Socialized Medicine, bad idea?

[Caedrus]

A friend of mine was arguing heavily against socialized medicine, mentioning the many tales of people from Canada who wouldn't get treatment for up to 7 months and instead flying down to the States to up and get it themselves, and similar opinions on Britain's system, they then throw in stories of gov't run health care within America (such as Veterans' something-or-other) and the near universal hatred of its poor service.

Is America's current system one of the better ones?

Can we see one of these actual tales? I hear people telling that people tell tales, but no Canadian or European I've talked to has ever corroborated those opinions.

Likewise, we have delayed care problems here. You know, as in, with the system we have right now. I have personally experienced it when I was quite sick. I also had to get in a fight with the insurance company over it, when I was in the least fit condition to be dealing with such things.

So yeah, I've personally experienced delayed care here, and heard corroborating stories from other Americans. I have also known Americans who went to other countries, like India, to get care. I have never met any of these people who the Republicans say are migrating to the US for its health system en masse. Never seen one interviewed either. Never heard a hard reference either, just the claim that it's true. No one will ever give me a goddamn source after they say there are tales of people fleeing to the US to escape poor healthcare systems elsewhere.

Everything I've seen that actually DOES have hard references tells me rather unambiguously that it's the exact opposite of what your friend is saying, Virgileso.

So yeah, as for "what arguments can I use" just ask your friend to give you a real source.

[ubernoob]

Because of the way insurance and health care works in the US, I've personally had an operation delayed by at least two months (because insurance people try to create paperwork delays to get us to pay for the operation ourself on the promise that we "should" get reimbursed).

I was supposed to get my wisdom teeth out over a year ago. The current date for the surgery is in about a month.

Fuck insurance companies.

[Lich-Loved]

Crissa - thanks for posting this info. It would be nice if such a plan could be created that doesn't break the bank, but some things I am just not sure are doable, like a lack of gender disparity - women of childbearing age are far more costly then men of the same age, assuming they are both in the same physical condition initially. That is, I believe that having babies is more expensive than the types of things men of the same age need. Doesn't this mean that premiums will have to be higher?

Frank - Hmm. I am going to check on a few tax things and maybe come back with some numbers to be sure I am understanding you completely.

[erik]

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of ... ums-2009-7

There's a nice graph showing the rise of health care premiums relative to inflation and wages, not that it should surprise anyone.

I don't know at what level of unemployment and lack of health insurance coverage (since those two compound each other as they rise) will be necessary to elicit the necessary outrage to change our healthcare system. It probably won't happen until we hit the requisite amount of collective rage to hit the reset button on our entire U.S. government.

[Starmaker]

Good socialized medicine is good, and shitty socialized medicine is shitty, same for insurance.

Rant:

I've been diagnosed with atopic dermatitis in 2007. It's latent most of the time, but on two occasions the bouts were maddening. The first time, I went to a private clinic, paid $30 for the diagnosis and $50 for two intravenous drips (I was scheduled to have three but I got better and decided to save money).
The second time happened when I was busy getting re-admitted to the university, something that required a medical approval, so I decided to get a treatment while at it. Bad idea. Instead of using the drip, the doctor just stuck a needle in a vein on my arm and pumped 10 ml of tavegyl solution through it. I was scheduled to have 10 of these injections: one I didn't attend, seven were painful and my arm ached through the day, one was okay and one nearly had the doctor phoning the ambulance because she missed the vein and pumped 2 cubes somewhere else before she even acknowledged something was wrong.

Some of the doctors were fucking rude, in a stupid way, never telling me what forms to have filled in and berating me afterwards for wasting their time. The dermatologist in particular got almost red with rage when I declined the option to have a quick blood analysis for $100 at a private lab and chose to wait a month for the opening at the state-owned lab. Also, going private won't help because the same people work in both private and public healthcare institutions. Like, literally the same people, half a day here, half a day there. The money buys politeness.

But they did sign my health report when they should have banned me from studying altogether, and that ought to count for something. I didn't even have to bribe them, "pretty pretty please" sufficed.

Generally speaking, the rampant corruption is horrifying. As an underhanded advertising method, doctors are paid money to prescribe specific medicine, vitamins, soap, toothpaste, no matter whether it actually works or not. My mom's on prescription hormones and the two doctors she visits (they work in shifts) accuse each other of incompetence and idiocy and everything else trying to get her to buy the brand they recommend. (She buys the better-tasting one.)

Trying to get an operation is a bureaucratical nightmare. The doctors are violently opposed to the idea of an operation, which is sort of understandable, because (they never tell it outright) it's fucking dangerous and expensive. (My sister's dentist is an exception, her catch-all solution being "Let's tear out half your teeth and see what happens" - no thanks, I'd rather have Dracula teeth than no teeth). I'd be carting around in a wheelchair if my dad didn't get the best orthopaedic surgeon in Russia to operate on me (an acquiaintance of his from the Party days; this cost nothing). Because many of the Russian doctors suck. They can't get a tooth out without cutting a patient's cheek. (No telling until it gets infected and swollen, no documenting it in the medical chart - which is just pointlessly cruel, since taking them to court is already next to impossible under current law - and the lawmakers want to make it totally impossible, fuck lawmakers while we're at that). They cannot cut out a cyst without spilling the contents in a patient's belly. One of the women I shared the ward with had a mild skin problem after lying in urine through the night, not being able to move after an operation and too shy to ask for help - while taking care of it, the assistants burned away most of the skin on her ass with several applications of KMnO4 they apparently didn't dilute. After that I took it upon myself to run errands for the ward, buying sweets and medical supplies, getting books from the mini-library, helping people to pee at night, teaching them to walk, insisting upon the timely removal of fucking catheters (I fell two times while learning to walk, I couldn't grab the wall because of the fucking catheter stuck in my arm), and stopping the ward from flooding at night on one occasion (industrial cleaning is fun when it's not a job).

To sum it up.

Teh suckage:
1. Public healthcare sucks because it's shitty.
2. Private healthcare sucks because it's shitty and costs money.
3. Health insurance in Russia is total crap because it's worded so as not to ever include anything except a trip to a hospital in a company-owned ambulance car (everything else, including a return trip, costs extra money).
4. Healthcare as part of a job package can be sort of good with the right kind of job (mid-level government officials or high-level corporate workers), except when the employers order the doctors not to hand out sick leaves to select employees. (This happened to my father. It took him falling unconscious at a corporate dinner for the doctor to acknowledge he might have a heart problem.)

Options that do not suck are:
1. An insurance-like private healthcare package provided by a medical institution which was established to service "the right kind of people" (#4 above). This costs about three times the Moscow minimum wage.
2. An Israeli citizenship. Russians who can afford it fake Jewish background in order to get a citizenship and substantially more reliable healthcare.

Bottom line: in a tabletop RPG, we can trust our friends (why would you game with assholes?) not to pwn everything with two Wishes per round, but any other system has to be first and foremost resistant to abuse. Fairness under idealized condictions is not a top priority.

[mean_liar]

When I lived in Canada, I had excellent care. The only people waiting for treatment in Canada used to be if you needed an MRI (they were lacking) or if you had a non-emergency condition.

Now, some of those non-emergency conditions could be annoying, but they weren't life-threatening and you knew you were going to get a free hip/knee/heart when your turn came up.