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Sicko Revisited: What do other countries have to teach us about healthcare?
- Thread starter godnotgod
- Start date
godnotgod
Thou art That
Just a friendly point, but posting a 2 hour video without any other context or commentary is hardly a good basis for any kind of discussion.
That's your opinion. Mine is that it's an excellent basis for discussion in terms of the topic. It's open-ended without my commentary. It's to inform people that the US is not everything it's cracked up to be, and that we lie about health care in other countries as being inferior to ours, when the opposite is the case.
Of course, anyone can comment re: the topic without watching the video.
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Regiomontanus
Ματαιοδοξία ματαιοδοξιών! Όλα είναι ματαιοδοξία.
Hello. Our health care system, while the best in the world for those that can afford it, is broken and poorly designed.
Imagine you had never known anything about our current system (USA). You were assigned the task of creating a system from scratch that would provide everyone with healthcare. Who would create anything like the system we have now? Private insurance companies (the more treatment they deny, the more profit they make)? Why the middleman?
IMHO, profiting on disease and suffering is evil. Irrational and simply wrong.
Peace
Altfish
Veteran Member
Hi from the UK
Our health system is free to use and funded by general taxation, the National Health Service (NHS). In general it is good, it is not perfect and can be bureaucratic and unwieldy at times but I wouldn't want a solely private system.
We do have private medical care that is usually funded by employers with an employee contribution, so you can in theory 'fast track' your care. But usually you have to ask to be referred by the local general practitioner. Not everyone has this. I do, but have never used it.
I've used the NHS system a few times in the last 5-years and it has been excellent, problems with ears and I had specialist treatment and a minor operation plus post care monitoring.
I then managed to dislocate my thumb when I slipped on ice last winter; it was treated with a couple of hours at our local A&E and then I was sent for follow up treatment to help me get mobility back.
All free!
Our health system is free to use and funded by general taxation, the National Health Service (NHS). In general it is good, it is not perfect and can be bureaucratic and unwieldy at times but I wouldn't want a solely private system.
We do have private medical care that is usually funded by employers with an employee contribution, so you can in theory 'fast track' your care. But usually you have to ask to be referred by the local general practitioner. Not everyone has this. I do, but have never used it.
I've used the NHS system a few times in the last 5-years and it has been excellent, problems with ears and I had specialist treatment and a minor operation plus post care monitoring.
I then managed to dislocate my thumb when I slipped on ice last winter; it was treated with a couple of hours at our local A&E and then I was sent for follow up treatment to help me get mobility back.
All free!
same thing here in Italy
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
Nobody is going to watch a 2 hour video on spec so you might as well just post “Healthcare: Discuss!”. All you’re going to get (and already are) is recycling of the same generic points, which typically turns in to pointless nationalist and political slanging matches. You’re only going to get anything meaningful and interesting on this topic (and most other) with focus and detail.
Altfish
Veteran Member
How is an operation on my ear and a replacing of my dislocated thumb 'generic'?
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
I’m not attacking you as such and largely agree with your overall point but there’s nothing special about the “I had X treatment under Y healthcare system and it was good” (or indeed “… and it was terrible”) stories. There are literally billions of people who will have received treatment under all sorts of different systems, having variously good, bad, indifferent or vastly mixed experiences. None of that really tells us anything about the actual pros and cons of any specific healthcare system or any of the underlying principles behind them.
It’s a bit like the “My grandad smoked 50-a-day and he lived to 97 so it can’t be bad for you!” arguments.
Altfish
Veteran Member
You might as well delete the thread then - unless you just want to quote government statisticsI’m not attacking you as such and largely agree with your overall point but there’s nothing special about the “I had X treatment under Y healthcare system and it was good” (or indeed “… and it was terrible”) stories. There are literally billions of people who will have received treatment under all sorts of different systems, having variously good, bad, indifferent or vastly mixed experiences. None of that really tells us anything about the actual pros and cons of any specific healthcare system or any of the underlying principles behind them.
It’s a bit like the “My grandad smoked 50-a-day and he lived to 97 so it can’t be bad for you!” arguments.
Our healthcare system is really a mess. But the thing is, it's not even consistent with its own free-market principles. For example, the idea of having to have a prescription or the idea of "controlled substances" goes against the principles of the free market, so if they're not going to be consistent with their own principles, they should abandon them.
I also think that it should be more consistent with principles of justice. So, for example, if an insurance company denies a claim and a patient dies, whichever company employee denied the claim should be held individually accountable - and possibly even charged with manslaughter. It would be no different than if someone's malice or negligence caused someone else's death.
There also appears to be a supply-and-demand problem with too few doctors on the market. Medical schools should be required to triple or even quadruple their enrollment and start training and graduating more medical practitioners. They should also fast-track medical education so it doesn't take too long to become a doctor.
In other words, if this country is so dedicated to free-market economics that we want to have this kind of healthcare system, then there could possibly be ways of improving it while still working within that basic economic principle. We just need to think outside the box.
I also think that it should be more consistent with principles of justice. So, for example, if an insurance company denies a claim and a patient dies, whichever company employee denied the claim should be held individually accountable - and possibly even charged with manslaughter. It would be no different than if someone's malice or negligence caused someone else's death.
There also appears to be a supply-and-demand problem with too few doctors on the market. Medical schools should be required to triple or even quadruple their enrollment and start training and graduating more medical practitioners. They should also fast-track medical education so it doesn't take too long to become a doctor.
In other words, if this country is so dedicated to free-market economics that we want to have this kind of healthcare system, then there could possibly be ways of improving it while still working within that basic economic principle. We just need to think outside the box.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
Well yes, that was kind of my point – not my call of course.
In general I feel “healthcare” is far too big an issue to address in one go, especially on an international scale. It’s the kind of area that requires a bit more specific focus on particular areas (where properly handled statistics can indeed play a valid role). I also don’t think the political basis for funding the system is actually all that significant in the wider scheme of things.
Ich, I don't like the way that the film just uncritically accepted Cuban state propaganda like that. Cuba's healthcare system is horrible, if you're not one of the elites. But by showing only the healthcare the elites gets, Cuba got to pretend through that movie like it's not a dictatorial mess.
Altfish
Veteran Member
I would argue that is the main difference in healthcare systems throughout the world.
It certainly is the obstacle to universal care in the US; even in the UK our Tory government would happily privatise the system (and to some extent are doing it by stealth) but know that they would never get voted in again if they did.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
A friend of mine bought the video and I watched it. Whether you like or dislike or have no opinion about Moore, what is covered is very thought provoking, especially since we're the only western industrialized country that doesn't have universal health care, and yet we pay more than any other country-- by far.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
I agree 100%, but then again, you cannot expect too much from Michael Moore who is the king of the shlockumentary.
I also bridle at the folks in the thread who said "It was free". Um, no, your system is NOT free. You are simply receiving care that you have already paid towards via your taxes. It's sort of like saying, "I got to drive down this road for free! Woot!" No, you ninny, you already have paid for the road via your taxes. It's hardly free.
In Canada, when I needed to go for an MRI, because my case was non-life threatening, I had to wait 15 months for a MRI test. Likewise, when I had my umbilical hernia, I had to wait over 2 years to get into surgery again, because it is based on triage and was not life-threatening. That said, I would not trade the Canadian system for the American system which is a "for profit" model. Personally, I think that making money off the backs of the sick is a teeny bit immoral and poses a potential conflict of interest.
Edit: For the record, once my number came up and I received my needed care, I have nothing but praise for the medical workers, from top to bottom. It was a wonderful experience overall.
Loviatar
Red Tory/SpongeBob Conservative
I basically agree with Altfish's posts here. What specific model you use can be debated, I prefer the Swiss (well-funded public insurance option within a competitive system) and Canadian (fully public insurance; mostly private hospitals) models to the government-run-hospitals British one for example, but public health insurance of some kind is a must. Literally anyone could have a medical emergency, the idea that this should cripple someone's family financially seems barbaric to me. It's an area of pressing social need that the market can't really cover on its own, traditionally the type of area where government steps in.
That said, a Michael Moore movie doesn't seem like the best thing to cite to make your case. He's well known for using badly selective editing, to Hollywoodize political narratives. In this movie he's less bad than he used to be in that area, but as mentioned above the picture he paints of the Cuban healthcare system is way too rosy. And he lumps the British, French, and Cuban systems together as if they're one thing and that's the thing that the left of the Democratic Party is advocating for, when really all they have in common is some kind of a public role in health provision. The left of the Democrats usually advocates something along the lines of the Canadian system, the right of it something like the Swiss system, from what I can see.
That said, a Michael Moore movie doesn't seem like the best thing to cite to make your case. He's well known for using badly selective editing, to Hollywoodize political narratives. In this movie he's less bad than he used to be in that area, but as mentioned above the picture he paints of the Cuban healthcare system is way too rosy. And he lumps the British, French, and Cuban systems together as if they're one thing and that's the thing that the left of the Democratic Party is advocating for, when really all they have in common is some kind of a public role in health provision. The left of the Democrats usually advocates something along the lines of the Canadian system, the right of it something like the Swiss system, from what I can see.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
Main difference in the systems, not the main difference in the healthcare. Within any given political/economic structure, you will find vast ranges in the actual healthcare received by patients on whatever clinical, social or even financial measure you might like to use. There are a vast range of other factors involved, some indirectly related to the system but many largely independent of it.
The systems aren’t irrelevant but I just think there is far too obsession over the “debates” between public vs private, “socialists” vs “capitalist”, US vs Europe with little or no thought about why aspects of one system might appear better or worse than in another, especially from people with literally zero understanding or insight in to how any of it actually works.
Altfish
Veteran Member
Well that puts me in my place.