Ve need Nazionalized Heals Care. Ze gofernment is doing such goot job. Time to seize more market share. Ve are sinking. Vaht are you sinking about, comrade?
Yeah! There was a BBC special on the distopia that is American Health Care. Not shown in the US , but the US system is the one with which the Brits scare small children . And the government ALREADY spends nearly 4000 per capita on health care through our subsidies to teaching hospitals, county hospitals, Medicare and Medicade. That is more than the Canadians and French spend per capita to cover EVERYONE. We are also the only country who forbids itself BY LAW from negociating drug prices with the drug companies. So we pay from 2 to 20 times as much for drugs as the rest of the world. American Health Care= Epic Fail
If given a choice, I would gladly take Japan's medical system, or that of any other developed nation, over that of the US. Medical care in the US is both the worst and the most expensive (by far) among all highly developed nations. But one thing is certain, the US will have to change its medical ways if its economy is going to survive.
The solution is simple. Getting there is inevitable eventually but how long it takes will depend upon how long people are willing to put up with this broken system. Overhead for administering programs such as medicare, medicaid is between 3-7%. Currently administration and other costs not directly related to providing care in the whole system we currently employ is 44-47%. Just switch everyone to a single payer system like medicare. Bump primary care docs reimbursement rate by 20-30% so they won't have to rush through 4-6 patients an hour just to clear their measly $100K a year (and while for some $100-150K sounds like a lot you have to factor in medical school debt of about the same amount, working for less than minimum wage for at least 3 years during residence, and that is after 8 years of college and med school, and then having to rush through patients never being able to do the thorough job you were trained to do and want to do, most physicians actually do go in to medicine for the right reasons and want to provide a service to their patients no one does it for the money anymore unless they are deluded or aspire to be extend their training by at least another 4-6 years so they can be work in the few remaining high paid specialties, because your numbers will be down and you will likely be put on review by the non physician site manager and eventually fired if you do not pick up the pace, which in turn means more visits for the patient, less information for the patient, worse care for the patient and because doctors are federally barred from organizing both patients are physicians are SOL and at the mercy of the HMOâs lobbyists) and without the corporate monkeys on their backs will actually be able to practice as they want rather as their corporate masters dictate and more people in medical school will choose primary care again eliminating shortages, as more primary care physicians are available reduce reimbursement to EDs and close a bunch down and open urgent care centers instead. Major tort reform, and not just for healthcare (this by the way is the biggest stimulus that could be done for the US economy at $0 cost to the tax payer). We already have all the medical infrastructure in place, more specialists, MRIs and CTs per capita than anywhere else so we wouldn't experience the long wait lists and frankly substandard care that exists for emergent cases in Canada and the UK. They do a great job with preventative care, and well patient care, and even chronic condition care, much better than we do here in the US, but for any emergent cases they are pitiful, making people with gall stones or kidney stones wait 6 month to a year for treatment of what are very painful conditions, using decade old medicines to treat cardiac/stroke emergencies leading to documented systemic substandard care, if you have a emergency cardiac incident there is NO better place than the US. At least 40c of every $ we spend on healthcare does not go toward providing any value to patients. We could save at least 20c of that with the changes outlines above and cover everyone with at least as good no hassle, preventative, and well patient care as the UK and Canada while still providing the much higher standard of emergent and in patient care that patients currently receive in the US. http://www.pnhp.org/
I don't want free health care. I want reasonable health care. The only thing worse than socialized universal health care is what we have in the US.
It worked AWESOME in Cuba until the late 1990's due to the crisis after the Soviet Union death. While it worked.................it provided 5 star healthcare for 11 million cubans