Quote:
Originally Posted by 427sharpe
Kevin; welcome to the debate. As I am sure you might have noticed, sometimes tempers flare a bit, but I am sure intentions are pure. I quoted 2 bits of text above that are central to the debate here, I think. We have the best track record for innovation and technological advancement. Agreed.
The second bit is telling...I emboldened the part of interest.
I don't want the 'best a tax based system can offer'..I want the best I can afford, period. The problem from here is that 'the best tax based system' requires the intrusion of the government into healthcare. From our perspective the government is absolutely unequipped to administer trash collection, much less life or death decisions. While it can be argued that both sides have some merit, after living with our governments intrusions for a lifetime I believe unequivocally that the negatives outweigh any and all positives for this type of system by a vast margin. This belief is confirmed by even a casual examination of our one government run healthcare system; the Veterans Administration Hospitals. I am sure there are plenty of horror stories at google-tip for you.
Thank you for participating!
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Thanks for the post, and as i said earlier, happy to stand corrected wherever i am factually wrong. I completely agree with the problems associated with state-centralisation of resources (or centralisation of anything else for that matter). As i said before, our system aint perfect by a long way. And i completely understand the desire to purchase the best care you can afford - the same is available in the uk - we have a variety of different private hospitals and private wings within nhs hospitals for those wishing to pay privately, and a variety of insurance/privately funded/ employer-funded schemes that fund these - so in parts, maybe not that different.
Three parts i'm still unclear about from the posts:
- care is never denied, but this seems to mainly refer to trauma, RTAs etc. (quite possible i missed something). The stories we here on this side is when insurance schemes run out of funding for the complicated follow-ups - long terms meds/dressings, repeat chemo drugs, need for home-based oxygen long term, the kind of thing needed for chronic conditions. This is the part that really costs, regardless of funding mechanism, and something which is really hard to set up a realistic cost estimate for a particular individual in advance.
- i beleive you need FDA approval for any procedure/treatment before reimbursement can be authorised? again, correct me if im wrong. but i beleive there are a lot of times that fda is very slow to authorise this (eg cardiac PET scans). This represents, i think, a similar impediment to access to state of the art care as our own 'NICE' institution, which has taken a huge wrap for the apparant random way it decides on authorized treatments, and is one of the sources of the problems in some of the cases posted above.
- how is provision made for those without the ability to pay for the best? do they still get the best the us has to offer?
Id be interested to read any comments on this aspect. and let me add im not here to wave the 'state control' flag or suggest the us should adopt a sate-funded system - its none of my business, im a foreginer. but england was mentioned in the rhetoric, so i decided to pitch in and try and add a little balance.
Kevin
- and, just to respond to the man with the 'socialist' issues, here is a link to my gallery on the UK cobraclub website. I am a well known UK member, same user name as here.
http://www.cobraclub.com/gallery/sho...php/photo/5329 (car riding a little high at the time)
lots of other pics there. (in fact car sold on Fri to make way for a more authentic project with FE + Toploader box)