Seriously, why do you fear Universal Healthcare as a solution for US?

Familiar with the VA Hospital that the federal government runs are we......Horned One?

Any two bit moron calling himself the devil can merely look to the federally run VA to answer your question. Why not rise on up from the burning cinders of hell and understand our own veterans aren't getting taken care of and if they cannot even care for their military veterans, the mere thought of the federal government scares many. Appropriately so too.

 

Great point. Thus...let's push to decide immigration status on merit. What can you bring to the table. Health care workers, scientists, engineers, computer sciences, bring to our country those with needed skills such as margot3 suggests here. Political asylum seekers, refugees for war torn nations, immigrants illegally pouring across our borders.......are negatively affecting our ability to bring skilled workers in.

 

Its hard to recruit doctors to work for the government. Currently they use a lot of locum tenens. Communication breaks down with short term staffers.

The perception among docs is that the VA is in the hands of administrators and bureaucrats.

 

I used to keep track of the data on FMGs .and how many every year took the ECFMG exam.. Last I looked was probably 10 years ago and I think there were 40,000 internal medicine docs just from India.

They can't practice in the US unless they do a US residency.. even if they were a practicing physician in their own country.

 

And where our health care would be in the hands of too......administrators and bureaucrats.

 

First of all, fear has nothing to do with it. It's not the job of the Federal Government to run healthcare for every citizen.

 

Why not they just claim they're 'undocumented' , that 'this land is our land', tell us to stuff our 'residency requirements' and claim racism?

 

Exactly

 

Doctors will stabilize a patient who can't pay, but that's just a temporary measure. If you want to become admitted as a patient, make sure you are insured.

 

Most 1 year olds have parents who take care of them.

 

Have you ever been treated at a VA hospital?

Have you?

I have.

I was treated for a particularly virulent case of cancer at the VA. That was almost 20 years ago. I'm still alive.

My treatment was professional and effective.

Yeah...there were slackers I saw in the system.

I've had a few smaller procedures done in non-VA hospitals also...and they were professional and effective.

AND I SAW PLENTY OF SLACKERS IN THOSE FOR-PROFIT HOSPITALS.

Not sure how you answer those questions above...but unless you answered them "Yes"...you really should not be bad-mouthing the VA. And if you answered them "Yes"...chances are you would not be bad-mouthing the VA.

Maybe you are just a big-mouth, though...doing the normal American conservative schtick of damning the government no matter what. If so, I am always willing to forgive ignorance.

 

But it can be

 

Sorry didn't happen. At least not on any scale imaginable. Why? Because there was no need for them to buy and close hospitals that were going to go bankrupt any way. You simply cannot financially justify buying an MRI machine or other top line diagnostic equipment for a fifty bed hospital. Yet in law suit happy America if you don't have them you are going to lose almost any malpractice suit thrown at you.

You are right, after a fashion, economies of scale did kill them but it was they weren't large enough to take advantage of them.

 

It most certainly can be...AND PROBABLY OUGHT TO BE!

 

Because of fox propaganda has taught them lies and conservatives appear to be either very ignorant, racist, or just completely heartless people. The I got mine crowd.

Amazingly a lot of republican voters continued to get screwed by the scumbag republican politicians and they continue to vote for them. Those are likely the ones in the ignorant/idiot or racist crowd. Then you have those that "I got mine, the hell with everybody else"

 

It's self serving to want an efficient and economical health care industry?

There are billions of examples.

This is not a USINGLE paradigm.

Can you give an example of government out competing the private sector outside scarce resource distribution?

 

Well, what else should we turn over to the government?

 

The issue of how to resolve healthcare is a deep, dark, and ugly issue and you can bet your ass it is corrupt! This is why it is so hard to fix! Trump penetrated the ultimate corruption of the political fraternity, I don't see why he can't penetrate this as well.

Doctors charge $1000 for something that has a real value of $300 because they know the insurance company will reimburse them $600. The insurance company pays the $600 because they know they are raping their customers. That kind of political machine cannot succeed unless there is collusion among the insurance companies. The insurance companies cannot operate in this manner without the government looking the other way. That is not something you fix over-night!

 

Are you asking me to substantiate your assertions...because you cannot?

You said: "Every other consumer good service is provided cheaper and with better quality through the private market."

So are you saying that the private market has produced cheaper, better cars than the government has?

That the private market has produced cheaper, better TV sets than the government has?

That the private market has produced cheaper, better clothing than the government has?

What the hell are you saying...if it is not the self-serving nonsense I suggested it to be?

 

Perhaps it is time to actually find out if GOVERNMENT can produce stuff better and cheaper than private market.

But guys like you want to assert that it cannot happen...because it fits the scenario you want to prevail.

 

Costs are two-fold, [1] Pharmaceutical and [2] Doctors and Hospital. We don't even need to talk about the insurance scams if we just address these two cost first. Pharmaceutical cost are high because of patents (basically a copyright) slapped on by the manufacture to limit competition. Hospital costs can charge higher rates depending on the technology they use and have access to. As you stated, doctor cost are high because tuition costs are high, and to me that is where it all starts. Because there is absolutely no reason why it should cost more to get the same education in the US than it does to get the same education abroad. But you are also correct that a medical degree acquired abroad does not transfer to the US. I cannot even count the number of convenient store owners that told me they were doctors in their home countries before coming to the US only to discover that if they wanted to practice medicine in the US they would have to retake their education here (and at our tuition rates).

 

In nearly every other industry I would agree with you. Health care is different. The consumer has absolutely no voice and no way to let their spending habits be their voice. The only way for an insurance provider to be profitable is to deny coverage and/or cover as little as possible through various marketing tiers. The management of which alone can double the premium.

I don't feel that a group of investors should be able to profit from others' poor health. You can chalk up some of that to poor lifestyle choices but the majority of truly life threatening maladies are the result of bad luck or losing the genetic lottery.

Paying for healthcare should be seen as an investment in the future. We can point to society's parasites as not worth the price but we can also point to the wasted Einsteins' and Beethovens' that never reached their potential.

The payer system should be non-profit and run that way.

 

Clearly post one established the flow of the thread. Universal healthcare detracts from everything, your earnings, Doctors earnings, Hospital earnings, research funding, Doctor and nursing staff and the list does on and on! What it does increase is national debt and politician wealth!

 

Obviously some people feel that the United States cannot do what damn near every industrialized nation has been able to do.

Too bad that. I suspect it has less to do with reason...than with following orders from their puppet masters.

Universal healthcare will come...as well it should. Probably not while the barbarians are in power...but it will come. They are fighting a losing battle.

 

It's doesn't matter if you go Dutch or not if at the end of the day big-pharma and college tuition is still ripping off everyone in general anyway. You're not paying more just because you're paying for someone else that doesn't earn enough to pay they're own way. Instead what you're getting is the ability to have a healthier work force that you don't have to pay enough to pay their own way. Maybe when CEO's realize that they don't have to earn 250-300 times the income of their employees we'll all be able to pay our own way and instead of carrying over-priced insurance policies (with little actual coverage) we can all pay COD. Insurance isn't an actual discount, if anything it's a tax scam. And can anyone explain to me why do prescription drugs for people cost ten times as much for the exact same drugs (made by the exact same companies) for animals?