Are there any negatives to universal healthcare?

[Silverstar]

Right, ok. I have no idea what sort of costs are involved in the US.

I'd love to give you some details about wait times here, but I seem to have a very healthy family and circle of friends who rarely end up going to the doctor or the hospital, so anecdotally, I couldn't say. I know I've never been unable to get a same day doctor's appointment for anything that might be serious (I wait a week for things like picking up birth control, or arranging bi-annual tests and that kind of thing).

The last time I went to the doctor was for sudden serious back pain, and I got a same-day out-of-hours appointment at our local hospital for that. Never actually discovered what that was, bizarrely. I think it was something to do with sitting in a freezing cold office for too long.

But I've got seriously sidetracked. Sorry.

[ljkeane]

What is the wait for something debilitating but not life threatening like a disk Herniation?

I don't know about disk herniations but I'm currently getting my knee problem dealt with on the NHS, I think that would qualify as a not life threatening condition and I know a few people who have done the same. While I'm sure I could have got it fixed quicker if I was willing to pay extra, the waiting times so far have not been prohibitive and I'm perfectly happy with the care I've received.

On top of that when a friend of mine who also had a non life threatening shoulder problem that was more serious he was able to get it fixed almost immediately so I have no problem with waiting times with the NHS.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Flippa,

Filippa,

What is the wait for something debilitating but not life threatening like a disk Herniation?

i've no idea, i've never had one...

regular doctor appointments (OB-gyn, endocrinologist etc ) can take as long as 2 or 3 months. but urgent cases are seen... urgently.

Well then define "urgent". A disk herniation isn't life threatening it simply hurts, a lot. It made even desk work painful and it was very hard to get a good night sleep. Is that "urgent"?

Ljk,

How long have yoiu and your friend had to wait for treatment?

[A wilding]

Please define "not a problem." A reasonable waiting time to one person may be unreasonable to another. It's a subjective standard. What sort of waiting times are you refering to? I had a disk herniation in 2000 it was painful but not life threatening. How long would I have to wait to get treatment for that sort of painful but not life threatening injury?

Anecdotal evidence from the UK, the three times in my life my GP has referred me to a specialist (none of which were for anything painful or life threatening) less than 6 weeks each time. Most recently I was positively taken aback to get an appointment within two weeks - even if the shine was taken off this a little by the referral letter getting lost, so the specialist had no idea why he was seeing me, somewhat typical of the slight muddle that the NHS is often characterised by.

And since someone has praised UK private health care companies, I will express my disagreement. In my experience they love to take your premiums and give you flashy treatments for just has long as you are relatively healthy. The moment you develop any sort of chronic condition they do all they can to get you off their books, and they will certainly never take on anyone with any existing condition.

More anecdotal evidence: my grandfather had private health insurance all his life. In his late sixties he suddenly needed a lifesaving operation. The healthcare company refused to pay for it. He was in no state to argue, and my grandmother was too distraught. Luckily a great uncle is a solicitor, and it took one "you pay or we sue" phone call to get the company to reverse its position. Apparently they pull this sort of stuff all the time.

[Filippa Eilhart]

I don't know Scott, i've never suffered anything urgent or non-urgent in here, so I really cannot say :)

eta: I'm sure though that if I was in a lot of pain I would be seen by a doctor immediately.

[RhaegarTar]

Some good points:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10011

1. It's anything but 'free' because your taxes will skyrocket to pay for health care products and services.

II. When health care becomes 'free' to anyone walking in off the street, the demand for everything will skyrocket. The slightest sniffle will result in a run for antibiotics, and so on. When demand exceeds supply, you'll see taxes continue rising to cover the additional products and services being dispensed. When prices/taxes get so high that even Congress is reluctant to continue raising them, the only recourse left is to limit the supply artificially.

III. I care considerably more about technological innovation and the life of patients than I do about the costs associated. There was an interested discussion on NPR the other night about the huge amounts of money medicare shells out in the last few months of life. Simply put, it isn't their money, so patients will try anything. If instead patients had to *pay* for the $20,000 a month cancer drug that will only keep them alive for another 3 months, they would be considerably more reticent to do so. The costs associated with the government run health care we already have are literally drowning us in future debt - so how can we afford to do more?

The system we have isn't "nice," because those with money can get the best treatment, but the fact is that everyone gets access to good, nonrationed and timely care, if they are willing to pay for it (or wait in the emergency room and then not pay). At the same time this money enables us to be the world leader in medical technologies, getting us closer and closer to the cures/treatments for a wide-variety of devastating illnesses. The burdensome system we have already discourages people from becoming doctor's, which has damaged that profession.

There are a wide variety of things we can do, such as not counting illegals or 20-somethings who choose not to have health insurance. That would drastically reduce the number of "uninsured." We could also transfer the tax incentives that companies get for offering health insurance to everyone, so that people could purchase private insurance which would follow them no matter what company they work for. I think that would go a long way towards solving this crisis.

As for the immense costs increases in the United states (6.21% increase in 2005), the increase was 5.55% in Europe, so not much of a difference. The key is technological innovation, holding people accountable for their health choices (oh, you eat 6 big macs a day? Premiums increase significantly until you get regular exams and eat better, same with smoking/drinking/ect, and asking people to make health choices that involve THEIR money, not societies. When its "free," its easy to say yes to expensive care, while society goes bankrupt.

Also, medicare/medicaid started as a system for the very poor and/or very poor elderly. Anyone know what the hell happened that got most, if not all, elderly to be eligible?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Flippa,

Fair enough (and knock on wood I really hope you stay healthy).

[Hereward]

My google-fu tells me that the waiting list for an operation to correct disc herniation is up to 18 weeks. Incidentally, my boss had that operation yesterday, privately, and has been waiting for the a surgeon in a BUPA hospital to become available for about 10 weeks.

Besides, to me this is a red herring. Despite my callous atheism, I cannot morally countenance the poor being unable to access medical care, or families being put through the additional stress of wondering how, or even whether, they can afford to pay for life-saving treatment for a child, just so I can shave a couple of weeks off my waiting times. Your mileage obviously varies.

[Lyanna Stark]

Lyanna,

Please define "not a problem." A reasonable waiting time to one person may be unreasonable to another. It's a subjective standard. What sort of waiting times are you refering to? I had a disk herniation in 2000 it was painful but not life threatening. How long would I have to wait to get treatment for that sort of painful but not life threatening injury?

I don't know. It depends on how many people are in a more critical condition than you. They will get treated before you. It also depends in Sweden on in which districts you live, since each district has a limited amount of resources, and will try to divide these resources in as sensible a way as possible, with critical conditions normally being prioritised, and then other things after that. I know that there was some discussion regaring hip replacement a some years ago since the waiting time could stretch out to months, and that was seen as unreasonable and something the UHC districts needed to fix. There are certainly some treatments that have queues, but normally this is discussed and then dealt with, if there are unacceptably long queues.

I've been to AE units at least 10 times in my life, and the wait time varies, based on such things like what's going on at the time. (A big traffic accident, guess what? They will go ahead.) I have always been treated in what I consider reasonable time and without any suffering to myself I would consider undue. I've had broken arms and legs, my mum had broken bones in her face (she got X-rayed within 2 hours and then with a couple of hours gap during an entire night, just to make sure her condition was still stabile).

My grandfather had cancer, got chemotherapy despite being over 75 years old. My gran got her heart operated, my other grandmother is getting blood pressure medication and constant treatment to stabilise her heart condition.

They were/are all poor pensioners. Would they have been able to afford that in the US?

My dad got an urgent stomach operation done the same day he came in feeling ill.

I'm sure there are treatments there are longer queues for due to various factors, but on my part, and on all my family's part, none of us would EVER want to live without UHC and the security it brings.

I'm soon going to use NHS services in the UK when I give birth, and so far they have been absolutely top notch, helping me with information, scheduling that would suit me and generally been very good on all fronts. It will cost me nothing to do so and I don't need to worry whether my work covers me for anything.

My normal waiting time for seeing my GP is 5 hours, if it is something that needs treatment the same day, and a couple of days if it is not. I normally allow 2-3 weeks if I want a specific time of day (say the first time in the morning) since I know they are the most popular.

RhagerarTar:

II. When health care becomes 'free' to anyone walking in off the street, the demand for everything will skyrocket. The slightest sniffle will result in a run for antibiotics, and so on. When demand exceeds supply, you'll see taxes continue rising to cover the additional products and services being dispensed.

No, it doesn't. Check any country with UHC and you can see that this is simply not the case.

Also, do you really think the doctors here give you antibiotics for a sniffle? What do you base that senseless opinion on? They won't treat people who aren't ill, you know. People who aren't ill are declared well and are then sent home, obviously.

[ljkeane]

Ljk,

How long have yoiu and your friend had to wait for treatment?

Well I wouldn't describe my knee injury as 'urgent' it's just restricting my ability to play sports and I'm currently in the middle of the process so I can't say how long it will take but I'm happy with how it's progressing.

My friend's shoulder injury was a bit more serious as he had dislocated it a few times and it kept popping out, after he injured it again he was able to get an operation to try and fix it within a couple of weeks.

[Silverstar]

II. When health care becomes 'free' to anyone walking in off the street, the demand for everything will skyrocket. The slightest sniffle will result in a run for antibiotics, and so on. When demand exceeds supply, you'll see taxes continue rising to cover the additional products and services being dispensed. When prices/taxes get so high that even Congress is reluctant to continue raising them, the only recourse left is to limit the supply artificially.

Unless Americans are completely different from most other nationalities, I doubt this would happen. To be perfectly honest, and this is purely anecdotal, most Americans that I know already spend far more time seeing medical practitioners than any of my British friends, and I've always put that down to our healthcare system being different from yours, in that if a doctor is being paid more depending on how many procedures and appointments he or she schedules, he or she is going to schedule far more appointments and be willing to run unnecessary procedures. In a UHC system, a doctor will turn you away if there's nothing actually wrong with you, because he or she gains nothing by treating you unnecessarily. Most of the time, I don't bother going to see a doctor for anything minor because I know he or she will just tell me there's nothing worth doing, and send me away again. I would expect that the same thing would happen in a UHC system in the US.

[Hereward]

Agreed. Doctors will not prescribe antibiotics for a cold or flu. Having taken my son two weeks ago, I know they even have posters up in the waiting room pointing out that a doctor will not prescribe antibiotics as it will do no good whatsoever, so please do not waste the doctor's time by asking.

[Annelise]

Despite my callous atheism, I cannot morally countenance the poor being unable to access medical care, or families being put through the additional stress of wondering how, or even whether, they can afford to pay for life-saving treatment for a child, just so I can shave a couple of weeks off my waiting times. Your mileage obviously varies.

I think Chataya touched on this earlier: "There's also a cultural difference - the US is more "individualistic" on some social science measurements, and we (as a nation) tend not to actually have the feelings of social solidarity that many Europeans do."

I agree there's less.. I am my brother's keeper & more everyone look out for themselves attitude. A lot of people don't see themselves connected as a whole except in the negative sense; other people dragging you down and wasting your hard earned tax dollars.

I think there is also an unfortunate tendency to look at the uninsured as failures and/or greedy people content to mooch off the sweat of their neighbors' brow. That healthcare is not a right, it's something you earn - if you don't have insurance, that's ultimately more to do with you than anything else.

[TrackerNeil]

There are a wide variety of things we can do, such as not counting illegals or 20-somethings who choose not to have health insurance. That would drastically reduce the number of "uninsured."

Ah yes...the old, redefine-the-problem solution. For example, we could always reduce the count of families living below the poverty line by simply omitting those who could do better if they only worked harder. Then poverty would be all but eliminated! We could also slash wasteful government spending by determining that any expenditures by the Department of Defense are necessary and therefore not in any way wasteful. There really is no limit to the problems you can "solve" using this method.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Or instead of just not counting them, we could deport them. All twelve million of them!

I can't imagine there being any sort of serious negative repercussions resulting from a forcible relocation of population on that scale.

[Annelise]

Or instead of just not counting them, we could deport them. All twelve million of them!

I can't imagine there being any sort of serious negative repercussions resulting from a forcible relocation of population on that scale.

I think some 50% or so of American households have firearms - just deputize them. One big ol' coast to coast Sheriff Joe posse. Call it.. job creation.

[TrackerNeil]

I think some 50% or so of American households have firearms - just deputize them. One big ol' coast to coast Sheriff Joe posse. Call it.. job creation.

I'll bet every Republican in Congress would have voted for that stimulus package.

[Hereward]

I think Chataya touched on this earlier: "There's also a cultural difference - the US is more "individualistic" on some social science measurements, and we (as a nation) tend not to actually have the feelings of social solidarity that many Europeans do."

I agree there's less.. I am my brother's keeper & more everyone look out for themselves attitude. A lot of people don't see themselves connected as a whole except in the negative sense; other people dragging you down and wasting your hard earned tax dollars.

I think there is also an unfortunate tendency to look at the uninsured as failures and/or greedy people content to mooch off the sweat of their neighbors' brow. That healthcare is not a right, it's something you earn - if you don't have insurance, that's ultimately more to do with you than anything else.

Take that back! :tantrum:

I'm a member of the Conservative Party and they'll drum me out if they catch me expressing social solidarity. :P

[Silverstar]

I think there is also an unfortunate tendency to look at the uninsured as failures and/or greedy people content to mooch off the sweat of their neighbors' brow. That healthcare is not a right, it's something you earn - if you don't have insurance, that's ultimately more to do with you than anything else.

It always amazes me that healthcare is a luxury, not a right, yet owning a gun is a right. To me, that's seriously skewed.

[RhaegarTar]

It always amazes me that healthcare is a luxury, not a right, yet owning a gun is a right. To me, that's seriously skewed.

Owning a gun allows you to protect your family and keep the government from overstepping its bounds. The idea of health care as a right is, frankly, mind-boggling to me. I outlined some basic reasons why it won't be successful above, which are being ignored.

The posts following mine are a perfect example of why conservatives don't post lengthy items on these forums on any regular basis. Their posts are dissected, their salient points ignored, and it all reduced to "wait time," or "you hate immigrants," ect. Doesn't it bother anyone that when we say "47 million are uninsured," AT LEAST HALF of that are people in their 20's who CHOOSE not to have health insurance or are illegal immigrants? If we were honest with ourselves, that number would be alot closer to 20 million. Doesn't sound so impressive though, and doesn't get society closer to UHC, so politicians/activists go with 47 million.