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Two Hours on the Operating Table

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Constance said:
Thankfully you have insurance to cover most if not all of the costs (and the rest can be paid over time). Anyone who doesn't carry medical insurance is asking for financial catastrophe. What would it cost in countries that have nationalized healthcare? You've seen Mike's post. This country needs it. When will people in this country realize that socialized medicine is not a dirty word?

All best to your wife, Gene. I'm sure you are being a good care-giver. :)
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Most of the costs? I fear not. But at least it's done, which was the most important thing.

But, yes, I devote a lot of time to being the care giver these days.
 
That really sucks, Gene.

Recently I went in to have a suspicious spot on my back looked at. While I was there I asked if the nurse could liquid nitrogen-zap two warts on my hand. I was there 15 minutes tops. I saw no doctor. There were no lab samples taken, and nor medicine prescribed. It was about as simple a visit as they get. The bill? $1052. Insurance cut this in half, but I raised hell before we paid anything, including filing a complaint with my state's attorney general.

It's like this all over the place:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/health/paying-till-it-hurts.html

This NYT article reads like a horror story. It's apparently legal for a physician you don't know to pop in, look at you briefly, and then send you a bill for thousands of dollars.

Americans are being bled to death by this parasitical health care system, corrupted as it is with profiteers from all sides. According to one recent essay I read, the ACA is unsustainable, and the only way out of this insane mess is through a single payer system, plus other reforms.

About 10 years ago I heard a talk given by Princeton professor Uwe Reinhardt, a world-known authority on health care economics. He said that when he attends international conventions on health care, it's generally understood that when you refer to the "American health care system" you're using shorthand for something that doesn't work. In the PBS documentary from a few years back, Sick Around the World, health care leaders in various countries were interviewed. If I recall correctly, the health care minister from Taiwan was interviewed and he discussed among other things how they set up their health care system. They first chose a dozen (or so) countries as models to learn from. I remember him saying quite clearly that they knew better than to look at the American system.

We all need a better system, and urgently. How many middle age or retired people suddenly find themselves emptying their retirements savings to pay for health care bills? In any other country in the world this would be a scandal. Not, apparently, in the US.
 
Hope Barbara's okay mate. Makes me realise that there's a lot to be said for the NHS, for all that us Brits moan. That bill is an eye opener.
 
Taking advantage of us when we are at our most vulnerable. It's criminal. I fail to understand why voters in this country don't overwhelmingly support a single-payer health insurance plan. Everyone in the US should be entitled to quality affordable healthcare without being bankrupted during the process.
 
The bills haven't stopped arriving. But she is doing well with rehabilitation.

The politics for single payer just aren't there yet. Too much fear mongering
 
Chris, I'm pretty middle of the road politically but I would say that regardless of politics, very few in the UK would get rid of the National Health Service (NHS). You pay for it through your taxes whether you use it or not, but when you do need it, it's free, regardless of whether you need a boil lanced or a couple of stitches in a footballing head wound, or major open heart surgery/cancer treatment. For me, albeit as a foreigner in terms of the US healthcare system, it surely can't be that hard for a powerful economy like the States to set up something like that. Just my twopenn'orth. :)
 
Standanista said:
it surely can't be that hard for a powerful economy like the States to set up something like that. Just my twopenn'orth. :)
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Hypothetically not. But in a system as corrupted with big money as the U.S. Congress, it's rare to find public officials willing to work in favor of the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens.
 
That real case study clearly shows the state of health care in the US. Thanks for sharing it for your international readers Gene.

So why are people against 'Obama Care'? I didn't see anyone here supporting the status quo. Perhaps someone would like to explain to a British citizen why the US population has such an aversion to some sort on tax-funded health service?

Is it the thought that if medical treatment were free, people wouldn't be inclined to look after themselves and medical expense for the nation would spiral out of control? That certainly doesn't seem to be the case for the explosion in obesity in the US. Why, if medical care is so expensive, don't Americans try and avoid such self-inflicted conditions and the expense incurred in dealing with the consequences?

Are fit, healthy people unwilling to end up paying to fix those who have 'chosen' to be obese - for example?

There's obviously something significant I'm missing here...

Ian
 
Standanista said:
Plenty of lardies in the UK as well though, Ian. You could say the same about smoking.
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Indeed although not yet quite as bad.

At least in smoking, much (all?) the high UK tobacco tax went towards the health service (directly or indirectly supposedly) so it could be argued that smokers did pay for their health care.

But then it gets complicated. If I heed the do-more-exercise message, and damage my knees/ankles/hips etc. through the cumulative effects of jogging, is it self-inflicted in the same way?

At the moment I believe the most the NHS will do to fix 'self-inflicted' illness is to say they won't do this or that until you loose weight/stop smoking/drinking. But if you can't/won't, you'll generally still get some sort of treatment.

As far as I can tell, the average (healthy) British tax payers aren't agitating for treatment for the obese or smokers to be charged for treatment or treatment withheld, although I can see a time when that may come...
 
There are debates going on in several European countries to avoid expensive treatments for obese or smoking people. A real disgrace, as if all doctors are living like monks.
 
Ian said:
Perhaps someone would like to explain to a British citizen why the US population has such an aversion to some sort on tax-funded health service?
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Somewhere between the catastrophic failure of the Great Depression and the Reagan Revolution, the gullible and often overly complacent middle classes have been sold the notion that free enterprise is a moral as well as an economic paradigm. Never mind that business at some level of magnitude melds with government and ceases to become free enterprise anyway. So instead of seeking an optimum balance between left and right, "we" cling to notions of rugged self-reliance and faith in the power of free markets to right all social and economic wrongs, if only we unbind its wings and let it fly. I agree that free markets are inherently superior to the kind of top down systems Americans seem to so irrationally fear. But only within the context of fairness and decency insured by regulatory oversight. This is why Americans pay $10.00 per pill for meds that cost a fraction of that in most countries.

And, "we" seem unwilling to admit to ourselves that while medicine is a business, it is also a moral obligation to the sick and injured that places it in a unique category. No nation with a progressive future can allow a society in which its poor go untreated and its middle classes are made poor by the astronomical costs of 21st century medical treatment. This is the discussion that should and would be taking place in the corridors of power if only we would collectively pull our heads out of that place where colonoscopies are done and get down to the business of engineering the greatest good for the greatest number.

Like--DUH !

To try to answer your question Ian, most Americans against governmental assisted medical care, if they have a cogent opinion at all, would probably express concern about losing their access to cutting edge medical technology under a collective system. I think change will come when some threshold is crossed in which the problem becomes so pervasive that even our blessed uber right wing politicians can not longer ignore it.
 
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