There are two sides to this coin. One of the major wastes in health care right now is hospitals and doctors ordering expensive MRI's for patients with ordinary maladies that a simple X-ray would reveal. They have to pay for those expensive machines and their operators so they order them unnecessarily. Medicare or private insurance has to eat the costs and our rates go up accordingly. Rehab doctors ordered unnecessary equipment for my elderly mom when she was an invalid. Medicare and her private insurance paid for it and the equipment went unused. They wouldn't take it back either and I ended up giving it away. This is one of the things Obama is trying to address--the waste and unneeded procedures. I don't see how anybody can object to this. Medical care costs more in this country than any country on earth, yet our care is far lower than most industrialized countries. It is mostly because of excessive waste and excessive greed in the medical industry. This has to be fixed.
Unless the 80 year old is you. All true, but the problem is Plaintiff Attorneys. Everything you mentioned is driven by sky high Medical Malpractice insurance premiums and fear of litigation.
I don't buy that our care is worse but don't know enough to argue conclusively. As far as eliminating waste, I agree. If that's what he really wants to do, it's a great idea, but I just don't see how it can work. I've met many doctors and most (not all) of them have two things in common: 1. Raging egos driven by money 2. Not astute businessmen This does not bode well for controlling waste. Like I said, I hope he can do it, I just don't see it. I'm more concerned we segway into socialized medicine.
It is true that the US ranks very low in some terms but there's much more to it than that. Many of the countries ranked ahead are primarily union/labor countries like Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. The types of economies can't be compared. And NONE of the other countries have the type of illegal immigration problems draining their health care systems the way the US does. Other countries rank higher in terms of access because they give insurance to all or nearly all citizens. Mere population in the US would make that impossible. The government can't pay for everything here. In terms of fairness, that is a strange measure as so many low income people neither seek medical care nor participate in follow up care. The US ranks highest in terms of quality....providing the "right care". I would like to have confidence that I was being treated properly rather than misdiagnosed and then finding out too late. We also rank highly in terms of specialized care and elective treatments. Compromising that option is undesirable IMO. Where do all the really wealthy people of those top ranked countries go for the best care? Likely somewhere in the US. America could do a lot better for itself by changing lifestyle habits rather than depending on the government. We are the most obese country in the world and still have far too many smokers. Putting efforts into addressing those issues as well as the illegal immigrant problem would do more than some convoluted government run health care system that IMO would lower the overall quality of care for most.
reform has a real shot because the groups that shot down hillary's attempt (insurers) are on board (so they say). something meaningful will happen because costs have gone so high that companies are dropping insurance as a perk. i find fault with the hospitals and insurers, but not big pharma. charging an enormous amount for a service is gouging, charging an enormous amount for drugs is different. those drugs wouldnt exist without them. i say, the govt should decide how much money they have to spend per person per year then make a prioritized list (based on risk and cost) and draw a line. we can pay for broken arms, hip replacements and kidney transplants, but not brain surgery. the fact that basic care is not "free" to all is stupid because it costs more in care later, indigent care, and lower US productivity. the fact that i have to pay for my son's immunizations and pregnant wife's doctors visits seems to be the height of stupidity.
The term socialized medicine defined. According to Wikipedia. Since everyone throws that term around and nobody can really say what it means. (Buzzword) Socialized medicine is a term used primarily in the United States to refer to certain kinds of publicly-funded health care.[1] The term is used most frequently, and often pejoratively, in the U.S. political debate concerning health care.[2][3][4][5][6] The term socialized medicine, technically, to most health policy analysts, actually does not mean anything at all.[7] Definitions vary, and usage is inconsistent.[citation needed] The term can refer to any system of medical care that is publicly financed, government administered, or both.[citation needed] Some say the literal meaning is confined to systems in which the government operates health care facilities and employs health care professionals.[8][9][10][7] This narrower usage would apply to the British National Health Service hospital trusts and health systems that operate in other countries as diverse as Finland, Spain, Israel and Cuba. The United States' Veterans Health Administration, and the medical departments of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force would also fall under this narrow definition. When used in this way, the narrow definition permits a clear distinction from single payer health insurance systems, in which the government finances health care but is not involved in care delivery.[11][12] Others apply the term more broadly to any publicly funded system. Canada's Medicare system, most of the UK's NHS general practitioner and dental services, which are all systems where health care is delivered by private business with partial or total government funding, fit this broader definition, as do the health care systems of most of Western Europe. In the United States, Medicare, Medicaid, and the U.S. military's TRICARE fall under this definition. Most industrialized countries, and many developing countries, operate some form of publicly-funded health care with universal coverage as the goal. According to the Institute of Medicine and others, the United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care.[13][14] The term is often used in the U.S. to evoke negative sentiment toward public control of the health care system by associating it with socialism, which has negative connotations in American political culture [15]. As such its usage is controversial.[5][6][4][16]
