Only as far as the government stays out.
Answered By: Randa - 9/8/2009 |
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It has nothing to do with health care. It has everything to do with life style and choices.
Answered By: joe d - 9/8/2009 |
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Mais oui.
However, you're addressing people who think good health care runs on freedom power. Facts, and logic--these things are but inconvenient tools of the enemy.
Answered By: Sakata Gintoki - 9/8/2009 |
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I can't afford healthcare, so I doubt we have the greatest healthcare in the world.
Answered By: Montreal SOS - 9/8/2009 |
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Quality of care is probably some of the best you'll get in the world. But the health care SYSTEM's about as messed up as you'll get.
Answered By: Kang....or Kodos? - 9/8/2009 |
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America does have the best health care in the world. The problem is, we have the worst system of paying for it.
It doesn't matter how good the care is, we can't afford it anymore. It is time to bring the insurance companies to the table to compromise. If they will not, then it is time to bring them to heel.
Answered By: Michael P in NJ - 9/8/2009 |
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There are great fares available to Japan right now.
Answered By: truth hurts u - 9/8/2009 |
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~~sigh~~
Like others have said, we do have the best healthcare in the world. The financial side is screwed up and needs fixing. Otherwise...we're the best.
BTW,
I've quoted why our infant mortality is higher--- including how other countries deliver their stats to the WHO....it's also because it's high risk infants get conceived and brought to term in the first place in the US--- by equally high risk mothers.
The rest is debatable bunk.
Answered By: EssieLou - 9/8/2009 |
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That's because the insurance companies do such a great job of administration. 20?f health care costs in the US go to administrative costs. Compare that with those inefficiently run government systems like France 5?r Japan 3?
Answered By: wyldfyr - 9/8/2009 |
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America doesn't have the best health care in the world. Not even close.
We are 50th in life expectancy. Someone lied.
Answered By: Rico Trump - 9/8/2009 |
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It's the best care in the world for some people. For the uninsured and underinsured, not even close. Single payer works in Canada and the UK; it covers everyone and it's cheaper than our system
Answered By: Charlie B - 9/8/2009 |
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He's a c****e get him lynch him before he infects someone!!!
Everything you have said is completely factual but unfortunately people don't have to base their opinions on facts.. Irrational fear of anything socialised is far more logical.
The fact that you have socialised libraries, fire departments, schools and when you think about even armed forces [the one thing America is world #1 at] seems to completely evade these people.
The world has changed, populations have grown, resources have diminshed, manufacturing has shifted overseas.. You have to adapt to these new variables or you will become relics of another fallen empire.
Answered By: Mike - 9/8/2009 |
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Right on! What most conservatives don't get is that medical care is already a tax on society by the insurance companies. People that have employee sponsored medical coverage today may contribute $1,000 to $2,000 a year for it but in 10 years, you will be paying $10,000 to $20,000 for it based on the current cost trend.
Obama is trying to "bend the cost curve" so that medical care stops increasing at a rate of 6-8?er year, which is 2-3x the inflation rate of most other goods and services.
Answered By: Howie - 9/8/2009 |
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If you are rich, you can FIND the best healthcare in the world here. However, if you are not rich, the American system suffers from many faults. If you are poor, forget about it, we have the worst system ever.
Answered By: Colby F - 9/8/2009 |
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We have the best schooling and technologies available but the implementation is among the worst. Too many hands out.
All an insurance company is is a middleman. Cut out the middleman, and we can afford decent healthcare.
Since when was our biggest need "affordable health insurance". what we need is affordable health CARE.
Answered By: PJTPA - 9/8/2009 |
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Ha, thats funny, its true, but funny.
Hannity can say what ever he wants to say. His viewers dont care to check on the facts. Thats why he's still in business.
The media runs the Repuglicans.
Answered By: El Danny! - 9/8/2009 |
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1. pls read the arbitrary criteria selected by WHO
2. you need to be certain that the definitions of infant mortality are the same in the countries being compared -- they usually aren't
3. life expectancy isn't about medical care -- it is about choosing healthy life styles. America, with its relatively high rates of obesity [#1 in the world], drunk driving, tobacco, violence, and illegal drugs has life style issues.
4. ya -- 750,000. population is 300m. care is much cheaper in second and third world countries if cost is important and transportation is cheap.
5. insurers do not deny care -- they deny payment. providers may deny care if they aren't going to be paid and it isn't an ER case.
6. if the rich do not pay for treatments when they are new and very expensive, how will they ever become well known and reasonably priced?
7. still, 1/2 of all drug research is done in America. Since we are far from 1/2 the world economy, or even 1/2 the first world's portion of the economy, those other countries aren't paying their fair share.
8. yup. a big dose of quality control engineering would probably do providers good. on the other hand, Medicare lost an estimated $60 billion to fraud in 2008 alone. So, the government probably isn't going to be the source of improved quality, are they?
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High taxes provide the resources Japan uses. You have to decide what price, and therefore what drag on upward mobility and opportunity, you think is worth the amount your plan will cost.
Preventive care shortage? go visit Honduras or any second world country. ordinary people do not get preventive care there of the variety you think 'necessary'. they do get care -- which they pay for. systems are intentionally set up so that medical care is delivered more cheaply. [example: pharmacists may dispense most drugs without prescription -- when patient has had same condition for a while and knows what he needs, why does doctor need to get paid for being a gatekeeper?]
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Just throwing more money at a system, as the Dems bills want to do, does not make the system work any better. You have to have proper system investigation, design, and engineering, even at the level of a whole society, to get better results.
None of the bills i've seen offers any evidence of proper systems work.
Answered By: Spock (rhp) - 9/8/2009 |
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More of a comment on than an answer to your question.
Why do so many Americans think it's socialist to have a national (federal I suppose you'd say) health care system? They don't think that having national armed forces is socialist I bet? Having a healthy population is good for the economy surely (point 8 above applies perhaps?)
Also, in most countries where there is a national health service, the people don't get it for nothing. They pay into a 'national insurance scheme' (in the UK for example) when they're in work.
And yes, to take your point 5 above; people who are so keen to have private medicine need to hope they're 'insurable', that is they haven't got any major complaint or illness which would be too expensive or risky for the insurance companies!
Answered By: Lorro - 9/8/2009 |
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1. That statistic is bogus. Right at the top of the WHO page on that it says that it is too difficult with way to many variables for the WHO to get an accurate reading on healthcare ranking and therefore it will never do it again. As a result that statistic is outdated (it's 9 years old for crying out loud) and unaccurate to begin with. Try to at least use accurate facts when making an argument.
2. Once again, there are alot of factors that contribute to infant mortality rates. The biggest is economic status. Meaning, the poorest of our country have the highest infant mortality rates. The poorest of our country already have access to government run insurance. It tends to be the result of people CHOOSING not to take advantage of the healthcare system. The highest cause of infant mortality in the US is sudden infant death syndrome. Something medical intervention often can't prevent, is directly related to sleep positioning and smoking in the home, not to our medical system on whole. You need to dig deeper.
3. Once again, there are many variables in terms of life expectancy. The US has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world. That's thanks to our dependence in large part on fast food chains and highly processed foods. We are also number one on the list of countries in terms of cocaine abuse and extremely high in other areas of drug abuse. We're up there in terms of smokers as well. We have one of the highest rates of drunk driving related deaths.
Point, much of this points to lifestyle choices in the US. Societal norms are different here, more lax in many cases, and that directly effects our life expectancy rate. Lifestyle, not healthcare system.
4. Did you bother to try and find how many people travel TO the US for healthcare each year? A January 19, 2008, article in The Globe And Mail states, "More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here. Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care." That's just from one spring, in one year, in Canada alone. 100,000 (Yes that many) British citizens seek healthcare abroad each year. That's just Britain. Compare Britains total population 60,943,912 to US population 304,059,724 and you'll find that the percentage of people seaking healthcare abroad between Britain and the US alone is nearly the same. They have socialized medicine, so what's your argument again? And that's taking into account the fact that you skewed the statistics to the highend. It's estimated to be between 500,000 and 750,000. The more likely scenario is more than 500,000 but LESS than 750,000 each year. If we took it at 600,000 traveling abroad our rates would be LESS than that in England. That's not even getting started into those that come from India, China, South America....geezus.
5. Yes, that's a problem. But, that's a problem in countries with socialized care too. It's not that they are only accused of having it, they actually do have that problem. Not to mention the fact that we would continue to have that problem under Obama's plan. He and his administration have admitted to that.
6. If the wealthy are coming HERE for their healthcare, then it means that those who can afford to get out of their systems are doing so. Those that are trapped in their systems cannot get out. What does it tell you about the quality of care when those that have a choice choose to come here? If their system was wonderful and their healthcare was great, why would they travel here when given the opportunity?
7.Yes, and so does the US. Of the top ranked hospitals in the world, the US dominates the top 33. We have all of the top 5.
8. Medical mishaps happen here, yes. But they also happen every where else as well. It's at a level in Britain where in the National Hospitals there are more deaths due to infection from unclean hospital environments than from car accidents every year. Canada, with it's socialized medicine and much much smaller population reports a similar number of healthcare mishaps each year to America by a rate of 30?o 34?
Again, Japan doesn't take care of everyone. Their care is rationed as well. People are still denied care there. Granted our system isn't perfect but it's a sad myth that's come about here lately that the socialized systems are perfect. In fact, socialized systems report much the same problems and concerns that the US reports What we need to do is work on fixing the errors within the system we have not completely throw out our system for a whole new set of problems and at the cost of more than a TRILLION dollars.
Answered By: greenjellybean - 9/8/2009 |
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