Letters to the Editor
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How much would this change malpractice and generally poor or inept care?
While poor access to healthcare is one huge problem, an equally large problem is the generally poor level of care once one has access. I wonder if this would have any bearing on that? For example even the AMA estimates more than 200,000 people/year are killed by malpractive, inept care, bad record keeping and so on. For example the news is rife with endless stories of misdiagnosis.
Would a national system change this? Yes? No? Neutral? Does it matter?
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Universal Healthcare in this country isn't too hard to fathom
The first person's post is killing me. It's rather ironic they read the whole article and sound like a lobbyist for a big healthcare insurance company. Here's the kick in the ass. If we bailed out of a dying social security system (revamp Medicaid), and raised FICA to 12% instead of 6% we could have it.Plus you raise the sin tax (stuff that would get you hospitalized in the first place for long term care). Sure it's raising taxes, but it's not income (exactly) or property. It's the healthcare lobby that's afraid of this (they may lose profit). No more HMO's (it goes through the government you should have coverage wherever the U.S. has property or an embassy). and you can choose your own provider through the government. If worse came to worse the government could always pile people into the Veteran's Affairs hospitals.
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Chinese Medicine is the answer! And why Michael Moore is a tiresome bore and a dumbass: Read on ...
Michael Moore should have taking his symbolic boat-load of sickos to China, not Cuba.
After all China provides the United States with just about everything else from auto parts, to the clothes you wear, to the toilet paper you wipe your ass with, to the computer parts that make it possible for you to read this, to the food that is poisoning you and your pets.
So why not outsource our medical care to China too?
I just read that Wal-Mart is going to start opening medical clinics in their Wal-Mart Superstores. Wal-Mart is for all intent and purposes a Chinese company operating in the United States.
So you wouldn't even have to pack your sickos on a boat and send them across the Pacific. You just drive on down to your local Wal-Mart and have a Chinese doctor diagnose you for a cut-rate fee, then walk a few steps to the Wal-Mart pharmacy where you fill your prescription for some cut-rate counterfeit pills.
Need glasses? Stop by the Wal-Mart optometrist where a friendly Chinese eye doctor will write you a cut-rate prescription for some cut-rate eyewear made in China.
Are you dying? Aren't we all?
Stop by Wal-Mart's new crematorium and pick out an urn for your ashes (Made in China of course.) Or do you prefer burial? Well, it's more expensive, but very affordable now that you can buy a Chinese made hardwood coffin. Is the price of a burial plot holding you back? Why not be buried in China where it's much cheaper.
Why is Michael Moore a tiresome bore and a dumbass?
Because he went to extraordinary lengths to make a point that everybody already knows: Access to health care in America is only available to those who can afford it. That makes him a bore. Only if you are young and healthy is Moore's news a fresh revelation. Everybody in America who is or has been critically ill or badly injured doesn't need a lecture, we already know how fucking bad it is.
Why is Michael Moore a dumbass?
Because the answer, the solution, to all things having to do with health care from cradle to grave, from prescriptions to prosthesis, is right down the street from him at... (wait for it)...
The SUPER DUPER CHINESE WAL-FUCKING-MART!
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The "Math" on Health Care
Consider this. In this country we have a high tech, high skill, high priced health care system that when it operates at its best, works quite well. We also have enormous social pressure to make health care accessible and therefore affordable. There's simply no room in this equation for the kind of profits that can allow health care to compete with other industries for investment dollars unless "costs are controlled" by limiting access to health care. Therefore, the only way to provide the best quality health care possible to the greatest number of citizens is to remove profit from the system. Private donations or a government system? You tell me.
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The economics of third-party payments ...
... are a big part of the problem, not to mention the dozen or so attempts at "reform" that have made the U.S. healthcare system more expensive and less effective than it ought to be.
If you're interested in reforms that are not going to leave the healthcare system in the hands of the geniuses who brought us the current mess, check out:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3459466.html
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New Rule, Maher-style
If your letter requires me to use my scroll bar to see from one end of it to the other, it will not be read. Not in this lifetime. And if I skim your letter and determine that it is another unfunny parody of why Wal Mart is the antichrist, I will be even more pissed. Thank you.
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US system not better for the whole country, just a select few.
Re: Xanthro-US Healthcare (commenting on my post "tiberius is misinformed")
First off I want to make it clear that I could care less if the US has universal healthcare. Every democratic country has to make its own choices as to the system it has.
However, just because someone goes to another country for specific care doesn't mean that they prefer the healthcare system there. There are Canadians that will go to Mexico for experimental treatment as well as those that may go to the US for an advanced treatment. But if you were to ask them if they would like to change systems with either country the answer would be a resounding no.
It's fine if you prefer "for-profit" healthcare over "socialized" healthcare but I've read some of your letters and you are intelligent enough to know that cutting edge research goes on in other first world nations. Your assertion that "health care in other first world nations would suffer greatly if we substantially changed our system." is dishonest and I do not think that you really believe it. People are fundamentally good and the idea that medical research is only profit driven does a disservice to people that work at this everyday around the world.
I agree that it is very unlikely that the US will ever have universal healthcare, but don't ever think that people with universal healthcare would ever want to see there neighbours lose there home and savings because of some illness.