The Canadian news is painting America as raving lunatics smashing shit and calling in death threats because of Health Care reform. I hope this is just bullshit news sensationalism?
Universal health care is available in every industrialized country in the world. Yes, all of them.
The stereotype of americans yelling “We’re number one!” comes to mind. Instead of reverting back to barbarism and being out of step with the entire planet, why not work hard to be number one in health care?
I find it sad that America is so far behind in healthcare… I live in Canada, won’t go into too much detail, but I lost the rock in my life last year to cancer and if we lived in the states, I would be completely homeless right now with having to pay for all the treatments we went through.
America needs a change, too bad the money makers don’t really have their peoples best interests in heart.
Yeah indeed a good thing that everyone get’s healthcare in the USA , It is a basic right .
I was blown away when seeing Michael Moore’s docu 'sicko 'a coule of years ago .
The problem with what was just implemented in the US is that instead of providing a public, single payer system, the bill that was just passed forces everyone in the US to pay for health insurance by penalty of fine. The part that got left out was the public option, which Obama has promised is on the way… but until then, they’re doing nothing but reward the very same criminals that have been causing the problem in the first place. American health insurance companies are notorious for not paying out on claims, and running all the way to the bank with people’s money. The new fine for not paying out? $100 a day… significantly less than it would cost to fund a dying cancer patient’s treatment until the day the patient dies.
So that’s why people are pissed off… both republicans and democrats. Nobody wants to be forced to pay for a system that doesn’t work.
It’s been real quiet, the old people could however be up to something, possibly planning a Drugstore Cowboy en masse.
I really haven’t seen anything out of place though.
Honestly, I kind of see all of this as helping medical herb find a stable foot hold into american society, it’s really gaining momentum.
I completely agree with byte-smasher. I live in the USA and the only reason I don’t already have health insurance is that I can’t afford it. Now I have to pay for it regardless. WTF! This whole system is screwed up. American public was so against a universal socialized healthcare system, often retartedly referring to it as some sort of communistic evil. I’m so sick of people and politicians in the US constantly mixing socialism and communism up. Not to mention it’s not like the US doesn’t already have socialized systems that work, and the fact that most 1st World nations have a socialized healthcare system that as far as I’ve seen kicks ass. Even Cuba has a socialized healthcare system. Yes, the USA’s dreaded little communist neighbor has socialized healthcare. The politicians in this country do not give a crap about its people unless they are in the multi-millionaire bracket and up.
How expensive is private health insurance? And what would be the insurance subscription if everybody is obliged to collaborate?
No such system should be put into action if there aren’t compensation manners for those who cannot afford it.
We have this system here, given the fact that you have to pay the basic amount. But because it is obliged, the fee’s can be kept fairly low.
And for those who don’t have the required income, there is a financial compensation to overcome this.
The system is not perfect though:
One problem that we have here is that the commercial insurance market has to run the show which doesn’t make the prices that low unfortunately.
Some insurance companies try to lower the price by offering collaboration sales (the more people that join the subscription, the lower the monthly fee).
Another problem is that the compensation measure brings in a lot of administrative paperworks plus if you guessed your yearly income too low, you have to pay back in the end, so there is too much money-shifting involved and too much formalitive overhead in this stuff. This compensation also costs money and is frankly a waste of money.
Then there is the health-care itself which has been commercialized over the past decade and the results were budgetting and cutting balances to the disadvantage of the health-care company’s clients.
What i find annoying most of all, there are two sources used to cover the expenses:deduction from your salary and you afterwards have to pay a fee from your paycheck. If everybody is working, no real problem, but not everybody is working so there is no deduction for this group, yet there is compensation because they are unemployed. So i have the idea i’m covering mostly the expense of those who can’t and i’m hardly sick, a fact for which i’m not rewarded either so in certain ways. And that for health-care providers who deliver worse quality of service than the sleezy pizza deliverer around my corner.
I’ve seen the health-care system in Russia… it may look poor, the buildings look like you even never would like to be found dead there and their specialties are divided across different parts in the city (Moscow has several hospitals:if you break your legs, they can’t treat you in just every hospital for that) , but these doctors know surprisingly well what they are doing unlike here in the Netherlands.
Obama has never promised a public option, he has explicitly - and repeatedly - said that a public option is the best system in his opinion but that Americans aren’t ready to accept it so it can’t be a reality yet.
This is where competition theoretically kicks in: if healthy individuals are obligated to buy health insurance, they theoretically are going to punish the companies that screw their friends by buying their health insurance from other companies. One of the rules in the new package is that health insurance companies will now - like propert/casualty companies already do - have to make public the ratio of claims paid to premiums collected. So at least consumers will be able to verify that the company they select is not pocketing the money, if they buy cheap insurance then they know they’re getting shitty coverage.
As someone who is in a “pre-existing condition” family, I’m really, really happy about this legislation. It boils down to this: my wife has a serious medical condition which requires very expensive treatments. In 2010, her safety is entirely reliant on a business decision made by my boss. If he decides that health insurance is something he doesn’t want to pay for, she will die. By 2014, it will be possible for me to purchase health insurance on the open market… it might be expensive, but I will be able to keep her alive.
There’s a lot of people out there that thing it’s unfair that healthy people should have to underwrite the costs of sick people. I have two responses to that: #1 is “Fuck you, what kind of asshole thinks that way?” and #2 is “Hahahaha, you’re a dumbass if you think you’re going to be healthy your whole life or that your job is secure.” No one is safe.
The idea is that if you make those people who don’t have work healthy, that they’ll be able to contribute to the workforce. You don’t get rewarded by insurance either if you don’t crash your car… but you have to pay it anyway. Just think what would happen if you had a freak heart attack and you had no way to pay for heart surgery. The “reward” that you get is it being there when you need it. As for your shitty hospitals, that’s just an indication to me that your government needs to start taking a tiny bit more in taxes to drastically improve the services. People should start complaining.
That’s all good to hear. I didn’t realize the companies would be forced to become more transparent by providing info on their payout ratio, and I definitely didn’t realize that you couldn’t purchase insurance on the open market… that’s just freakin crazy. Sounds like it’s not as bad a plan as I’d figured. Ideally though, having a public option for those who want it would still be best.
Well, it is the least of my concerns, i may get unemployed as well. I should have perhaps given that thought more nuances.
That my friend, is what most Dutch insurance companies do have and it is called no-claim discount. The less accidents you cause, the less subscription-fee you have to pay each year. And you build this up each year you drive crashfree.
Our government already takes a lot of taxes, but does not spend it on the health system because the health-system is being commerciallized and made an open market. That is what i consider wrong and lots of opposition parties in our government agree that it’s wrong. But the coalition parties simply pressed matters through without listening.
In one way our government tries to reduce the mass amounts of money pharmacists, doctors and surgeons receive and try to tone down the pharmaceutical industry, which i think is fair, but it goes at the expense of the quality of the material and expertise of the specialists.
The commercial insurance companies forces the health-system to use the cheapest solutions in medicine and other treatment forms.
Pharmacists going broke because their income going down at a very fast pace simply because an alternative product that gets delivered by India costs 8 euro’s per packages whereas the US variant used to cost 80 euro’s.
It is not as simple to explain how this stuff completely works, but at my job, i’m in the middle of these people working in this sector.
In general the government retreats itself slowly from financing the health-care system each year more. Eventually the whole health-care system has to turn into an open market somewhere around 2015 or 2020 where insurance companies dictate what the health-system supposed to do and what to use.
And that all supposed to become a self-regulating system.
I hope that won’t be true since insurance companies are a$$holes.
Insurance companies should deal with stuff that doesn’t have a possible leathal impact.
E.g. water leak fine, car issurance fine, saving people from cancer no, dealing with criminals no.
Would someone like the police or fire departments to be handled by insurance companies ?
-Na that house isn’t insured by us, you need to call the other fire department.
I’m definately for capitalism but there is a flaw with capitalism just as with every -ism.
That is by the very concept of capitalism you have to earn more every year, more profit than the year before and so on.
Some basic service areas doesn’t fit this model and so it need to deviate from it.
What is amazing, you can see this in every country, is that some think one idea is the perfect idea or the perfect order.
Or at least they try to make you think this is the perfect idea/order.
As with everything there is NOTHING that is perfect.
Once you realize that you will understand that you get screwed in X but you gain in Y.
Then suddenly you gain in X but loose in Y because you went through event Z.
What you can argue about is how those systems are implemented and used, not the need for them (IMO of course).
I live in Sweden with LOTS of taxes and maybe not the worlds best health system.
But at least I don’t have to worry about cost of surgery when needed.
Ohh, I work for an american company, so I’m not anti-american or any crap like that
I know… currently there is already an “own risk” level of 150 euro’s. If you consider yourself healthy you can raise this bar to 650 euro’s and save yourself some 30 euro’s subscription fee.
It is the only sort of “reward” you can apply to your monthly subscription fee.
But for whatever happens, the first 650 euro’s you have to shell out yourself then in that case.
