zappaisgod said:

The dirty little secret is that most people in this country have very good health care. Very good.

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Forget health care, apparently 15% of Americans can't even afford enough food:



From: http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=75

zappaisgod said:

Apparently that doesn't show that. What a surprise.

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Quote:

Hunger Widespread

As most Americans gather for Thanksgiving November 27--traditionally a time for festive overeating and self-indulgence--about one-in-seven of their fellow citizens say they occasionally can't afford to put food on their tables. And the problem is not getting any better.

As many as 15% of Americans said there have been times in the last year when they did not have enough money to buy food for their families.

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Quote:

In contrast, only one-in-eleven Western Europeans (9%) and one-in-25 (4%) Japanese said they periodically go hungry. These proportions have not changed significantly between 1974-5 and 2002, when compared with data collected by Gallup International. Only in Japan, notwithstanding a decade-long economic stagnation, has the proportion of people reporting they occasionally can't pay for food declined significantly, by 10 percentage points since 1974-5.

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Apparently Japan is the only country which seems capable of helping to feed it's people, even out-performing Europe:

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are you sure about that? what about Scandinavia? we are pretty much covered here in every way

zappaisgod said:

The dirty little secret is that most people in this country have very good health care. Very good.

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zappaisgod said:

Reform the ludicrous tort system whereby malpractice insurance companies find it expedient to settle for hundreds of thousands rather than risk a trial before bleeding heart retards who will almost always find for and award huge judgments to any poor unfortunate schmuck regardless of culpability. A disgusting percentage of medical procedures are performed to avoid lawsuits and for no other reason.

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Quote:

Large jury awards play a limited role in causing premiums to rise, despite allegations that greedy trial lawyers and frivolous claims are to blame. Less than 2% of malpractice claims result in a winning verdict at trial, according to insurance industry estimates.

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Quote:

* How much of a doctor's revenue goes to malpractice insurance? A March 2002 government report by MedPAC, a congressional advisory commission, says doctors, on average, were expected to spend 3.2% of their revenue on malpractice insurance last year. That compares with 12.4% for staff salaries, 11.6% for office expenses and 1.9% for medical equipment. Calculations based on two surveys published by Medical Economics magazine — widely read by physicians — last year show that OB-GYNs paid the most for malpractice insurance, as a percentage of their revenue, 6.7%, and cardiologists paid the least, 1.5%.
* Why are malpractice insurance costs going up? The problem is two-pronged, according to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures. First, insurers are spending more to pay claims — 33% more from 2000 to 2001. Second, falling interest rates for bonds and stock prices have weakened insurers' investment income, their main source of profit. The Physician Insurers Association of America, the lobbying group for doctor-owned insurance firms, says investment income contributed 47% to its companies' revenue in 1995, but only 31% in 2001.

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Quote:

The number of malpractice verdicts and settlements over $1 million is way up, according to the Physician Insurers Association of America. About one in 12 paid claims settles for $1 million or more these days vs. one in 50 a decade ago. That's a 400% rise.

But two-thirds of patients who file a claim don't get a dime, the insurance group's statistics show. About 61% of cases are dismissed or dropped; 32% are settled, with average payouts of $300,000, and only 7% go to trial. Patients prevail in only one in five of the cases that are tried — about 1.3% of all claims.

When patients win, the 53 companies in the insurance group pay an average of $500,000, says Larry Smarr, president of Physician Insurers. "It's a lottery for trial lawyers. They don't win often, but when they do, they win big."

Doctors and insurers say the lure of the big win prompts many to file frivolous suits. But a 1990 Harvard University study suggested that only one in eight victims of medical negligence ever files a claim. When they do, it's an uphill fight: Lawyers sometimes have trouble finding a local doctor who will testify to a colleague's mistakes, attorneys say, and jurors often are inclined to give a physician the benefit of the doubt.

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Quote:

At the same time, the congressional study reported that caps on pain and suffering awards would translate into very small savings — 0.4% — on overall health insurance premiums for the general public. That's not much, given that consumer health-insurance premiums are rising by about 15% a year.

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zappaisgod said:

You have got to be fucking kidding me if you think that graph shows a "failed" health system. Do we get less bang for our buck? Yeah, no shit. We subsidize Canuckistan fer crissakes. We subsidize the whole world. Strangely enough, Switzerland is right there with us.

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phi1618 said:

I agree, medical malpractice is probably one major contributor to the excessive cost of US health care.

However, I'd argue that the quality of health care in the US is probably not all that great, and the headaches associated with ending up in the hospital are absurd, even for those with good insurance. I don't have any real solid statistics to back this up with, but the experiences of some of my freinds family members have not been very igood.

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The fact that life expectency in the US is lower than it is in other wealthy nations is also suggestive. This isn't proof in itself that the US health care system sucks, because there are so many other factors - lifestyle seems a likely culprit - involved, but it's certainly suggestive and easy to compare.

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Quote:

Beyond lawsuits, frivolous and otherwise, there are other factors leading to expensive, low quality care in the US.
This article suggests that a oversupply of specialists relative to generalists results in unnecessary and expensive treatments:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/11/1/235.pdf
Note that many nations with less overall expenditure on health care have more doctors per capita.

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Also, the cost of a medical education in the US makes becoming a doctor a dubious financial decision for most talented students:
http://www.amsa.org/meded/studentdebt.cfm

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The US system is complex, and places the burden of understanding the complexity on the consumer. My insurance plan comes with a link to a 150+ page .pdf describing the agreement I've entered into.

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The service provided is not that great - unnecessary procedures, fights with the insurance companies, mimimal doctor attention, complications, etc. etc. are par for the course.

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The overall cost is obscene - the Swiss appear to be right up there with us on that chart because the horizontal axis is logaritmic - in reality, costs here are probably something like 30% greater.

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America spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as France, and almost two and a half times as much as Britain. And yet it falls down in almost every key indicator of public health, starting, perhaps, most shockingly, with infant mortality, which is 36 per cent higher than in Britain.

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JonnyOnTheSpot said:

let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the numbers in that article are true. please explain this since you seem so sure our free-market health care system is so superb.

Quote:

America spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as France, and almost two and a half times as much as Britain. And yet it falls down in almost every key indicator of public health, starting, perhaps, most shockingly, with infant mortality, which is 36 per cent higher than in Britain.

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seriously, did you even read the whole article? or did you just read a couple paragraphs and then start spouting rhetoric about the subject. rhetoric, that is largely addressed, explained, and in some cases debunked within the article. for instance, the whole thing where you posted an article claiming that canadian doctors we're flocking to the US and then trying to pass it off as as proof that the canadian healthcare system is terrible, is actually discussed within the article. personally, i think the author's reasoning makes a little more sense than your "abandoning a sinking ship theory"

you should really read the whole article, it actually points out some pretty interesting things and makes some good points. more so than any of the opponents of government healthcare, in this thread, have made imo.

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FrenchSocialist said:

zappaisgod said:

Reform the ludicrous tort system whereby malpractice insurance companies find it expedient to settle for hundreds of thousands rather than risk a trial before bleeding heart retards who will almost always find for and award huge judgments to any poor unfortunate schmuck regardless of culpability. A disgusting percentage of medical procedures are performed to avoid lawsuits and for no other reason.

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Your claim that frivolous lawsuits are significantly effecting the cost of health care is exaggerated, and your method for dealing with it are unrealistic:

Quote:

Large jury awards play a limited role in causing premiums to rise, despite allegations that greedy trial lawyers and frivolous claims are to blame. Less than 2% of malpractice claims result in a winning verdict at trial, according to insurance industry estimates.

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Quote:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-03-04-malpractice-cover_x.htm

Quote:

* How much of a doctor's revenue goes to malpractice insurance? A March 2002 government report by MedPAC, a congressional advisory commission, says doctors, on average, were expected to spend 3.2% of their revenue on malpractice insurance last year. That compares with 12.4% for staff salaries, 11.6% for office expenses and 1.9% for medical equipment. Calculations based on two surveys published by Medical Economics magazine — widely read by physicians — last year show that OB-GYNs paid the most for malpractice insurance, as a percentage of their revenue, 6.7%, and cardiologists paid the least, 1.5%.

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gluke bastid said:

Wasting money to Zappa is not a big deal as long as insurance companies are entirely private. He is scared that if the government subsidizes health insurance that means they can tell him how to live.

He likes to ignore many facts. Such as the fact that private insurance companies can deny you coverage if you are obese and a smoker, just as much as the government of Britain can.

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zappaisgod said:

gluke bastid said:

Wasting money to Zappa is not a big deal as long as insurance companies are entirely private. He is scared that if the government subsidizes health insurance that means they can tell him how to live.

He likes to ignore many facts. Such as the fact that private insurance companies can deny you coverage if you are obese and a smoker, just as much as the government of Britain can.

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Private insurance companies can deny you coverage. That means they can refuse to take your money. Only the government can deny you care. Do you see a difference there? If not, get better glasses.

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