"We have the greatest health care system in the world" "Socialized

[Mountainman]

medicine means waiting in long lines for care"

I heard these on C-Span this morning. My reply is this. What good is the best health care on earth if you can't afford health insurance?

Compare waiting in line with HMOs and insurance companies deciding what treatment you will get.

[rogerashton]

1. Our health care system is about 20th best

by most objective majors, such as life expectancy, infant mortality rates, and such. But it is the most costly.

[izzie]

2. If you look who gets care and how long people live the US is not tops

Live births is another figure I have read. We do not do so well.

[izzie]

10. Read Institute for Economic Democracy IED

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH ALL THIS TALK. and DO NOT SAY YOU DO NOT LIKE "SOCIALIST" STYLE. i WAS UNDER us GOVT. Health care for 40 years and it was fine.

[izzie]

14. If you read that tell me we have the greatest health care in the world

For once try and back it up with some figures. It is frankly all spin they are feeding us.

[BlueEyedSon]

3. It's SPIN

[Monte Carlo]

4. Excuse me? We don't have long lines now!?

A woman I work with was sick, and they told her to come in next week. Sounds like a line to me...

[qanda]

5. Which country were they calling from?

My husband and I don't have health care right now. And even if we could find someone to insure us, we wouldn't be able to afford it. We just have to hope and pray that we will stay healthy.

[Mountainman]

8. There were two talk show hosts on C-Span this morning.

The wingnut host said we have the best care in the world and that socialized medicine means waiting in line.

I thought that the wingnut talking points, although they are lies, are easier for the people to accept. When the liberal talk host spoke he took a long time explaining his point and it got tiresome listening to him though I think he was telling the truth.

[oscar111]

15. LW is longwinded: RW works at boiling down to catchphrases: we stupit, RW

is smart in that way.

LW "culture" is longwinded. Some of us think the public is a classroom chained to listen for a class hour.

We better learn to take time to study our ideas and find good phrases that boil them down.

And, support AAR radio. Put it in your will, last testament.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

6. Something that irks me about this issue...

if "socialized" medicine is so bad, then why don't the military (free health care) and the whole Congress, as well as all federal employees, ever complain????

[nickinSTL]

7. Ask my fiancee if we have the best health care system...

She doesn't have insurance, she's been unemployed for 3 years (and despite all her efforts, has barely had any calls at all for interviews)

If she gets sick, she would have to rely on emergency care, which we can't afford out-of-pocket, although I'm working 2 jobs to try to pay the bills (the ones we have already are almost too much)

My fiancee would be THRILLED to be able to wait in a long line for medical care, if she could get it at all. Which she can't right now. She has allergies which are mostly going untreated, as well as some other minor problems, and one not so minor, sleep apnea. But they aren't going to provide a sleep study and a CPAP for someone with no insurance. Even though studies have proven that sleep apnea is a HUGE risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

Anyone who tries to tell me that our health care system is great...

[sui generis]

9. Republicans say the stupidest things sometimes

Where did they drag this "long lines" image from? There are already long lines. Tried to make a doctor's appointment lately? If there are long lines it's not because of universal healthcare, it's because there aren't enough doctors, PA's and nurses.

And another thing. What exactly do they mean by that? Here's what they are saying:

If everyone can afford healthcare, then everyone will be seeing the doctor to try to remain healthy. Gosh, that's just turrible.

Wouldn't want that guy to have to schedule an appointment to have his head extracted from his ass, however desperately it's needed.

[oscar111]

12. 20 live longer: WHO-39th citizen health, 72th system quality/rich,8yrLonge

I read three yrs ago, WHO of the UN rated most nations..

US .. health of the population, about thirtyninth. {memory a bit fuzzy, but it WAS in the thirties}

and quality of the health delivery system... 72nd. {again, memory .. but it WAS in the seventies}.

recent study of rich neighbords vs poor in NYC, found the rich live eight years longer.
Homeless... 84 000 die every year.

Greedhead doctors here have played us for fools, suckers and rubes.

Greedhead doctors have overrun the health system.

Nationalize and cap their salaries at fifty thou., only way to drive the greedheads out.

[sui generis]

16. well, you can't cap their salaries like that

because they come out of med school owing between 200 and 300K in student loans.

Also, doctors work long hours, and a good doctor has to spend most of their "spare" time in continuing education, conferences, seminars, and other professional improvement. I have no problem with paying doctors, but that's not where the cost happens.

The real cost of medicine happens in the lab - if you have ever had a critical blood count or liver function test, you know that you can get a thousand dollars of tests very quickly. Big companies like LabCorp, which are publicly traded, see no problem gouging the insurance companies, who then pass those costs back to the patient. None of the "reasonable and customary" charges are ever met, and most often your costs are double.

Add to that fiscal "rationalization" of new hospitals and the impact of unpaid indigent health care (indigent meaning anyone without insurance), and medical costs get splattered back on people who do have insurance. The entire industry needs revision, but it needs to start with publicly traded insurance and laboratory operations since those guys are ONLY in it for the money.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

11. Doesn't the level of bureaucracy with all the forms, screening

and salaries for administrative personnel in our private managed-care system contribute to higher costs? Or does it make the system more efficient? In some HMOs where I have been, I have seen office after office after office of staff doing paperwork, not performing actual medical care.

[mumon]

13. I gotta point you to my blog here...

http://mumonno.blogspot.com/2004/10/terrorism-heres-something-worse.html


It's a goddam scandal that there but for the public health systems of Vietnam, Thailand, China and Taiwan we would have a major epidemic that would kill millions of people.

Read the articles linked on my blog- you decide.

I'll take "Socialized Medicine" any day over the laughingstock that our public heath system has become.