Universal Health Care

[Copernicus]

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sorry, I really dont understand your point here

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you said that the statistical reports dont reflect people who are not treated. However, the same can be said about people whose insurance doesnt cover treatments. <font color="red"> which, once again, is such a small number it wouldnt even find its way into the statistics had they been treated </font>


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coverages for necessary surgery in the US are essentially all inclusive

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Well, "essentially" is obviously a red flag here. And of course, you can assert this just as well as I can assert "all Canadians get access to necessary surgery"

But, I know a friend from school whose mother didnt get a surgery because it wasnt covered. (it wasnt a complete necessity, some back pain thing). Am I now to conclude that this isnt 'atypical'? <font color="red"> it depends on the coverages she elected. It may or may not be atypical for her given coverage. I cost and design employer provided health benefits. There are very few if any policies written that exclude any sort of necessary surgery. Also, audits of health insurers claims payments consistently show much higher instances of overpayments and payments for non-covered events than payments denied for covered events, and the latter are always corrected. Your friends situation may have been the result of alternate procedures that were determined to be medically equivalent or superior, or her proposed treatment was considered experimental.</font>


No, because I think its poor reasoning to judge complex situations based on a few anecdotes. But, I dont think you've presented any clear evidence to show that the problems of non-access in Canada are any more severe than they are in the US. <font color="red">Since there are virtually no problems of non-access in the US any access problems in Canada are by definition more sever than the US. Access is one of the most credible statistics, since it is relatively discrete and easy to measure. As noted in someone elses post the US is rated first in access. </font>



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It is ONE of the most expensive, and provides health care among the best in the world. There arent enough valid statistics to differentiate among the highest n in costs, or the top k in quality. The US is clearly in both of those (limited) groups.

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when you said "The countries that provide socialized health care are evidence that it isn't true, since they are either extremely expensive, lower quality or both" you seemed to find ways to do some rough rankings.

What countries have medical care that cost more than in the US, and yet is of poorer quality?

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As I already said, the statistics are insufficient to draw conclusions such as absolute rankings of either cost or quality. My statement, perhaps not expressed as clearly as this, is that within the ranges of the credibility of the statistics that do exist there will be some countries whose upper bound on cost estimates and lower bound on quality estimates will exceed/fall short of the potential ranges of US statistics. That does not imply that you can pick which ones actually do exceed/fall short.

As stated before, one broad indicator of quality is life expectancy from 5 years old excluding the cohort that died violent deaths, and the US ranks number 1.