I want a National Single-Payer Healthcare Plan, Do You?

[Cephus]

You let them do it. Why do you let them get away with that?

Because I, as an individual, have no say. It's only collectively, as a nation and as a people, that we can step in and stop it. We put these idiots in power, we need to keep them on a tight leash. However, most people, as I've said in another discussion I'm having right now, are idiots. They don't know any better and even if they did, they don't care. We can point at the government all we want, but ultimately, it is the fault of the people.

 

[joG]

I posted links to numbers that dont seem to agree with your claims. It is not up to me to look for links that go against my links and support your claims.

Then just look at the numbers behind this graph and think about, what they mean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_..._health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg

A hint might be to think about the fact that the per capita is over the total population for the public and private spending. As you can see, the US public system spent a bit more than the OECD average per capita and slightly more than most of the social democracies (Norway is an exception being raw material export country).

If you now consider that the proportion of persons in the public systems in the US is smaller than in the social democracies with the rest resorting to private spending, you might come to the conclusion that public spending per beneficiary in the US must be larger than in a country that spends the same per capita but distributes it over more heads. In other words the US spending is more sumptuous in the public system than that of the countries, in which practically the whole population must make do with the same aggregate amount.

 

[Quag]

Then just look at the numbers behind this graph and think about, what they mean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_..._health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg

A hint might be to think about the fact that the per capita is over the total population for the public and private spending. As you can see, the US public system spent a bit more than the OECD average per capita and slightly more than most of the social democracies (Norway is an exception being raw material export country).

If you now consider that the proportion of persons in the public systems in the US is smaller than in the social democracies with the rest resorting to private spending, you might come to the conclusion that public spending per beneficiary in the US must be larger than in a country that spends the same per capita but distributes it over more heads. In other words the US spending is more sumptuous in the public system than that of the countries, in which practically the whole population must make do with the same aggregate amount.

If the USA is spending the roughly same amount per capita on public health care to cover only a portion of their population perhaps they should look at the way they provide pubic health care. It still doesn't change the fact that the TOTAL amount is way above the other western countries which are usually considered to have better health care systems.

 

[Cassandra]

Some reasons why the U.S. spending on H.C. is so high compared w Europe.

I would suggest that in the U.S. we have a ton of high paid specialists (and too few p.c.p.s)- who manufacture a demand for costly but often unnecessary treatments and diagnostic tests. This has been documented among medicare recipients.

European countries have typically looked at health in a more holistic manner so Scandinavia and elsewhere provide the infrastructure for a bike riding /walking and make car ownership a costly enterprise.

They also acknowledge that institutionalizing the elderly is a very expensive and unhappy treatment visited upon the elderly so they provide more support for home healthcare

Finally, as is well known, they insist that Big Pharma sell drugs at reasonable prices.

Single payer does not imply "socialized medicine" so it is important to make that distinction.

 

[DashingAmerican]

We should be able to shop across state lines, buy whichever insurance we want or choose not to have any at all.