6 ms·

It's back-handed socialized medicine. Hospitals cannot turn anyone away so the money has to come from somewhere and this is how they do it. Oddly enough this

It's back-handed socialized medicine. Hospitals cannot turn anyone away so the money has to come from somewhere and this is how they do it. Oddly enough this is what keeps the whole system from collapsing.

EvanAnderson 9y ago
This "shadow" socialized system fills me with anger simply because we can't seem to deal with it in a mature and constructive way. As long as Americans can't stomach the idea of turning away people who cannot pay for emergency care to die we have socialized medicine. I don't understand why we can't, as a society, have a "grown up" conversation about this fact.
- mfoy_ 9y ago
  Why not just have proper socialized medicine, such as in Canada? Instead of this perverse system of "shadow" socialized medicine, fraud, and over-billing, why not just make it come out of everyone's taxes? That way everyone pays a very modest amount in tax and no one has to be financially ruined by flukes of nature. Also kills a huge amount of overhead in the billing departments, collection agencies, insurance companies, etc.
  - pancreas 9y ago
    It will be nice to have socialized medicine, but please, not as in Canada. Their system is not good. I would prefer Medicare expansion to all, or a VA-like system while medicare and medicaids are phased out. This will happen eventually, but alas not soon.
    - wvenable 9y ago
      I'm a Canadian, what's wrong with our system from your perspective? (No system is perfect; there is always room for improvement and trade offs) Just two weeks ago, my wife had an emergency appendectomy. She went to the free clinic first thing Sunday morning as she had terrible pains all night. They immediately referred to the local hospital. She had the ultrasound in the afternoon and Surgery at 3:00pm. She's been off work (more or less) for 2 week recovering. The only thing we paid for is parking. This[1] redditor in the US has the same surgery and it cost $55,000 dollars, which insurance covered a lot of but still left him with an $11,000 bill. That's just one simple surgery and that's not a small amount of money. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-an-appendectomy-reddit-user-posts-55000-bill/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-an-appendectomy-reddit-u...
      - ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
        >> I'm a Canadian, what's wrong with our system from your perspective? longer wait times for non-emergency treatment and (most of the time) not being able to pay cash and get the procedure done without the wait. personally know ppl in Canada (Toronto, so not some little town in the boonies) who had to wait few months to get an MRI. on the US side - takes 2 weeks or so to get the insurance company's approval (they do this dance with a mandatory x-ray and electromyogram appointment before approving) or $500 or so gets you in like tomorrow. the kicker of course is they will charge the insurance company $3k. that said - the current US system needs a major overhaul, no doubt. both Obamacare and the not-there-yet "Trumpcare" are lipstick on a pig solutions though.
        wvenable 9y ago
        Yeah, waiting a few months to get an MRI if your condition isn't serious isn't uncommon. Diagnostics like that tend to be the longest wait times -- actually getting surgery after a diagnosis is pretty quick. On the other hand, my experience with the US is that the service is great. They'll even send you for unnecessary tests just because. And it's all pretty fast. But then you have so many people who get nothing at all. And then many of those who do get something are totally bankrupt. There is no system that can give anyone health care and not have a triage system. So you might have to give up some comfort so your neighbors can live.
        ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
        sure, it's a balancing act. another downside to mention - wait times in walk in clinics in Canada during the flu/cold season are pretty extreme - it's free so ppl just go if they suspect anything is wrong. I remember reading in the news they were considering charging a nominal fee, like $5 to cut down on these types of visits. On the US side you'd pay around $50 for one of those visits (unless you go to your doc) - wait time is like 10 min. I actually wouldn't mind something similar to a Canadian system - if they can manage that without tax increases :) - plus a private "network" someone who can afford paying for a private insurance (or using straight up cash) can use.
  - dboreham 9y ago
    Because Americans are selfish. Source: lived in US for 20 years.
    - jazzyk 9y ago
      I have lived in the US for 27+ years and I think Americans tend to be very generous, a lot of people donate their time and money to charities, churches, etc. They just don't want to give their money to a bunch of bureaucrats, who spend it mostly on themselves, and seem to multiply like rabbits.
      - arethuza 9y ago
        Do you have any evidence that socialized health care systems have more bureaucrats? [NB I'm just out of a UK NHS hospital so therefore feeling very warm and fuzzy about our favourite chunk of socialism].
        Broken_Hippo 9y ago
        I think that basically, the "bureaucrats" of the government become the "employees" of the companies, and are somehow not counted as bureaucrats, even though they form a private, less efficient bureaucracy that has more trouble providing basic services for a decent price (like home nursing).
      - grasshopperpurp 9y ago
        What a pile of garbage. Your charities and churches do more harm than good, and they allow people like you to justify your selfishness.
        dang 9y ago
        We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines.
      - wvenable 9y ago
        So they pay for profit insurance companies owned by Wall Street investment firms. I don't understand why American's find that more palatable. The "government doesn't work" mentality is self-feeding. If you want government to work, you make it work. The alternative is just defeatist. You won't find many conversatives in other countries who want to give up their socialized medical system.
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  Americans cannot stomach the idea of giving anyone anything for "free", without thinking about longer term benefits.
  - LyndsySimon 9y ago
    I don't think this is it at all. The argument is that there is no such thing as "free", there are only transfers of cost. Someone is paying.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      Well, we usually refer to the UK NHS as "free" but we all know that it means "free at the point of delivery" we know it gets funded from our taxes and therefore all taxpayers pay. As someone who just had a few days in an NHS hospital I'm pretty much delighted with the experience. When was money mentioned? Not once, not once.
- slice_of_life 9y ago
  >As long as Americans can't stomach the idea of turning away people who cannot pay for emergency care to die we have socialized medicine. Seems a tad callous even by my standards as a staunch classical liberal; may be all other medical services but not emergency services.
  - EvanAnderson 9y ago
    I'm not stating an opinion about this fact, I'm simply stating it. (Personally, I think Americans ought to have socialized medicine.) The "conservatives" who bellyached that the ACA created "socialized medicine" willfully ignored (or were ignorant of) the fact that the mandate to treat emergency patients regardless of ability to pay "socialized" medicine when it was passed (by "conservative" stalwart Ronald Regan) in the EMTALA[1] in 1986. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
bryanlarsen 9y ago
Yet when you try and tell people that it was Ronald Reagan who effectively socialized medicine in the United States they get really angry.

EvanAnderson 9y ago

This "shadow" socialized system fills me with anger simply because we can't seem to deal with it in a mature and constructive way. As long as Americans can't stomach the idea of turning away people who cannot pay for emergency care to die we have socialized medicine. I don't understand why we can't, as a society, have a "grown up" conversation about this fact.

mfoy_ 9y ago
Why not just have proper socialized medicine, such as in Canada? Instead of this perverse system of "shadow" socialized medicine, fraud, and over-billing, why not just make it come out of everyone's taxes? That way everyone pays a very modest amount in tax and no one has to be financially ruined by flukes of nature. Also kills a huge amount of overhead in the billing departments, collection agencies, insurance companies, etc.
- pancreas 9y ago
  It will be nice to have socialized medicine, but please, not as in Canada. Their system is not good. I would prefer Medicare expansion to all, or a VA-like system while medicare and medicaids are phased out. This will happen eventually, but alas not soon.
  - wvenable 9y ago
    I'm a Canadian, what's wrong with our system from your perspective? (No system is perfect; there is always room for improvement and trade offs) Just two weeks ago, my wife had an emergency appendectomy. She went to the free clinic first thing Sunday morning as she had terrible pains all night. They immediately referred to the local hospital. She had the ultrasound in the afternoon and Surgery at 3:00pm. She's been off work (more or less) for 2 week recovering. The only thing we paid for is parking. This[1] redditor in the US has the same surgery and it cost $55,000 dollars, which insurance covered a lot of but still left him with an $11,000 bill. That's just one simple surgery and that's not a small amount of money. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-an-appendectomy-reddit-user-posts-55000-bill/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-an-appendectomy-reddit-u...
    - ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
      >> I'm a Canadian, what's wrong with our system from your perspective? longer wait times for non-emergency treatment and (most of the time) not being able to pay cash and get the procedure done without the wait. personally know ppl in Canada (Toronto, so not some little town in the boonies) who had to wait few months to get an MRI. on the US side - takes 2 weeks or so to get the insurance company's approval (they do this dance with a mandatory x-ray and electromyogram appointment before approving) or $500 or so gets you in like tomorrow. the kicker of course is they will charge the insurance company $3k. that said - the current US system needs a major overhaul, no doubt. both Obamacare and the not-there-yet "Trumpcare" are lipstick on a pig solutions though.
      - wvenable 9y ago
        Yeah, waiting a few months to get an MRI if your condition isn't serious isn't uncommon. Diagnostics like that tend to be the longest wait times -- actually getting surgery after a diagnosis is pretty quick. On the other hand, my experience with the US is that the service is great. They'll even send you for unnecessary tests just because. And it's all pretty fast. But then you have so many people who get nothing at all. And then many of those who do get something are totally bankrupt. There is no system that can give anyone health care and not have a triage system. So you might have to give up some comfort so your neighbors can live.
        ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
        sure, it's a balancing act. another downside to mention - wait times in walk in clinics in Canada during the flu/cold season are pretty extreme - it's free so ppl just go if they suspect anything is wrong. I remember reading in the news they were considering charging a nominal fee, like $5 to cut down on these types of visits. On the US side you'd pay around $50 for one of those visits (unless you go to your doc) - wait time is like 10 min. I actually wouldn't mind something similar to a Canadian system - if they can manage that without tax increases :) - plus a private "network" someone who can afford paying for a private insurance (or using straight up cash) can use.
- dboreham 9y ago
  Because Americans are selfish. Source: lived in US for 20 years.
  - jazzyk 9y ago
    I have lived in the US for 27+ years and I think Americans tend to be very generous, a lot of people donate their time and money to charities, churches, etc. They just don't want to give their money to a bunch of bureaucrats, who spend it mostly on themselves, and seem to multiply like rabbits.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      Do you have any evidence that socialized health care systems have more bureaucrats? [NB I'm just out of a UK NHS hospital so therefore feeling very warm and fuzzy about our favourite chunk of socialism].
      - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
        I think that basically, the "bureaucrats" of the government become the "employees" of the companies, and are somehow not counted as bureaucrats, even though they form a private, less efficient bureaucracy that has more trouble providing basic services for a decent price (like home nursing).
    - grasshopperpurp 9y ago
      What a pile of garbage. Your charities and churches do more harm than good, and they allow people like you to justify your selfishness.
      - dang 9y ago
        We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines.
    - wvenable 9y ago
      So they pay for profit insurance companies owned by Wall Street investment firms. I don't understand why American's find that more palatable. The "government doesn't work" mentality is self-feeding. If you want government to work, you make it work. The alternative is just defeatist. You won't find many conversatives in other countries who want to give up their socialized medical system.
skummetmaelk 9y ago
Americans cannot stomach the idea of giving anyone anything for "free", without thinking about longer term benefits.
- LyndsySimon 9y ago
  I don't think this is it at all. The argument is that there is no such thing as "free", there are only transfers of cost. Someone is paying.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Well, we usually refer to the UK NHS as "free" but we all know that it means "free at the point of delivery" we know it gets funded from our taxes and therefore all taxpayers pay. As someone who just had a few days in an NHS hospital I'm pretty much delighted with the experience. When was money mentioned? Not once, not once.
slice_of_life 9y ago
>As long as Americans can't stomach the idea of turning away people who cannot pay for emergency care to die we have socialized medicine. Seems a tad callous even by my standards as a staunch classical liberal; may be all other medical services but not emergency services.
- EvanAnderson 9y ago
  I'm not stating an opinion about this fact, I'm simply stating it. (Personally, I think Americans ought to have socialized medicine.) The "conservatives" who bellyached that the ACA created "socialized medicine" willfully ignored (or were ignorant of) the fact that the mandate to treat emergency patients regardless of ability to pay "socialized" medicine when it was passed (by "conservative" stalwart Ronald Regan) in the EMTALA[1] in 1986. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...

bryanlarsen 9y ago

Yet when you try and tell people that it was Ronald Reagan who effectively socialized medicine in the United States they get really angry.