Health Care -- Help, I know nothing!

[Artsemis]

Can someone please break it down for me... basically:
- Outline Canada's healthcare program.
- Outline the US healthcare program.
- Outline Ron Paul's solution.

Feel free to list pro's and con's to each... I'm not looking for huge details (but feel free if you're bored) but this is a topic I think I need to learn much more about but I don't even know the basics of how the US's current system is.

[boracay]

[ QUOTE ]
Can someone please break it down for me... basically:
- Outline Canada's healthcare program.
- Outline the US healthcare program.
- Outline Ron Paul's solution.

Feel free to list pro's and con's to each... I'm not looking for huge details (but feel free if you're bored) but this is a topic I think I need to learn much more about but I don't even know the basics of how the US's current system is.

[/ QUOTE ]

there's a good explanation in wiki:

Universal health care results from a government mandated program to provide all citizens, and sometimes permanent residents, of a governmental region access to most types of health care regardless of ability to pay.

The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system. The government directly covers a little over one-quarter of the population[8] through health care programs for the elderly, disabled, military service families and veterans, children, and the poor.

Current estimates put U.S. health care spending at approximately 15% of GDP, the highest in the world. Despite this, only an estimated 84.2% of citizens have some form of health insurance coverage, either through their employer, purchased individually, or through government sources. In 2003, approximately 61 million adults, or 35 percent of individuals ages 19 to 64, had either no insurance, sporadic coverage, or insurance coverage that exposed them to high health care costs. In the absence of a national program, proponents of universal health care have turned to the states. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is implementing a near-universal health care system by mandating that residents purchase health insurance by July 1, 2007. The City of San Francisco is also undertaking a universal health care system for uninsured residents. California, Maine, Vermont and Hawaii are also considering or seeking to implement universal or near-universal systems.

Common arguments forwarded by supporters of universal health care systems include:

* Health care is a basic human right or entitlement.
* Ensuring the health of all citizens benefits a nation economically.
* Coverage should be provided to all citizens regardless of ability to pay.[citation needed]
* About 60% of the U.S. health care system is already publicly financed when federal and state taxes, property taxes and tax subsidies are included A universal healthcare system would merely replace private/employer spending with taxes. Total spending would go down for individuals and employers.
* A single payer system could save $286 billion a year in overhead and paperwork. Administrative costs in the U.S. health care system are substantially higher than those in other countries and than in the public sector in the US: one estimate put the total administrative costs at 24 percent of U.S. health care spending.
* For-profit healthcare has been shown to have higher expenses and worse results.
* Several studies have shown a majority of taxpayers and citizens across the political divide would prefer a universal healthcare system over the current U.S. system
* Health care is increasingly unaffordable for businesses and individuals.
* Universal health care would provide for uninsured adults who may forgo treatment needed for chronic health conditions.
* Providing access to medical treatment to those who cannot afford it reduces the severity of epidemics by reducing the number of disease carriers.[citation needed]
* Wastefulness and inefficiency in the delivery of health care would be reduced.
* America spends a far higher percentage of GDP on health care than any other country but has worse ratings on such criteria as quality of care, efficiency of care, access to care, safe care, equity, right care and wait times, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
* A universal system would align incentives for investment in long term health-care productivity, preventive care, and better management of chronic conditions.
* By reducing paperwork a universal system would allow doctors to spend more time with patients, thereby increasing physician productivity.
* Patients would be encouraged to seek preventive care, enabling problems to be detected and treated earlier.
* A centralized national database would make diagnosis and treatment easier for doctors.
* Universal health care could act as a subsidy to business, at no cost thereto. (Indeed, the Big Three of U.S. car manufacturers cite health-care provision as a reason for their ongoing financial travails. The cost of health insurance to U.S. car manufacturers adds between USD 900 and USD 1,400 to each car made in the U.S.A.)
* The profit motive adversely affects the cost and quality of health care. If managed care programs and their concomitant provider networks are abolished, then doctors would no longer be guaranteed patients solely on the basis of their membership in a provider group and regardless of the quality of care they provide. Theoretically, quality of care would increase as true competition for patients is restored.
* The profit motive adversely affects the motives of healthcare. Because of medical underwriting, which is designed to mitigate risk for insurance providers, applicants with pre-existing conditions, some of them minor, are denied coverage or prevented from obtaining health insurance at a reasonable cost. Health insurance companies have greater profits if fewer medical procedures are actually performed, so agents are pressured to deny necessary and sometimes life-saving procedures to help the bottom line.[citation needed]
* According to an estimate by Dr. Marcia Angell roughly 50% of healthcare dollars are spent on healthcare, the rest go to various middlemen and intermediaries. A streamlined, non-profit, universal system would increase the efficiency with which is money spent on healthcare.



Common arguments forwarded by opponents of universal health care systems include:

* Health care is not a right.
* Providing health care is not the responsibility of government.
* Universal heath care would result in increased wait times, which could result in unnecessary deaths.
* Poorer quality of care.
* Unequal access and health disparities still exist in universal health care systems.
* Universal health care would reduce efficiency because of more bureaucratic oversight and more paperwork, which could lead to fewer doctor-patient visits. Advocates of this argument claim that the performance of administrative duties by doctors results from medical centralization and over-regulation, and may reduce charitable provision of medical services by doctors.
* Profit motives, competition, and individual ingenuity lead to greater cost control and effectiveness.
* By law, uninsured citizens receive emergency care regardless of ability to pay. The health care safety net, which includes free medical clinics, charity care, and nonprofits and government-run community hospitals provides necessary care to the uninsured.
* Government-mandated procedures would reduce doctor flexibility.
* Healthy people who take care of themselves should not have to pay for the burden of those who smoke, are obese, etc.
* Loss of private practice options and possible reduced pay would dissuade many would-be doctors from pursuing the profession.
* Likely loss of insurance industry jobs and business closure in the private sector.
* Universal health care would eliminate the right to privacy between doctors and patients.
* Empirical evidence on single payer-insurance programs demonstrates that the cost exceeds the expectations of advocates.
* Universal health care systems, in an effort to control costs by gaining or enforcing monopsony power, sometimes outlaw medical care paid for by private, individual funds.