Universal Health Care

[JackQ]

Comments?

catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004736.htm

 

[marci]

Speaking as a person who is dealing with a chronic illness, I don’t want to see something like they have in Britian or Canada. I want the option to keep my private insurance. I don’t want to deal with 6 month waiting periods and beaurocratic panels deciding my care. France is much more reasonable in that people are allowed to have private insurance and opt out of the public option.

Having said all of that, I hope we never see true universal government healthcare in this country, I believe it will be devasting to patient care and innovation

 

[CountrySinger]

Speaking as a person who is dealing with a chronic illness, I don’t want to see something like they have in Britian or Canada. I want the option to keep my private insurance. I don’t want to deal with 6 month waiting periods and beaurocratic panels deciding my care. France is much more reasonable in that people are allowed to have private insurance and opt out of the public option.

Having said all of that, I hope we never see true universal government healthcare in this country, I believe it will be devasting to patient care and innovation

Have you lived in the UK before? If you haven’t, don’t judge. If you have, where did you live? I want to avoid it. I hate when people slag the NHS and 99% of the time, don’t know anything about it (most of my friends say the same thing).

I waited for two days for a doctor appointment (I live in England, American ex-pat). And you can have private insurance in Britain (I know several people who have it).

I too have a chronic condition, and have received better care under the NHS than I ever did in America (lived there 30 years, with top-tier medical insurance), and it’s free. In America, I would wait for 9-12 months for an appointment , under the NHS, within 2-3 days. Prescriptions are cheaper too (and free in Scotland).

And insurance companies don’t make decision on people’s healthcare? You think they don’t have panels? Or investors who depend on seeing a return? What happens if the company decides not to cover a medication or treatment?

 

[gxensen]

I don’t want to see something like they have in Britian or Canada.

There’s a joke that goes something like, “You know you’re in Canada when the ambulance takes longer to arrive than the pizza man.”

 

[JerryZ]

Have you lived in the UK before? If you haven’t, don’t judge. If you have, where did you live? I want to avoid it. I hate when people slag the NHS and 99% of the time, don’t know anything about it (most of my friends say the same thing).

I waited for two days for a doctor appointment (I live in England, American ex-pat). And you can have private insurance in Britain (I know several people who have it).

I too have a chronic condition, and have received better care under the NHS than I ever did in America (lived there 30 years, with top-tier medical insurance), and it’s free. In America, I would wait for 9-12 months for an appointment , under the NHS, within 2-3 days. Prescriptions are cheaper too (and free in Scotland).

And insurance companies don’t make decision on people’s healthcare? You think they don’t have panels? Or investors who depend on seeing a return? What happens if the company decides not to cover a medication or treatment?

US healthcare system a haven for many, but sick Americans are often jilted

The NHS is sending patients abroad for advanced treatments, but that same care is hard to come by for many living there
guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/06/us-medical-care-haven-nhs

Is public healthcare in the UK as sick as rightwing America claims?
guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/11/nhs-sick-healthcare-reform

Breast cancer does claim more lives, proportionally, here than in the US. According to the 2002 Globocan database run by the World Health Organisation’s cancer advisers, 19.2 of every 100,000 Americans die of the disease, but 24.3 per 100,000 here die. On prostate cancer, a Lancet Oncology global study last year found that 91.9% of Americans with the disease were still alive after five years compared to just 51.1% in the UK. With heart attacks, 40% of Britons who suffer one die from it compared to 38% in the States – nowhere near the difference claimed.

Looks like things are not as rosey in the UK as you paint them.
Higher mortality for cancer and hearth attacks and that almost 50% more mortality for prostate cancer compared to the US is not promising.

In the end the old truth still holds valid, no government can run any enterprise as efficiently as the private sector, bearing in mind that in the US many hospitals are actually run by the Catholic Church.
And I also take exception that you could even think that anything the government gives out is “free”.
Nothing is free, someone somewhere has to pay for it!

 

[Regina_Love]

Subsidiarity. It means the best way to care for a situation is to let those at the local area, who are aware of the details of that particular situation who are in the best position to make good decisions. Huge Govt. agencies are the worst. For example: I can comfortably care for a child for about $12,000. per year. Foster Care in Nevada costs about $90,000. per year. The red tape and regulations, are outrageous, and usually prevent everyone from doing what is BEST for the child.

 

[SonCatcher]

Every time I or a family member needs hospital care (ER, hospitalization or certain tests) they automatically send out a letter instructing that they may send the fee out to a collection agent, even before a balance has been calculated. It’s quite unnerving, even for one who has adequate funds to pay the instant the fee is known.

The fact that hospitals are required to accept non-insured patients and the high charges they tend to run up is quite a problem. People should be able to approach the doctor of their choice for care without concern for their ability to pay.

Some kind of “universality” is needed in the healthcare system. The very poor can often (not always) turn to Medicaid but this is not automatic. The merely poor usually have no access to Medicaid nor can they afford any type of medical insurance.

A blended system (like in the UK) may be just what America needs. It can be weighted more heavily on private insurance for middle class and above but in charity we need to make sure no one falls through the cracks.

 

[Scoobyshme]

Universal healthcare would be great…provided it didn’t destroy or downgrade our current healthcare system, or bankrupt the country and destroy the economy. That’s exactly what the current Obamacare system will do if left in place as it stands.

I think we could make things better by allowing medical insurance companies to really compete for business (crossing state lines, etc.), and by fixing torte law to be like torte law in England. In England, if you sue someone, and you don’t win, YOU pay for EVERYTHING! Your lawyer, their lawyer, court costs, etc. Folks there are much more reluctant to sue than here. There are more lawyers in Washington, DC than in all of Europe combined! Fix torte law and malpractice insurance should come way down, decreasing medical costs, etc.

 

[asia53]

I too have a chronic condition, and have received better care under the NHS than I ever did in America (lived there 30 years, with top-tier medical insurance), and it’s free.

Really??? The NHS is publicly funded by taxation. Hmmm, that means someone is paying.

 

[JimG]

Really??? The NHS is publicly funded by taxation. Hmmm, that means someone is paying.

Yes, and someone is being paid. Doctors, nurses, hospitals, technicians, don’t work for free. That would be slave labor. So, any provision for universal health care means not only the provision of some level of health care for all citizens; it is also guaranteed income at some level for the entire health care field. Do they all work for the government?

 

[SamH]

Have you lived in the UK before? If you haven’t, don’t judge. If you have, where did you live? I want to avoid it. I hate when people slag the NHS and 99% of the time, don’t know anything about it (most of my friends say the same thing).

I waited for two days for a doctor appointment (I live in England, American ex-pat). And you can have private insurance in Britain (I know several people who have it).

Having talked at great length with people in the UK that have children with chronic illnesses I wouldn’t want anything similar in the US either. Their system probably works fine for 80% of the people, but if you are in the remaining 20% God help you.

For instance - my son was on the KETO Diet to treat his epilepsy. The diet was first developed by Johns Hopkins and is available as a treatment in most neurology treatment centers in the US. There were no fewer that 5 centers in Kansas that offered it. There are 6 hospitals in the entire UK that offer it and the waiting list to get on it is years long. Parents contacted us to get the menu plan so they could start their children on the diet without the benefit of a hospital.

See the movie “Do No Harm”.

 

[He_Man]

Have you lived in the UK before? If you haven’t, don’t judge. If you have, where did you live? I want to avoid it. I hate when people slag the NHS and 99% of the time, don’t know anything about it (most of my friends say the same thing).

I waited for two days for a doctor appointment (I live in England, American ex-pat). And you can have private insurance in Britain (I know several people who have it).

I too have a chronic condition, and have received better care under the NHS than I ever did in America (lived there 30 years, with top-tier medical insurance), and it’s free. In America, I would wait for 9-12 months for an appointment , under the NHS, within 2-3 days. Prescriptions are cheaper too (and free in Scotland).

And insurance companies don’t make decision on people’s healthcare? You think they don’t have panels? Or investors who depend on seeing a return? What happens if the company decides not to cover a medication or treatment?

No, it isn’t. As a 1099 employee, I pay all my own taxes quarterly. Try that some time; it is amazing seeing yourself wite a check for 42% of your income to the government. 42%. Nothing is free, including National Healthcare.

 

[Ender]

The OP was about an article in the CNS titled “*Pope, church leaders call for guaranteed health care for all people” *so let’s start with that. Opinions about the NHS in Britain might be interesting but they aren’t relevant.

I reject the notion that the Church has called for guaranteed health care for everyone although I don’t deny that some “Church leaders” have called for it. This is a misreading of what has been called for which is not guaranteed health care but fair access to what health care is available. Given that the Church is universal can anyone believe for a moment that she is stating that countries like Bangladesh and Botswana have a moral obligation to provide something like Obamacare or the NHS?

The point is that the Church is not specifying the type of health care a country is morally obligated to provide and that is as true of the United States as it is of Uganda. What she is saying is that a nation has an obligation to consider health care as a necessity of life in the same way it thinks about feeding the hungry and sheltering the poor. That is, a nation, so far as it can, must help the needy (and this includes health care) but she no more specifies how this is to be done than she specifies how roads are to be built or where they must go.

Ender

 

[Brendan]

Well, there are currently no industrialized countries right now that actually DO offer Universal Health Care.

They make execeptions, such as children in utero. Those can be torn apart and they somehow call that ‘health care’

As Pope John Paul II noted in Christifidel laci, all our efforts so far have been false and illusionary

Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights – for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture – is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination

For it is only after the right to life is secured for all, that we can even hope for something such as truely universal health care.

And then, really, the priority should be to assist those in countries who cannot even hope for basic medical care before improving our own.

I do work in Tanzania, and often the medical care there is the local village priest and his first aid kit. I worked with such a priest and a 7 year old girl with a laceration. What would normally be done in Urgent Care or the ER and involve 2-3 stitches was handled with some iodine and super glue.

If there are people in the world who lack even that, why are we concerned about our own system at all.

It’s like complaining that there is only hamburger at the store instead of steak, while people outside lack even bread.

 

[Ender]

And then, really, the priority should be to assist those in countries who cannot even hope for basic medical care before improving our own.

Now this is an interesting point if we recall that health care has been called not just a civil right but a universal right of man - a human right. Given this, how is it that we can justify providing only the citizens of our own country with health care? Do we not have a responsibility to all mankind? How can we consider that our moral obligation is only to Americans when, as Brendan noted, the rest of the world has such poor health care? If one wants to argue that we have a moral obligation to provide universal health care then what is the argument that it should not in fact be universal and include everyone?

Ender

 

[_Abyssinia]

Theoeretically universal health care is a good thing, it reality there are major problems

I think the issue of health care, forgive me if I am wrong, is for prudential judgement?

Where universal health care is there is rationing and denied treatment

Doctors say treatment has to be rationed in Britain

German doctors fear health care rationing

No equal access with Germany’s “universal” health care

LA times opinion piece states the reality

Britain’s Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year. In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than a year. Many of these individuals suffer chronic pain, and judging by the numbers, some will probably die awaiting treatment. In a 2005 ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin wrote that “access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare”

In Britain, in certain areas you can have a drug from a NHS health care trust; in another area of the country the health care trust does not have the drug

Wherever universal health care is, free contraception, abortion, IVF and sterilisation seem to be available in the health care system, they are ingrained

America has a 5 survival rate of nearly 100% from prostate cancer, Canada 96%, Britain 81%

There are many Canadians going to the US for treatment, as there are from many other countries around the world

Ontario, Kingston resident Shona Holmes needed a neurologist and endocrinologist and went to the US when she was told to wait ‘four months for one specialist and six months for the other’

Karen Jepp delivered identical quadruplets in Montana ‘because of a shortage of neonatal beds in Canada,’ and the Calgary health system picking up the costs

Governments of Quebec and British Columbia sending patients to the US for cancer treatment and coronary artery surgery

Survey of hospitals in US, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australia by Robert Blendon and colleagues in Health Affairs found, 'waits of six months or more for elective surgeries were reported to occur ‘very often’ or ‘often’ by 26 – 57% of executives in the four non-U.S. countries. 1% of U.S. hospitals reported this. Canadian hospitals reported average waiting time of over 6 months for a 65 year old man requiring hip replacement for over 1/2; no American hospital administrators reported waits this long

Look at waiting lists for operations in Britain as of 2004

Survival rates for cancer, stroke, heart disease are better in America than they are in the Britain. Many people travel from Britain and other countries to get treatment in America where they have to pay for it

 

[CountrySinger]

No, it isn’t. As a 1099 employee, I pay all my own taxes quarterly. Try that some time; it is amazing seeing yourself wite a check for 42% of your income to the government. 42%. Nothing is free, including National Healthcare.

I know that the NHS is paid for by taxes (I’m not a complete idiot). I just play one on TV (or the internet). But I thought the NHS was paid for by the money fairy (I will catch that fairy someday).

And I do know about paying over 40% for taxes. When DH and I lived in the USA, we paid 45% of our income in taxes (and we aren’t contractors, just your average middle-class married couple, DH was an post-doc). So ,you aren’t the only one who is over taxed.

Just for comparison, we pay less in taxes in the UK (even though DH makes close to twice as much now). We actually broke it down and converted our taxes here into USD, we are nerdy like that.

Cheers.

 

[Brendan]

Now this is an interesting point if we recall that health care has been called not just a civil right but a universal right of man - a human right. Given this, how is it that we can justify providing only the citizens of our own country with health care? Do we not have a responsibility to all mankind? How can we consider that our moral obligation is only to Americans when, as Brendan noted, the rest of the world has such poor health care? If one wants to argue that we have a moral obligation to provide universal health care then what is the argument that it should not in fact be universal and include everyone?

Ender

Exactly, the Pope made that evident in his message

The pope lamented the great inequalities in health care around the globe. While people in many parts of the world aren’t able to receive essential medications or even the most basic care, in industrialized countries there is a risk of “pharmacological, medical and surgical consumerism” that leads to “a cult of the body,” the pope said.

In effect, in terms of health care, the industrialized nations, including the US, are the ‘super rich’ that are chastised in terms of economics.

What is the point of calling for ‘universal’ access to MRI’s and advanced medical equipment for Americans, when so many in the developing world lack access to even sterile bandages and basic disinfectant. Where, as Catholics, should our priorities lie?

 

[marci]

telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9644287/NHS-millions-for-controversial-care-pathway.html

This is what can happen with universal healthcare

 

[Bill_7154]

I have concerns about gov’t run universal healthcare. IMO gov’t lays on a ton of beaurocrocy to everything they do, having administrative costs be way too much in all areas in which they function. There is a ton of dead weight and paperwork, with inspecting and checking and revising of the paperwork to the degree that it significantly takes away from whatever the stated goals of the programs are.

I also don’t want to wait for months to get care like I hear happens in Canada.

God Bless,
Bill