Family Health Insurance
Dec
26
Health care plan that would work?
December 26, 2009 | 10 Comments
The countries that the Liberals quote as having better health care than the USA, DO NOT have a public health care plan.
They have private insurance companies compete. Health care premiums are progressive and income based. With heavy handed regulation on payment within 5 days and pre-exisitng conditions covered. And regulation on overhead costs.
Why hasn’t that even been proposed by the Democrats?
Do they really just want to take over 1/6 of the economy?
Maybe they can see why people are suspicious and see it for what it is.
Is that why they are trying to play the race card to end the dialogue about it?
Alot of questions I know.
Universal Health Care does not require a public option. For example, Germany and Switzerland provide Universal Health Care and there is no public option there but they spend less on health care than we do and get similar health outcomes.
Why? Their health insurance companies use a different business model than we do. They make profits on providing basic care. This gives US health insurance companies the incentive to take in payments and deny care when it can. The other health insurance companies make profits on the number of members in their plan. They have incentive on keeping their members happy. The best way to force companies to adopt that model is to introduce the public option. Blue Cross and Blue Shield once used this model.
This will not lead to government takeover of health care industry. If you believe that, you underestimate the power and creativity of capitalists. I do not play the race card and most liberal answers on health care issue do not play the race card. We play the evidence and reason card.
Comments
10 Comments so far
You make a claim and yet post no list of countries. Perhaps you are talking about Sweden and a hand full of others where the health care is provided by non-profit private companies but under strict regulations. You’re right almost all of the others do not have ‘a public health care plan’, they have a universal health care (i.e. single payer system).
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The best thing they could do to make health care more affordable would be to make the loser of frivolous law suits pay for both sides expenses, but libtards wont do that. THe trial lawyers union was the DNC’s biggest contributor.
And the fact is that NO COUNTRY HAS BETTER HEALTH CARE THAN THE US. There are some dolts who have never been out of their own burg that make that claim, but they are just ignorant.
1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.
3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries. Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit from statin drugs, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease, are taking them. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons, and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
4. Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:
* Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
* Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.
* More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).
* Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).
5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”
6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”
8. Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).
9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.
10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.
Hey voice, why dont you get a job and get your own health insurance. Obama cant be your daddy your whole life.
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http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525427.html
Yes they do have a public option.
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Not true. France has a public health care system financed through payroll deductions and charges and the general fund. Health care pros either work for a government entity or privately but all is linked to the centralized health insurance and payment system. It IS BETTER than all the other systems especially the rip off private stuff in the USA.
Why doesn’t America just slap a 1% sales tax on everything to help finance the plan so that people can get affordable unrestricted health care? That would solve the issue in a minute.
Gissmo, I do work and pay taxes. I am not a resident of the states. Please stay away from stupid assumptions about me and silly statistics that prove nothing. I see you never mentioned France where health care is far better than in the USA. I have lived in both systems ? You?
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there is enough wealth and technology in existence right this very moment for the entire population of the earth to live in luxury.
Get rid of the evil leaders and replace them with kind hearted individuals and all will be well.
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The us has a health care plan run by the gov.its called medicare part a and b also Medicaid.if you don’t qualify buy your own.
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The problem with comparing the U.S. to other countries is that it overlooks the basic problem with ANY government involvement with health care in America: It isn’t Constitutional.
I don’t care to discuss what works in other countries, I am far more concerned about preserving the Constitution than any other aspect of this issue.
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All that Gissimo says is correct except that the facts he states only apply to the fortunate Americans who have coverage. What about the person earning minimum wage who can’t afford health insurance or the family with an insurance coverage that only covers well-care visits? People may be happy with their coverage as it stands today, but what will we do in a few years when money is no longer available to supplement health care? Coverage should be available to all and a health care reform bill is the only way to make it a reality. It’s time we all started to think about others instead of just ourselves.
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Universal Health Care does not require a public option. For example, Germany and Switzerland provide Universal Health Care and there is no public option there but they spend less on health care than we do and get similar health outcomes.
Why? Their health insurance companies use a different business model than we do. They make profits on providing basic care. This gives US health insurance companies the incentive to take in payments and deny care when it can. The other health insurance companies make profits on the number of members in their plan. They have incentive on keeping their members happy. The best way to force companies to adopt that model is to introduce the public option. Blue Cross and Blue Shield once used this model.
This will not lead to government takeover of health care industry. If you believe that, you underestimate the power and creativity of capitalists. I do not play the race card and most liberal answers on health care issue do not play the race card. We play the evidence and reason card.
References :
The part of the health care system that works best in the US is the care for people over 65, that is Medicare. We are more likely to die before the ages of 60 than people in countries with universal health care, but are better off if you are older. Medicare is a singly payer system that pays for 80% of most bills with only supplemental coverage provided by private insurance.
Note: Government already pays for nearly half of all medical care through various programs and out of pocket expenses is about a quarter. Many large companies self insure their employees which account for a large fraction of what is left so insurance companies pay for only are a relatively small fraction of the total cost, and not nearly 1/6 of the economy
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