Daniel Hannan rebuts Obama’s claim that the British and Canadians have a great health care system in which everyone can just walk into a clinic and they are fixed free of charge on the spot:
Hannan – …the reality is that it hasn’t worked, it has made people iller, we spend a lot of money and we get very bad results. You look at survival rates for cancer or heart disease we are well down on all the leagues. We have very few doctors, we’ve disincentivied people from practicing medicine in this country…a lot of our best and brightest doctors emigrate, a lot of them go to North America.
See author page
Many countries have age or health limits for designated treatments – somewhere ,sometime limits will be in place either through a medical /social partnership or sheer economics.
Its the chicken & the egg – the more early micro tumours spotted the better the overall survival rates are because maybe they were never going anywhere anyhow.
Plus the need is to differentiate between cure & 5 year survival rates. 5 years for an 80 year ld is good but not for 30 year old.
Comparing health systems is way too difficult to be glib.
I thought I heard somewhere that women who get breast cancer in the UK are essentially sent home.
Timothy -that is silly.
There is a series of tests & results . A doctor my confirm a lump is suspicious then a FNA is ordered. Patent goes to that facility. ( Young women ae often sent directly to the clinic).
On results of the fna ,a further biopsy is ordered. The results may send patient off to scans. The result of those will determine the course of events.
By this time it s hoped the patient is n consultation with a Specialist. Some health areas employ a board of experts .
At any time British women can use their private insurance or pay the many thousands of oounds themselves.
Cancer is still an individual disease- in every case successes & disappointments everywhere.
I have a relative with terminal BC who has had every advanced treatment including extremely expensive herceptin & Tykerb & multiple Cat Pet MRI Bone scans.
The cost must be over 250,000 but almost all National Health plus private insurance supplements. The Private fees are maybe $40 per week.
I cant say for the USA but here the best is a mix.
Yes, socialized medicine is such a hopelessly screwed up system that the UK has held on to it for almost over 60 years, through Conservative and Labour governments, even Ms. Thatcher’s.
Great Britain started it during WWII and now evey first world nation with the exception of the United States has adopted it. What an astounding failure. I’m sure glad we didn’t go down that deadend road.
Perhaps they have hung on to a system for over six decades because they can’t find a way to back out of the nightmare they have created, Dave Noble.
As a proponent of universal health care, Donald Light pointed out in a 2003 synopsis that the UK system that represents everything we think of when conjuring up visions of socialized medicine.
The problem is, of course, the usual progressive mantra… under funding.
With the ever increasing size of the US population, there is no amount of funding of universal health care that will result in any system other than one with these “dreary features”.
So why don’t you regale us with how well Romney’s grand scheme of health care is working out in MA? Oddly enough, they had started out with relatively low uninsured and a sophisticated medical system before they decided to “reform”. Since they have so badly underestimated the needed funding… and that number increases annually… the state is ending up on the hook for just shy of a billion to cover premiums for those who purchased insurance to avoid the tax penalties, but can’t pay for it. and the co-pay amounts are going up to boot.
Time Traveller, didn’t you tell us you were from Australia? So are you speaking of UK or Australian health care? You might find this Guardian article from a year ago, comparing the two, interesting.
So Dave,
Why is a member of the European Parliament warning us against it?
This is another false choice argument by the left – If we don’t nationalize healthcare, then we are doomed. Why not consider some reform of the legal system that allows vampires like Barack to force young doctors like my neighbor into retirement? How about the program initiated in Tennessee that aids small businesses to afford health insurance? – oh, small business – bad. Sorry, lost my head there. There are many roads to providing reasonable good healthcare without nationalized healthcare.
I am just sick and tired of the leftist eggheads telling how to run my life.
Dave,
I am a moderator for a web-based discussion group for neuralgia (nerve pain.) Our visitors come from all over the world – Singapore, Canada, U.K., Australia, New Zealand, U.S., etc. Most of the visitors have had many years of socialized medicine, and I would estimate that over 90% of these visitors with socialized medicine express deep dissatisfaction with their health care. By far the greatest complaint is that waiting times for even the simplest of procedures are astronomical by our standards. For example, one very common procedure is a nerve block, in which a pain-blocking solution (typically a combination of an anesthetic and a steroid) is injected near a nerve or nerve root. In the U.S., such a procedure requires no more than a couple of months notice, but in countries with socialized medicine the wait is generally between 6 and 12 months (for more involved procedures, such as nerve excision (sectioning), vertebrae fusing, or implantation of a nerve stimulator or morphine pump, wait times greater than 24 months are not uncommon). In addition, almost without exception, if a given procedure does not provide significant pain relief (not at all unusual when dealing with chronic pain), the patient moves to the back of the line. I’ve had conversations with people ready to kill themselves because they’ve been through several years of waiting list “cycles” without relief.
Unfortunately, the long delays tend to aggravate pain syndromes (and many other medical conditions), and can cause manageable problems to lead to deep depression or other considerably degraded conditions simply because medical treatment doesn’t happen in a timely manner.
We see many other problems with socialized medicine too, such as inability to change doctors and/or hospitals without physically relocating, unavailability of latest-generation drugs (due to stringent cost controls), lousy physician attitudes, excessive procedures, … the list goes on and on.
Socialized medicine works for people who rarely get sick; those who really need a responsive system are rarely served well by such systems. These are not my opinions, but are unsolicited comments and testimonies from the many dozens and even hundreds of patients in socialized medicine plans around the world.
Jeff V
@Dave Noble: Draws attention to the fact that once you get one of these socialist monstrosities it is impossible to get rid of it.
All the more reason NOT to do it here.
@Dave Noble: did we agree on something, we need to check our foreheads and make sure we aren’t sick, and not in england. lol. i have private insurance, its through my husbands union job and we have really good ins and are very lucky. i have a good friend with no insurance and she has many issues she sees no doc for because she cannot afford it. our profession typically has no insurance as we are usually boothrenters or work for small business’s. if you go corporate then you may get insurance, but i make more money working 3 days a week than working 6 for a corporate salon i worked for many years ago. the trade off is in flexibility in my schedule and family and the fact that i can pretty much do as i please. i come to work do the hair and then go home, no sighting corporate mission statements that are full of shit and wearing the same clothes as everyone else i work with. wearing all black and white all the time sucks. i wear whatever i want, within reason, and have fun at work. i feel i have a family there and not a bunch of idiots who have just gotten out of school, but again, we have no benefits at all, nothing. we take a vacation, we don’t get paid. i take very few days off.
crap, guess i missed the sarcasim in daves post. been a long day.
Dr. Who,
If it’s so good in the UK, why need private insurnace? How long do people in Britan have to wait for care? How is that dental thing going? And just how high are those taxes to pay for all of this?
My relatives in Canada will give you an earfull about socialized medicine. One relative had to go to the States because his home privince (Ontario) has limits and delays on certain proceedures. He couldn’t wait anymore and the system was stalling. He had to put a mortage on the house to pay for his care in New York.
http://www.liberty-page.com/issues/healthcare/ukration.html
http://www.liberty-page.com/issues/healthcare/socialized.html#britainj
(links to various situations)
(sources, and their links, cited)
Reading thru the comments here, the general consensus seems that Healthcare Reform is a bad idea, because of the implications for a Socialized system to be created. I am sure there are nightmare stories regarding other countries Socialized system that are sad and true. Does anyone here dispute the need for something to be done with the system we have now?
Two Examples:
My Daughter has Diabetes, diagnosed at age 15, now she is 26, her Pancreas is non functional and she has an insulin pump. Thank God I had a good job and insurance when she was diagnosed. Right now she is working at a small company that helps disabled people. They are a pretty small company. She wants to get a better paying job, in the same line of work, but if she does, she can’t take her insurance with her. If hired somewhere else, her condition will be pre existing, with no coverage for a period of time, like 2-3 months.
Some at her company resent her, because her condition, factored in with the employer provided coverage that she has no control over, causes the experience rating for their insurance to be higher. She needs and uses the insurance every month, while some never use it and see her as part of the cause for their higher rates.
There is no way that she can afford to go without insurance, and she can’t afford to pay 100% of a new policy. Even with insurance coverage she now has, she pays a very significant portion of her earnings for premiums, co pays, and supplies.
A good friend of mine works at a local factory, Japanese owned place that makes fork trucks. He had a kidney transplant, and his body rejected it. He is back on dialysis, same boat for him. No way he will be able to quit that job and afford coverage with his pre existing status. He could get disability, but he is a proud man, and wants to work to support his family. The other side of the coin is that his employer and the employees absorb the costs thru higher premiums, and he isn’t going anywhere, he simply can’t afford to change jobs.
Does anyone see a problem with our current system? There are millions of examples like this in our country.
Many work very hard to find reasons why we shouldn’t reform healthcare, while ignoring the reality that it needs to be done, not only for the people, but for small business and our economy.
Part of the title of this post is “The Disaster Known As Socialized Health Care”
I agree that other countries health care has problems, but the current system we have is also a disaster in many respects and needs reform. Period.
Damitt, we are America, we can do better
Don’t let your anti Obama bias get in the way of fixing this issue, it is about the people, defending the Status Quo is as wrong headed as embracing a failed model from someplace else.
Mata, You get major points for pointing out that not all “socialized” healthcare is British/Canadian style. The Canadians are the worst, because it’s all single payer, government, without a private sector option. The British system is better, because people get a choice: public or private. The Australian system is better still, public integrated with private. In this respect it’s like Medicare — the best health care system in the USA.
Medicare.
Compared to private insurance:
1. It provides universal coverage
2. The total cost (insurance premiums + taxes) is substantially less. When people talk of the horrendous cost of “public” health care, they are only considering taxes. But you have to consider the whole thing: taxes, insurance premiums, out of pocket expenses. US private health care is the costliest in the world, yet produces the most unnecessary surgery and, by a number of objective measurements, inferior outcomes. And it produces personal bankruptcies (see #4).
3. The customers (patients/beneficiaries) have greater satisfaction, compared to private insurance
4. There are substantially fewer health related personal bankruptcies (the number one cost of personal bankruptcy is catastrophic illness in people with private health insurance)
5. There is the greatest choice of health care providers
6. There is complete portability across state lines
7. Adjusted for illness/age: superior outcomes
8. Far fewer requirements for pre-authorization, restriction from seeing specialists, etc.
Who doesn’t like it?
Those doctors who feel that $250K per year constitutes inadequate income. Conservative doctor op ed writers will feed you malarky about doctors about how dissatisfied doctors are because of getting their incomes squeezed. That’s just fine. Medical school applications have never been more competitive. I know doctors literally all over the world, virtually all working for public-financed health care systems. It’s the same great job everywhere. In most places it’s simply a great, relatively well paying job. It’s not necessarily a job for people who want to make a fortune, but it’s still a great job, which attracts the best and the brightest.
What health care in America needs is a generation of new doctors who entered medicine without the expectation that $250K constitutes a floor on the income level. Health care also needs a government which does not restrict its health care system (e.g. Medicare) from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on drug prices.
The Australian and Scandinavian systems are close to ideal: co-existing public and private health plans, open to all. Delivering a superior product for a lower cost with universal access, lack of personal bankruptcies which are health related, and making industries globally competitive (GM pays more for employee health insurance than it pays for steel; foreign industries are not so encumbered).
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
My comment on this thread (#14) went to spam. Can someone retrieve it? Thanks. – Larry W
I wasn’t impressed by the NHS in the UK- it is a politcal football. Some praise – others rip into it. They say it’s underfunded but as far as I can see tons of money have been poored into it. The hospitals are on the whole dreary, the service usually fairly poor and stretched, staff morale low, waiting times are horrendous. It has become a monster sucking up money and giving back poor results. If you pool all your money together and let the Government run it – then you are going to get the lowest common denominator.
However it is a safety net. That is looking at the US model of private insurance – it seems there are thousands of people who cannot afford it and either have horrendous bills that they struggle to pay or they go without and become sick.
I wish there could be a balance between the two somehow. Ideally I suggest that everyone should be forced to have at least ‘basic’ private medical insurance through work – but those below a certain level of income have some or all of these paid by the state. It’s a shame to have to force people but you can’t buy a mortgage without buildings insurance – so why not health? But people can choose which provider and which scheme etc.
Just a note in passing – It’s implausible to me that if the healthcare system in the UK were truly a nightmare you say it is, Mata,t hat no politician, again including Margaret Thatcher, has been able to change it in 60 years.
Further, since modern socialized healthcare started in the UK, why every other industrialized nation followed the UK’s lead. Except us. That must be that American exceptionalism we hear so much about.
Look, we are an example to the world in many, many ways. But we have to drop this American arrogance that we can’t learn from anyone else. Another example, AND NOT TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT (because the current subject is ripe for debate): The Israelis have soldier for soldier one of the best armies in the world. And gays serve in their military. Here, in the United States that’s a Rubicon we just can’t seem tp cross.
Larry,
My twin brother is a doctor (pediatric intensivist) who prefers to work in a hospital setting vs. having a private practice. Why?
Medicare
This government program pays an extremely small amount for all services because it is managed by bean counters. The emphasis is on lowest short-term cost, not best treatment. Doctors have to limit the amount of time they spend with each patient in order to remain profitable, so many doctors here do not accept medicare patients.
Then there’s the delay in getting paid for services. Right now, in Illinois, doctors have to wait about 100 days for Medicare to pay for services, hence another reason why so many doctors don’t accept Medicare patients.
I agree with Mooseburger that the health system is in need of treatment itself, but Medicare *as it exists today isn’t a tenable solution.
Jeff V
But you know this, don’t you? You pay high malpractice insurance, right? Would you have much of a career if every one of your patients was on Medicare? Many doctors here don’t accept Medicare patients, because of Medicare’s single emphasis on cost.
Arrrggghhhh!!! Spam filter got me again! What’s the problem? Doesn’t it get enough to eat without having to chow down on our posts?
Is there something we can do (or not do) to avoid the beast?
Jeff V
Any form of socialism is bad, look it up.
For all you youngsters out there who drink the bong water and don’t remember the real Soviet Union do some real research and don’t believe what your Messiah Nobama says.
Interesting article here:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/04/healthcare-multiple-choice-what-would.html
There are plenty more on that particular web site and I would encourage you all to look for your own health.
We are going to have socialized med in this country whether the majority wants it or not. That’s just the way this administration works. Damn the people and the laws, full speed ahead to disaster.
Dave Noble said:
“since modern socialized healthcare started in the UK, why every other industrialized nation followed the UK’s lead. Except us. That must be that American exceptionalism we hear so much about.”
What is so exceptionalism about follow a losing system? That shows a lack of insight and sound judgment into the reality of the matter. Worse, you wish to push this losing system onto the rest of of us.
Guess when the herd of Buffalo run off the cliff you follow too right?
ruaqtpi2, have you tried animal sacrifice to appease the spam filter gods?
Mooseburger:
First off, it’s unconstitutional for government to take control of the health industry. They don’t have the legal grounds of doing so and lack the knowledge to run it.
That being out of the way, if our system needs any kind of enhancement, it should come from ridding outside forces like lawsuits and government intervention.
To bring costs drastically down, litigation has to be a “loser” pays all so hospitals aren’t saddled high insurance costs. On top of that, when they do pay out, almost half of the settlement goes to the lawyer. Why does the lawyer need all that money to begin with? If we regulate CEO pay then we should regulate what percentage trial lawyers get…right?
Another problem is government law’s of making hospitals provide health care with no re-reimbursement. So the government tells the hospital to provide coverage but has no means of paying them, so how is the hospital to recoup their losses? They raise rates on everything else to cover the losses.
On the issue of medicare, it only pays out to hospitals a small percentage causing them to lose money. You can go back to the above example on what the hospital has to do to regain their losses.
These examples mentioned, would drive down the costs of health care that a heart transplant can go from $250,000 to just $5,000. It’s not far fetched at all le tteh free market prefect it further. Health care was very inexpensive until government got involved in the era of “great society” by LBJ. It has intervene more and more over the years to point where were at now.
It’s like government want’s the health care industry to collapse so it can intervene.
The examples you mentioned didn’t convince me me we need national health care but rather why it’s important to have a job and take care of yourself.(BTW Hope your daughter get’s better).
My wife and I have a special needs child with subglottic stenosis, trackia malaysia and vocal cord fixation.
She breath’s through a trac and we have to always be cautioned about germs she may have contact with. She’s been in the hospital 16 times mostly with pneumonia and has be on oxygen. It it weren’t for the miraculous health care system we have she would have been dead. because she wouldn’t been diagnosed thoroughly then one hospital wanted to do major surgery of removing cartilage from her rib and adding it to her windpipe to expand it.
We felt something wasn’t right because this type of surgery wasn’t necessary because it didn’t have a good success rate.
So we searched for a second opinion and low and behold, we came across a surgeon out of state, examined her closely and declared sh can out grown it and doesn’t need surgery.
Now would some bureaucrat in a distance government agency figured that out? Of course not but that is what’s proposed by Obama and the Democrats to have all our medical decisions made from a centralized bureaucracy not knowing the patient in person just what’s on paper. If your not steadfast it will happen to you when tragedy strikes someday.
We can make our own decisions, we don’t need government to tell us what to do.
b1jetmech said, “We can make our own decisions, we don’t need government to tell us what to do.”
Perfectly said. Hope the best for your little girl.
Unfortunately it takes a lot more courage to make decisions on your own than having big brother make them for you. Rasmussen has a new poll out. Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. 20% believe socialism is better and 27% were unsure. UNSURE?
I think there is a need for healthcare reform. But NHS isn’t the answer. We need to move away from employer based healthcare and put it back into the hands of the consumer. You wouldn’t have to worry about changing jobs, the healthcare insurance would be yours. We would have much more power as consumers than our employers have.
Doug Ross has a fantabulous blog up today, the following is part of it, check it out:
The Curious Case of 200 Nearly Identical MSM Headlines
More:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/04/msm-complicit-in-full-court-pr-push-for.html
Modern health care can cost a BOMB & is financially unsustainable in its direction.
It has been said that a large % of money is spent in the last 6 mths of life.
So there’s something to look forward to !
Mata -yes I am Aust But in my experience we have the clinical luxury of looking to USA practices -which are too expensive – & seeing how the Brits manage to cut costs in their cheapo system.
In above comment # 14, I described the advantages of Medicare. The only disadvantage is that the doctors don’t get to make as much money as they think they should. But doctors who don’t like to participate in Medicare don’t have to. And, as I pointed out, applications to medical schools have never been more competitive. There is a virtually unlimited pool of medical school applicants, who are, on the whole, substantially more qualified than the people who entered medical school in the 60s and 70s (in the pre-woman medical era), who would be only too happy to work for “Medicare wages,” unlike the spoiled physicians of my generation who went into medicine in large measure because they expected it to be a gravy train. But these guys are going to be fading into the woodwork, to be replaced by new generations of physicians, perfectly willing to live merely comfortable lives, with one of the most rewarding jobs in the world, as opposed to having an automatic entitlement to wealth.
Your brother is a PEDIATRIC intensivist (meaning he mainly deals with neonatals). And he does this to avoid Medicare? You might inform your brother that Medicare is a health care system for people over the age of 65 and not so much for babies — last time I looked.
A whole lotta docs I know would vastly prefer to provide services to Medicare patients than to Blue Cross patients.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA