I think that Americans are generally afraid of universal health care, because they see it as too expensive and it stirs up some of the old fears of socialism. It threatens the ideal of a free market society.
I agree with you. Quality health care, like quality education, ought not to be limited to only those who can afford it.
Yeah, the people who make money off of our current system tell us horror stories about long waits to see specialists, and yet... I have an appointment with a eye surgeon today, and it took four months to get that appointment. This is not for cosmetic reasons or lasik, but possibly for surgery to prevent blindness.
There are other specialists I have seen that it took 7 months to get an appointment.
We already have long waits for specialists, We already have people who can't access medical care or whose claims are denied. We have people chained to jobs they hate because they have pre-existing conditions that would not be covered if they switched employers and medical plans.
We have my mother paying 180 dollars for a single prescription on an income of around $1200 a month. We have people using emergency rooms for primary care or for chronic conditions that would have been preventable if they had been able to have regular checkups. We have babies being born and being harmed for the rest of their lives with conditions that could have been prevented with adequate prenatal care. We have health care plans and employers refusing to pay for contraception but covering Viagra. We have pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions based on THEIR religious beliefs.
What we have is NOT working. It is making some people very wealthy.
Everyone should have health care. Regardless of income. I don't mind paying taxes to make this possible.
Our health care is not as good as you would think. My doctor wanted me to have a certain test a few months ago and the insurance company kept rejecting the test, always claiming they needed more information. I still have not gotten that test.
The American Revolution has left an amazing fear of taxes within us. Isn't it remarkable how history remains alive?
Do you have more specific information about the your friend's parents health plan? What, specifically, was not covered and why?
Also: Do you have any qualms about paying for other people's bad decisions? (Think your friend's mother times hundreds of thousands, if not millions.) What a terrible thing to happen to her, her husband, and her family. But at what point should personal responsibility rule the roost?
I'm afraid I don't have specifics, as this happened maybe 20 years ago.
Your questions about other people's bad decisions is a good one, but I think I'm already paying for a great deal of them. I don't think people should live in fear of losing their health insurance, and I don't think people should be wage slaves. I think our current system encourages both of these things, and things are not changing for the better.
When I was a kid, a million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it was commonplace for one parent to go to work and another to stay home. Many middle class people simply don't have that option anymore.
I have a brother in law in Canada. He works in a factory. He has a nicer house than I do, works fewer hours than I do, his wife got one year paid vacation after childbirth, they have free child care, they have universal health insurance, and because he's in a union, he pays nothing for prescriptions.
The only time he pays for insurance is when he visits the US.
He will not be taking a second mortgage to send his two sons to college either.
We can do better.
Ms. Cornelius:
I have an appointment with a eye surgeon today, and it took four months to get that appointment. This is not for cosmetic reasons or lasik, but possibly for surgery to prevent blindness.
Were you waiting for one specific eye surgeon, or did you try to look for others? Are there very few surgeons able to do the type of surgery you needed, or was there a good number of qualified people from whom to choose?
NYCE,
I guess I can't challenge you on your anecdote about your b-i-l. It sounds great, but it seems too good to be true. I envision a society being crushed under the weight of such social welfare expenditures (witness France, where nearly 15,000 people died during a heat wave in 2003: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/...nce-heat_x.htm)
And why accept paying for "a great deal of" bad decisions? We should not shunt personal responsibility to the side and accept it.
The number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is catastrophic medical emergency. This is no longer grounds to excuse debt under bankruptcy.
Of course, such bankruptcies are unheard of in Canada.
As for France being in debt, I doubt they're nearly as in debt as we are, with our 100 billion dollar a year war, a very, very bad decision that I'm forced to support.
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
You're right, my friend's mom made bad decisions. I don't claim this story is typical, but I still think we should cover everyone.
I don't know why people get cancer and heart attacks, but I think we can care for them, all of them, and pay less than we do now. If it costs $7000 per person in the US for healthcare and only $3000 in Canada, we're doing something wrong.
I gotta imagine people in Canada make bad decisions too. Yet they're all covered, as we should all be.
Life-saving measures are often denied by insurance companies, and such denials are not generally based on the wisdom, or lack thereof, of policy holders.
When I say my brother in law works fewer hours than I, I'm comparing my three jobs to his one. I make more money than he does, but I don't have a higher standard of living.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/04...06s01-
woam.html
6 bucks a day child care Canada--though my sister in law said it was free. Maybe she exaggerated.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/hea...ity-
leave_x.htm
Across the border in Vancouver, Canada, Suzanne Dobson is back at work after 14 months of paid maternity leave.
"It was great," she says. "I was still making pretty good money for being at home."
...The United States and Australia are the only industrialized countries that don't provide paid leave for new mothers nationally, though there are exceptions in some U.S. states.
As for France being in debt, I doubt they're nearly as in debt as we are, with our 100 billion dollar a year war, a very, very bad decision that I'm forced to support.
1. I never said France was in debt.
2. Public debt is very different from private debt. There are myriad reasons for public debt -- some good, some bad. I can just as easily argue that we are in debt because of decades of ridiculous pork barrel spending projects.
3. France's social welfare system is crushing its economy, not to mention negatively affecting the social fabric: http://www.cato.org/pub_display....php?
pub_id=5202
4. Your war reference was quite a red herring.
That "cheap" health care in Canada comes at a cost: Massive waits for lifesaving procedures, including MRIs: http://www.townhall.com/
columnis...alized_medicine
Remember, just because the price is zero (or low) doesn't mean the cost is zero (or low)
NYC Math Teacher-
You have never had to deal w/ the USA medical system. And I pray you never do. Because if you do; you will blow your brains out.
In 1970 my Mother collapsed at work @ the age of 44. She had a brain anyersum [sp?]. She had the best care possible and lived until 1997. It was a nightmare to deal with the government, insurance, medical establishment. And in our circumstance, with a Father who was in the insurance business, able to provide the best the industry had to offer it is immoral for you who has never had to deal with this situation to assume that it has something to do with personal responsibility. Our experience with my Mother was the good old days. Now it is so much worse.
On the subject of blaming the person who smokes for their medical condition it is important to remember that if you have driven a car from the age of 16 and are now 40 (?) you have caused the death of one adult and the lead poisoning of one child. I could go on detailing your faults, but, suggest you ponder what I have told you during your downtime and turn your efforts to making it better for all of us in this country. Oh, btw, should you ever have someone you love in the hospital, don't go home. You're the only one who can protect them. Use two words-malpractice and attorney. Very effective.
As for the Clintons, the only mistake they made was thinking that being the Presidant of the USA was more powerful than the medical/insurance establishment.
A mistake all of you bloggerguys have made, I'm afraid.
As for the tragedy in France, that had more to do with a failure of imagination than anything else.
Not an uncommon human trait.
I wonder if we might get further with the idea of "standardized" health care; it seems to work with education, fleet-wide mileage from auto manufacturers, building codes....
I understand that our experiences upset all of us, but let's please stick to arguments and try not to personalize this.
It's hardly surprising Walter E. Williams, who sometimes subs for Rush Limbaugh, and the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, take these positions.
I once saw Williams on TV saying that poor people in the US were not actually poor because they owned microwave ovens and color TVs.
I often visit Canada. Having met many of the people there, I don't believe Williams or Cato, let alone see them as remotely objective sources. I don't know a single Canadian who envies us our health system.
But even if WW and Cato were completely accurate, it wouldn't mean we couldn't do better.
AS for the war, I thought it was a very good example of paying for a mistake far, far more costly than health care for our citizens. I believe I saw GW speak about providing free health care for Iraqis. It sounded like a good idea, and I wondered why he couldn't do the same for us.
We can do better.
YES! We can do better!
I was just in Spain, where there is free medical coverage, even for foreign visitors like we were.
In a country that is as "developed" as ours, it is an abomination that our health care system is in such a state.
WW is no more or less objective than you, NYCE. His point about the poor is accurate: We in the U.S. toss about the term "poverty" rather loosely and tend to equate it with the poverty we see around the world. WW does not say that
And BTW: let's please stick to arguments and try not to personalize this.
It is your blog post opens with an anecdote and no one -- not you or anyone else advocating for something "better" has shown any evidence -- real empirical evidence. You continue in your post above to talk about how you "often visit Canada". You and many others here are substituting personal anecdotes for actual evidence.
Also, to northbrooklyn: 15,000 deaths from the heat in a modernized western nation is not exactly a "failure of imagination". Sheesh!
An aside: Ignore that incomplete sentence at the end of my first paragraph.
The main point, which you pointedly ignore, along with stories from the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, is that our system is broken.
When people can't get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, when millions have no insurance, when people can't take sick days for fear of losing their jobs, when thousands die because they don't have insurance (18,000 a year, plainly beating France's single 15,000),
http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/03...n19_04/
00.shtml
when the number one cause of bankruptcy is catastrophic medical emergency, when the primary interest of our health care system is not health but corporate profits, when insurance companies regularly deny health care to save money, we have a problem.
And again, even if everything your blatantly biased sources contend about Canada is true, there are hundreds of other systems to emulate and improve upon.
First of all, if someone wants to make an appointment with a specific doctor for whatever reason, I would never tell them to look for another doctor unless it was someone I had dealings with an offered the recommendation.
Secondly, at one time Express Scripts under the old plan allowed for our parents coverage of medications and possibly Marsh does as well.
Third, I find it ironic, if we are to discuss this war, that our military receives substandard medical treatment, and this and other administrations do nothing about offering top-notch care and rehabilitation.
As for New York City teachers under GHI, we are still forced to use 1990's schedules for their payment.
Because some of my doctors who are out-of-network, reaching the deductible is almost impossible because GHI uses 1990 rates of service. And, I would never give up these excellent doctors because NYC Math or anyone else tells me so. Why am I not entitled to see these doctors because they no longer accept GHI? The patient should be of total control of their health.
Yet it is the UFT who negotiates this contract. GHI has yet to update this schedule in a realistic manner.
If Universal health is much like the managed care system we have now, I would not be in favor of it. However, everyone should be entitled, and I mean ENTITLED to health care.
If our country can't treat our deserving soldiers, I wouldn't trust them to treat me.
If our health care system is so great, why does Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc. not want it?
My husband is British and we are seriously considering moving to the UK to have our future kids, at least long enough for me to get British citizenship in case anything catastrophic ever happens.
Again, if our system is soooooo great, why would we need to contemplate these things?
Our system is not great. And managed care is a major problem. When a patient is denied state-of-the-art treatment because some person from the health insurance company doesn't want to pay for it, we have a problem.
When an insurance company can just drop you because your health needs are too expensive, that's a problem.
But this administration has always backed the insurance companies.
It's this kind of mentality that scares me. Other countries probably
don't have to worry about medical and drug lobbies. Unfortunately, we do,
First, stop insurance companies from second guessing our doctors. So many people who could be alive today are not because their plans refused to pay for needed treatments.
I am not against Universal health care, as much as I don't trust our legislators with this responsibility.
...and still no evidence indicating that moving to a Canadian (or British or whatever) model of healthcare will improve anything.
And BTW: Walter Williams is certainly biased, but he cited actual studies in his opinion piece. We're all biased one way or another, but that does not mean we discount each others' opinions. We do have a responsibility, though, to cite evidence and not heart-warming (or heart-rending) anecdotes.
Improve? Perhaps, but in my view not with Canada in mind.
Been following this discussion. I cannot understand how people who praise the work and opinions of Michael Moore can then accuse Walter Williams of bias.
Moore is a superb filmmaker with very clear agendas. In that was he is no different from Leni Riefenstahl or Sergei Eisenstein.
As one who has a sense that the political left,since 1933, has been more interested in enlarging the numbers of Americans dependent on government for their well being, I have great suspicions of universal health care. In my experience from my childhood to now, that's back in Ike's admin,. I have never seen nor experienced a problem with the health care system. This is, of course anecdotal. But I have serious doubts about placing my health care in the hands of the people who run Amtrak.
When this board, with good reason, rails against the privatization of education it reflects, not only the fears of our place in such a system, but the realization that education is has never been a business model enterprise. But I also doubt that the people on this board would entrust education throughout America to the federal government to run and to maintain. That is precisely what Universal healthcare does. And if it's OK for health care, why not edication?
XK,
Federal ed? I don't know about that.
The reason, really, is that I see local systems that work very well. I do not feel our health care system works well.
If something were to happen to me, or if I were to lose my job, despite my life insurance and or retirement funds, I believe my family would be better off moving to Canada, where they'd have family, health insurance, and affordable college education for my kid.
As for Williams, I honestly don't consider him a credible source. And while you're right that I personally admire Moore, aside from a general statement about the film, I chose not to use him (or Huffington Post) as a source either, though they do indeed have pieces that support my POV.
NYC Math Teacher,
I'm fairly certain we've come as close to agreement as we ever will.
Local education works??? Been to Mississippi lately, or South Texas, or Eastern Ky, or Roosevelt or Hempstead?
Local ed works as long as the local communities work. When they fail or become dysfunctional so too the schools. Now I believe in local solutions, but we are on the verge of a rebirth in the idea that gov't (federal variety) knows best. If we can copy France's social and health solutions, why not its educational ones as well?
Anecdotally, in the 28 years I've been married, my wife has been hospitalized six times for five surgical procedures and one child birth. We have paid a total of $30 out of pocket, that was for telephone service.
This, in no way, defends the deficiencies in American health care. Only that there is absolutely NO WAY my health care will improve, under the government from what it is now. And I will be paying for that takeover in taxes I, now, do not pay. If that sounds selfish, I am sorry. But I pay taxes for Pell grants my kid cannot get, for TAP assistance she cannot receive, and I pay tuition to help fund scholarships @ her school that she cannot qualify for financially. I'm not suppposedly one of the rich, just a NYC teacher at max, married to another NYC teacher, also at max. Well off and no real complaints, but unwilling to cede anymore of the fruits of my labor to satisfy someone's vision of a just society in the style of Marx.
It works where I am.
I agree with you about communities, and I think that's an important point.
My wife works part time and has no benefits, so that may account somewhat for my differing viewpoint.
True enough, NYCE, but I have to ask you this (at the risk of beating a dead horse):
I know WW is a conservative and, as such is skewed toward that side of these debates. But why don't you consider him credible? He's not academically dishonest. He doesn't lie or obfuscate. His academic bona fides are voluminous, and he is truly a scholar. Disagreeing with him...that I can see. But not credible? How so?
As I said, he stated poor people were not poor because they had microwaves and color TVs. I find that shallow and disingenuous, and totally off-base regarding the working poor in America. Many of my students fall into that category, and the things Mr. Williams mentioned are not what's important to them.
However, it was what John Stossel considered evidence that there should be no minimum wage, and Mr. Williams concurred. I remained unconvinced, and very suspicious of his motives.
He's also written columns claiming Asians achieve and people of color do not, and did so in a way I found highly offensive, if not outright racist. Stereotypes are stereotypes, even those that are ostensibly positive.
His chair at GWU is funded by a chemical and munitions manufacturer who's contributed millions to right-wing think tanks.
He's written in praise of John Stossel's "Stupid in America" documentary. Stossel's work is to documentaries what professional wrestling is to sports. His views on education lean toward vouchers and tax credits, and I believe he wants to do to education precisely what we've done to health care (I know, we don't agree). I don't think he cares about people like my students, my children, or me. Or you either, to tell you the truth.
His job largely entails rationalizing things that hurt working people. I realize you will not concur, but that's my impression.
He's John Stossel with a lectern instead of a microphone.
Sorry I didn't get back to this conversation, but... I was at that eye doctor's office. All day. Then I had a headache from my eyes being dilated. All day.
To address NYC Math teacher: because that is the doctor the other eye doctor wanted me to see, and every other eye surgeon who was a possibility had a wait of that long as well. It's a long story, which I actually posted about on my blog today.
My point is that waiting for specialists already happens. Being shunted off to see a nurse-practitioner when I get sick, which thankfully happens rarely, is also the rule, because my GP is already overscheduled in the system that we have.
And we already pay for someone else's lack of responsibility for their health. Been to a hospital lately? We pay six bucks for a Tylenol because we have to pay for other people's failure to pay their hospital bills. And why can they not pay their hospital bills? Because they don't have insurance. Which means they don't have a primary care physician to head off health emergencies. So they go to the emergency room, get charged huge bills, which they don't pay.
And the hospital raises costs for the rest of us because, we really don't care what the charges are. Why? Because we HAVE insurance, and so we may not notice that 6 dollar Tylenol. But then the insurance companies start limiting coverage due to the rising costs.
Even if those huge bills were caused by other people ignorantly smoking or eating Big Macs all day long, we still end up paying for it. But even if it was something that was less their own fault, like someone I know who has been passing blood-clots for weeks and yet can't afford to see a doctor and the clinic near her home says that they are already treating enough people in her age bracket, whatever that means.
This is not a system. It's a scandal. And it is NOT working for most of us, including the people who DO take responsibility for their health.
Sorry for the late comment, just found this via EducationWonk. As a Canadian, I have always taken my health care for granted. I was in New Zealand last year, and thought that I might be developping a UTI, but couldn't afford the 55$ to go to the doctor. I waited about a week to get paid, and by the time I got to the doctor, I had a fever or 104, and was hospitalized with a kidney infection and dehydration. I had to spend 3 days in the hospital, for a total of over 1800$. If I had not had to pay for the doctor's visit, a simple 15$ perscription would have solved everything. I know that this is a personal story, but I wonder how much money could be saved by preventitive visits?
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