Thread: Universal Health Care

Originally Posted by HuntnJade

Originally Posted by -Sauso-

found this interesting....and might as well put it in this thread.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Tex...267/story.html

Victims compensation fund? Never heard of it and if I needed to be rape tested i would gladly pay my emergency room co-pay. Why should tax payers pay for my rape test?

We taxpayers pay for every many aspects of criminal investigation carried out by the system. When some unknown gets murdered or beaten down, a forensics team runs evidence...how is this different?

I would like to throw this in just for argument's sake:
Firefighting used to be privatized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting

Originally Posted by sprite

Firefighting wouldn't be profitable in today's society, that's why it must be provided by the government.

Soy you can keep quoting those WHO stats, but you still have not addressed how the difference in obesity rates factors into those numbers. You cannot say that in a socialized system you "pay less for more", its simply not true. You have to compare two countries that have the exact same size, culture, and lifestyle to compare two different systems. That is why the stats you quoted earlier do not stand up in an argument for socialized health care.

All of the countries listed in those tables vary radically in size, economic structure, and...obesity/lifestyle choice rates. Like I said, canada has a very similar rate of smokers and drinkers as America. We do have an obesity issue, but other countries are catching up. They still pay more for less... Go look through those countries and look up their specific rates if you are interested.

They all outperform us for less cost and they all vary dramatically when compared to each other. Some are very similar to us in some ways and others in other ways...except that they pay less for better average life expectancy, lower infant mortality, etc. Hell in some countries they smoke like damn chmineys compared to Americans, but they still live longer for less cost. So saying that we are different simply due to obesity is somewhat erroneous. All of those countries have varying rates of all the factors you mentioned. Furthermore, Our obesity rate, larger than other countries, is not too far from other countries with universal healthcare. If they can succeed why can't we? I think we are better than that.

Obesity rates in Canada: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Canada
Obesity rates in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity..._United_States
As it turns out, our obesity rates are not much different...hmmm...

Originally Posted by sprite

It depends on your definition of success. Our goal shouldn't just be the number of people that have access to health care, but also the quality of that care. We should embrace a system that provides the most advanced medical care in the world. I do not see this happening under a socialized system. There have been numerous studies showing that government interference has caused problems in the medical industry. What makes you think that all the problems raised by medicare and medicaid will just disappear if the government assumes control of the whole industry?

I have said this before and I will say it again, there is no way you can say that spending on health care in this country will go down with a socialized system. There is no indication this will be the case, unless the government institutes a rationing system. I haven't seen anyone on either side of the argument in favor of such a system. So instead of quoting WHO stats, please tell me how a socialized system will reduce spending. It doesn't just happen, there has to be reasons for it. Show me HOW a socialized system will allow us to get more for less. Posting health indicators of countries with such a system is not showing how this will create the same results in the US.

So tell me then how it will not produce those results. All those countries used to have marketized systems. They do not anymore. And I call them more succesful because more people live longer and healthier under those systems. Sure we have advanced procedures; but people liver shorter and less healthy than in any of those other countries. I would say that makes them more succesful. What we see is that our system does not produce as good of results; there system does. The difference between our systems is market versus government (whether state or federally controlled). So, there must be something they are doing better than us, and with the only difference being as said above...well the variable we need to adjust seems obvious.

And as stated: Most of them include some privatized choices as well. So obviously very few are completely "socialized" and simply more regulated. Remember, no one is laizzes faire or fully regulated, it is a scale to adjust, and the evidence seems to indicate we should push our scale towards regulation a little farther...probably not a lot farther.