I don't know I've talked to many ex-pats from England and other countries with single payer and they hate it. As bad as ours is you can get treated before you die.
I think this is 90% of it. They don't have the testing that goes into R&D, they just throw some stuff out there and take it at your own risk. Sure it might cure what ails you, it might also cause some other crazy shit to happen.
I've heard Canadian get the same drugs as Americans, they just get them a lot cheaper. The drug companies must be selling them to Canadian pharmacies and hospitals cheaper than what they charge in the USA. You can believe that big pharma is not losing money on it so that just shows you what enormous profits they are making off of us. Yes, research and development does cost a bundle but once a drug is on the market pharma can profit from it for 30 or 40 years until it is finally replaced with something else. How much did they make from Valium for decades before Caned took it's place?
You don't pay you don't play. None of this free shit. You get sick I might, maybe if I'm in a spectacular mood leave a hug of motrin outside the ER. Other than that you get what Mike Browns momma gets. A tough shit sandwich!
The factory where I used to work had good 80/20 medical insurance. About 15 years ago my Mom had triple bypass heart surgery, not including follow up care, her hospital bill was $640,000,.. luckily she is dirt poor, so the State paid for it. If it had of been me, I 'd have been presented with a $128,000 after insurance hospital bill,.. with plenty more to follow. My stepdad, a staunch Republican, always opposed socialized medicine, he was an "America's got the best health care in the world" type of guy. Then he got sick, his medical bills were enormous, to protect his assets, he hid them by transferring everything to my sister. Then he became very sick,.. and went to this elitist hospital in San Francisco that specializes in liver problems, his insurance paid for the operation but wouldn't pay for his stay and follow up treatments. The hospital demanded access to his/my sister's bank account, sort of an auto-withdrawal setup,..He was there for 10 days, and had to pony up $119,000,.. if he had run out of money, they'd have shipped him to one of their lesser hospitals, which don't provide the care his life depended on,.. it's all about money, rich guys live and fuck the rest,.. dad doesn't sing the best care in the world tune anymore.
This is an important post because it addresses the two central questions in the healthcare issue. First is the cost of healthcare. It's been shown time and again the current charges don't reflect the actual cost of most procedures. Much of the charge is so clouded we don't know what we're paying for. The examples of $1,000 aspirin and expensive MRI procedures are rife yet how much did your last bottle cost? There are cash only clinics where an MRI costs $350 etc. and these are in modest to poor neighborhoods as well as well to do. One article I read and posted here compared out of pocket expenses for a cash only to the minimum coverage and deductible under Obamacare and the poorest are better off with significantly less out of pocket with cash only than Obamacare. We DON'T know what actual healthcare costs are and until that is corrected any supposed solution is BS. In all likelihood @GiantDuckFan what your father was charged had little relation to the actual cost of his service. The next question is much more delicate and explosive. It can be posed in a couple of way but in essence it is; Does everyone have the right to the same level of care no matter what their ability to pay is? Should a poor working person have access to the same specialized and expensive that say Steve Jobs did when he was fighting liver cancer? If a cure truly costs $1,000,000.00 should a minimum wage earner be able to get treated for what is essentially free. No amount of insurance no matter how universal will cover such expenses across the board. Likewise when someone takes risks of damage or disease by their own actions whether from poor habits or careless and dangerous decision/action am I supposed to be his insurance? How does it get apportioned? Who decides what's right? Why do we not begrudge the wealthy their houses, cars, lifestyle food etc that they earn and pay for yet expect to have the same level of healthcare as them even though we can never earn enough to pay for it. I have a wealthy friend who learned he had stage 4 colon cancer that had spread through his body. He was given less than 6 months. He was able to find and pay for a treatment at Sloan Kettering in NYC and is cancer free. I'm very happy for him yet I know if I found myself in his shoes I wouldn't have been able to get that treatment. That's life. No one can protect us from it and making promises that can't be kept is destructive. We've been doing it in one way or another since WWII at least. It's easier to make the promise than keep it. I believe that needs to change too.
Round 2. Apparently they have created a loophole in the new plan to protect themselves (congress) and their staffers but not the American people. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/gop-wants-save-coverage-pre-221933685.html
