Might have been easier just to point out that saying British scientist Stephen Hawking woudn't stand a chance if he was British doesn't make a whole lot of sense...
USA healthcare debate about 'socialised medicine' rages
- Thread starter Badger Kitten
- Start date
Might have been easier just to point out that saying British scientist Stephen Hawking woudn't stand a chance if he was British doesn't make a whole lot of sense...
spring-peeper
Well-Known Member
Facts really don't enter into this.
Personally, I find the entire charade embarrassing. I tuned out after some Canadians wanted a woman branded a traitor for going on American tv and declaring that she would be dead if she hadn't gone to the States for treatment.
Ted Striker
Foot's on the other hand
Isn't it to do with the unpleasent truth that they pay for something like 90%* of the worlds R&D?
It's almost because it is privatised that they are expensive - simnply enough there's more in it to discover new drugs.
The gloves came off costing wise when pharmaceuticals were allowed to be advertised (and hence the ballooning marketing costs).
The World does really 'owe' the US for most, if not all, of the major advances in Medical Care in the last 50 years.
It's not a particularly fair nor welcome comparison but I'd much rather have a loved one treated there than over here (with the assumption that they would have some sort of insurance cover, which is the vast majority of the working population).
I love the NHS and think it's a fine model for healthcare, but that doesn't mean it would be the best for the states.
I also think the adverts are laughable though.
*in the realm of
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
If only. I'd be happy with pharma profits if the R&D story were true. Most of that money goes on marketing.
turing test
Nearly Toowrong
When my wife and I changed jobs back in 2005 we had to use something called COBRA. It covered both of us for 2 months. It cost 4000$. Had we not used COBRA our existing conditions would have no longer been covered by insurance.
Insurance is one way employers can grab you by the short hairs in the US.
Recently I had my appendix out while living in Texas. I saw the bill the insurance company paid. It was 25,000 dollars.
While recovering I asked the nurse what sort of surgery she saw a lot of on my ward and she said appendicitis was one of the most common.
Both experiences strikes me as problematic.
Insurance is one way employers can grab you by the short hairs in the US.
Recently I had my appendix out while living in Texas. I saw the bill the insurance company paid. It was 25,000 dollars.
While recovering I asked the nurse what sort of surgery she saw a lot of on my ward and she said appendicitis was one of the most common.
Both experiences strikes me as problematic.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
They're not all that good.
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
It's not a lie. That's the figure they put on 6 months of life, and that is the approximate threshold cost-effectiveness used by the NHS, via NIHCE - £30,000 per quality adjusted life year gained. It's not a threshold on the absolute cost of treatment, and nor do they claim it is. We'll spend hundreds of thousands on saving a premature baby, because that's an awful lot of healthy life years saved. We'll spend less per patient on curing acne because the gain is smaller.
Most treatments that are considered too expensive to use in the NHS are expensive because they offer very little health gain, not because the costs of manufacture are astronomical. £30k is a very reasonable threshold in the context of modern treatments and healthcare systems.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
dilute micro
esse quam videri
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
It's worse than that. Most of the R&D is state-funded through the uni system. . .
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
More like 90% of the marketing, which is a much bigger budget than R&D. There is lots of R&D, of course, but unfortunately a lot of it is devoted to spinning the truth and manipulating doctors in a medico-legal framework. Vioxx springs to mind - an incident which led to Congress censuring the FDA for being too cosy with the pharmaceutical industry.
And high dose chemotherapy for breast cancer. Not a winner for the drug companies at all, but a big money maker for the doctors. It was impossible to do research in the US because the treatment was so oversold that no women were willing to forego the treatment. Twenty years later, more and more trial evidence starts to emerge that suggests it isn't as good as conventional treatment. And still they kept on using it, until an early trial was exposed as fraudulent and the scandal forced them to admit that there was no good evidence for what they were doing, just a nice fat pay cheque.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
God I hate these fucking anti "socialised medicine" type ccunts. Anybody who colludes in attempts to prevent people who can't afford, or are not eligable* for, health insurance from getting treatment is just an evil inverse Dr Mengele shit who should be tried before a international criminal tribunal for crimes against humanity. "Don't be a slave to big government and European Socialism (TM) folks - we want to protect your freedumb to die or suffer in extreme agony while we spend hundreds of billions of your tax dollars on bailing out the richest, most corrupt criminals in america" - fuck these ccunts - send them all packing to the Hague.
* iirc in all but 3 states, the snake like insurance companies are allowed to deny cover to people who have previously been ill without a plan. How fucking nuts is that?
* iirc in all but 3 states, the snake like insurance companies are allowed to deny cover to people who have previously been ill without a plan. How fucking nuts is that?
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
That'll be because you get your politics from right wing conspiracy websites.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
You obviously missed post#53, Jazz's reply on US health outcomes...
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=9539005&postcount=53
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
I think it backs up my point!
JimW
支那暗杀团
Dubious claim to begin with, and what genuinely pioneering research that does take place owes as much to federally funded academia and agencies (http://www.nih.gov/) as the private sector
Barking_Mad
Non sibi sed omnibus
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
The pharma giants don't do shit either. Most of the funding for drugs research come from tax payers and these parasitic vermin step in at the last uncomplicated stages with a little bit of money and then get the exclusive patent over them. They then try to prevent anybody producing cheaper generic brands - (eg anti retroviral HIV/AIDs drugs for South Africa even when millions of people were dying). The Pharma companies are as bad as the Nazis - genocidal scum who are now trying to protect their Tamiflu patents when swine flu poses a serious health epidemic in the developing world.
People who worship at the alter of "free market" healthcare of any kind of fucking mental of evil filth.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
$25K FOR YOUR APPENDIX TAKING OUT!?!?
Holy shit batman.
A burst appendix is obviously preferable to SOCIALISM!
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
$25K FOR YOUR APPENDIX TAKING OUT!?!?
Holy shit batman.
There's a lot of people going to India or some other country for care. They can get treatment, recuperation time, plus a nice vacation for lots less than the medical bills in the US. I guess that's what the Republicans mean by a "market solution" to health care.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I remember being surprised when in the USA and listenning to the talk radio in the car at just how right wing most americans seemed to be.
If it were a simple matter of democracy then you would expect the vast majority of those less well off to vote for some kind of system like we have here, free at the point of use and funded out of general taxation but for some reason in the USA, a lot of poor people are as right wing as the rich are.
How has this come about?
If it were a simple matter of democracy then you would expect the vast majority of those less well off to vote for some kind of system like we have here, free at the point of use and funded out of general taxation but for some reason in the USA, a lot of poor people are as right wing as the rich are.
How has this come about?
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Senator Mcarthey, among other things.
look at the socio-political make up of 20's america. That's where and when socialism lost in america.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Jesus, that would be hilarious, were it not so fucked up.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
1. Listening to Talk Radio in pretty much any country would convince you that everyone there was a r/wing nutter. It's just the medium.
2. You seem to suffer from Eurocentrism here. It's a common misconception that because the US looks and sounds a lot like Europe, and specifically the UK, that it's similar. It isn't - their entire mentality is different from Europe and they regards us as equally stupid when it comes to issues of governance.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
On the plus side, passport ownership has gone way up.
<edited to add>
Here's an article on Medical Tourism:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/08/10/0810medtourism.html
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Well I do get that the US is a different country, I learnt for example that business operates differently to here as well, despite that it looks similar.
But as to the difference in mentality, it is that in which I am interested.
To my mind poor people voting for the status quo is like turkeys voting for christmas. It just does not make sense.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Me too, but the mentality in the US would be 'We're free from the burden of welfare, and thus have to work in order to eat, which makes us free, because when I am working I will pay less in taxes for services I may or may not use.'
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
They have a fucked up notion of freedom then.
Ken Macloud does some interesting bits on US vs Euro models in Cosmonaut Keep
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
It's not really all that different from Europe, certainly not from the UK; the impression that you get through the media of general public opinion in the US tends to be only a couple of notches down from what you'd get if you just listened to talk radio. You'd have thought the entire country was waving flags and loved Bush over Iraq for instance. (A lot of this is also the result of _domestic_ propaganda, trying to convince people that the rest of the country _is_ like that.)
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