Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

You can't just assert that the free market is good and government is bad, and wave away decades of experience to the contrary.

Government is not bad. When government is limited to the purposes of preserving freedom, and removing fraud, then it is good. I would say that the free market, and government have both shown their ugly sides. I don't see that you can on the one hand believe in a model where services are offered by corporations, but then on the other hand also believe that government should take over offering a service that is also offered by private corporations. Specifically what I've heard about Britain's system is that it faces a 15 billion pound deficit, the hospitals are overcrowded, dirty and understaffed, and that people have to wait on lists for weeks or months for medical care.

I just don't believe in collectivism in any form. I disagree with the practice of casting a net of taxes across the people for the purpose to giving that wealth to others. Yes, collect taxes to pay for running the government, and defending our liberties, then let us figure out how we will organize our society. Adding to the mass of government should not be an answer to our problems, but I do believe LEADERSHIP can help lead us to discovering an answer.

This article by the The American Journal of Medicine analyzed a random national sample of 2,314 bankruptcy filers. 75% of these people had medical insurance.

Some of the significant findings were;

• The highest out-of-pocket health care costs were associated with non-stroke neurological illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis, followed by diabetes, injuries, stroke, mental illnesses and heart disease.
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• For 48% of medical debtors, hospital bills were the largest single out-of-pocket expense. Prescription drugs for 18.6%, doctors’ bills for 15.1% and insurance premiums for 4.1% of other debtors were the largest expense. Medical equipment and nursing homes where the largest expense for the remainder of medical debtors.
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• Illness-associated loss of income also contributed to financial problems related to medical bills. In 37.9% of medical debtors, the illness resulted in the patient’s family member losing or quitting a job; in 24.4% of debtors, the illness led to getting fired.
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• Unaffordable healthcare costs contributed directly to the bankruptcy of 92% of medical debtors.<>
  [st]
  So, my point in showing you this is that the US system is broken for everyone, both the insured and uninsured alike. The problem is not that the government does not offer a public option, but that the costs of getting catastrophically ill are too high for low, middle, and even upper middle income people to be able to afford.