Health Insurance

[Artful D0dger]

That's garbage man. Canada's average wait time for surgery is more than 18 weeks I promise. Three months for MRIs is realistic though. If your wife's sister got her surgery in 4 months it was probably deemed "urgent".

France, Norway, and Denmark all have decent healthcare, but those guys are paying half their income or more, and almost NO medical/bio innovations come out of there. Whenever the government gets involved in providing something, the price goes up and the quality goes down. We need something which addresses the costs of health care. Subsidizing part of med school debt? Importing more doctors( and not ones from Africa, the Carribean, or Belize)? Tort reform? All the above?

Quote from tomdavis:

A national healthcare system only works if you cap costs. When you cap costs, you end up with rationing. My wife's sister lives in Canada. She badly injured her knee in a car accident. She had to wait three months for an MRI and an additional four months for surgery. She was in excruciating pain and had to take strong pain killers. After seven months of pain pills, she was addicted to painkillers and she had to go through treatment for that problem. Now she's finding out that seven months of painkillers caused kidney damage. What a nightmare.

The following article says that wait time for surgery in Canada is over 18 weeks.

http://www.canada.com/health/Surgical+wait+times+increase+Canada/3933033/story.html

Come up with a way to control costs that doesn't result in severe rationing and the entire country will support a national healthcare system.

 

[omegapoint]

Quote from Mercor:

Why care what the CEO makes? It has zero effect on service provided, the amount of money paid is a very small percent of company revenue.
These companies pay more per year for office supplies then for top managment.
The issues are all in your head.

Whats been planted in your head is the boogey man that
even the notion of socialism or government can't run any-
thing surrenders families budgets over to middleman health
care insurance companies. I don't care what name you
give it, lower my premiums and my employers by any means
necessary.

 

[Vinny1]

Quote from bpcnabe:

Or...go to Mexico, get a Mexican passport (will probably sell it to you for a song) slip across the border into California, check into a hospital under your new "Vicente" alias, have your kid, then just stiff the rest of us with the bill!

That is a brilliant idea actually.

 

[Vinny1]

Quote from AK Forty Seven:

If we had a public option/medicare option we could have told the insurance companies to fuck themselves and bought into the public /medicare option

Thanks republicans and 7 or 8 blue dog democrats !!!!

Plus we could have all made some nice money buying puts on the health insurance company stocks.

 

[Debaser82]

Quote from Vinny1:

$1,000 to have a baby is very cheap. What country are you from?

Someone should make a documentary film about different countries' costs for various medical procedures compared to the U.S.

Would you happen to know if a U.S. tourist goes to a hospital in Europe for an emergency, do they have to treat you, even if they know the tourist won't pay the bill?

I live in Belgium and I only commented on this thread because I was at a dinner party last week where this woman who just gave birth said she found it outrageous it costs 1K to give birth in a hospital.

How are poor people supposed to pay for this she said?

Don't know on policy concerning threatment of foreigners or tourists, not in my country nor in other European countries as they can differ quite a lot among each other.

Ofcource nothing is free, the cheap healthcare comes with a price like very high taxes. Then again we don't have capital gain taxes just to point out there are many sides to the story and wheter or not one would be better of living in Spain, Belgium, Thailand or the US pretty much depends on ones personal situation I would think.

 

[tomdavis]

When kids are young they're inexpensive. Watch what happens as they get older and get involved in more activities. Costs will increase dramatically. I'm speaking from experience. I have a 10 year old and 13 year old. It also depends on what kind of experiences you want your kids to have. I want mine to experience art, music, science and the world at the highest educational levels possible. That costs money. My younger daughter has a learning disability. She needs tutors. That costs money. Part of her therapy is dance and music lessons. That costs money. My older daughter is a great soccer player and plays on a club team that travels to tournaments. That costs money. And on and on...

Quote from Vinny1:

It doesn't cost $10k per year to raise a child. I have a 3 year old girl and it costs us about $2,500 per year for food for her and $500 for clothes and that is it. She gets gifts from other family members. She will be going to public school where it is free. Do you really think that poor people are spending $10k per year per child? Some of them have 5 kids and they are not spending $50k per year for all of them.

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from omegapoint:

...or government can't run any-
thing...

They can't, not without fucking it up.

 

[omegapoint]

Quote from Lucrum:

They can't, not without fucking it up.

And the private sector never fucks up anything right!

 

[Mercor]

Quote from omegapoint:

And the private sector never fucks up anything right!

When the private sector fucks up you can either choose a different company and/or sue the company that caused the harm.

When the goverment fucks up, you have no other choice and you are not allowed to sue.

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from omegapoint:

And the private sector never fucks up anything right!

I didn't say that. Its just that our overly intrusive, bloated, incompetent federal government fucks up nearly everything they get get involved with, and they fuck it more thoroughly and at a higher cost to tax payers than the private sector.