7 ms·

So absolutely happy to be Canadian.

by thisisnico 7y ago

Santosh83 7y ago
Eventually coming to all countries as the elite in power are falling for the prospect of huge money...
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  So every other country in the first world offering some form of socialized medicine will inevitably be like this, the US is just "winning" and leading the charge? Or are we more the token outlier with a "worst of all worlds" system?
  - ddxxdd 7y ago
    Government-run health care systems tend to lead to higher healthcare costs, since the beneficiaries aren't the payers. Around the world, it appears that low costs lead to universal healthcare, not the other way around. What America needs to do is make it cheaper and easier to become a medical practitioner without taking on half a million dollars in debt and wasting half of one's pre-retirement life. No fancy government program will work without first addressing that issue.
    - larkost 7y ago
      What is your evidence for this? The US is almost alone amongst developed countries in not having a government-run general heal care system, and has the highest costs (while not covering everyone). And Medicaid, Medicare, and the Veterans Administration (the three big government run healthcare systems here) all run more efficiently by every measure than any private health insurance system. Note that I fully recognize the problems that the VA has had, but when you really look at it fairly, they have many parallels to problems in the commercial side of the system, we just don't tolerate that when it comes to government (nor should we).
      - ddxxdd 7y ago
        >What is your evidence for this? After Canada implemented universal healthcare, costs rose rapidly before stabilizing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/379054 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/379054 Both private insurance and taxpayer-subsidized programs pay astronomically high prices for healthcare; I haven't seen any examples of Medicare paying European-level prices for services.
    - uoaei 7y ago
      > Government-run health care systems tend to lead to higher healthcare costs I know this feels true because laissez-faire and commie-bashing rhetoric is still common in the Western world, but there have been numerous studies recently showing that the US is the most costly per capita. The next 3 countries (by 2016 numbers) are all places where most things are more expensive because the country and its citizens are relatively rich: Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Norway. There's even a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Of particular interest is this graph, which breaks it down by public vs private spending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita#/media/File:OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
      - ddxxdd 7y ago
        Can you explain how your links dispute the notion that "low healthcare costs lead to universalization, rather than the other way around"? I feel like you didn't read and fully understand my comment.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Sounds pretty defeatist to me.
- thisisnico 7y ago
  I hope the US Federal Government does something to fix the situation for Healthcare. Healthcare and Education seem like the biggest issues in the US currently, just being unlucky on either aspect, even if you make amazing money can throw you into poverty it seems.. seems like a horrible way to live in constant fear.
  - jermaustin1 7y ago
    As a consultant, with a couple of monthly prescriptions (thyroid, asthma, allergies), and a wife with a couple of monthly prescriptions (allergies, asthma), we pay just under $2000/mo for insurance, then about $200 every few months for doctor bills, and around $150/mo for all of our prescriptions. All in all, we spend about half the median household income each year in health care. When my wife got pneumonia after the flu, we had to drop thousands on an ER visit. If I wasn't well paid, between our allergies and asthma, we'd probably dead.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      This is the crazy part to me. You have private insurance, but the quality of the insurance is so piss poor that one wonders what the point of it is in the first place. Nothing seems to ever be fully covered under it.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        The insurance is there to pay for the $20k+ heart attacks, premature babies needing NICU at probably $100k+, hemophilics needing $500k+ medications, etc. Also, if you're young, you're subsidizing healthcare for the old. If you're not poor (per government definition) and don't qualify for health insurance premium tax credits, then you're subsidizing them too. And if you're a male, you're subsidizing childbirth and other women specific costs. And who knows what else. In other words, it's the same as a tax to pay for healthcare for the country, except it goes to insurance companies, and you have to deal with in network and out of network. Except this tax goes up the older you get (but capped at 3x what youngest/healthiest person pays). Presumably, if you add up all the insurance premiums paid for every year of a person's life, it should theoretically add up to close to how much the insurance company expects to spend on you (plus some profit, capped at 20% by ACA).

So absolutely happy to be Canadian.

Santosh83 7y ago

Eventually coming to all countries as the elite in power are falling for the prospect of huge money...

FireBeyond 7y ago
So every other country in the first world offering some form of socialized medicine will inevitably be like this, the US is just "winning" and leading the charge? Or are we more the token outlier with a "worst of all worlds" system?
- ddxxdd 7y ago
  Government-run health care systems tend to lead to higher healthcare costs, since the beneficiaries aren't the payers. Around the world, it appears that low costs lead to universal healthcare, not the other way around. What America needs to do is make it cheaper and easier to become a medical practitioner without taking on half a million dollars in debt and wasting half of one's pre-retirement life. No fancy government program will work without first addressing that issue.
  - larkost 7y ago
    What is your evidence for this? The US is almost alone amongst developed countries in not having a government-run general heal care system, and has the highest costs (while not covering everyone). And Medicaid, Medicare, and the Veterans Administration (the three big government run healthcare systems here) all run more efficiently by every measure than any private health insurance system. Note that I fully recognize the problems that the VA has had, but when you really look at it fairly, they have many parallels to problems in the commercial side of the system, we just don't tolerate that when it comes to government (nor should we).
    - ddxxdd 7y ago
      >What is your evidence for this? After Canada implemented universal healthcare, costs rose rapidly before stabilizing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/379054 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/379054 Both private insurance and taxpayer-subsidized programs pay astronomically high prices for healthcare; I haven't seen any examples of Medicare paying European-level prices for services.
  - uoaei 7y ago
    > Government-run health care systems tend to lead to higher healthcare costs I know this feels true because laissez-faire and commie-bashing rhetoric is still common in the Western world, but there have been numerous studies recently showing that the US is the most costly per capita. The next 3 countries (by 2016 numbers) are all places where most things are more expensive because the country and its citizens are relatively rich: Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Norway. There's even a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Of particular interest is this graph, which breaks it down by public vs private spending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita#/media/File:OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
    - ddxxdd 7y ago
      Can you explain how your links dispute the notion that "low healthcare costs lead to universalization, rather than the other way around"? I feel like you didn't read and fully understand my comment.
arcticbull 7y ago
Sounds pretty defeatist to me.
thisisnico 7y ago
I hope the US Federal Government does something to fix the situation for Healthcare. Healthcare and Education seem like the biggest issues in the US currently, just being unlucky on either aspect, even if you make amazing money can throw you into poverty it seems.. seems like a horrible way to live in constant fear.
- jermaustin1 7y ago
  As a consultant, with a couple of monthly prescriptions (thyroid, asthma, allergies), and a wife with a couple of monthly prescriptions (allergies, asthma), we pay just under $2000/mo for insurance, then about $200 every few months for doctor bills, and around $150/mo for all of our prescriptions. All in all, we spend about half the median household income each year in health care. When my wife got pneumonia after the flu, we had to drop thousands on an ER visit. If I wasn't well paid, between our allergies and asthma, we'd probably dead.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    This is the crazy part to me. You have private insurance, but the quality of the insurance is so piss poor that one wonders what the point of it is in the first place. Nothing seems to ever be fully covered under it.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      The insurance is there to pay for the $20k+ heart attacks, premature babies needing NICU at probably $100k+, hemophilics needing $500k+ medications, etc. Also, if you're young, you're subsidizing healthcare for the old. If you're not poor (per government definition) and don't qualify for health insurance premium tax credits, then you're subsidizing them too. And if you're a male, you're subsidizing childbirth and other women specific costs. And who knows what else. In other words, it's the same as a tax to pay for healthcare for the country, except it goes to insurance companies, and you have to deal with in network and out of network. Except this tax goes up the older you get (but capped at 3x what youngest/healthiest person pays). Presumably, if you add up all the insurance premiums paid for every year of a person's life, it should theoretically add up to close to how much the insurance company expects to spend on you (plus some profit, capped at 20% by ACA).