Do we all agree yet that obamacare was always a single payer trojan horse?

[JoeB131]

you just can't admit you're wrong about France having single payer can you?

Distinction without a difference...

Here's the real issue. It's not what you call it, it's the philosophy behind it.

Sensible People - "Health care should be a right and a public service. No one should die from a treatable condition because they were unable to pay for it."

Conservative Assholes: "Health care is a consumer commodity, and if you are poor and can't afford insurance, fuck them! Bunch of losers living off the producers in society, just like Rush says! Because the Founding Fathers never said anything about Universal Health Care!"

Of course the problem with Position B is that people like myself who actually paid for insurance often find themselves getting fucked over when an insurance company already has your money and doesn't want to give it back. (This is what pretty much cured me of any Libertarian/Republican Bullshit! I'd still rather have a knee that worked properly.) Because once you've made something a commodity instead of a public service, you can pretty much rape people on price. Which is exactly what is happening.

So how you get to the Sensible Person Position can be a government controlled program, like the UK, a single payer insurance system like Japan or Canada, or a patchwork of government mandates and subsidies through providers who are strictly regulated like France or Germany. But the key thing is rejected the Conservative Asshole position, which the rest of the world has.

 

[Skull Pilot]

you just can't admit you're wrong about France having single payer can you?

Distinction without a difference...

Here's the real issue. It's not what you call it, it's the philosophy behind it.

Sensible People - "Health care should be a right and a public service. No one should die from a treatable condition because they were unable to pay for it."

Conservative Assholes: "Health care is a consumer commodity, and if you are poor and can't afford insurance, fuck them! Bunch of losers living off the producers in society, just like Rush says! Because the Founding Fathers never said anything about Universal Health Care!"

Of course the problem with Position B is that people like myself who actually paid for insurance often find themselves getting fucked over when an insurance company already has your money and doesn't want to give it back. (This is what pretty much cured me of any Libertarian/Republican Bullshit! I'd still rather have a knee that worked properly.) Because once you've made something a commodity instead of a public service, you can pretty much rape people on price. Which is exactly what is happening.

So how you get to the Sensible Person Position can be a government controlled program, like the UK, a single payer insurance system like Japan or Canada, or a patchwork of government mandates and subsidies through providers who are strictly regulated like France or Germany. But the key thing is rejected the Conservative Asshole position, which the rest of the world has.

no there is a difference and a big one

 

[JoeB131]

no there is a difference and a big one

Between what the rest of the world does and what we do? Yes.

Between the UK and France? Not so much.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

The Definition of Insanity!!

Republicans Swear They Will Keep Trying To Repeal Obamacare | The Huffington Post

 

[Theowl32]

So we all agree then? It is a single payer? Well, not yet, but soon.

 

[martybegan]

So we end up with DMV style health care, wonderful.

I wish health care was as efficient as the DMV.

Last time I went to the DMV, they had me in and out of there in all of 10 minutes.

LOL.

 

[Theowl32]

So we end up with DMV style health care, wonderful.

I wish health care was as efficient as the DMV.

Last time I went to the DMV, they had me in and out of there in all of 10 minutes.

LOL.

That moron is not kidding. You would think that would be a joke. That is what truly makes it funny and what makes those losers the losers they are.

He means it.

 

[JoeNormal]

Been saying it since it happened. The one thing that you cannot do politically is take away something from millions of people that have been GIVEN something. We know obama counted on this. They knew it would be next to impossible to take the insurance away from millions of people who have it. We also know that it is impossible to be sustained. Both things counted on and Grubber admitted this.

Do we all agree yet that obamacare was always a single payer trojan horse? No, I wish it were. It was another giveaway to the bloated healthcare industry.

 

[JoeB131]

That moron is not kidding. You would think that would be a joke. That is what truly makes it funny and what makes those losers the losers they are.

He means it.

Not at all.

here's the thing.

When I go to my doctor's office, I usually expect that I am going to waste the better part of an afternoon going there. Unlike the DMV, they aren't open on Saturday. If I want to see a specialist, I have to go to a generalist to sign off on it first.

The last big medical thing I went to was when I pinched a nerve in my shoulder. My regular physician ordered tests, which took weeks to schedule, to finally see the nerve specialist, who couldn't do anything because the generalist ordered the wrong tests. Thankfully, by that time, the problem largely cleared up on its own. But that was after I was out a few hundred bucks and my insurance got charged more.

Meanwhile, my last trip to the DMV, I could have avoided altogether because I had no accidents or moving violations in the last four years. But I wanted an ID with a current picture, so I went to the DMV. In and out, ten minutes. no muss, no fuss.

But if you have some brain disease where you just hate you some government.... probably just the thought of a driver's license pisses you off.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

If Obamacare is as terrible as the opponents of it would have you believe,

why are those opponents apparently incapable of coming up with anything better?

Shouldn't that be easy?

Because there is nothing good to come up with.

Obama didn't address the issue. He simply threw something against the wall and hope it stuck.

Now we are paying the price.

 

[danielpalos]

Been saying it since it happened. The one thing that you cannot do politically is take away something from millions of people that have been GIVEN something. We know obama counted on this. They knew it would be next to impossible to take the insurance away from millions of people who have it. We also know that it is impossible to be sustained. Both things counted on and Grubber admitted this.

I agree to disagree. We can always end our War on Drugs.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

How many hospitals could survive on 87% or 79% of Medicare? Many Drs don't accept Medicaid patients now. You simply can't stretch resources to cover everyone.

That's ridiculous small minded BS, sorry. We are THE RICHEST nation on the planet - we absolutely CAN afford to do single payer. We just need to restructure the system and remove obscene profit motives and CEO salaries in healthcare industry and insurance industry.

Pick up a book, read about how it works in many vibrant countries who have excellent medical facilities, excellent doctors, etc.

Why do you suppose so many doctors support ACA and would like to see it expanded to single payer?

I have yet to see a single doctor that supports single payer. Few doctors take medicaid and medicare now. Make it single payer and it would be half a dozen alcoholic doctors with a dozen malpractice claims behind them.

obamacare gave us concierge medical care. If you have enough money, you pay the concierge directly and the doctor comes to your house.

Single payer will work with a relatively small population of high wage earners and little to no immigration.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

Been saying it since it happened. The one thing that you cannot do politically is take away something from millions of people that have been GIVEN something. We know obama counted on this. They knew it would be next to impossible to take the insurance away from millions of people who have it. We also know that it is impossible to be sustained. Both things counted on and Grubber admitted this.

I agree to disagree. We can always end our War on Drugs.

We never had a war on drugs.

 

[JoeB131]

I have yet to see a single doctor that supports single payer. Few doctors take medicaid and medicare now. Make it single payer and it would be half a dozen alcoholic doctors with a dozen malpractice claims behind them.

Yes, I'm sure that the Doctors all want to get six figure salaries...

But single payer works just fine in Europe, Japan and Canada.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

I have yet to see a single doctor that supports single payer. Few doctors take medicaid and medicare now. Make it single payer and it would be half a dozen alcoholic doctors with a dozen malpractice claims behind them.

Yes, I'm sure that the Doctors all want to get six figure salaries...

But single payer works just fine in Europe, Japan and Canada.

It works in Japan, no immigration to speak of, low unemployment. I have not heard anything good from Canada. Long delays and travel long distances for necessary tests.

My business associates tell me that the medical system is terrible. Doctors have to prescribe water for patients in the hospital. A friend who was in a London hospital told me everything is bribes and tips. You want your meal? Bribe the guy who delivers your food. If you want your medication, bribe the nurse.

Oh and learn how to pull your own teeth. You'll be doing that with single payer.

Single payer works best with few patients. Known as an increase in funeral home business

 

[2aguy]

Been saying it since it happened. The one thing that you cannot do politically is take away something from millions of people that have been GIVEN something. We know obama counted on this. They knew it would be next to impossible to take the insurance away from millions of people who have it. We also know that it is impossible to be sustained. Both things counted on and Grubber admitted this.

It wasn't even a Trojan Horse......the dynamic they created showed it was a Trojan Horse....

 

[2aguy]

I have yet to see a single doctor that supports single payer. Few doctors take medicaid and medicare now. Make it single payer and it would be half a dozen alcoholic doctors with a dozen malpractice claims behind them.

Yes, I'm sure that the Doctors all want to get six figure salaries...

But single payer works just fine in Europe, Japan and Canada.

No....socialized medicine doesn't work anywhere.....

Britain....

NHS problems 'at their worst since 1990s' - BBC News


Services in the NHS in England are deteriorating in a way not seen since the early 1990s, according to a leading health think tank.

The King's Fund review said waiting times for A&E, cancer care and routine operations had all started getting worse, while deficits were growing.

It said such drops in performance had not been seen for 20 years.

But the think tank acknowledged the NHS had done as well as could be expected, given the financial climate.

Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund, which specialises in health care policy, said: "The next government will inherit a health service that has run out of money and is operating at the very edge of its limits.

================



Iceland...


Iceland's Universal Healthcare (Still) On Thin Ice - The Reykjavik Grapevine

One year ago, Iceland’s lauded universal healthcare system seemed to be teetering off the edge. Doctors’ wages had stagnated after the economic crash, and following a bout of failed negotiations, they went on strike for the first time ever. While they coordinated their actions to avoid endangering patients’ lives, the doctors’ message was clear: if demands were not met, they would seek employment elsewhere.

Coupled with years of tough austerity measures, faltering morale, and an infrastructure in dire disrepair, there was not much slack to give. In an in-depth analysis, we at the Grapevine tried to figure out what, exactly, was going on, and where we were headed.
=========

New Zealand...


WHO | New Zealand cuts health spending to control costs
New Zealand cuts health spending to control costs
New Zealand’s health-care system is undergoing a series of cutbacks to reduce costs, but critics are concerned that the health of people on low incomes and in some population groups may suffer. Rebecca Lancashire reports in our series on health financing.
When Robyn Pope was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 she was told that she would have to wait two months for a mastectomy if she wanted breast reconstruction as part of her treatment in the public health system. “Two months may not seem like a long time,” says Pope, a mother of three, who lives on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand, “but a day lived knowing that you have cancer in your body is like an eternity”.

The underlying reason for the delay was a familiar one – funding. Like other countries offering universal health care, New Zealand struggles to meet the steadily growing demand for a full range of high-quality health services offered largely for free to everyone, while remaining cost efficient. In the past eight years, New Zealand’s total health expenditure has doubled to 3.6 billion New Zealand dollars (NZ$) (US$ 10 billion). In the face of economic slow down, the government is calling for reform to rein in this expenditure.

===========


Sweden


'Sweden's healthcare is an embarrassment'



Swedish was once a health care model for the world. But that is hardly the case anymore.

This is not primarily due to the fact Sweden has become worse - rather it is the case that other countries have improved faster.

That Sweden no longer keeps up with those countries is largely due to its inability to reduce its patient waiting times, which are some of the worst in Europe, as the latest edition of the Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI) revealed in Brussels on Monday.

The 2014 EHCI also confirms other big problems within Swedish healthcare.
===============

France....

France's Health-Care System Is Going Broke

Yet France’s looming recession and a steady increase in chronic diseases including diabetes threaten to change that, says Willy Hodin, who heads Groupe PHR, an umbrella organization for 2,200 French pharmacies. The health system exceeds its budget by billions of euros each year, and in the face of rising costs, taxpayer-funded benefits such as spa treatments, which the French have long justified as preventive care, now look more like expendable luxuries.
“Reform is needed fast,” Hodin says. “The most optimistic believe this system can survive another five to six years. The less optimistic don’t think it will last more than three.”
===========

Finland...

Why is Finland’s healthcare system failing my family? | Ed Dutton

Finland’s health service has been in a parlous state for decades and it is getting worse.
According to an OECD report published in 2013, the Finnish health system is chronically underfunded. The Nordic nation of five million people spent only 7% of GDP on its public health system in 2012, compared with 8% in the UK. In 2012, the report found, 80% of the Finnish population had to wait more than two weeks to see a GP. Finland’s high taxes go on education and daycare.
Finland has more doctors per capita than the UK but, at the level of primary care, a far higher proportion of these are private than is the case in Britain. And the Finnish equivalent of the NHS is far from free at the point of use.
A GP appointment costs €16.10 (£12.52), though you pay for only the first three visits in a given year. A hospital consultation costs about €38, and you pay for each night that you spend in hospital, up to a maximum of €679. And once you get to the chemist, there is no flat fee; no belief that you shouldn’t be financially penalised for the nature of the medicine you require.
The service is not national, but municipal, meaning that poorer areas of the country tend to have a bad health service and limited access even to private GPs, who set up practices in more affluent areas.

---------

Canada....

If Universal Health Care Is The Goal, Don't Copy Canada

Amongst industrialized countries -- members of the OECD -- with universal health care, Canada has the second most expensive health care system as a share of the economy after adjusting for age. This is not necessarily a problem, however, depending on the value received for such spending. As countries become richer, citizens may choose to allocate a larger portion of their income to health care. However, such expenditures are a problem when they are not matched by value.
The most visible manifestation of Canada’s failing health care system are wait times for health care services. In 2013, Canadians, on average, faced a four and a half month wait for medically necessary treatment after referral by a general practitioner. This wait time is almost twice as long as it was in 1993 when national wait times were first measured.
--------

Long wait times in Canada have also been observed for basic diagnostic imaging technologies that Americans take for granted, which are crucial for determining the severity of a patient’s condition. In 2013, the average wait time for an MRI was over two months, while Canadians needing a CT scan waited for almost a month.

These wait times are not simply “minor inconveniences.” Patients experience physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, and lost economic productivity while waiting for treatment. One recent estimate (2013) found that the value of time lost due to medical wait times in Canada amounted to approximately $1,200 per patient.

There is also considerable evidence indicating that excessive wait times lead to poorer health outcomes and in some cases, death. Dr. Brian Day, former head of the Canadian Medical Association recently noted that “[d]elayed care often transforms an acute and potentially reversible illness or injury into a chronic, irreversible condition that involves permanent disability.”

And more on Canada...


The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care

Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.

When Aucoin appealed to an official ombudsman, the Ontario government claimed that her treatment was unproven and that she had gone to an unaccredited clinic. But the FDA in the U.S. had approved Erbitux, and her clinic was a cancer center affiliated with a prominent Catholic hospital in Buffalo. This January, the ombudsman ruled in Aucoin’s favor, awarding her the cost of treatment. She represents a dramatic new trend in Canadian health-care advocacy: finding the treatment you need in another country, and then fighting Canadian bureaucrats (and often suing) to get them to pick up the tab.

And the truth.......that Canadians don't see until it is too late.....

My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way to one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute. Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.
Norway.....
Government Health Care Horror Stories from Norway

I'll admit this: if, like me, you're a self-employed person with a marginal income, the Norwegian system is, in many ways, a boon – as long as you're careful not to get anything much more serious than a cold or flu.

Doctors' visits are cheap; hospitalization is free. But you get what you pay for. There are excellent doctors in Norway – but there are also mediocrities and outright incompetents who in the U.S. would have been stripped of their licenses long ago. The fact is that while the ubiquity of frivolous malpractice lawsuits in the U.S. has been a disgrace, the inability of Norwegians to sue doctors or hospitals even in the most egregious of circumstances is even more of a disgrace.

Physicians who in the U.S. would be dragged into court are, under the Norwegian system, reported to a local board consisting of their own colleagues – who are also, not infrequently, their longtime friends.

(The government health system's own website puts it this way: if you suspect malpractice, you have the right to “ask the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision in your county to evaluate” your claims.)

As a result, doctors who should be forcibly retired, if not incarcerated, end up with a slap on the wrist. When patients are awarded financial damages, the sums – paid by the state, not the doctor – are insultingly small.
------------

Take the case of Peter Franks, whose doctor sent him home twice despite a tennis-ball-sized lump in his chest that was oozing blood and pus – and that turned out to be a cancer that was diagnosed too late to save his life. Apropos of Franks's case, a jurist who specializes in patients' rights lamented that the Norwegian health-care system responds to sky-high malpractice figures “with a shrug,” and the dying Franks himself pronounced last year that “the responsibility for malpractice has been pulverized in Norway,” saying that “if I could have sued the doctor, I would have. Other doctors would have read about the lawsuit in the newspaper. Then they would have taken greater care to avoid making such a mistake themselves. But doctors in Norway don't have to take responsibility for their mistakes. The state does it.” After a three-year legal struggle, Franks was awarded 2.7 million kroner by the Norwegian government – about half a million dollars.

Another aspect of Norway's guild-like health-care system is that although the country suffers from a severe deficit of doctors, nurses, and midwives, the medical establishment makes it next to impossible for highly qualified foreign members of these professions to get certified to practice in Norway. The daughter of a friend of mine got a nursing degree at the University of North Dakota in 2009 but, as reported last Friday by NRK, is working in Seattle because the Norwegian authorities in charge of these matters – who have refused to be interviewed on this subject by NRK – have stubbornly denied her a license. Why? My guess is that the answer has a lot to do with three things: competence, competition, and control. If there were a surplus of doctors and nurses instead of a shortage, the good ones would drive out the bad. Plainly, such a situation must be avoided at all costs – including the cost of human lives.

Then there's the waiting lists. At the beginning of 2012, over 281,000 patients in Norway, out of a population of five million, were awaiting treatment for some medical problem or other. Bureaucratic absurdities run rampant, as exemplified by thisAftenposten story from earlier this year:

Japan....

Medical services in Tokyo area in danger of collapsing | The Japan Times

Medical services in the Tokyo metropolitan area are facing a serious danger of collapse as hospitals affiliated with private medical universities and private universities’ medical schools, the key players in the region’s medical services, are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

These institutions, long beset by higher labor costs than in other parts of the country, have been hit hard by the increase in the consumption tax from 5 percent to 8 percent in April last year. While they now have to pay higher taxes when purchasing pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, they cannot pass that incremental cost on to patients or health insurance associations. This is because medical services are exempt from the consumption tax, so patients and health insurance associations are not required to pay it.

 

[2aguy]

I have yet to see a single doctor that supports single payer. Few doctors take medicaid and medicare now. Make it single payer and it would be half a dozen alcoholic doctors with a dozen malpractice claims behind them.

Yes, I'm sure that the Doctors all want to get six figure salaries...

But single payer works just fine in Europe, Japan and Canada.

And Japan....

Not all smiles



Like other service industries in Japan, there are cumbersome rules, too many small players and few incentives to improve. Doctors are too few—one-third less than the rich-world average, relative to the population—because of state quotas. Shortages of doctors are severe in rural areas and in certain specialities, such as surgery, paediatrics and obstetrics. The latter two shortages are blamed on the country's low birth rate, but practitioners say that they really arise because income is partly determined by numbers of tests and drugs prescribed, and there are fewer of these for children and pregnant women. Doctors are worked to the bone for relatively low pay (around $125,000 a year at mid-career). One doctor in his 30s says he works more than 100 hours a week. “How can I find time to do research? Write an article? Check back on patients?” he asks.

 

[g5000]

Been saying it since it happened. The one thing that you cannot do politically is take away something from millions of people that have been GIVEN something. We know obama counted on this. They knew it would be next to impossible to take the insurance away from millions of people who have it. We also know that it is impossible to be sustained. Both things counted on and Grubber admitted this.

I've been telling you tards literally for years that the GOP sold us all down the river to single payer decades ago.

Trump will deliver the kill stroke.

 

[JoeB131]

I

Single payer works best with few patients. Known as an increase in funeral home business

Except that Canadians live longer than we do and have a lower infant mortality rate.