Public Option Defeated?

[Reliant121]

I have an NHS card....somewhere.

[Monroe]

I have an NHS card....somewhere.

You know come to think of it I have a private health care co-op (Runs out in November) card somewhere. So in other words we ALREADY HAVE A FREAKING CARD.

[Reliant121]

thats one of the worst things. Who the hell actually knows their NHS number?

[Sonic Glitch]

Our system isn't quite so simple, you have to be registered as an NHS holder and then given a number. I think you have to have worked here for a year or so before being entitled to NHS care, I'm not sure though. Then its a case of, I fall ill, i go to hospital and get better. Done, ended. No money spent, NHS care provided. Bam. When I had Kawasaki's on 1999, i was carted off to St. Mary's Hospital Southamphton. diagnose, treatment. Kawasaki's is a particularly expensive one to treat if not on a health plan. It cost me nothing. We do have to pay for dental care, but its a damsight less than private. my privated dentist charged £400 to take my frigging teeth out for my brace. The quote from the NHS was about £90.

Oh Jeebus, no one better tell the Yanks that they might need an id card for this.

Because obviously we will be one step closer to being labeled with the Mark of the Beast and Obama is obviously the AntiChrist.

[Tsukiyumi]

I've got no problem with the national ID concept. I'm just not into the "ID implant" concept.

[IanKennedy]

Yes cause the existing government medical care is soo complex.
I've had government ran health care. It is not complex. There are no insurance forms, there are no shuffling of who to talk to. Its treatment, bam done.

Our system isn't quite so simple, you have to be registered as an NHS holder and then given a number. I think you have to have worked here for a year or so before being entitled to NHS care, I'm not sure though. Then its a case of, I fall ill, i go to hospital and get better. Done, ended. No money spent, NHS care provided. Bam. When I had Kawasaki's on 1999, i was carted off to St. Mary's Hospital Southamphton. diagnose, treatment. Kawasaki's is a particularly expensive one to treat if not on a health plan. It cost me nothing. We do have to pay for dental care, but its a damsight less than private. my privated dentist charged £400 to take my frigging teeth out for my brace. The quote from the NHS was about £90.

There is a NHS card but you never carry it, people don't event know their number. Nobody will ever ask you for it. It's simply so you know your number that is used to keep the medical records in order.

As for working here a year to get treatment, no that is not the case. You can get treatment the day you are born. You do pay a tax (called national insurance), which comes out of your pay, towards the cost. However, if you are not earning you get it payed for you as part of your benefits. Just to stress the point if you are not working and haven't been to two years you still get health care without cost.

[Monroe]

Sounds horribly complex doesn't it Tyyr

[Tyyr]

I guess the whole concept of 'and another' is lost on you. 15% + 11% =/= 4%.
15% profits which the government does not care about.
11% overhead / bureaucracy

Well if they were pulling in 15% net profit margins but reporting 4% the SEC should be all over their asses. Given that their not and politicians are typically idiots...

compared to 4% bureaucracy under the Public Option

And we know they'll hit 4% how?

Government option wins in cost effectiveness.

Actual health care costs would be unchanged. You might see a small change in price...

Did you just contradict yourself?

No. A couple percentage points change in your health insurance costs aren't going to radically change things in the country. Ask Tsuki what a 10% reduction in the cost of health insurance will do for him. Its the difference between doing something that sounds good and something that makes an actual difference.

Sounds horribly complex doesn't it Tyyr

Congrats on missing the point. Just because you wave a card and the admit you doesn't mean it will be run efficiently with minimal cost... of course that's also the UK, not the US.

[Lazar]

Just because you wave a card and the admit you doesn't mean it will be run efficiently with minimal cost... of course that's also the UK, not the US.

But the fact remains that the US has the most expensive health care system of any developed country and doesn't get the results to justify it. If we had a single-payer system, it would cut out profits and marketing, it would reduce needless duplication of equipment and personnel, and it would make the claims process much simpler because everyone would be covered for all necessary care, with no consideration of pre-existing conditions. And it would let us eliminate fragmented government health programs like Medicaid and SCHIP, and it would take a tremendous burden off of American businesses because they wouldn't have to provide health care as a benefit. Of course, I don't expect Obama's watered-down proposal to achieve anywhere near that kind of improvement, but nonetheless the public option would help drive prices down by providing new competition for the insurance industry. And last time I checked, public universities haven't put private ones out of business, and the Post Office hasn't put UPS and FedEx out of business.

[Tsukiyumi]

...Ask Tsuki what a 10% reduction in the cost of health insurance will do for him...

Nothing at all.

[sunnyside]

But the fact remains that the US has the most expensive health care system of any developed country and doesn't get the results to justify it.

Alright, so everyone seems to be talking about this. Republican talking heads have been acting like it'll kill us all, Democrats act like so long as it's nationalized health care it's just as good as the US system even in some backwoods African/South Asia country with a life expectancy in the 30s.

So I poked around for some info. Little hard to find stuff. But I did find numbers for MRI wait times.

Uk wait time 7.5 weeks average
http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/news/jul ... -ct-scans/

Canada 10.1 weeks 2007
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/10/ ... raser.html

United States 0 wait. That's how it had been in the limited instances it's come up with family members. But, while the US doesn't do studies (because there isn't much to study I guess) I found info on New York. It wasn't a question of wait times for an MRI machine, it was a question of how long the hospitals bothered to staff them and how utilized they were. So if you need an MRI done there is likely a machine around not in use.
http://www.myhealthfinder.com/hcac/MRIreport03.pdf

While at that I also found a good study (from Sweden it seems) comparing wait times for US Veterans hospitals, regular US hospitals, Candadian, UK, and Sweedish hospitals.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0735-1097(94)00442-S

(you can click on the pdf option for full text, scrolling down it's pretty well spelled out in the figures)

Suffice it to say I hope I'm inside the US if I ever need a coronary angiography, electivly OR urgently.

One interesting thing there is the VA hospitals are notably worse. Also it seems hospitals with larger percentages of HMO business are worse on MRIs.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/17/5/195

I wanted to find something about a newer procedure, but I'm not a doctor and don't know what is really cutting edge. Any of you are welcome to look around yourselves, but I think we all know what the general trend will be. I started looking into minimally invasive aortic aneurysm surgery, looks like Canada might be a bit backwards there.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/7/182
And the US certainly has a lot of places that do it. But maybe everyplace actually picked it up last year, I really don't have the time to look right now.

Point is. The US system IS significantly better * Though I don't know about outcomes. We're also the fattest nation. So maybe having a long wait time is balanced out by a few dozen Wendy's Baconators


*when you have decent insurance handled by a private company.

If we had a single-payer system, it would cut out profits and marketing,

That, by the way, would be solved by the Co-op concept that is floating around now if you''ve seen it. As a non-profit member owned enterprise (which there are a number of in the US already which should make the Liberal Socialists happy) it wouldn't need profit margin beyond padding for hard times. And possibly wouldn't need marketing. Though again we're only talking about a couple percentages. Still, I'd consider joining something like that.

it would reduce needless duplication of equipment and personnel, and it would make the claims process much simpler because everyone would be covered for all necessary care, with no consideration of pre-existing conditions. And it would let us eliminate fragmented government health programs like Medicaid and SCHIP,

This stuff is possibly true, depending on exicution.

and it would take a tremendous burden off of American businesses because they wouldn't have to provide health care as a benefit.

Actually I believe the proposed laws all tighten the screws on business. Though conceivably you could create a plan that shifts all the burden onto taxpayers.

And last time I checked, public universities haven't put private ones out of business, and the Post Office hasn't put UPS and FedEx out of business.

Well, if someone decided that tax payers would subsidize the post office such that it always costs a buck to ship anything anywhere it would.

The primary difference in the comparison is that if you join up with a public university you can't just waltz into a class at a private university. If you created a system where, there are signficant differences in the standard of care between public option and private option people, than yes, you could probably create a system where you don't degrade the overall quality of care in America while providing reasonably priced care for all.

But nobody is really talking about that at this point in the US. Though I thought that things were more like that in the UK. I wonder why their wait times are so bad. Is it that a lot of people are on the state system and that's really bad while non state is actually good so on average they're just bad?

[Tsukiyumi]

I did find numbers for MRI wait times.

Uk wait time 7.5 weeks average

I'd say that's considerably better than the indefinite wait time I'd currently have.

I guess in the end, the whole reason this issue is being debated so much is because the large majority of Americans already have quality health care, so they don't see the problem.

After all, if my neighbor's house across the street is on fire, it's not my problem, right? It's not my house. Why should I care?

[Monroe]

Well if they were pulling in 15% net profit margins but reporting 4% the SEC should be all over their asses. Given that their not and politicians are typically idiots...

We must be getting our numbers from two different places. I'm getting mine from CNN and C-Span. Maybe its 4-15% for the companies reason the right uses the 4% figure and the left uses the 15% figure?

compared to 4% bureaucracy under the Public Option

And we know they'll hit 4% how?

A study based on how large the US is, the overall health of the US, and the amount Medicare and programs in other countries spend. It comes to around 4%. How do you know it wouldn't?

No. A couple percentage points change in your health insurance costs aren't going to radically change things in the country. Ask Tsuki what a 10% reduction in the cost of health insurance will do for him. Its the difference between doing something that sounds good and something that makes an actual difference.

So we shouldn't pass reform because it's not going to solve the problem as a whole but only parts?

Congrats on missing the point. Just because you wave a card and the admit you doesn't mean it will be run efficiently with minimal cost... of course that's also the UK, not the US.

And yes that is the UK... and to be fair our public option will be more like Germany than the UK from what I understand.

[Lazar]

I guess in the end, the whole reason this issue is being debated so much is because the large majority of Americans already have quality health care, so they don't see the problem.

And many of the people who say that they're satisfied with their health care just haven't had an expensive illness. To extend your analogy, it's like asking people what they think of their homeowner's insurance when they've never had their house burn down.

[sunnyside]

I guess in the end, the whole reason this issue is being debated so much is because the large majority of Americans already have quality health care, so they don't see the problem.

After all, if my neighbor's house across the street is on fire, it's not my problem, right? It's not my house. Why should I care?

I think the reason people get so defensive over health care is becuase they see it as a "them or you" sort of situation, beyond just the usual complaining about tax hikes. You get your molars out, they die waiting for an angiogram.