Is access to health care a basic human right: or a privilege?

[Gold Dragon]

How in the world can you consider tort reform to be "government interference"? It means changing to a "loser pay" system. And it is achievable, seeing that it's been achieved in Georgia, California, and Texas already.

Most tort reform proposals aim to reduce the number and payout sizes for medical malpractice suits using legislative means. One way to look at that is the government interfering with a "free market" in the legal world to determine which suits have merit and how much compensation should be given.

Some of the hostility you're experiencing from certain posters in this thread could be because you're some Canadian living in Australia criticizing the American healthcare system, when your countries could use a little reform themselves. Physician, heal thyself.

I have admitted in my first posts how all systems have their pros and cons and can be improved. I think more privatization will help with the wait times issues in canada and the U.K. In Australia, the current Liberal administration (which is the right wing party - don't get me started) is trying to privatize more and more of the public system. While I can see the benefit of some of these changes, especially with regard to trying to manage costs, it can get to a point where it threatens the universality of medical care. I think there is a healthy debate on this issue in the country.

I haven't really suggested any ways to change the us system. I just highlighted some of the problems I see and ask what private options exist to improve them and question how viable those options are.

I would think all of us want to improve our health care systems and sometimes the best way is to see what has worked and hasn't worked in the past or in other places. Sometimes it is being open to completely different ways of doing health care.

 

[Revmitchell]

RevMitchell, I'm impressed that you attempted to address these individually. There are hundreds of other reasons for expensive health care in addition to the ones I listed off the top of my head. If your approach to affordable health care is to tackle all of them, I don't see how your solution will ever produce an affordable health care system without significant government intervention and likely several decades if not centuries of time. In the meantime, people need quality health care today.



I don't really agree with your reasoning and approaches to any of these. But even if I did, I don't see much in the way of a solution that is achieveable in the real world. Wishing there were no poor people and that these costs can be reduced with ideology will not make it happen.



Risk of litigation is something that can easily be reduced. The rest of the world has significantly reduced medical indemnity fees compared to the US. But of course government intervention in the form of tort reform is needed. Of the things you mentioned, this is something actually achieveable.

When I say a non government resolution what I means is not having the tax payers pay endlessly into other people's health care. That is never a workable solution.

 

[Revmitchell]

Try telling that to a black man pre- and even post-Civil Rights Act.

You really don't get the concept of privilege, do you? Wow, just.. .wow

sigh, there is no privilege. Everyone faces discrimination and everyone faces difficulties.

 

[FollowTheWay]

Healthcare costs have been skyrocketing ever since all those technological advances in medicine early last century. All of a sudden, all these diseases (polio, diphtheria, etc) became treatable and then it went from there. Insurance companies came along and started offering these health plans but at retirement age, they were very expensive and those people were the ones that actually needed healthcare. Thus, Medicare was born in the US.

Truman tried to get single-payer through but the AMA threw a fit. Medicaid is a totally different thing, it came along back when Medicare did but the states have always had an opt-out/experimental feature to Medicaid, unlike Medicare.

Come to think of it, Obamacare does have actually fascist elements to it, it's just a marriage of insurance and government. It has proven to be a huge disappointment, but even states like Vermont can't play around with single-payer because the costs are at least double for the entire state's budget. And when you push it by some ballot initiative (Colorado 69, Oregon 23), it goes down in flames.

If you take enough mathematics, you realize that some problems have no solution. Maybe keep Medicare/Medicaid, do some tort reform, issue vouchers? Also need to rein in private insurance companies, they are making a killing with Obamacare and before that.

Interesting that all other industrialized nations and many 3rd world countries have found a solution but mighty America cannot. Doesn't that tell you something? The problem is with those that have opposed a different approach (the GOP and the big money) and with the large companies with an interest in not improving our current morass. BTW, there are no fascist elements in Obamacare. if you believe that then you have to argue that the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc. are all fascist countries.

 

[FollowTheWay]

When I say a non government resolution what I means is not having the tax payers pay endlessly into other people's health care. That is never a workable solution.

It works for other countries.

 

[FollowTheWay]

Socialized medicine, which you are advocating, is about government control. Liberty and free markets, which I am advocating are not, and are not, by any definition, "fascist". Now, are you able to answer the question or not?

You're supporting what has proven to be a failed system. I'm advocating what has been demonstrated to work in all. of the developed world except here.Name-calling is not an answer.

 

[Revmitchell]

It works for other countries.

No it doesn't

 

[Gold Dragon]

When I say a non government resolution what I means is not having the tax payers pay endlessly into other people's health care.

Fair enough. Maybe we can continue this discussion in another thread when this one closes.

My other point stands though. How can you tackle all the reasons that make health care expensive and people poor to deliver an affordable health care system sometime this millennia with privately funded health care and (if I understand you correctly) temporary public funding until the poor can somehow become unpoor by trying harder not to be poor.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

This thread is closed.

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