HealthCareFollow

I hear a lot of talk but very few links discrediting what i've said.



Rate highly on an international scale...that's cute.

Exactly. The only reason your health care provider will not just allow you to die is the threat of being sued.

Further, the numbers don't add up. UK-style health care could save us 50-65% of what we pay for health care - which would be an enormous boon to our international competitivness. Malpractice insurance is about 1% of costs. So if we removed it entirely, we would save 1% - and add to our already steep risk of death whenever we need anything expensive from our providers.

Since health care costs are rising so fast, about what? 2.5% above inflation? that 1% saving literally is gone in a few months.

Sorry to be late getting back to you.Erm. Profit. Profit comes after paying expenses such as salaries of all staff, including surgeons and specialists. Please tell me you're not that stupid. All profit goes to the shareholders, and only the shareholders. (Yes, including senior administrative management staff with share bonuses.) Of course that 15% I quoted might be a bit out of date, because we've had a couple of burst bubbles since then, but you get my drift. Public institutions automatically cost less than the amount of profit the shareholders demand the board of directors make every year. It makes up for the inefficiencies that can creep in with some behemouth organisations, both public and private. Not that I should hare off after your complete Straw Man, but I gather you have no idea what menopause does to the physical metabolism of the average woman, no matter how stringently she eats and exercises. And I doubt with her responsibilities and her desk job she gets to work out much. She looks like a great 53 year old woman with a natural menopausal excess of estrogens to me.
In Australia, doctors decide what is medically needed, and best for the patient, period. Any and all patients who make a booking with them, or who come into ER. Hospital administrators get more headaches, but they don't get to impinge on doctor's medical calls. They get to tinker around with cleaning and secretarial services, building maintenance, catering contracts etc and wrangle with the government. The government gets much more of a headache, balancing the budget, not the doctors. The one thing that you'll notice in a government run facility is that everything is triaged by need. Unimportant things really get bumped to the back. So I've had a test in a hospital, and was called back for a new appointment time the very next day, to be told it was positive, and how to manage the condition. And I've had a different test in a hospital, for something that I had a 2% chance of having, but they wanted to eliminate that chance just in case, and they made a new appointment with me 2 months later, which I assumed meant, as was indeed the case, the result came back negative.

My condition means I'm monitored for a lot of things. I've learned to pre-gauge exactly whether a test came back negative, or positive, and how serious the positive results are, by just how fast they book me in for a new appointment.

At 20 had to get my wisdom teeth out because they were growing horizontally forward underneath my gums into the roots of the teeth before them. They hadn't yet, but in the end they'd grow forward enough to damage, hurt and kill the existing teeth next to them. I wasn't in any pain at all from them, (the way my wisdoms were growing in had been discovered from an x-ray for a different condition) but the dentist predicted they'd be trouble in the future. So he booked me into a free extraction of my wisdoms, and I was told might be up to 2 years before I'd get my surgical slot because it wasn't urgent. So I was surprised when I actually got called in for the surgery 9 months later.

It is true that the Government here takes steps intervening in medical decisions in favour of cost. They intervene in which medicines they'll subsidise. Most medicines DO get listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits List. The most expensive medicines, those that cost perhaps upwards of $100,000 a year per patient, WON'T get approved, unless they've passed a rigourous proof of effectiveness study. In Oz, if you earn under $20k a year, a medical script will cost you $4 max and the government pays the rest. Everyone else pay about 10% of the cost of the medicine, up to a maximum of $30 per prescription.

Edited, Jul 25th 2009 8:28am by Aripyanfar

Actually I agree with varus on this one. The option of free universal healthcare WILL be good for business, the economy, and jobs in the long run. (And families, of course.)

There's a certain level of illness that means a person starts making poor judgements, is more likely to be irritable, or starts making bad mistakes at work. This lowers morale in general, or can lead to costly and damaging accidents. This can greatly add to the costs of a business needlessly.

There's a certain level of illness that makes the difference between someone being able to work or not work, or between only working part-time instead of full time. This puts less cash in the sick person's pocket, and means that they contribute to the growth of the economy far less. Companies also suffer when their already trained and familiar employees leave or drop their hours due to illness. In fact, a rash of severe illnesses or disabilities can contribute to a downturn.

Despite what anyone might think of someone who doesn't manage to secure an income straight out of school and save relentlessly, putting away and keeping money for whatever dire illness might strike them or their family members in the future, it is, in fact in everyone else's much better interest to make sure that everyone's health needs are met, and they are as work-ready as possible, even if the tax payer foots all the bill in the present. Over time, keeping the improvident or the unlucky work-ready will lead to collecting higher taxes from them down the line.

The option of free adequate healthcare for everyone -> takes money out of system short term -> healthy, more emotionally balanced workforce and investors -> more money created by system later -> economic growth -> more jobs.

PS, sorry, not trying to pharm posts, It's just that after a certain amount of writing I feel the wall of text is so eye-bleeding it needs to get broken up for the psychological relief of everyone involved.

Edited, Jul 25th 2009 11:35am by Aripyanfar