What should be cut?

[quaddriver]

and found that some cities perform very poorly on that score. .

As compared to what ALL of Canada? MOST of Europe?

[quaddriver]

So where is your evidence that Americans have a worse lifestyle than Europeans? .

um as quoted the majority of deaths for those under 44 are NOT disease related?

[Gob]

I injured my knee a few weeks ago playing tennis, and thought yesterday that I ought to do something about it. I called the local sports medicine clinic and got an appointment with their knee guy this morning. I'm having an MRI on Thursday morning - which will confirm his diagnosis of a lateral meniscus tear. If I were not going on vacation on 8/19, I am certain that the surgery would be complete before the end of the month. My total out of pocket might be a couple hundred dollars. Maybe less.

Would this happen in England? Canada? Germany?

Of course it would happen. Treatment of such quality and sped of delivery is open to anyone who wants to pay for it, (you are doing this treatment on insurance, right?)

Following my recent motorbike crash I was taken straight to hospital, and received great treatment for dislocated shoulder and double knee fracture. Free.

However if there had been any doubts about the speed or quality of the treatment I needed, I could have called on our insurers to get me treated privately. As it was I opted to see a private orthopaedic surgeon here for follow up. (A Catholic hospital none the less Dave.)

I had my MRI on my knee and shoulder x-rays done here, on the same day, as requested, privately. (These were follow up to the free ones I had had done on admission to accident and emergency.)



And I must say that I am surprised you've taken my criticism of wasteful US government spending as an attack on the US, I thought you were against that too?

[Liberty1]

There are definately things that could and should be changed in the US healthcare system, just allowing people to buy insurance accross state lines like you can with car insurance would do wonders.

That being said, I'm willing to pay significantluy more to keep the government out of it any more than it already is.

[dgs49]

How precious that the longest wait times mentioned above were in BOSTON, where they have the most "progressive" version of government-mandated health insurance. Indeed, the Massachusetts system is the one that Barry & The Progressives (not a rock & roll band) most often cited as the example they wanted to follow.

"Change you can believe in."

Indeed.

Speaking of bullshit statistics, "more than half of all personal bankruptcies are related to healthcare expenses."

What exactly does that indicate?

Well, Bankruptcy is the best remedy for unsecured debt. Given the fact that you can keep your home & car when you go bankrupt, and most people don't have a proverbial pot to piss in when it comes to actual savings or non-401k investments, bankruptcy may be a very rational solution to someone who wants to walk away from a pile of medical bills.

It doesn't prove that the medical bills were unreasonable, or even un-payable, merely that the debtor saw an easy way to get out of paying them.

Is there any doubt that if the law regarding student loans hadn't been changed to prevent them from being discharged in Bankruptcy, THEY would be the most prevalent reason for filing?

Which would prove what, exactly?

Nothing.

[Guinevere]

Pardon me, but the Massachusetts mandatory health care system is the brain child of on MITT ROMNEY. Why is it that you always forget that small piece of information?

As for long wait times, I've never experienced an issue with them. I also represent a hospital system and have spent tons of time in their ER, and looking at their statistics. Average ER wait times have gone DOWN in the last 5 years, not just at my hospitals but at ERs across the Commonwealth. Which indicates that fewer people are relying on the ER as their primary care physician, keeping the cost of health care down.

[Scooter]

Speaking of bullshit statistics, "more than half of all personal bankruptcies are related to healthcare expenses."

What exactly does that indicate?

It means that health care costs have become unaffordable, largely because of policy limits and other ways insurance companies have devised to refuse coverage.

Did you often hear of people going bankrupt due to medical costs 40 years ago? No, you didn't. The rise is health care related bankruptcies is clearly linked to the meteoric rise in out-of-pocket costs.

[Liberty1]

Pardon me, but the Massachusetts mandatory health care system is the brain child of on MITT ROMNEY. Why is it that you always forget that small piece of information?

Who says anyone forgot it. Shit is shit, sometimes it even comes from a Rep.

The rise is health care related bankruptcies is clearly linked to the meteoric rise in out-of-pocket costs.

I'd propose it comes from the medioric rise from new exppensive procedures and lawyers willing to sue if any and all expenses are not expended to avoid malpractice.

[Scooter]

And that doesn't translate to higher out-of-pocket costs? Must be the new math.

[Gimcrack]

You were lucky, dgs - when I wracked my knee many a year ago, I had to pay a co-pay to my regular doctor, get a referral to an ortho (another co-pay - but the referral was mandatory), had to pay 20% of the MRI cost, was scheduled for surgery two weeks later, and had to pay a portion of the hospital bill ($400 or so, IIRC).

A few years ago I became very ill, but wanting to save money I went to the doctor the following day rather than the ER that evening. Bad mistake. If I had paid the (then) co-pay for the ER at $125, I would have saved $500. Instead, the MRI and CAT scans were only partially covered, as they were considered "elective". If I had been an ER patient they would have been covered.

TheKid had an appendectomy last summer. The total bill was over 20K. Luckily, I only had to pay $250.00

This is with insurance provided by my government employer. I've had to ask family for assistance to help pay these medical bills, and was lucky enough that they had the means to do so.

It was said that the vast majority of Americans have insurance. Approximately 15% do not have insurance of any type. Of course, that 15% raise everyone's costs, as the only access they have for medical care is in emergency situations. Our local hospital has started to turn away the indigent because the costs of treating them was causing financial stress in all other areas of their system. Then you have those with insurance that covers little of nothing. My ex has medical insurance for the first time in years. His doctors office co-pay is $50, all prescriptions are covered 50%, and his deductible is $3k. On paper, you can say "Well, he HAS insurance!", too bad he cannot afford to utilize it.

Our health care system is broken. People should not have to choose food or medicine. People should not have to break out the magnifier to read through their coverage statement, only to find the medication they need is covered only on alternate Thursdays when the moon is in Gemini. There is nothing user friendly about health care.

[Econoline]

Saying that the the U.S. health care industry is the world's best is sort of like saying that the Italian auto industry is the world's best.

Not everyone can afford a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or American medicine, but those who can afford them agree that they're the best.

[quaddriver]

So FINALLY we have a concensus that the US system is expensive, and not faulty resulting in lower life expectancy as Gob opined?

'bout time.

No thanks required.

[quaddriver]

Interesting take from a canadian doctor and author:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_c ... hcare.html

Interestingly, he notes that Canada and the UKL are seeking to privatize.

If we move to socuialization, I guess we will meet them on the way down.

Some sobering facts I had already pointed out:

One often hears variations on Krugman’s argument—that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use, and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health. Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall, or a car accident. Such factors aren’t academic—homicide rates in the United States are much higher than in other countries (eight times higher than in France, for instance). In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don’t die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country.

And if we measure a health-care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50 percent; the European rate is just 35 percent. Esophageal carcinoma: 12 percent in the United States, 6 percent in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2 percent here, yet 61.7 percent in France and down to 44.3 percent in England—a striking variation

I had pointed out that cancer treatments are practically non-existent elsewhere, Gobs intentional misuse of my words notwithstanding. Consider this:

Take America’s high spending on research and development. M. D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.

In the US the author found *1* center (out of how many in the US?) that outspends the entire nation of Canada.

This data was easily found. Why was it not linked or quoted in this thread by anyone but me? Oh thats right, because it disproves Gobs entire treatise. What did he have to say about it?

lies

Indeed.

Is the UK any better? you decide for yourself

[quaddriver]

Take for example the antidepresant nafazodone (trade name serzone) which you and the hen took for years.

LOL!! Suicidal Quaddy, the man who doesn't want to live long, thinks we take anti-depressants?

Good grief. The 'man' is a moron who speaks through his arse. I am so glad I don't read his dribblings and spittle any more.

Though I must admit, I was probably taking those drugs for the same amount of time that quaddy was fiddling with the private parts of small children. I do hope he stops that sometime soon.

didnt see this cuz I was out...but no one is going to call her on this?

As Andrew had said 'where is the outrage?'

[dgs49]

For clarification, I do not believe that the American healthcare system is great for everyone or the best for anyone, or even tolerable.

Life is a series of tradeoffs. If you want socialized medicine, then you will have to suffer the consequences of socialized medicine. It doesn't take much searching to find Canadians, Brits, and others with "National Healthcare" complaining just as loudly as some Americans do. With our bastardized private-government system, we have out-of-control costs due to many of the major players gaming the system. We also have a very difficult situation for the lower middle class, AKA the "working poor." If you are a security guard or a cab driver or someone working for a small company, a medical problem can be a financial catastrophe. I remember living with painful impacted wisdom teeth for a year, waiting until I got a decent job, then waiting until the initial waiting period for the insurance ran, so I could have oral surgery and relieve my pain. And even with that, it took me months to pay off my out-of-pocket.

But woe to the idiot who claims that socialized medicine is "free."

Update on Uncle Gregory: Yesterday, they thought about doing a cath to see if his heart might be the reason why he's been feeling poorly. But the docs thought he might not be strong enough to withstand the cath, and he didn't want it. His daughter, a nurse, talked him and the doctors into it, and of course they discovered an assortment of blockages.

The guy is dying, after all.

So the guy who might not have been able to survive a cath is now undergoing a bypass operation.

What the hell - he has good insurance right?

As Rahm Emanual once said, no reason to waste a good crisis. Why not do a $50 thousand procedure on him before he dies? He's covered!

I'll have to talk to the cardiac surgeon about that 90-day, money-back guarantee, won't I?

[Gob]

So having embarrassed himself by not realising that "productivity" when referring to medical research means "producing new drugs/treatments/procedures", and that Europe leads the US in it, and claiming cures for cancer are only available in the US Quadiot again tries to divert attention.

So FINALLY we have a concensus that the US system is expensive,

Nobody ever doubted that

and not faulty resulting in lower life expectancy as Gob opined?

Ah, ye old team troll technique, "lie about what people have said, never back it up with a quote by them."

[The Hen]

Did you expect more from him?

I love you for your optimistic outlook on life and scum.

[Gob]

I
I had pointed out that cancer treatments are practically non-existent elsewhere, Gobs intentional misuse of my words notwithstanding. Consider this:

No you have made up an imaginary "fact" that this is true, whereas anyone with a functioning cortex would see it for the utter bollocks it is.

Mind you, I can see why someone sucking on the government teat like you are would want more government spending.

But again, Quaddiot is just trying to divert us away from his own stupidity here.

The topic is, what should be cut. The US government spends disproportionally on public health, should it be cut?

[Sean]

Good grief. The 'man' is a moron who speaks through his arse. I am so glad I don't read his dribblings and spittle any more.

Though I must admit, I was probably taking those drugs for the same amount of time that quaddy was fiddling with the private parts of small children. I do hope he stops that sometime soon.

didnt see this cuz I was out...but no one is going to call her on this?

As Andrew had said 'where is the outrage?'

Outrage? Why on earth should anybody be outraged?

You didn't understand it is all...

Allow me to assist your reading comprehension with another example:

I was dancing the jitterbug on the surface of the moon for the same amount of time that quaddy was fiddling with the private parts of small children. I do hope he stops that sometime soon.

[Gob]

Oh god, he really didn't get it did he?

Another item to add to the ever increasing lengthy, "list of ways Quadiot has embarrassed himself here..."