We're still Last...

**maxx** · October-29-10, 04:44 PM

in healthcare among nations in the developed world. And neocons want to make sure we stay there.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Cont...Countries.aspx

New York, NY, June 23, 2010—Despite having the most expensive health care system, the United States ranks last overall compared to six other industrialized countries—Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—on measures of health system performance in five areas: quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and the ability to lead long, healthy, productive lives, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. While there is room for improvement in every country, the U.S. stands out for not getting good value for its health care dollars, ranking last despite spending $7,290 per capita on health care in 2007 compared to the $3,837 spent per capita in the Netherlands, which ranked first overall....

**maxx** · November-18-10, 12:23 PM

And we're likely to stay last if Republicans plan to undo the changes to our health care system that were enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act.
http://www.healthcare.gov/law/provis...ate/index.html
"The life of the Medicare Trust fund will be extended to at least 2029, a 12-year extension as a result of reducing waste, fraud and abuse, and slowing cost growth in Medicare. This will provide you with future cost savings on your premiums and coinsurance..."

http://www.healthcare.gov/law/infocu...ies/index.html
Ending insurance discrimination. Insurance discrimination will be banned, so people who have been sick can’t be excluded from coverage or charged higher premiums. Women will no longer have to pay higher premiums because of their gender.

http://michuhcan.com/Display.aspx?pa...re%20Resources
"The ACA requires all members of Congress to purchase their insurance through the Exchange in their state."
[from MichUHCon's latest newsletter]

This is probably a highly motivating force for conservatives in Congress.

**johnsmith** · November-18-10, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by maxx

the Affordable Care Act

That may be the most ironic name ever given to a piece of legislation.

**Ray1936** · November-18-10, 02:13 PM

Well, American physicians NEED their Bentleys and Ferraris. I'm so happy to help pay for one with every office visit.

**1KielsonDrive** · November-18-10, 02:32 PM

Originally Posted by johnsmith

That may be the most ironic name ever given to a piece of legislation.

You got that right. The only thing more accurate would be to add, 'whether you like it or not' to the title.

**maxx** · November-18-10, 03:05 PM

Originally Posted by johnsmith

That may be the most ironic name ever given to a piece of legislation.

Why? Because you think affordable health care isn't possible in the U.S.? How DO the Europeans manage to achieve it? Hmmm?

**jerrytimes** · November-20-10, 06:56 AM

So Maxx, do you think that our health care system is going to improve just because the Democrats are going to make people buy insurance? If you read about that list that you have there, the only reason that those countries have better heath care than the United States is because their health care is less expensive. I have two cousins that recently had major medical issues. One had a brain tumor and the other had a major heart problem and needed an emergency quadruple bypass. Neither have insurance, both are under 50 years old. They went to the hospital and got immediate care and their lives were saved and the hospital knew that they have no insurance. It is 100% illegal for a doctor or hospital to refuse treatment, especially when your life is on the line, regardless of your insurance situation. Sure they have some hefty hospital bills, but they aren't dead. Our family is putting together some fund raisers for then this month to help cover the cost.

**gibran** · November-20-10, 11:39 PM

Hey we all know it's against the law to turn away a person form emergency care...but it's the preventive, diagnostic and rehabilitation that is needed and costly... A TBI isn't healed in 30 days in the acute hospital... read your coverage folks and see what and how TBI coverage or other long term disabilities are covered...

We have young people in nursing homes because they don't have the rehabilitation others may have... look past the headlines and you will see...HC is a moral issue and if you don't think we pay for under-insured we do... cost shifts... I have worked in non profit hospitals that refused treatment or sent people to nursing homes ...our system is screwed up ..because it is run by insurance companies and big health-care corps... you all don't want our government running it ...and so you entrust your health to profit driven private companies...now that is foolish

**firstandten** · November-21-10, 12:39 AM

Originally Posted by jerrytimes

So Maxx, do you think that our health care system is going to improve just because the Democrats are going to make people buy insurance? If you read about that list that you have there, the only reason that those countries have better heath care than the United States is because their health care is less expensive. .

I don't think that's is the case. I think other countries have made a decision that health care is a "right" that all its citizens must have. Health care is not treated in those countries as "for profit" enterprises. The mind set that you have as a nation is different when it is thought of in that way. When you have a mind set of "for profit" rather than a basic human right you are going to have problems with access to care simply by definition. Where Obama and the democratics are having problems is that they are trying to redesign our present health care system to do things it was not designed to do. To truly fix the problem of access , quality and cost some type of single payer system needs to be implemented.

Obama correctly knows that would be almost impossible to implement, so thats why you have this "nibble around the edges" approach that we have with health care.

For as much as we claim to love our fellow man as a nation, we also have a strong social darwinism streak that comes into play on a regular basis.

**oldredfordette** · November-21-10, 09:17 AM

We are the only country in the world where we have fund raisers to pay for life saving hospital stays. It's completely immoral and downright embarassing. How can that possibly be all right with anyone?

**jerrytimes** · November-21-10, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by firstandten

I don't think that's is the case. I think other countries have made a decision that health care is a "right" that all its citizens must have. Health care is not treated in those countries as "for profit" enterprises. The mind set that you have as a nation is different when it is thought of in that way. When you have a mind set of "for profit" rather than a basic human right you are going to have problems with access to care simply by definition. Where Obama and the democratics are having problems is that they are trying to redesign our present health care system to do things it was not designed to do. To truly fix the problem of access , quality and cost some type of single payer system needs to be implemented.

Obama correctly knows that would be almost impossible to implement, so thats why you have this "nibble around the edges" approach that we have with health care.

For as much as we claim to love our fellow man as a nation, we also have a strong social darwinism streak that comes into play on a regular basis.

And those countries health care systems are failing and a extremely costly and slooooow. I'm sorry, if I have to go to the hospital I don't feel like waiting very long.

**maxx** · November-21-10, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by jerrytimes

So Maxx, do you think that our health care system is going to improve just because the Democrats are going to make people buy insurance? If you read about that list that you have there, the only reason that those countries have better heath care than the United States is because their health care is less expensive. I have two cousins that recently had major medical issues. One had a brain tumor and the other had a major heart problem and needed an emergency quadruple bypass. Neither have insurance, both are under 50 years old. They went to the hospital and got immediate care and their lives were saved and the hospital knew that they have no insurance. It is 100% illegal for a doctor or hospital to refuse treatment, especially when your life is on the line, regardless of your insurance situation. Sure they have some hefty hospital bills, but they aren't dead. Our family is putting together some fund raisers for then this month to help cover the cost.

So that's your solution to fixing our healthcare system? Everyone gets their friends and family to chip in? That's what insurance is only you chip in less on a monthly basis, and you may not know the people who are being covered. You know how insurance works; a large group of people pays in when they are healthy so that they get healthcare when they need it. I'm all for lowering medical costs where we can. But people who expect healthcare without paying anything are not facing reality.

**Patrick** · November-21-10, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by oldredfordette

We are the only country in the world where we have fund raisers to pay for life saving hospital stays. It's completely immoral and downright embarassing. How can that possibly be all right with anyone?

Fuck you-I got mine is the mantra in our nation. Don't you know...we worship Horatio Alger and his bootstrappy ways.

**firstandten** · November-21-10, 12:29 PM

Originally Posted by jerrytimes

And those countries health care systems are failing and a extremely costly and slooooow. I'm sorry, if I have to go to the hospital I don't feel like waiting very long.

Do your research !

Your making an assumption thats not necessarily true, and we all know that line about people making assumptions

**maxx** · November-21-10, 05:09 PM

Originally Posted by jerrytimes

And those countries health care systems are failing and a extremely costly and slooooow. I'm sorry, if I have to go to the hospital I don't feel like waiting very long.

I'm sure you can go somewhere in Europe and find people waiting for medical care. I have a friend who waits for at least an hour on average every time she sees her eye doctor.

**Whitehouse** · November-21-10, 06:57 PM

And we're first!!

Originally Posted by maxx

Why? Because you think affordable health care isn't possible in the U.S.? How DO the Europeans manage to achieve it? Hmmm?

1) Republicans....
2) Prifit driven healthcare. Shareholders are more important than patients.

Originally Posted by maxx

Originally Posted by jerrytimes

And those countries health care systems are failing and a extremely costly and slooooow. I'm sorry, if I have to go to the hospital I don't feel like waiting very long.

I'm sure you can go somewhere in Europe and find people waiting for medical care. I have a friend who waits for at least an hour on average every time she sees her eye doctor.

What country are you talking about?

**oldredfordette** · November-22-10, 07:28 AM

He's talking out of his ass. Good news for you Jerrytimes, you can wait a loooooooooong time, while they look up your credit history, while they determine how they will treat you, since you have no insurance and then they will wheel you out the door as soon as you are stable.

**Lowell** · November-22-10, 08:08 AM

This is the most telling graphic I have ever seen. Halfway down you see average per capita cost on the left and average life expectancy on the right. Thickness of line is average number of doctor visits per year.

Soaring off the page to the upper left is the US with costs of $7290 per year / 1 visit per year / diving to a life expectancy of just over 78 years. Compare that with Japan at $2581 / 12 visits per year / life expectancy at almost 83 years. This should be a t-shirt.
Attachment 7845

**maxx** · November-22-10, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by Whitehouse

And we're first!!

So what can you tell us about your health care system? What is the average doctor's salary? How much does it cost to go to medical school in the Netherlands? Do tourists get treated there ? How much does the average person pay for health insurance there?

I should have been clearer. My friend who spends an hour or more waiting for her eye doctor lives near me in Michigan.

Great graphic, Lowell, although it is a bit hard to read and only magnifies once.

**Whitehouse** · November-26-10, 10:09 PM

I'll see if I can find some info.

Meanwhile, here's another graphic with the same parameters. Different method of recording, same outcome.

Be careful watching this graphic, your head might explode. This is a graphic in which the years 1975 and 2005 are compared.

**maxx** · November-30-10, 12:52 PM

Refuting the lies about healthcare reform.
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=2215

I just spent close to two and one-half hours in the waitingroom of my friend's eye doctor.

**Whitehouse** · December-29-10, 10:26 PM

I dug up this thread. I could not answer some questions clearly. I'm reasonably well aquainted with the English Language but some things are even over my head. And right now there comes this article that explains a lot.

Why did the insurance industry try so hard to destroy the credibility of Michael Moore's "Sicko"? Because once Americans saw what other countries had, they would begin to see what was possible -- and that would be bad for health insurers.
I'm pretty sure Americans would feel the same way if they saw the kind of safety net available to citizens in other countries -- Germany, for instance. Via Democrats Ramshield, an American expat, writing for Alternet:

The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less -- right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical -- the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.
The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.
Der Spiegel has run an interesting feature called "A Superpower in Decline," which attempts to explain to a German audience such odd phenomena as the rise of the Tea Party, without the hedging or attempts at "balance" found in mainstream U.S. media.
[...] The piece continues with the sobering assessment that America’s actual unemployment rate isn’t really 10 percent, but close to 20 percent when we factor in the number of people who have stopped looking for work.
Some social scientists think that making sure large-scale crime or fascism never takes root in Europe again requires a taxpayer investment in a strong social safety net. Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system? [[In America over 2 million people are incarcerated.)
Unlike here, in Germany jobless benefits never run out. Not only that -- as part of their social safety net, all job seekers continue to be medically insured, as are their families.
In the German jobless benefit system, when "jobless benefit 1" runs out, "jobless benefit 2," also known as HartzIV, kicks in. That one never gets cut off. The jobless also have contributions made for their pensions. They receive other types of insurance coverage from the state. As you can imagine, the estimated 2 million unemployed Americans who almost had no benefits this Christmas seems a particular horror show to Europeans, made worse by the fact that the U.S. government does not provide any medical insurance to American unemployment recipients. Europeans routinely recoil at that in disbelief and disgust.
[...] It's important to note that no country in the European Union uses food stamps in order to humiliate its disadvantaged citizens in the grocery checkout line. Even worse is the fact that even the humbling food stamp allotment may not provide enough food for America’s jobless families. So it is on a reoccurring basis that some of these families report eating out of garbage cans to the European media.

More here.

The text in bold and red echo's completely my feelings when it comes to American Heath issues, from my Dutch and European perspective.

Unrelated to the above story but U have a question. I bet there are some of you that never have seen a divice like this one.

It's a defibirlator. When you have some trouble with your heart, like an attack or other malfunction, your heart can be jumpstarted with it. In most public buildings this device is within reach. I some private companies, like the one where I work, it is even mandatory to have it within reach. I even had a course on how to operate this thing. [[There are different types of them but I got the course on the one pictured. In any case they operate the same.)

I have a chance of surviving an attack. I think I'm doomed when I get an attack in an American city, unless some stranger passes by who knows how to apply first aid.

**maxx** · December-30-10, 01:01 PM

I think tea partiers are suffering from too much fat --- on the brain. This bears repeating:

"Some social scientists think that making sure large-scale crime or fascism never takes root in Europe again requires a taxpayer investment in a strong social safety net. Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system?"

**Detroitnerd** · December-30-10, 01:10 PM

The Obama plan sucks. The Republicans' alternative, back to the way it was, sucks too. And passing the most sensible thing -- a European-style health plan -- is politically impossible here. So, it sucks, and it's gonna keep sucking. That's what I get out of this debate.

**ghettopalmetto** · December-30-10, 01:21 PM

Originally Posted by Detroitnerd

The Obama plan sucks. The Republicans' alternative, back to the way it was, sucks too. And passing the most sensible thing -- a European-style health plan -- is politically impossible here. So, it sucks, and it's gonna keep sucking. That's what I get out of this debate.

The Obama plan sucks less than the Dickensian system we have now. It ain't perfect, but I'll accept improvement.