What do you think of Universal Healthcare?

[back2basics]

America has a national health system, it’s called the Veterans Health Administration. It benefits from many of the good reasons for having such a system and has its hands tied in other (the ability to negotiate for drugs on the basis of a large order). And that’s the thing, you will find many “free market” type people saying they don’t want a national health care system, because it’s against their principals. Well you have one, and it has no ability to negotiate and buy at a market price. The Veterans health association do a great job as well. They have a single IT system, nice facilities and win many awards for innovation, and it’s all done at a relatively low costs. They cover about 50 Million people.

 

They also have a shared responsibility national program called Medicare and Medicaid, that cover the poor and old. Many people will say that the poor are not refused treatment. That’s false for so many different reasons. Try getting a private ambulance service to pick you up if you have no insurance. It costs quiet a bit of money. When you have treatment in a Medicaid hospital the doctor may send you home to take some drugs, you may not be able to afford them. 25% of all diabetics in America do not take insulin as its to expensive. These are all part of the reason why Amercia has some of the worst mortality rates (in adults and children) in the developed World.

 

There is no preventative care programs, which save huge amounts of money. Which is one reason every person in England, France, Canada etc spend half as much per capita on health care than an American does. So while Americans are paying for shared responsibility programs, they are seemingly not worried about reducing those shared costs by preventing expensive healthcare problems, or allowing these programs to negotiate drug costs.

 

American manufacturing companies are now finding they cannot compete with the cost of healthcare and are becoming some of the more vocal groups to want a national solution to reduce their costs.

 

Its easy to say you don’t want to share responsibility, but if you had a child born with a expensive lifelong genetic issue, I would love to hear people say the same thing.

 

 

The other argument "name another national system that works" is pretty bad as well. By all measures the best system is the one in France. Mortality rates are far better in all countries with national systems than America. And it my belief that America could do a great job of implementing a system that covers everybody, if they cannot, nobody can.