Looks like America WILL have National Health Care after tonight
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This is an excerpt from another discussion i was having with someone who raised the same point of US being ranked 37th. Here was my response:
Just to quickly go back to my questions of the WHO (World Health Organization) 2000 report which ranks the US 37th and France 1st, and that being a proof for us to move to a system more like france.
Looking at the link you sent (http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat/EN_WHS09_Full.pdf) I noticed a few important things. 1. this study is ranking countries in many areas that go beyond the health system and have more to do with socio-economic conditions than a health care system. Of the 19 criteria ranked in that study more than half are things that are not related to the healthcare system (for example: access to clean water. access to improved sanitation, fertility rate, contraceptive prevalence, etc..) I realize this is a different study than the 2000 study, but i just wanted to point that out.
After further researching the 2000 study there are also flaws in the methodology that lead to the final rankings. That study used a single methodology to grade all countries. The final score was based on three areas:
1. Effectiveness of healthcare (medical care and public health services)
2. Responsiveness of the health care system to its users
3. fairness of the system in financing care.
A big flaw of the study is that it assumes that mortality rates and morbidity are directly related to the health care system, and overlooks many social/economic factors (as in my example before from the 2009 report).
Another flaw is how it calculates efficiency. The US was ranked 72nd in efficiency, which skewed our overall ranking, and while i agree our system does have many inefficiencies that could be improved upon (not by the government taking over, as their bureaucracies are inefficient in almost everything they do), there is one part that was not represented when calculating efficiency and that is research. The US spent 22 billion on medical research in 1999, which was factored into our costs, but since it was research the immediate value was not realized, and thus no output from that spending was calculated. We were #1 in healthcare responsiveness.
I actually found a very in depth report from the American Journal of Public Health that went through many formulas of WHO's study and point out certain flaws. (www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/92/1/31.pdf)
I guess the point is studies like that are just thrown around and used to promote ideas that the study doesn't actually support, upon further analysis. That's why i don't just buy into quotes from studies like that when the mainstream media, or politicians, throw them around. There is always more to it that can be uncovered with a little research.
Lol I'd like to again point to other countries (I am aware that that view might be hard to understand for some Americans). The US is the ONLY developed country that not has some form of universal health care, it's hardly a new or untested concept.
The fact that nearly all those countries health care system is vastly better then the one in the US speaks for itself.
Please take a look at this:
The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems
You might notice that the US is WAY below most other developed countries.
I actually agree, I'd like to see the U.S. government collapse and a second revolution. I'd also like to see each and every politician strung up and executed in public for what they've done to this country, one right after another. Both republican and democrat because they're both fucking Americans equally as hard.
You are effectively making a point FOR public health care. Yes, the public school system sucks, but luckily no one forces you to go to public school, you have the choice to go to private school, exactly how it will be with health care.
It sounds like you are arguing that all public schools should be closed and that there should only be private schools and that everyone that can't afford private just stay stupid. I hope you don't truly believe so.
I doubt it, doctors have been shoving their fingers' up asses and cupping balls for quite some time before this, but why my barber tried to the same I'm not entirely sure.
Can someone explain me something which I just read, plain out of curiosity --
I confess to not following this bill from get-go as US Domestic Policies don't impact me a bit and I have no intentions of ever becoming a US Citizen. But this whole thing doesn't seem right to me and seems to have too many loopholes.
So essentially, bill forces EVERYONE to buy Health Insurance yet there is no regulation of price of Insurance by the Insurance Companies? Wouldn't they be passing on the higher cost of doing business to the customers?
I confess to not following this bill from get-go as US Domestic Policies don't impact me a bit and I have no intentions of ever becoming a US Citizen. But this whole thing doesn't seem right to me and seems to have too many loopholes.
You really think the public will remember the health care debate for that long?
Seems like the only thing that ever stays in the news for that long is if someone politician bangs a secretary or is found out to be gay.
You're a moron, I'm not agreeing with you, I think YOU'RE the fucking joke. Don't worry, this bill is TOTALLY about healthcare, there is nothing nefarious about this, and anyone who says otherwise is paranoid. Keep repeating that NYT bullshit, you'll get far with that after Obama heals this country with the rest of his laws, and yes you can bet he's got other big ones planned.
Except you have to pay for public schools. Don't have a kid? Too bad, you pay for public schools. Have kids but send them to private school or home school them? Tough shit, you're still going to pay for public school. Low life fuck head who works at walmart and has 10 kids? No sweat, some jerkoff will pay for your future failures to attend public school.
ThatSwissIMGuy: This is my exact reasoning behind testing in smaller numbers first. You do NOT roll out a plan this drastic without testing, and fuck how other countries run their health care, that is ludicrous to assume if it works in other countries like Switzerland, where the population is slightly over 7 million, to a country like the US where here we have over 307 million. You operate the countries differently, and because it works somewhere else, does NOT mean it will work here because of various differences in laws and not to mention you are disrupting a huge market, something that DID NOT happen in Europe where this has been around for 50+ years.
Hence, why you TEST. And the fact you think we should put all of our eggs in one basket is crazy. I do not see how you can possibly say it would be educated to just roll it out at once.
Let me just ask the question again since you didn't understand it the first time, would you RATHER spend all your money on one creative hoping it is the right one, or test a bunch in small batches and scale up?
Note: i'm NOT in favor of public education either. My kids will be going to private school and i don't think i would have to pay for a school i do not wish to use. But here is a list of things that i can think that make it different:
first, healthcare is tied to life and death, education is not
second, public education is temporary (till 12th grade). healthcare is not.
third, education is not a preventative entity like healthcare (meaning if you are a healthy person, you don't go to a dr. and become super healthy. You go to prevent yourself from being sick or to cure yourself if you are sick. With education, you go to gain something you don;t have)
Fourth, Education is based on population sizes and is predictable in terms of cost and need of resources. You know the population of an area and therefore you know pretty well what resources you need to educate those people. Healthcare is much less predictable and people get sick more randomly and have HUGE costs and where those costs will come is less predictable.
Fifth, healthcare is just way more expensive.
Sixth, people can opt out of public school and have access to private school w/o worrying about sharing resources with public school people and without affecting their private education. In the current system almost everyone shares the same healthcare resources (newly insured people will have access to my dr. and hospital, which may affect my care).
just some things i can think of off the top of my head.
There is no regulation on the cost of insurance by law but it will not be necessary since the government program will effectively provide the competition needed to keep the private companies from ripping off people. Until now, your choices were paying out of your ass to an insurance company or not have any insurance at all. From now on it will be the choice between paying more for a good private insurance or much less for a shitty public one.
I actually like this form of "regulation" much better as it will be more beneficial overall.
Why can't they afford it? In a truly free market, anyone could get a fucking job and anyone would be able to afford school. Their retarded solutions build upon themselves.
What you and that idiot turbofap don't understand is you can't legislate a good as a right. Goods have to be made. They have to be produced. They COST money. Guaranteeing them as a right means you're guaranteeing the cost of them, which in turn means you're guaranteeing the money for it. And the government only gets money from the people, and I don't want to pay for somebody else's schooling. So they're forcing me against my will to pay for somebody else. So their vaunted 'right' to education affects me. But none of that bullshit even matters. If Obama was a typical leftie, we could talk about bullshit like that. But he's not. This isn't about healthcare. Amnesty won't be about immigration. Nothing this scumbag does is legit. But half of you morons won't realize that till its too late, and by then I won't give a fuck. But watching half of you celebrate the loss of your liberty without an actual thought as to what it really means makes me want to throw up, and virtually guarantees that this republic is finished.
No it is not. It was pretty insightful of Turbo to mention it.
If you accept the premise of socialized education (an entitlement), it is only a hop, skip and a jump to socialized health care (an entitlement).
And did you even fucking read the post made right before yours? That study is so flawed its hilarious.
Anyone interested in what's actually happening with this healthcare reform bill can read:
Healthcare Napkins All
FACTBOX-US healthcare bill would provide immediate benefits | Reuters
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/03/18/section.analysis.pdf
PolitiFact | Top 10 facts to know about health care reform
washingtonpost.com
What Are We About to Pass? - Page 1 - The Daily Beast
http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/SUMMARY.pdf
The first two seem like good jumping-off points.
I mostly see opinions, and it's important for people to read for themselves and make their own conclusions.
Healthcare Napkins All
FACTBOX-US healthcare bill would provide immediate benefits | Reuters
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/03/18/section.analysis.pdf
PolitiFact | Top 10 facts to know about health care reform
washingtonpost.com
What Are We About to Pass? - Page 1 - The Daily Beast
http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/SUMMARY.pdf
The first two seem like good jumping-off points.
I mostly see opinions, and it's important for people to read for themselves and make their own conclusions.
Fair enough, I agree that it is not a fair comparison between Switzerland and the US. Lets look at bigger countries then. Unfortunately there really is no developed country as big as the US so the best I can offer are France, Spain and Germany. Germany has over 80 million, France over 65 and Spain over 45 million people. All together about 190 million people. All of them have some form of socialized medicine. Now go and check their positions on the WHO list. ALL of them are above the US.
I'd say that's a pretty decent test.
And again, you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. You still have the option to get private insurance. It's not like they outlawed it or anything. Since when are additional options so horribly bad?