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What do you think about America's healthcare system?

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What are your thoughts on America's healthcare system? If you could change anything about it, would you and how?  I do not need anyone's name as we will not use it on our podcast.  I do however would like to know age, location and gender. Thank much!
Classygal1



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  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5965 Pts   -  
    It features high quality services, but is quite a bit overpriced. I would fully privatise everything and remove all regulations and entry barriers, so small companies could challenge established corporations, which, in turn, would compete with each other.

    I do not want to give away too much information, so I will just say that I am a male in late 20-s living on the Midwest.
    Plaffelvohfen
  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -  
    Well it should be judged on its merits and according to well known stats it does pretty horribly. It manages to do around the same level as other developed countries, perhaps a touch worse, but it has to spend nearly twice as much to do so.

    You're basically the only developed national without some form of universalise healthcare and it really shows as the horrible inefficiencies and layers of bureaucracy created by your capitalist set-up minimise treatment.
    We_are_accountableStoneTTB
  • @Ampersand can you provide some references to these well known stats?
  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -  
    @TruthSearcher

    Image result for healthcare percentage of gdp
    Image result for life expectancy by country
    Data from Bloombergcom httpwwwbloombergcominfographics2014-09-15most-efficient-health-care-around-the-worldhtml

    All the usual datasets like OECD, World Bank, WHO, etc confirm it. The USA pays more to get worse service because it's the only developed country that bases it's system on private healthcare. The insurance industry contributes exactly nothing of value to actually keeping people healthy and instead like any capitalist business is designed to make money and increase profits.
    Plaffelvohfen
  • Your data shows that it is expensive. I won’t challenge that, but there is a lot more that contributes to life expectancy than healthcare.  It starts with the habits of the people. The US has so much money (due to the motivation created by capitalism) that your average person can live life without the need more much physical activity. Furthermore, food is more affordable than ever so people are gorging on fat and sugar. The fact is the US has the best doctors in the world and you get what you pay for. If not for those doctors, our life expectancy would be a lot lower. The best way to lower the cost of healthcare in the US is to take better care of ourselves. 
  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -   edited February 2020
    Your data shows that it is expensive. I won’t challenge that, but there is a lot more that contributes to life expectancy than healthcare.  It starts with the habits of the people. The US has so much money (due to the motivation created by capitalism) that your average person can live life without the need more much physical activity. Furthermore, food is more affordable than ever so people are gorging on fat and sugar. The fact is the US has the best doctors in the world and you get what you pay for. If not for those doctors, our life expectancy would be a lot lower. The best way to lower the cost of healthcare in the US is to take better care of ourselves. 
    Simply saying something is a fact and providing no evidence to back that up is very different from something actually being a fact. When you state "The fact is the US has the best doctors in the world", that's not a fact; that's an opinion.

    While it's true that exercise and eating habits will have an effect on life expectancy, that's only one factor and one that is not unique to the USA as many other countries have significant incomes and plenty of food available (including unhealthy food) but rank significantly better than the UK. You can also look at the harm and mortality rate caused by the opioid crisis, largely brought about by the unique set-up of the USA's capitalist driven healthcare system where the inadequate access to care favours giving pills rather than providing clinical treatment and where pill farms will spew out prescriptions for profit.

    https://interactives.commonwealthfund.org/2017/july/mirror-mirror/ provides a good overview of the inadequacies of the US healthcare and contradicts your claims. If the US has the best doctors in the world, why doesn't it have the best healthcare outcomes when people get sick - not even in terms of overall life expectancy but rather the specific outcomes of illnesses once people get sick? And what would having the best doctors matter when most of the population wouldn't have access to those doctors anyway? 
  • Equal healthcare for all is not a desired goal. Your ability to receive from others should always systematically be tied to your contribution. This is why the US is the economic powerhouse that it is. Why should someone who hasn’t contributed to society receive a free service from someone else who spent years of their lives putting in an enormous amount of time into something.  This is fundamental. Furthermore, this system is what has attracted the best doctors from around the world which has also fueled most of the medical  advancements the rest of the world benefits from.
    PlaffelvohfenMayCaesar
  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -   edited February 2020
    Equal healthcare for all is not a desired goal. Your ability to receive from others should always systematically be tied to your contribution. This is why the US is the economic powerhouse that it is. Why should someone who hasn’t contributed to society receive a free service from someone else who spent years of their lives putting in an enormous amount of time into something.  This is fundamental. Furthermore, this system is what has attracted the best doctors from around the world which has also fueled most of the medical  advancements the rest of the world benefits from.
    The first line of the constitution literally spells out that the constitution is in place to "promote the general welfare" and provision of healthcare is literally spelt out as a right in the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights.

    Your thinking is very 19th century and seems to and coming from someone who has surely benefited immensely from other people's contributions without contributing anything of your own immensely hypocritical. It's also obvious you're not after a serious argument because you go straight to castigating the unemployed when a huge amount of working americans are actually in the same boat of being unable to afford adequate healthcare and get normal access - but rather than actually address the issue you try and vilify the poorest people in society.

    Also to turn it on its head, why should society allow people to have vastly sums of wealth unless we structure society in such a way that their wealth benefits the entire community? We don't allow people to get rich our of some general philosophical principle of liking rich people, we do it because it's meant to help the country as a whole. if that doesn't happen and wealth, resources and services are hoarded away from normal working people then what is the benefit to allowing the accumulation of large amount of wealth.

    Really the fact that you're basically now arguing that having a bad healthcare system is actually good because you don't want to deliver good healthcare to everyone is in and of itself an effective denunciation of your entire position.
    Plaffelvohfen
  • Yeh, that's why Canadians come to America, when they need surgery in a timely fashion, before dying on a waiting list.

    Socialist nations with universal healthcare do not protect the world with a very expensive military, as does America. We can not afford free healthcare for everyone.@Ampersand
    Plaffelvohfen
  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -  
    @We_are_accountable

    Literally every single other developed nation in the world is able to offer universal healthcare and as shown with evidence, having non-universal healthcare is actually more expensive and costs the US money. If the USA switched to universal healthcare it'd have more money to "protect the world" (good job there btw).

    Also US companies have started flying sick employees to Mexico because the cost of flying them there, giving them spending money, hiring someone to look oversee them and get them treated is more efficient then just trying to get healthcare normally in the USA: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/utah-cuts-healthcare-costs-flying-employees-mexico-prescription-drugs
    We_are_accountablePlaffelvohfen
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @We_are_accountable

    **** Socialist nations with universal healthcare do not protect the world with a very expensive military, as does America

    Ha , Ha ,” you’re protecting the world now “ how do you go about that when a bunch of emaciated rice farmers kicked you’s up and down Vietnam until eventually they kicked you’s out?

    Apologies I just remembered didn’t you’s win a “war “ in Grenada once which is roughly the size of my back garden?

    Those endless war movies you make are not real you do know that don’t you? Tell us again how did Trump avoid the draft? 
    We_are_accountablePlaffelvohfen
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5965 Pts   -  
    Equal healthcare for all is not a desired goal. Your ability to receive from others should always systematically be tied to your contribution. This is why the US is the economic powerhouse that it is. Why should someone who hasn’t contributed to society receive a free service from someone else who spent years of their lives putting in an enormous amount of time into something.  This is fundamental. Furthermore, this system is what has attracted the best doctors from around the world which has also fueled most of the medical  advancements the rest of the world benefits from.
    I will add that it is truly unfortunate how deep the moral corruption runs in society. Whether it is okay to take someone's property against their will and give it to someone else who allegedly needs it more - is not even a question any more; the question is now only how much of it should be taken, and how to punish the owner if he/she refuses to give it up.

    Merit-based and freedom-based thinking is completely replaced with need-based and entitlement-based one. The Founding Fathers warned about this, seeing it as one of the most likely pathways towards tyranny - but they were not the first ones, and even Ancient Greek philosophers pointed this out metaphorically.

    At least in the US we can have this discussion. Everywhere else I have looked, the idea that it is okay to forcefully redistribute property is so deeply ingrained in the society, that most people will not even understand the objection; it is just outside the set of concepts they have considered.
    We_are_accountable
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -   edited February 2020
    @TruthSearcher

    ***** Equal healthcare for all is not a desired goal.

    Not desired by you , but desired by those who cannot afford it 

     ****Your ability to receive from others should always systematically be tied to your contribution. 

    Right , so using that rationale why bother giving humanitarian aid to those in foreign countries after all they have not contributed have they?

    ****This is why the US is the economic powerhouse that it is. 

    Right, yet 41 million Americans suffer food poverty 

    ***Why should someone who hasn’t contributed to society receive a free service from someone else who spent years of their lives putting in an enormous amount of time into something.  

    Who are these Americans who have never contributed to society? What about those in economic blackspots in the U S who want work but cannot get it?

    ***This is fundamental. 

    What is?

    *****Furthermore, this system is what has attracted the best doctors from around the world which has also fueled most of the medical  advancements the rest of the world benefits fro

    Wow ! That’s some claim a sizable amount of Americans have this absurd notion they rule the world in all that’s good which in nothing more than pumped up patriotism 

    Anyway I get your main point that only those who can afford medical care should get it the rest should just suffer on as a fair amount of Americans  say “not on my dime buddy” 


    World Health Organization’s Ranking of the World’s Health Systems



    1Fance

    2 Italy

    3 San Marino

    4 Andorra

    5 Malta

    6 Singapore

    7 Spain

    8 Oman

    9 Austria

    10 Japan

    11 Norway

    12 Portugal

    13 Monaco

    14 Greece

    15 Iceland

    16 Luxembourg

    17 Netherlands

    18 United Kingdom

    19 Ireland

    20 Switzerland

    21 Belgium

    22 Colombia

    23 Sweden

    24 Cyprus

    25 Germany

    26 Saudi Arabia

    27 United Arab Emirates

    28 Israel

    29 Morocco

    30 Canada

    31 Finland

    32 Australia

    33 Chile

    34 Denmark

    35 Dominica

    36 Costa Rica

    37 USA

    38 Slovenia

    39 Cuba

    40 Brunei

    41 New Zealand

    42 Bahrain

    43 Croatia

    44 Qatar

    45 Kuwait

    46 Barbados

    47 Thailand

    48 Czech Republic

    49 Malaysia

    50 Poland

    51 Dominican Republic

    52 Tunisia

    53 Jamaica

    54 Venezuela

    55 Albania

    56 Seychelles

    57 Paraguay

    58 South Korea

    59 Senegal

    60 Philippines

    61 Mexico

    62 Slovakia

    63 Egypt

    64 Kazakhstan

    65 Uruguay

    66 Hungary

    67 Trinidad and Tobago

    68 Saint Lucia

    69 Belize

    70 Turkey

    71 Nicaragua

    72 Belarus

    73 Lithuania

    74 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

    75 Argentina

    76 Sri Lanka

    77 Estonia

    78 Guatemala

    79 Ukraine

    80 Solomon Islands

    81 Algeria

    82 Palau

    83 Jordan

    84 Mauritius

    85 Grenada

    86 Antigua and Barbuda

    87 Libya

    88 Bangladesh

    89 Macedonia

    90 Bosnia-Herzegovina

    91 Lebanon

    92 Indonesia

    93 Iran

    94 Bahamas

    95 Panama

    96 Fiji

    97 Benin

    98 Nauru

    99 Romania

    100 Saint Kitts and Nevis

    101 Moldova

    102 Bulgaria

    103 Iraq

    104 Armenia

    105 Latvia

    106 Yugoslavia

    107 Cook Islands

    108 Syria

    109 Azerbaijan

    110 Suriname

    111 Ecuador

    112 India

    113 Cape Verde

    114 Georgia

    115 El Salvador

    116 Tonga

    117 Uzbekistan

    118 Comoros

    119 Samoa

    120 Yemen

    121 Niue

    122 Pakistan

    123 Micronesia

    124 Bhutan

    125 Brazil

    126 Bolivia

    127 Vanuatu

    128 Guyana

    129 Peru

    130 Russia

    131 Honduras

    132 Burkina Faso

    133 Sao Tome and Principe

    134 Sudan

    135 Ghana

    136 Tuvalu

    137 Ivory Coast

    138 Haiti

    139 Gabon

    140 Kenya

    141 Marshall Islands

    142 Kiribati

    143 Burundi

    144 China

    145 Mongolia

    146 Gambia

    147 Maldives

    148 Papua New Guinea

    149 Uganda

    150 Nepal

    151 Kyrgystan

    152 Togo

    153 Turkmenistan

    154 Tajikistan

    155 Zimbabwe

    156 Tanzania

    157 Djibouti

    158 Eritrea

    159 Madagascar

    160 Vietnam

    161 Guinea

    162 Mauritania

    163 Mali

    164 Cameroon

    165 Laos

    166 Congo

    167 North Korea

    168 Namibia

    169 Botswana

    170 Niger

    171 Equatorial Guinea

    172 Rwanda

    173 Afghanistan

    174 Cambodia

    175 South Africa

    176 Guinea-Bissau

    177 Swaziland

    178 Chad

    179 Somalia

    180 Ethiopia

    181 Angola

    182 Zambia

    183 Lesotho

    184 Mozambique

    185 Malawi

    186 Liberia

    187 Nigeria

    188 Democratic Republic of the Congo

    189 Central African Republic

    190 Myanma

    Plaffelvohfen
  • I was obviously talking about preventing the Communists in Russia and China from taking over the world. It's our nuclear and military might that keeps the world safe. Deny the truth all you want.@Dee
    PlaffelvohfenDee
  • Well said!@MayCaesar
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @We_are_accountable

    **** I was obviously talking about preventing the Communists in Russia and China from taking over the world. 

    Oh yeah I forget Americans biggest fear those Commies who are now Capitalists .....

    ****It's our nuclear and military might that keeps the world safe. 

    Bwaaaaaaahahahahahaha 

    ****Deny the truth all you want 

    You mean your opinion of the truth which we have seen is worthless 
    We_are_accountable
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @We_are_accountable

    **** I was obviously talking about preventing the Communists in Russia and China from taking over the world. 

    Oh yeah I forget Americans biggest fear those Commies who are now Capitalists .....

    ****It's our nuclear and military might that keeps the world safe. 

    Bwaaaaaaahahahahahaha 

    ****Deny the truth all you want 

    You mean your opinion of the truth which we have seen is worthless 
    Plaffelvohfen
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    Yeh, that's why Canadians come to America, when they need surgery in a timely fashion, before dying on a waiting list.
    This is the kind of misinformation I expect from uninformed individuals and as such I'm not surprised you would parrot this debunked talking point...
    As a Canadian, I can tell you that it's mostly false and definitely disingenuous... https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.21.3.19

    Canadians going to the US, overwhelmingly do so only for elective and cosmetic surgeries or are tourists involved in accidents and such... 
    DeeWe_are_accountable
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • Where to start, public corporations in America including insurance companies are more socialist then capitalist and have been for some time. They are regulated by governed law to profit this has an effect. Saying they are capitalist is simply addressing the educational sales pitch to become a doctor in the first place, money.

    While most all education for the medical field comes at the public initial expense on both education scholarships and medical research grants, foreign education can also play a role in cost deferred over time placed adding increases.  The healthcare over fluctuating periods has other facture tide to treatment.

    The reasons of higher price in American healthcare is somewhat more reflective of the significant dangers the United State faces as a hole with the industry's labor risk. As a Doctor risk is quite high for many reasons. A risk of death is significantly part of the carrier choice of the medical services industry and is not just in relationship the patients holds alone. This as both as living and dying from illness are the professional focal point of the job description. 

    American healthcare is intuitively, and this kind of impulse comes with an effect on the overall costs. There are some fundamental changes that can be investigated addressing concerns of control in liabilities. Not just major risk like reckless titling of treatments like abortion but with many much smaller events that may affect the industry as a whole.

    Male, 56, New Jersey United States.

    100199-G11500 

  • AlofRIAlofRI 1484 Pts   -  
    In ANY CASE, we must De-Trump it. (Or die). :'(
  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -  
    MayCaesar said:
    Equal healthcare for all is not a desired goal. Your ability to receive from others should always systematically be tied to your contribution. This is why the US is the economic powerhouse that it is. Why should someone who hasn’t contributed to society receive a free service from someone else who spent years of their lives putting in an enormous amount of time into something.  This is fundamental. Furthermore, this system is what has attracted the best doctors from around the world which has also fueled most of the medical  advancements the rest of the world benefits from.
    I will add that it is truly unfortunate how deep the moral corruption runs in society. Whether it is okay to take someone's property against their will and give it to someone else who allegedly needs it more - is not even a question any more; the question is now only how much of it should be taken, and how to punish the owner if he/she refuses to give it up.

    Merit-based and freedom-based thinking is completely replaced with need-based and entitlement-based one. The Founding Fathers warned about this, seeing it as one of the most likely pathways towards tyranny - but they were not the first ones, and even Ancient Greek philosophers pointed this out metaphorically.

    At least in the US we can have this discussion. Everywhere else I have looked, the idea that it is okay to forcefully redistribute property is so deeply ingrained in the society, that most people will not even understand the objection; it is just outside the set of concepts they have considered.
    Really the greed and hypocrisy of libertarians is shameless. Trying to take the governments property because you hate that it will be used for the common good of everyone is immensely selfish. Trying to say the property is yours simply doesn't work. 1) If it's yours, why does the government have it 2) Were you somehow unaware that taxes existed?

    Also it's hilarious how few Americans actually know what the founding fathers wrote, despite supposedly revering them. James Madison for instance President, one of the most important influencers of the constituion, one of the writers of the Federalist papers wrote:

    "In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort. 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expence of another. 5. By making one party a check on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."

    Really you just have to come to terms with the fact you live in a society and that there will always be a mixture of individualism and collectivism and that a purely individualist point of view can never work except through force.
  • kenpagekenpage 30 Pts   -  
    The care itself is very good from what I can tell, if you can afford it. 

    Nevertheless, my response is that it is obscene and immoral! For-profit healthcare is inherently immoral (profiting from people's misery and pain) and it is immoral to hold a huge population hostage to for-profit healthcare by denying them other options. Every other civilized democracy in the world has universal healthcare, it works and has worked for a very long time. The people in social democracies with universal healthcare are healthier, happier and live longer than we Americans (see world health/quality of life stats). In Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, South Korea... healthcare is a basic human right. Bankruptcy/huge debt due to illness is almost unheard of.  In this area and others, they have made American principles and values a living reality better than we have!

    I had direct experience with socialized medicine in Italy once. I had a medical situation that was treated immediately with no waiting by friendly professional staff in a short time in a clean up to date facility. The cost was 0, including the drugs. And this was in a small town and I wasn't even a citizen!

    History will damn the Republican party for two main things. First, for holding millions hostage to for-profit healthcare. Second, for doing nothing will the planet was dying.  

    My country is wallowing in greed and selfishness. Since Reagan, Americans feel justified in commodifying everything. Well in a "civilized" 21st century nation with so much obscene wealth, basic rights should not be on the market. 
  • The US is unique in its view that competition drives improvements for society.  This has been proven in the rise of a nation at rates never before seen. While not perfect, it is undeniable that this is the case. Medicine is no different. You don’t deserve all the benefits on modern healthcare just because you exist. You must show your worth for someone else’s worth to be reciprocated.
  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -  
    The US is unique in its view that competition drives improvements for society.  This has been proven in the rise of a nation at rates never before seen. While not perfect, it is undeniable that this is the case. Medicine is no different. You don’t deserve all the benefits on modern healthcare just because you exist. You must show your worth for someone else’s worth to be reciprocated.
    The "rise" of the American nation occurred due to the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the native inhabitants and the European inhabitants having a strong technological and industrial head start not from their own merits but from coming form their links with the nations of their birth - the industrial revolution for instance happening first in the UK and Belgium and spreading outwards from there. During all this time the US focused on avoiding competition, having strong tariff measures so that it could develop its infant industries without having to compete fairly with foreign nations.

    Also yes, people do deserve access to modern healthcare regardless of anything else - as stated it's specifically a human and US right and a willingness to help others is a basic moral imperative in pretty much every religion.
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -   edited February 2020
    @TruthSearcher

    ** The US is unique in its view that competition drives improvements for society.


    How is it “unique” in its view?  Is this purely an American view?


     **** This has been proven in the rise of a nation at rates never before seen. 


    You mean a nation where 40 million people suffer from food poverty ? 


    ***While not perfect, it is undeniable that this is the case. 


    You seem to think that by asserting something it must be true because you say so


    ****Medicine is no different.You don’t deserve all the benefits on modern healthcare just because you exist. 


    Right .....


    "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

    So as a country collectively you’s don’t really mean that ? It’s only used in movies to let others know how great you’s are is that it?


    ****You must show your worth for someone else’s worth to be reciprocated. 


    What a terrible world view you have , American’s keep telling us how much they give to charities worldwide regards helping those in other countries , tell me how do those in other countries prove “their worth” that would satisfy your sense of justice?

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