"Free" health care!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-01-2003
"Free" health care!
250
Thu, 07-22-2004 - 7:15pm
I wonder how many of you have had to live without health insurance? You say that health care is not a right? NO WONDER! You have always had a place for the bills to go other then your mailbox! How many of you have ever asked what the actual cost of your prescriptions are? Do the math! Do you have any idea what it is like to call around from doctor to doctor trying to find one who would see you WITHOUT insurance? Have you ever stood at your doctor office and humbly asked for samples instead of a prescription because u know that your $360 check wont stretch enough to cover your $280 med bill AND the doctor appt. Don't even mention medicaid! If you make enough money to buy food and scrape by...you do not qualify.

Go ahead and be technical but if you ever run into some bad luck you will see things in an entirely different light!

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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 8:02pm
<<It may not be perfect but just ask someone who does not have insurance which they prefer:

no health insurance
--or--
universal health care while not perfect and some problems but still can be seen by a doctor.

>>

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2004
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 8:23pm


Sorry, I do not buy into that statement at all. Here are some statements made by President Bush...

"And about 40 million Americans still have no health insurance at all.

Most Americans get their health care coverage at work, yet higher costs are causing some employers to cut back on benefits, or insist that the employee pay more, especially if they want to choose their own doctor or to avoid the complications of managed care. Many families end up in a health plan whose monthly premium puts a strain on their budget. And when they require care, they find what they need really isn't fully covered.

Too many workers get no coverage at all through their jobs. This is especially true among minorities or part-time employees and seasonal workers."

http://www.afcm.org/afcmreports.html

This is just an interesting article.

Profit motive is health's loss

June 20, 2004

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2004/june/profit_motive_is_hea.php

Editorial page, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

June 20, 2004

Profit motive is health’s loss

In a country where capitalism is the state religion, it’s hard to get people to admit that the profit motive doesn’t improve every enterprise. Americans seem to think there is no problem that cannot be solved by some resourceful entrepreneur.

But we’re experiencing a crisis of faith in at least one area — health care. The soaring cost of hospitals and medicines suggests that capitalism is sometimes at odds with the common good.

Not many of us have the nerve to say that aloud yet. It’s heresy.

Besides, the last time any public figure made a serious effort to reform health care, the result was near excommunication. Hillary Clinton’s complex system of rules and regulations was easily caricatured by opponents, and the blowback was enough to keep any self-respecting politician away from health care for years. But in the coming decade, the soaring cost will force Congress and state legislatures to confront the problem.

We now have a health care system whose primary mission is not delivering

health care. Instead, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and, in fact, many hospitals exist to make money. That’s their first priority, and also their second and third priority. The product they sell happens to be improved health. But they jack up the prices on the product and restrict it to those who can afford it.

In this enterprise, a little profit motive goes a long way. And in health care, it has gone too far.

Just take a look at what has happened recently to prices of some pharmaceuticals used by elderly patients. The prices shot up just as the new drug discount cards were released, ensuring that drug companies will earn just as much on products for ailments such as hypertension and arthritis as they did before. So those retirees who have struggled to pay for their medications will be no better off — even with discount cards. The prices of the 30 drugs used most often by retirees rose more than four times the rate of inflation from January 2003 to January 2004, according to consumer advocacy group Families USA.

In the United States, capitalism works as well as it does because businesses compete for customers. And there is usually a business willing to make any product available for a cheaper price. If a motorist can’t afford a Mercedes, he can buy a Mazda. If you can’t afford the $15,000 plasma TV, you can settle for the $500 cathode-ray tube model. But who wants to see the discount cancer doc?

Insurance companies have tried to hold down costs by reimbursing physicians at a standard rate for common procedures. But that has not kept health care costs from rising faster than the rate of inflation. Perhaps that’s because medicine is one of those mysterious enterprises where the average consumer can never be sophisticated enough to know what he’s actually buying. Most of us find a physician we like and do what he or she dictates. It’s simply not the same as buying a toaster or a dining room table. You don’t wait for a good sale to get your angioplasty.

There is also this difference with the average consumer product: Most Americans believe that access to doctors and hospitals is a right, not a privilege that comes with money. We don’t say that out loud either. Not yet. But federal regulations already guarantee treatment in case of an emergency. If you have pneumonia and need to see a doctor, a public hospital may not turn you away, even if you don’t have insurance.

But guaranteeing access to emergency room treatment has helped to push the cost of medicine even higher. It would be far cheaper to guarantee every American preventive care — regular check-ups for hypertension and diabetes, immunizations for school-age children, medications for routine illnesses such as ear infections.

As more and more working Americans find themselves without health insurance, our faith in the ability of capitalism to provide a fundamental asset of American life is being sorely tested. Sometime in the next decade, we’ll be forced to admit that government will have to step in and shore up the safety net by guaranteeing basic health care to all Americans.

The old-time religion will have some new hymns.




iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2004
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 8:27pm
http://www.jhsph.edu/Press_Room/Press_Releases/PR_2004/Hussey_healthcare.html

May 4, 2004

Americans Spend More on Health Care But Are Not Healthier

Despite spending more for health care, Americans do not have the best medical care in the world, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions.

The study is the first to use a universal set of standards to compare the quality of health care in the five countries surveyed. The researchers found that no country scored the best or worst overall and that each country was the best and worst in at least one area. The study is published in the May/June 2004 issue of the journal Health Affairs.

Peter S. Hussey, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management, said, “It is well known that the United States spends much more on health care per capita than other countries, and it is commonly assumed that we have the best health care system in the world. However, the results of our study show that the United States performs better than other countries in only a few areas, while performing worse in others. This raises the question of what Americans receive for all of the money devoted to health care.”

The international group of researchers worked together as The Commonwealth Fund International Working Group on Quality Indicators. Data on 21 health indicators that reflect the quality of medical care in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States were collected and examined. Five-year cancer survival rates, 30-day case-fatality rates after heart attack or stroke, breast cancer screening rates and asthma mortality rates are a few of the indicators the researchers studied. The researchers broke the 21 health indicators into three categories, which include survival rates for various cancers and transplants, avoidable events such as suicides, asthma and smoking rates and process indicators that include vaccination and screening rates.

The United States had the highest breast cancer survival rate, the highest cervical cancer screening rate and the lowest smoking rate. For breast cancer survival rates, the United States (86 percent) was 11 percentage points better than the worst country, which was the United Kingdom. For cervical cancer screening, the United States (93 percent) was 26 percentage points better than the United Kingdom, the worst country. The United States tied with Canada for having the lowest smoking rate, which was 15 percent lower than the lowest-scoring country, which was the United Kingdom. T

he United States performed more poorly on indicators including asthma mortality rates and survival after kidney and liver transplants. The United States is the only country where asthma mortality rates have been increasing over time; they are now higher than in the United Kingdom and Australia. The survival rate after kidney transplant in the United States (83 percent) was 11 percentage points lower than in Canada, the country with the highest rate.

One noteworthy pattern was in the United Kingdom. It scored the lowest in five of the nine survival rate indicators and highest in five of the eight avoidable event indicators. This means that the United Kingdom is exceptional at preventing avoidable health issues such as pertussis or hepatitis B, but has the lowest cancer survival rate of the five countries studied.

“Each country in our study has areas of care where it can learn from the other countries and areas where it could teach others. That tells us that there are opportunities for improvement in the quality of health care in all five countries. We hope our study will be expanded upon so that it can be used to judge overall health system performance around the world,” Hussey said. He also noted that Americans were spending more on health care, but not receiving extra benefits or having better health care experiences.

Hussey, and colleague Gerard F. Anderson, PhD, a professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, also co-wrote a second article about Americans spending the most per capita on health care. In the article, which is also in the May/June issue of Health Affairs, they address why Americans pay much more for health care than their foreign counterparts. Dr. Anderson, Hussey and co-author Uwe E. Reinhardt, PhD, with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, found that the second-highest spending country, Switzerland, spent only 68 percent as much as the United States on health care per capita.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2004
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 8:32pm


With all this "work" they have been doing, what actually has come out of it?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 8:47pm
<>

I can't see the problem here. If wages are lower but prices are lower, it balances out, no? Or is there some sort of cachet attached to paying higher prices for the exact same things?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 8:53pm
Did you see this informative article that was posted a few threads back? It covers a lot of information about Canada's healthcare program, taxation and funding.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Health/O_Canada_KP.html

In it, it mentioned that Frazer Institute study you quoted (I've already posted this on the thread):

<>

The article (though long) might be an interesting read for you (or would you rather just read only the bad things about the Canadian Healthcare system ;o)

For every dreadful story you can come up (like that heart transplant story) I can probably come up with a number of horror stories that show how the American system is failing people as well.

I can only go by my own personal experience and that of my family and friends. I've (they've) only had the best and most timely of care in this system. Unless you've experienced it first hand you really have no basis to say that it is shoddy.




Edited 7/26/2004 9:11 pm ET ET by suemox

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 10:50pm

<>


"80% of those who don't are somewhat to very satisfied with the healthcare they receive"


"Since the health systems and the role of public and private insurance differ in each country, another important aspect of the report compares access to health care and people’s satisfaction with the health care they receive. Americans were more likely to report that the quality of their health care services in general was excellent compared with Canadians (42 percent compared to 39 percent.) Among uninsured American respondents, 28 percent said the quality of the health care services they received was “excellent,” 44 percent “good,” and 28 percent “fair” or “poor.” When asked about their satisfaction with health care services in general, 53 percent of Americans and 44 percent of Canadians said they were “very satisfied,” while 37 percent of Americans and 43 percent of Canadians said they were “somewhat satisfied.” Among uninsured Americans, 39 percent were “very satisfied” with the services they received, and 40 percent were “somewhat satisfied.”"http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/firstjointsurvey.htm


"Most people who don't have insurance, don't have it by choice."


Of those 40 million you referred to, 10 to 20 million of those are only temporarily without healthcare as they switch from one job to another (they get countred

Renee ~~~

Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 11:22pm
<>

I can only go by my first hand experience, too, and found it sorely lacking.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 11:57pm

<>


And I can say the exact same thing to you, so where does that leave us?

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 12:02am

If prices were all 25% lower, Canada would have the same standard of living as we do in the US, but that's not the case.


"The problem is that our standard of living has been declining in recent years-- particularly as measured against that of our neighbors to the south. And if it continues to decline, so, too, will our ability to sustain and grow our health care systems, our social safety nets, our cultural institutions, and our ability to provide the youth of Canada with the education they will need to compete globally and with the job opportunities that will be needed to keep them from moving away."


http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Zwy-fpc_4WwJ:www.td.com/economics/standard/full/daniel.pdf+us+canada+standard+of+living&hl=en


Renee ~~~

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