financing for what I had to pay.

It's all what is important to you. If it is then a person will find a way to take care of it.

[Heracles 417]

Here. I will give you an example of the downside of UHC:

The food is so bad that patients are starving

Natasha Wallace Health Reporter

April 3, 2008

PUBLIC hospital food was so "atrocious" and menus so inflexible that half of all patients were "starving" and ended up staying twice as long as a result, an inquiry heard yesterday.

A survey of 777 patients across the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service last year found 51 per cent were malnourished - and many had not entered hospital in that state.

Joanne Prendergast, the manager of the department of nutrition at Royal North Shore Hospital, told the special commission of inquiry into acute care services that it was "incredible" that NSW Health had no set nutritional standards for meals.

"Malnutrition is rife in our public hospitals and we need to do something about it," Ms Prendergast told the inquiry. "We have patients starving."

........

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-fo...6851011857.html