Critical care: Satire on socialized medicine?

[Xhiandra]

R. Star wrote:

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^
The problem with everyone paying into a communal fund to provide for everyone is that not everyone pays into it yet still reap the benefits of everyone else's work.

So?
You know, at some point, one has to move on past the pettiness.
"Waaah, I have to pay and X doesn't, yet X also benefits, it's soooo unfair!" is such a childish way to look at things, quite frankly.
Not to mention quite heartless.
If X is suffering, then we should help X, regardless of his/her ability to pay the bill when all is said and done.

JirinPanthosa: No offense, but... no, you do not get to spin socialism into its polar opposite and still get taken seriously.

[Guy Gardener]

With a large enough population, it's pennies and no one notices.

Besides how do you think that the police and the army is paid for if not your taxes?

Surrounded by water with nothing so menacing nearby, I'd rather have free health care paid for by my taxes than the army, and I'm not to fond of the police either. 90 percent of their job is stop drugs, speeding, and drink driving which natural sellection can take care of if you don't mind some collateral damage.

[R. Star]

Xhiandra wrote:

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So?
You know, at some point, one has to move on past the pettiness.
"Waaah, I have to pay and X doesn't, yet X also benefits, it's soooo unfair!" is such a childish way to look at things, quite frankly.
Not to mention quite heartless.
If X is suffering, then we should help X, regardless of his/her ability to pay the bill when all is said and done.

JirinPanthosa: No offense, but... no, you do not get to spin socialism into its polar opposite and still get taken seriously.

It's called sustainability. If the system will carry those who won't contribute, less and less people are going to contribute. That's human nature. That increases the burden on the people who do, until it gets unsustainable.

To say nothing of the fact that the more "free" health care gets, the lesser quality and longer waits you get.

[Guy Gardener]

One, if you don't pay your taxes, you then have to pay fines and your taxes and interest or you go to jail.

Two, the more you earn, the sleezier your accountant, the less your taxes are.

Three, when was the last time the Fire Department refused to put out a fire just because it looked like the burning women and children didn't pay their taxes and therefore their wages? Actually since children don't pay taxes, then fire men should let all the children burn.

[teya]

R. Star wrote:

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^
The problem with everyone paying into a communal fund to provide for everyone is that not everyone pays into it yet still reap the benefits of everyone else's work.

Does this mean you favor the system shown in the episode?

[teacake]

It's funny watching americans argue that people who enjoy their socialized medicine as a reality are wrong, really it sucks.

Wake up your health care is substandard and you could die waiting for it!!

[Guy Gardener]

If we're dead we don't need it anymore.

As I understand it, you show up to an ER, if ER is to believed, in the states and you're waiting a minimum 9 hours before anyone will do anything.

Actually there was a couple episodes of Nurse Jackie, where Nurse Jackie got sick of thepenny pinching from the admistrator, jabbed his ass with a sedative, or he was sick and passed out, I man be thinking about Frank and Hawkeye from M*A*S*H* but everything was backed up becuase management refused to go over budget and hire temp nurses for the week... So Jackie did it any way once any one who should be in charge was passed out.

It might have been the final of the season and they fired her?

Socialized medicine is what is on Voayager and in the Federation becuase they have conceivably unlimited resources.

What we saw in Critical care was all about Capitalism. Sure they were stessing status over financels but they don't have poor people with status now do they?

[Tosk]

teacake wrote:

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It's funny watching americans argue that people who enjoy their socialized medicine as a reality are wrong, really it sucks.

Wake up your health care is substandard and you could die waiting for it!!

I was just thinking the same thing. It's scary/amusing to see people point out reasons why it absolutely, positively, cannot work. ...even though it totally does.

[MacLeod]

Now the Data used in this report is from 2000 but it does provide an interesting spotlight on some of what we are discussing And of course as it is 12 years later it could have changed, so should be taken with a pinch of salt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO%27s...h_care_systems

To just compare 2 the UK and the US

The UK ranked at 18th the US at 38th, despite the UK ranking only at 26th in expenditure per capita and the US at number 1.

And of course there is some critisim of the WHO report, though the section detailing that seems to indicate that is mainly from the US.

[teacake]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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Also, I think if we do have a system that's entirely based on need, then people who engage in risky behaviors like smoking or skydiving should have to pay more. But that's a tangent.

Cigarettes are 16.00 a packet here, for the cheap ones. That's mostly thanks to taxes. So govco sucks back some of the cost of paying for people's emphysema/cancer care by charging those that brought it on themselves.

[Guy Gardener]

Um.

Medical insurance.

You constantly put more money into a communal fund which everyone else uses more of than you do unless something very very horrible happens to you. More importantly there's a huge deductible and if you do use your insurance, they hike your rates after there's finally nothing wrong with you in preparation for the next time you become difficult.

How is insurance better than taxes?

You can lapse taxes and still get your hernia fixed.

If you have the wrong plan, they won't touch your hernia no matter how many thousands you've given your carrier, and if you change your plan, it's a preexisting condition.

[teacake]

I cannot understand why anyone in my country has private insurance. People are going to the exact same hospitals, having the exact same treatment, sleeping in the exact same beds and paying a ton of money for it because they have private insurance. And me, it's free.

The lucky ones go to nicer looking hospitals with nicer menus. So that's a very expensive meal.

[teya]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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If we're dead we don't need it anymore.

As I understand it, you show up to an ER, if ER is to believed, in the states and you're waiting a minimum 9 hours before anyone will do anything.

Actually there was a couple episodes of Nurse Jackie, where Nurse Jackie got sick of thepenny pinching from the admistrator, jabbed his ass with a sedative, or he was sick and passed out, I man be thinking about Frank and Hawkeye from M*A*S*H* but everything was backed up becuase management refused to go over budget and hire temp nurses for the week... So Jackie did it any way once any one who should be in charge was passed out.

It might have been the final of the season and they fired her?

I wouldn't take what happens on a TV show as truth. It's intentional hyperbole.

ED waits depend on a multitude of factors. I've had 2 ED visits at a major urban medical center in the last 2 years. One was 6 hours: I wasn't bleeding or in imminent danger of death, and 3 major freeway accidents just happened to occur that afternoon. People getting choppered in take priority.

For the second--a broken bone in my foot--I was in, x-rayed, casted & out the door in 45 minutes. It took longer to fill my prescription at the drugstore than it did in the ER.

The biggest problem in US EDs is that so many people go for treatment that would better be taken care of in an MD's office--but they don't have insurance, so they go to the ED. Technically, under the law, we don't have to treat non-emergent conditions in the ER. But tossing them out on the street leads to PR nightmares because Americans believe they deserve what they want when they want it. Who cares if the hospital eats the visit?

An example of where the US system completely fails is this:

My SIL was born with a dislocated hip. She had what was state-of-the-art treatment in the 1970s--casts & later surgery. The hardware is breaking down, and a pin has dug a groove in the head of her femur. The cartilage is gone. Every step she takes grinds bone away. It's excruciating.

In Canada, she'd get a hip replacement.

But, since she's in the US, her insurance company has to authorize it. Because of the hardware in her pelvis, there are only 2 places in the country she can go for a hip replacement (doing it wrong could shatter her pelvis). Fortunately, one is 40 miles from her home.

But her insurance company won't authorize it. Why? Because she's only 42 years old & artificial hips don't last forever. They'd need to replace the artificial joint within her lifetime. So, she has to wait until she's 55 before they'll authorize it.

By that time, she'll be in a wheelchair & unable to work.

I really fail to see how it benefits the country to declare her permanently disabled & pay her SSI rather than treat her and let her go back to nursing patients...

[MacLeod]

^Using the example above just how does an insurance company know how long an individual is going to live? Sure in countries with Universal Health care youmight have to join a waiting list for the surgery and that might mean waiting a year or so, but at least you would know that you were going to have the surgery at say somepoint in 2014.

Like with any system Universal Health care isn't without it's problems.

[robau]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Three, when was the last time the Fire Department refused to put out a fire just because it looked like the burning women and children didn't pay their taxes and therefore their wages? Actually since children don't pay taxes, then fire men should let all the children burn.

There have been stories of fire departments refusing to do anything because the homeowner didn't pay.