Sicko Revisited

[vhawk01]

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The US govt does not exactly have a good track record when it comes to efficient spending of tax dollars. Why will that suddenly change with money taken for the purpose of health care? Who holds them accountable? No one. Governments can waste all the money thery want and no one can stop them. No one can choose not to keep giving them money if they feel it's being wasted.


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I agree with this,... that is the US abyssmal govt record in efficiency. That being said, to me it is not a reason to think Universal healthcare is undoable. Its a reason for people to fix their govt.

I thought one of the more interesting quotes in the movie was an interview with someone in France. The gist of it was that the govt. was afraid of the people. People regularly challenged their govt and protested when they disagreed. Where I think the US population, for the most part, is very apathetic. Since no one holds our govt accountable, they quite often perform poorly.

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It's funny to hear liberals rail against large corporations for fear of monopolies, because they feel that monopolies are so bad for consumers. But when it comes to health care, a monopoly will magically be great for the consumer. The failings of the UK system are well documented.


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Yet according to the US report quoted in the doc, the people of UK get better health care then Americans. Also, the US was, if I remember correctly, ranked 66th for healthcare.

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Here's the explanation: The statistics that Moore uses are from the WHO, which is a socialist organization that attempts to glorify countries with socialist health care systems. They use life expectancy and infant mortality rates to judge the health care systems. This is completely inaccurate because life span has much more to do with the homocide rate than anything. Infant mortality rate is an even less accurate stat because the definition of an infant mortality is different in every country.

Do you honestly believe that you would recieve better treatment in a Cuban hospital than an American one? [/quote
Do you have studies which you think places the average American in better light?

Also - it is conceiveable that Cuba could deliver better healthcare to the avg. american... depending on their income.

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Right, so until the government is fixed, this will be a catastrophic failure. So, fix the government, get back to me.

[ikestoys]

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1. Medical school costs, # of doctors, doctor pay... it seems to me that if you switch to universal health care, you'll be needing to worry a lot about how doctors are going to pay off med school. I'm not sure how 'efficient' the medical school market is at the moment.

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There is absolutely no effieciency in this market. The AMA controls how many doctors get licenses, and how many med schools exist. They do this to artificially increase doctors' income and eliminate competition.

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fail

costs of training med school student > tuition

therefore

not a lot of med schools.

[natedogg]

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The majority of citizens want it so if you have any regard for democracy thats good enough reason

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There are so many problems with this statement that all of your opinions on public policy are null and void as far as I'm concerned.

natedogg

[Ron Burgundy]

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1. Medical school costs, # of doctors, doctor pay... it seems to me that if you switch to universal health care, you'll be needing to worry a lot about how doctors are going to pay off med school. I'm not sure how 'efficient' the medical school market is at the moment.

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There is absolutely no effieciency in this market. The AMA controls how many doctors get licenses, and how many med schools exist. They do this to artificially increase doctors' income and eliminate competition.

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fail

costs of training med school student > tuition

therefore

not a lot of med schools.

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fail

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We have to go very far back to the first meeting of what would become the American Medical Association. This meeting was held in New York City in 1846. Twenty-nine allopathic doctors (MDs) attended the meeting. They wanted to establish a monopoly over health care in the United States for those doctors that practiced higher quality medicine, such as themselves. They felt there were too many different kinds of doctors practicing too many questionable forms of medicine. They wanted only doctors that conformed to their brand of medicine to be allowed to practice. They wished to set up their association as a medical elite and obtain a government-enforced monopoly over health care in the United States.

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Soon after the medical monopoly was formed it began to push its agenda of destroying all competition. A well organized and funded nationwide purge of all non-MDs was undertaken. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century this medical monopoly managed to shut down over forty medical schools. Their idea was to keep the number of doctors low in order to keep fees up. After WW II the medical monopoly started rigidly controlling how many of each medical specialty it would allow to be trained. So ophthalmologists, orthopedists, dermatologists, obstetricians, and others began to be in short supply. And of course when supplies are low, fees are high. The medical monopoly also managed to outlaw or marginalize over seventy healthcare professions. Protection of the healthcare consumer was, as always, the rationale for this power grab.

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[xorbie]

Ron,

What you quoted doesn't necessarily imply that what you are arguing against is wrong. That's what I'm talking about. I don't know enough about what the actual costs (non-labor, I don't care if med school profs make less money) of training a doctor. Machinery, corpses to practice on, etc.

[Kaj]

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I'm also curious to all the people against the concept; of the countries featured on the DVD (Canada, Cuba, France, Norway (#1 for Healthcare) and even many 3rd world countries)... many of these countries supply universal healthcare and there people have better health standards then the US. How do you explain this?

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One reason is that the rest of the world severely underinvests in healthcare research and just lets the US pay for it all. A huge chunk of the money that Americans spend on healthcare is invested in R&D, and a correspondingly huge percentage of healthcare innovations are made in the US.

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This rebuttal falls flat considering much (certainly not all) of the medical R&D in America is funded by the federal government and performed by state universities. Kind of silly to use the success of some government spending as an argument against government spending.

[bobman0330]

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I'm also curious to all the people against the concept; of the countries featured on the DVD (Canada, Cuba, France, Norway (#1 for Healthcare) and even many 3rd world countries)... many of these countries supply universal healthcare and there people have better health standards then the US. How do you explain this?

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One reason is that the rest of the world severely underinvests in healthcare research and just lets the US pay for it all. A huge chunk of the money that Americans spend on healthcare is invested in R&D, and a correspondingly huge percentage of healthcare innovations are made in the US.

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This rebuttal falls flat considering much (certainly not all) of the medical R&D in America is funded by the federal government and performed by state universities. Kind of silly to use the success of some government spending as an argument against government spending.

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It's not an argument against government spending, it's an argument against replacing the American system with the National Health Service. Or not even that, it's an explanation of how some countries can provide the results they do without ruinous expense.

[Kaj]

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I'm also curious to all the people against the concept; of the countries featured on the DVD (Canada, Cuba, France, Norway (#1 for Healthcare) and even many 3rd world countries)... many of these countries supply universal healthcare and there people have better health standards then the US. How do you explain this?

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One reason is that the rest of the world severely underinvests in healthcare research and just lets the US pay for it all. A huge chunk of the money that Americans spend on healthcare is invested in R&D, and a correspondingly huge percentage of healthcare innovations are made in the US.

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This rebuttal falls flat considering much (certainly not all) of the medical R&D in America is funded by the federal government and performed by state universities. Kind of silly to use the success of some government spending as an argument against government spending.

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It's not an argument against government spending, it's an argument against replacing the American system with the National Health Service. Or not even that, it's an explanation of how some countries can provide the results they do without ruinous expense.

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But there's no point to follow if the govt here is already funding much of the research. All you are saying is "America is rich" and leads the world in research. Fine. It would still be doing so with or without universal health care in America. And it already is doing so through massive government involvement anyway. If you could point out a country that leads the world's research through merely private means, you may have a point to make. But here you don't have that.

[inside??]

I am generally in favor of universal health care but there is one point my doctor raised.

I recently had back surgery and my doctor was a Canadian who had moved to the United States to practice. I asked him what his view of it was and he said he was against it because the Canadian government required him to purchase specific instruments for surgery and not the ones he preferred. He felt that he was needlessly putting patients at minor risk by not being able to used tools that he had been trained on.

[GoodCallYouWin]

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Yes, a 1.5 hour propaganda film is going to change my understanding of society and economics so I will advocate socalism over laissez-faire capitalism. That's just how I roll.

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These are my favorite responses. They completely ignore the realities of different health care models and pretend that capitalism is the end all be all regardless of reality.

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Capitalism is the end all and be all, at least as far as economics is concerned. You want me to believe your socialist fantasies? Explain to me how, in the absence of a price structure, economic calculation can be possible.