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The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign isn’t going anywhere, but his idea of single-payer healthcare will surely live on. Now, an analysis earlier this year from
When are they going to propose confiscating 35% of our income to provide our housing for us?
I don’t see what right a government founded on the principal of liberty has to take over heathcare. Where do I go if I’m yearning to breath free?
Another $2.5 trillion per year? Pshaw. Exxon and the Koch brothers spend that on caviar and yacht wax every other month, don’t they? Seriously, if we make only mean people and The Rich pay for it, how can there be a problem?
You toss out these cost numbers but since math is just another form of rape why should we listen? Besides another $8000 per head per year in the US is probably like 1% of how much Wall Street steals from the middle class every day (see, dude, I can do the number rapey thing too!).
But this whole numbers thing is a major buzzkill. It is the main reason why we Feel the Bern not Think the Bern.
LIKE!
The reason health care is too expensive in America is because we pay our doctors way more than minimum wage. They are getting rich off of the sickness of others!
Lower the pay for all health care personnel and the cost will drop! Of course, unless you want the checkout guy at 7-11 to moonlight as your doctor, you might prefer they get compensated for having a doctorate degree- but that doesn’t fit the socialists ideas of justice.
It’s easy to make a service affordable enough for everyone, just lower the quality to the point that nobody wants it at any price, and demand will drop, lowering prices!
It doesn’t come down to how we practice medicine in this country, it comes down to how we practice law. Any doctor will tell you that they primarily practice defensive medicine, to mitigate any claim that they were negligent in treating a patient.
Consider this:
Source: Emergency Physicians Monthly
Americans would have an absolute fit if we had the kind of wait times and limitations on treatment they have in the UK. Over 60 and kidney failure ? Sayonara. Need a hip? Take a number, we might get to you in a year. Need a CT scan? 6 months. Breast cancer? No advanced immunotherapy for you. Macular degeneration? You get a dog and a cane. In Canada, doctors are limited in compensation. So for example, Neurosurgeons are unable to bill after September because they’ve billed the max, and just …stop.
Also, better do a major rework of our current malpractice laws. If you force me to alter my practice to save money, you better remove the “I’m gonna sue you” threat if I don’t do every possible test and study to evaluate a patient.
Finally we need to stop throwing billions at illegal healthcare. The following is a screen shot of a single patient who is common where I work. I work at a major, US teaching hospital in a Southern state. Every day we see illegals who are cycled through the Emergency Room for dialysis. This means they make multiple visits a week. This is because the hospital cannot provide them with outpatient dialysis, so every routine dialysis becomes an “emergency”, and is covered by EMTALA. That means an ER visit and dialysis. We see at least 4-5 patients like this every day at our facility.
I have read about Medical Doctors in Cuba who drive a taxi cab because it pays better. There are also accounts of Cuban Doctors who are sent to Venezuela by the Government and proceed to escape across the border to Colombia. No incentives equals no motivation.
This is a case “getting what you pay for”. If we want highly-capable and well-trained Physicians in America, we need to pay them accordingly. Otherwise intelligent students will pick other areas of study that pay better for equal or less cost, time and effort. I don’t want the kid who got C’s in high school performing surgery on me.
This section explains why the progressives and socialist always focus in the wrong area when it comes to American healthcare.
I echo the comments of EJ and Kozak and add that, when I was considering med school, the doctors I worked with were, (each!), paying around $90,000/year in malpractice insurance, plus the surgical instruments we used were purchased by them, for typically @ $40,000 for each surgeon, and that was in the 1980s. Add the cost for medical school itself and I/my family could simply not afford it.
In countries with “single payer” most “doctors” patients see do not actually have doctorates. We are already seeing more of this in the US, as more patient care is being provided by Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners. It would be useful to see an actual, apples-to-apples comparison of costs. I am all for reducing waste and costs associated with red tape, but we need to include the mortgage and student loan defaults of all the attorneys that live well off the proceeds of “Health Care” costs when we talk about, “making medicine a more-middle-class profession…”.
Heh! I should start saying that as a professor, I get rich (or, well…) off the *ignorance* of others. ;)
This horrifies me, and I have known of these kinds of examples for years. Yikes!
Sweezle, this drives me nuts in the world of PT, too. The current entry level degree is DPT (reminds of getting my diptheria vaccination): doctor of physical therapy. Those that have ’em all insist on calling it a doctorate (I’m a “master,” BTW).