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Out of Pocket Expenses = $0
Annual Max = $0
Donut Holes = $0
Preminums = $0
Coverage = 100%

How can you justify our health care system when compared to the rest of the Advanced World. How much did you pay for health care this year. Are you happy about that? Wouldn't you rather pay $0 if you had a choice?

Fred, how much does your daughter make as a health care provider, in New Zealand? Is it the same as she'd make here, in private practice?

Follow up question, is dental provided for "free" in NZ?

(If the doctors are getting paid, if the prescriptions are getting filled, if the hospitals are surviving, someone, somewhere is paying!)

steve

Healthcare is not a right. Healthcare is a good or service. Rights are what are given to us by our creator (whatever creative force you choose to believe in). We have "rights" as part of existing - "among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Our rights end when they infringe on someone else's rights. A right places no obligation on someone else other than to not infringe upon your rights. We have no "right" to someone else's time, labor, expertise, knowledge, skills, etc.

To say healthcare is a "right" is to say that someone else is obligated to expend their time and knowledge to your benefit. "I have a right to healthcare, so doctors should take care of me when I'm sick/pregnant/depressed." No. Healthcare is a service, not a right. Healthcare is a commodity you must purchase.

Your life wasn't created by a man. Your life was created by nature (or God or whatever creative power caused us all to exist). You didn't buy your life. That's why your life is a right. And it's why healthcare is not a right.

Change healthcare to something else. Furniture, for example. "I have a right to furniture, so you have to build me a chair. And to be qualified to build a chair, you have to spend an enormous amount of your own time and money devoted to the practice of fine furniture. And I need a chair specialist, not some general practice carpenter. And if you make a mistake building my chair, then I'm going to sue you, so be prepared. And since I have a right to a chair, you have no right to refuse to build me a chair."

Ridiculous, isn't it? Because you don't have a "right" to anything created by Man. You don't have a "right" to someone else's time or money.

I'm not knocking the benefits of NZ's healthcare system. Or Canada's or the UK's. That is a whole other area of discussion.

But Healthcare is NOT a "right." It's a service. In some places it's a service that everybody is forced to share the cost of as a whole so that it is cheaper or "free" upon individual use. But regardless of the pros and cons of the various cost/benefit models, that does not make healthcare a "right."

fredsheldon wrote:Out of Pocket Expenses = $0
Annual Max = $0
Donut Holes = $0
Preminums = $0
Coverage = 100%

How can you justify our health care system when compared to the rest of the Advanced World. How much did you pay for health care this year. Are you happy about that? Wouldn't you rather pay $0 if you had a choice?

I'm sorry but I just can not help but wonder why you have not transported yourself to NZ to live the high life along with your daughter and her family.

This whole thing is a little silly. We already spend over double in tax-money what universal healthcare would cost us. Both sides should be pushing for single payer. Conservatives should back it for the 50% or more cost reduction and better care. Liberals should back it since most believe healthcare is a right.


Every single other developed country provides healthcare through the tax system for every citizen and pays much less per person with much better outcomes. The wait time "issue" is a myth. If it was true, America would not be near last in almost every healthcare metric. We have the best traumacare in the world (maybe not even best...more like "thorough"). We are below 3rd world country status in infant mortality because we refuse to provide prenatal care for every woman. We love to talk about abortion but what about babies dying because their mom was poor?! Over 50,000 people die every year from no healthcare because we cling to a more-expensive and immoral system.


The single biggest cost in healthcare is from lack of access. People use the ER as a primary care doctor or they wait until their condition is so bad (because they don't have access) that the cost goes from a few hundred dollars to a few hundred thousand...


Instead of several thousand pages of a new law they should have written one sentence. "Every CITIZEN in the US is covered under Medicare and medicare now covers 100% of all healthcare costs, without exception." Done...solved...over...and everyone's taxes would go down from cost savings. You can bet your last dollar that if every citizen (including politicians) had Medicare, any and all issues would be fixed very quickly. As it is now, it only effects old people and doctors so most don't care...

Martin Niemöller wrote: First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

fredsheldon wrote:That's how I feel about my cable company. I get channels I don't want or need. I guess there would be hundreds of different options on insurance packages if you wanted to pick only what you think you need a la carte style. That's how they keep the costs down, have fewer plans to administer and keep track of. It's just like the stock market hitting 16,000. It's going to happen no matter how you feel about it. I'm just going to go with the flow and see how it all works out in the final analysis. Now I going to go into the shop and work on something I do have control over, finishing my 90 bowls.

Hundreds of plans? How 'bout 2. Male and female.

Or, 3. The 3rd being with dependents.

I don't need pap smears, and she "don't" need prostate exams.

steve

heathicus wrote:But Healthcare is NOT a "right." It's a service. In some places it's a service that everybody is forced to share the cost of as a whole so that it is cheaper or "free" upon individual use. But regardless of the pros and cons of the various cost/benefit models, that does not make healthcare a "right."

Healthcare became a right when ER's were no longer allowed to refuse care. It's not a service or commodity when the provider is forced to provide it to you, even at their expense. That throws any analogy to any other good/service out the window because that doesn't exist with any other good/service.

joshh wrote:This whole thing is a little silly. We already spend over double in tax-money what universal healthcare would cost us. Both sides should be pushing for single payer. Conservatives should back it for the 50% or more cost reduction and better care. Liberals should back it since most believe healthcare is a right.

Sorry, Josh, but I've seen "single payer" health care. The VA is about as close to single payer, that you can find. (At least, until Obamacare is fully implimented.)

I had to FIGHT with the admin people, and also get my Congressman (now the junior Senator from Az) involved, just to get a prescription corrected. And, that was before 9-11-2001.

steve

The VA is true socialized healthcare, whereas elsewhere it's socialized health insurance. In a true single-payer system, the employees are not government employees. The system is run like normal but the insurance is covered through taxes. In contrast, the VA doctors, nurses, etc. are government employees (that's why they suck so bad...no real accountability).


I can tell you that Medicare constantly adds care standards and ties pay to improving outcomes. The VA has no such thing on any significant scale.