What does this have to do with healthcare in america? We did not adopt a single payer system like in the UK. The UK spends 10% of GDP on healthcare, while we spend 17%. The Brits have a general budget issue and are moving to try and live within their means. They have many choices based on national priorities, they could choose to cut elsewhere and leave heathcare alone. I hear they are moving to reduce the central bureaucracy in healthcare system. We ration healthcare in america, and we have for a long time. If you are wealthy or well insured, you have it good. If you are poor, unemployed, or god forbid if you had a pre-existing condition, well, you could be denied insurance and you could die. The health insurance companies did a bad job allocating healthcare, and they did such injustices that the people finally decided the govt. should set the rules. There are winners and losers in the new system. But this has nothing to do with the UK that I can see, at least not today.
There's only one old bull that I worry about. Yet. Wrong. Obama decided. The people were and are vehemently against it.
If the dems would support tort reform we could do something about this. It is most definately a problem but one that will not go away until malpractice suits are brought under control. Doctors will run every test known to man to rule out crap that they already know isn't the problem because they have no choice.
For the time being but I posted plenty of material in this forum during health care debate that says just the opposite. There will be no such thing as private insurance for health care in 3 to 5 years that is if you could still afford it. There are places where people with pre-existing conditions can go for health care such as the case here in Colorado. Oh you mean like Obama and the politicians, CEO's have it good and some of us don't have it as good. The people didn't decide, liberals decided against the will of the people. So you are saying that government run health care can do a better job, gotcha! Are you saying the liberal policies government passed so far this year is the answer? No more victims, right?
You can go sit all day and get antibiotics prescribed for pneumonia, but can you get a heart transplant if you need one, or will you have to die? You gonna die. Get that knee replaced? Naw. The people elected Obama, and his #1 issue was healthcare reform, followed by ending the war in Iraq (and escalating in Afghanistan). Obama said the insurance company would have to accept all applicants, and that they couldn't drop you if you got sick, and people went for it, and that's in the bill.
I know that there are problems with the current system but I am willing to bet that if you researched and went to the right place you could get help. Again, The liberals own this, you can't fix the health care system by attacking it from one side of the spectrum. This will be an ultimate failure like Libs predicted would happen in Iraq. How is it that the Libs always seem to go against the country? I'm not sure what it is saying that people seem to keep re-electing the same people when poll numbers are so low. I guess the other side just sucks just as bad??? Yes and if the election was held today Obama probably wouldn't be elected. Obama also ran on transparency, he is a loon and a liar. Obama also said taxes wouldn't go up on the middle class, he also said no one would kill grandma while he stated to a lady that her older mother wouldn't be operated on, she would be given a pill. Consequences of government run health care along with tax hikes on health care, debt. You aint seen nothing yet, can't wait to see the economy tank once again next year. Are you ready?
My mother has terminal lung cancer. With this logic, you're saying that we should just let her die and not even attempt to treat her or prolong her life. In the immortal words of SabanFan, 'Fk That!' Guarantee you change your tune when it's someone you love that's denied treatment.
Socialized medicine has been sold as a moral imperitive. It isn't. The very people that have promoted it's virtue are the same that call for it's rationing. That's not virtue. What is the difference between limiting care based on an individual's ability to pay... and limiting care based on the government's ability to pay? Either way care is limited by dollars and cents in the end. It's just a question of who's dollars are (not) used...
No. You misunderstand my argument. My argument is not that we should deny treatments that will or could benefit people, it is that we must stop performing procedures on the people who stand no chance of benefitting from the procedure. Can you believe that a doctor ordered chemo for a 95 year old man? There is a 100% chance one treatment would have killed him, but the Medicare reimbursement for chemo is really good. I know another example of 85 year old man in poor health whose doctor ordered a triple bypass. He didn't make it out, and because he had that doomed to fail operation someone else had to wait. Now extrapolate that with an aging population, a shrinking pool of doctors, and a growing population. At some point demand takes over supply and then we have to start rationing care. It is a simple reality. We waste a lot of valuable medical resources on people with miniscule to no chance of benefitting from them. It is wrong. It is wrong for the stress it puts on the infirm. It is wrong because it waters down the care the healthy receive.
Healthy people don't need care. Dying people do. The decision to "pull the plug" is the family's, not the Government's.
