Commentary: "Coronavirus shows again why 'Medicare for all' is a bad idea"

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StudentMI said:
In other words, you’re not going to consider it because you disagree with the stand of who wrote it. Wonderful. So if you post an article from, say, CNN I’m allowed to discount it because they’ve criticised conservatives?
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The “Center For A Stateless Society” has an axe to grind. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be considered, but it’s a fringe position.

And CNN is a pretty terrible news source regardless.
 
And I am not saying a totally free market in health care would work. I don’t believe stateless societies are possible. However, I do believe he’s correct in his argument. Whatever the solution turns out to be is irrelevant.
 
And it’s just fact that the USA pays a greater percentage of GDP towards healthcare than any other developed nation in the world. We pay more per person. We have worse infant mortality rates and life expectancy rates. We have a large number of uninsured. And the majority of available plans are all managed care plans with high deductible and out of pocket costs (not counting premiums) when citizens of other countries have no out of pocket costs.

A single payer-system would be a boon to supporting and providing financial security to families in America.
 
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BenjaminJ said:
Thata a lie. My father has 16 bothers and sisters, not to mention aunts and uncles. All from manatoulin islands. Mostly little Current. They all have horror stories on wait times using Canadian health system.
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It’s always interesting to read others mentioning stories they heard about our horrible health system in Canada.
 
You are correct. One simply cannot make a case that the US healthcare system is better than elsewhere in the industrialized world. It us more expensive to society at large, more expensive to individuals, worse outcomes, more people lacking adequate healthcare, etc. Most people have no relationship with a family doctor anymore. Red tape is greater. Bureaucracy is worse in the US.

Our healthcare system is very broken.
 
Neithan said:
And we don’t have a federal healthcare system. Each of the provinces is responsible for its own.

It’s not unreasonable for each state to have single-payer basic healthcare. Or at least for those states that want it. You also don’t have to eliminate private insurance for extended healthcare or pharmacare.
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The problem with any state controlled healthcare system is that all of the features (wages, infrastructure, education, staffing, sourcing) of the system are centrally controlled. That means, essentially, that all other possible actors or agents have exited the healthcare system altogether. There is no opportunity to quickly “ramp up” services because there are no other players in the game, just the state.

The US system is far more robust because there are all kinds of independent players that are well-placed to quickly, as the need arises, ramp up to meet the need.

In a state run system, the entire system is premised on budgeted needs that are carefully controlled and the entire system operates according to those parameters. So, what happens when a centrally controlled system (or 11) faces a challenging crisis? Rationing of services with no possibility of “ramping” up services because the entire system is structured around “normal” functioning and there are no outside agents who could possibly assist the system to ramp up. The system is all there is.

That is why Italy has such a high death rate from CoVID-19. Anyone over 75 is simply not helped, but left to fend for themselves while the younger patients are triaged in terms of where the necessarily limited resources ought to be targetted.

 
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This is in the city of Bergamo.

Only 3.5 Hr drive from my house. Thanks be to GOD I am currently living in the US. But most of my relatives do live in Italy.

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Peace!
 
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Under single payer, I would be dead. Such socialized medicine works for the majority of the people, the majority of the time. The problem is that I am a medical minority.

For example, “Workman’s Comp” or State-run “Industrial
insurance” is an example of single payer health care that many of us are familiar with. I suffered a back injury when an extremely large (460lbs) mental health patient fell out of the back of an ambulance onto me while being loaded. This blew out the L4-5 disc in my back.

Filed a claim. The system has, by law (which defines their service) 90 days to decide on treatment. Meanwhile, I was either shuffling very slowly or, at times, crawling around the house, and sleeping on the floor with my legs up on a sofa.

I received my notification that they authorized surgery on day 89. That was a day short of three months in pain - sometimes agonizing. My state caseworker was from Croatia. Her workload was so severe that she was considering returning to Croatia.

This is deleting all of the red tape such as second medical opinions from hired-gun retired doctors who try to convince you to have spinal fusions, etc.

Now, let’s talk about cancer. I have dealt with cancer patients from around the world as a moderator on an international cancer forum. I have had three cancers. In 2012, I interviewed with Lymphoma Canada regarding a drug I had been on in the US since 2009. HealthCanada would not cover that drug, meaning that many patients with rare non-Hodgkin’s Lymphomas probably died.

When you relinquish your health care to a political body, you are granting them three powers: power to decide if they will treat you, the power to make you wait and the power to decide which treatments might or might not be available.

As much as private systems are criticized and condemned, if not for (admittedly excellent) private insurance, I would have died in 2009. Just trying to put a name or face on this.
 
Thank you for that post. It seems that too often we’re only allowed to put a face on the case for socialized healthcare.
 
BenjaminJ said:
Youre clueless
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Wesrock and I disagree on many things. But his posts are worth reading. They are informative, factually based, well written, to the point and persuasive. . . .
 
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JerryZ said:
Well, then get ready to die if you are elderly like they are telling the old in Italy.
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That has nothing to do with healthcare, but an acute crisis. I will remind you that the healthcare system in the United States also does not have the resources to handle that amount of patients, which is why we have all this “flattening the curve” rhetoric instead of increasing resources. Capitalism is not proving any better at handling this volume of sick.
 
Taiwan has a single payer system and their fight against Coronavirus is the envy of the civilized world.
 
Wesrock said:
And it’s just fact that the USA pays a greater percentage of GDP towards healthcare than any other developed nation in the world. We pay more per person. We have worse infant mortality rates and life expectancy rates. We have a large number of uninsured. And the majority of available plans are all managed care plans with high deductible and out of pocket costs (not counting premiums) when citizens of other countries have no out of pocket costs.
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Americans tend to live very unhealthy lives.

We eat way too much, and much of what we eat is sugar and fat (not the good fats, but the transfats).

Our obesity rate is around 50% in adults. I’ve also read that 2/3 of all adult Americans are obese. Some of the figures claim that 1/2 or 2/3 of all adult Americans are overweight but not clinically obese. And some studies claim that 1/2/ or 2/3 of all Americans’ are morbidly obese.

It’s hard to get accurate figures on the obesity rate. But look around. Drive by a high school at closing time and you will be shocked to see the number of students who are literally really really fat, not just “chubby” or “big-boned!” And I’m not talking about the football players who are solid muscle! Many of the girls obviously weigh well over 200 pounds, and many of the boys are walking spraddle-legged to be able to manage their hanging bellies.

Many of those kid will be dead by the time they are 30. Dead of complications of Type II Diabetes, which many Americans do NOT take seriously! They figure, “Well, I have too much sugar in my blood. I’ll cut back to two cookies instead of four.” Sigh.

And equally unhealthy are the Americans who are sleep-deprived. This is almost as deadly as being obese!

And how about the number of Americans who are addicted to something, usually alcohol or over-the-counter drugs, but also many opioid addicts. Most of these addictions started out innocently enough, but because of various factors, users became addicted.

And a large percentage of Americans are clinically depressed. Not just “kinda blue,” but depressed and in need of cognitive and medical treatment. High risk of suicide here.

And then there are the numbers of people who are living with chronic stress. Losing a job, divorce, kids, illness, crime, traffic, too much online, loneliness–etc. Chronic stress is a killer.

We are a very unhealthy nation. When I compare our lifestyles to the Italians, or the Africans (living in peaceful African nations), or the Scandinavians–we are in terrible shape here!

So if we could just get our wellness act together, we would probably use a lot less healthcare! But we aren’t likely to stop living large–that’s the American Way, and as long as you stay healthy, it’s fun! But when it goes bad, life in Denmark or Canada or France looks pretty good.
 
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I laughed when late last week a Bernie Sanders support who was extremely left-leaning (think Universal / Single Payer health care run solely by the government - no private insurance) made the statement that if we (the US) only had single payer health care right now the coronavirus would be under control. Everyone on the panel laughed (all political viewpoints…), and the response was “how’s that working out for those countries with socialized medicine!”.
 
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