Universal Healthcare---Your Thoughts?

[Wake]

I am traditionally very conservative; I was raised that way. Even though I've researched why I believe what I believe, there's only a select few issues I can budge on.

Namely, universal healthcare. My thoughts are changing slightly on it when I consider that I'm currently on health insurance. I have some medical conditions from asthma to slightly unstable knee ligaments that, when struck somewhat or pressured on an angle, will snap sideways which results in insane pain. This has happened 7 times over my 22 years of life. The 6th time I broke a quarter-sized piece of bone out of my right kneecap. The 7th resulted in a painful bone contusion.

Where am I going with this?

IF I did not have healthcare, I would be immeasureably screwed. I cannot help but not want others to suffer. Granted, I am cautious of the government because there is the possibility of more and more government control---like baby steps, per se. Still, I hate human suffering. This puts me in a very difficult position because I don't know what alternatives there are and even if there were the right/left would fight and drown out everything else.

What do you think of this? I don't have much background info, but I am certainly willing to learn from it.

 

[Real Korimyr #9]

I believe that our nation absolutely needs to have a national health care system. Imagine if you hadn't had your health coverage, and not only were you left without care for your injuries, but you became disabled as a result of them. That would be a lot of money in government pensions and lost tax revenues that we could have saved if we'd repaired your knee up front.

We are also entering an era where pandemic disease as a result of bioterrorism is a possibility. National health care in such an instance doubles as national security.

 

[cpwill]

i think that universal health care will work about as well as universal food provision does.

see: China, USSR, history of.

 

[Wiseone]

A national healthcare system can work effectively, its just a matter of how its implemented, how its run, and how its people feel about it. Sweden for exactly has a universal healthcare system and it enjoys one of the highest standards of living and more of its people say they are happy in life than almost any other country on Earth.

Of course the US isn't Sweden, so we may need/want something else.

 

[Barbbtx]

We need HC reform that gets the costs down, and addresses issues of pre-existing conditions etc.
We don't need a government run HC system and we sure don't need that hunk o' junk that passed.

 

[Patria Antiqua]

It's a national disgrace that we don't have some sort of National Health Service.

35:05 to 37:49 captures my view on the matter fairly nicely.

Keep in mind that the Hitchens brothers are as diametrically opposed as you can be politically, and are of one mind on this issue.

[video]http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/57427-1[/video]

 

[cpwill]

Fun Facts about American v Universal Healthcare (mind you, these facts are obviously pre-Obamacare)

Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.

Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer...

Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."[5]...

Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]

Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."[9]

Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]

Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]

Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.]

 

[Manc Skipper]

Yet despite the cherrypicked statistics, they still come out behind most Euro/developed countries with a national healthcare system. Shame.

 

[Cold Highway]

I dont want to pay for those I hate to live, I wish for them to die in the most painful ways possible.

 

[cpwill]

Yet despite the cherrypicked statistics, they still come out behind most Euro/developed countries with a national healthcare system.

:lol: based on what?

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

There is so much dishonesty, false equivocations and misinformation, that surround this issue that legislating anything based on the average person's opinion, would be a grave mistake.

For the time being, I'd like nothing done to the system.

 

[American]

Yet despite the cherrypicked statistics, they still come out behind most Euro/developed countries with a national healthcare system. Shame.

You haven't presented one shred of evidence. Shame.