One of the worst ideas I have heard in a while. I've heard this before, and the concept is not a new one. The helath care in America is not the best it can be, but it is pretty good. What we need to do is rework and get rid those damn insurance agencies... between them and doctors who are doctors for money and not saving lives.
The cons of Universal Health Care:
Canada has universal health care and nothing good has become of it. I have not only heard stories, but some of my own family members have been victims of maltreatment of the healthcare system in Canada. My great aunt has had some hip trouble, being that she is getting older that is known. Well going in they told her that she had to wait till it got worse for them to operate on it. So they made her wait a couple years... only to tell her "it's too late, we can't operate because it is so bad."
I found this on a discussion site about Canadian health care. Link is after the quote.
"My husband needs surgery. I have heard of the long wait times but was shocked to hear two years! I have aksed about the price for the surgery in my home state and he may save up and have it done in the usa. There are no wait times, unless you count the few days it could take to schedule surgery. - from burlington
"The constraint on resources means that sometimes I might need to wait a while for an appointment - perhaps a day or two to see my GP, or an hour or two if I visit a hospital ER without a real emergency. For elective surgery I might need to wait up to six months depending on where I live and what condition I have." - from Julian
All in all, everyone should have their riht to healthcare... making a living out of saving people's lives should not be an issue. Yes, people deserve the right to it, but until we can come up with a system that not only is equal to all, but allows for efficient service, there is no point in attempting something we cannot have. Espeically in America, being that we are in a huge debt. Also, note that we should not be paying so many taxes... if we paid less taxes on trivial things and got rid of laws that basically are taking up space in law books and money out of our pockets, maybe we could afford something like this.
P.S. John Q, released in 2002 tells a tale of some of the terrible things people face in our health care system today.
I agree. Universal Health Care might lower costs, but it also lowers value.
About the waiting times...please....Maybe Julian needs to experience the kinds of waits that military personnel and their families experience here with the insurance the government provides.
Making appointments can take between a day or two to a week if I don't want to see a regular doctor; if I want to see the same face every time so my doctor can know some of my history before cranking out unnecessary medications and misdiagnoses, each appointment has to be scheduled a month or more in advance.
Emergency room visits are impossible. If I'm not rolled in on a stretcher it can take more than five hours to see a doctor, and up to an hour just to see triage.
And a great deal of specialized care either isn't covered at all, or has an outrageous co-pay that we cannot readily afford. I am supposed to be having a series of surgeries within the next decade; all of which will have to be paid for out of pocket and all very expensive.
That is how our country treats those who give everything they have to serve it, and the families that support them (although that's another arguement altogether...). Honestly, for people like us with insurance (that we pay for, mind you...the government doesn't give it for free), Canada's system is like a dream world.
If you want better quality than what the general public would be able to receive, then how about advocating a joint public/private system? The people who need or want the public care can have access to it as needed and the people who want to pay for better care can do so (and actually get better service for their money instead of paying for nonsense).
And I agree that the government wastes an abhorrent amount of money; the only thing we can do about that is to get someone who is good with accounting and money to go in and fix the budget and monitor it to remove porking...although that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
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"Our lives begin to end when we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Live one day at a time, emphasizing ethics rather than rules."
-Wayne Dyer