There are a number of successful models we could emulate. I hear the French have a good system.

Last edited Sun Dec 22, 2024, 05:19 PM - Edit history (1)

I do remember growing up in a small rural town with family doctors who made house-calls, a small local hospital, larger hospitals a couple of hours away. Medical bills were paid directly as possible (some bartering still went on.) There were no "pre-approvals" or "claim denials". I'm sure there were financial hardships but they weren't because of insurance behemoths demanding their 10 pounds of flesh.

Our current system grew more like a parasitic tumor.

Why would wealthy white jerks want that? /s

Each of the Canadian provinces funds the healthcare system rather than the Canadian government. Still, it's better than the U.S. healthcare system where people aren't viewed as patients but as profit centers. If the U.S. were to adopt the Canadian model the major needed would be not to rely upon the individual states for funding but by the federal government. Each state then can supplement federal funding if they want to.

I'd like to see a healthcare system in the U.S. like they have in Europe or even Canada.

for giving us for profit healthcare

I belive Ronny Raygun was also a perpetrator of accountants doing medicine.

Utterly random.

CA and WA are pretty good for healthcare markets. States that opted out of medicaid are much worse.

Their model will spread to the other 50. (probably not, but it's an interesting thought.....)

Your signature line is great. I have never seen that one before.
Appreciate your input.

Check out the book to learn about the wise man who says that quote.

just the fact that you cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions and that parents can keep their kids covered as dependents through 26 y.o. is huge. The health coverage and insurance market in 2007 was much much worse. Like everything, it’s location dependent, same with schools, zip code determines a fundamental difference in public schools.

Here’s a sad statistic for you: In the United States, we have a whopping 1.4 million people employed with the job of DENYING HEALTH CARE, vs only 1 million doctors in the entire country!

That’s all you need to know about America. We pay more people to deny care than to give it...
https://www.democraticunderground.com/

... for killing the public option.

That's what I remember Sarah Palin for.

Oh those imaginary death panels that never got explained or understood. But they were in someone's imaginary single payer plan.

It was because of the need for triage that she made up that BS.

Funny how we now have a large group of filthy- rich people making life and death decisions right now and people are dying from a lack of medical attention. But those aren't considered death panels.

The right wing went all out on the propaganda to keep us from having a functional medical system.

! And every provider seems to have their own dam' system.

But for rightwing ideologues with their lies and demagoguery about ‘socialism,’ ‘communism,’ and ‘I have to wait six months for routine surgery.'

It wasn’t always like this.

In the 50s, 60s and early 70s, 95 percent of medical treatment was done in hospitals – no surgery centers or outpatient clinics.

You saw your doctor for simple things – shots, prescriptions, a few stiches; and most Americans could afford to see a doctor, no health insurance needed.

If you needed more advanced medical treatment you were admitted to the hospital where you used health insurance – private or Medicare.

And in those days health insurance was like homeowner’s insurance or car insurance, you rarely used it – if at all.

Then came the explosion of medical treatment and technology – and an explosion of medical costs; now you needed medical insurance to see your doctor, you couldn’t afford to see a doctor otherwise.

Insurance companies responded to the cost explosion by prioritizing profit over patient care.

too many – nearly all! – Dems have also been so captured by the health care capitalists that they don't even bother to ask for what we want. (Remember how Obama took the public option off the table before negotiations even began?)

Republicans have successfully pushed us to where we are now by consistently making demands that initially seemed outrageous but eventually became normalized. We need Dems to start demanding free, universal health care, stronger protections for unionization, much stronger Wall St. regulation, etc. etc.

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias."

– Oscar Wilde (1897), Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.1051, Wordsworth Editions.

We have enough investment schemes in this country; we need a health care system.

... "promote the general Welfare". It says nothing about predatory financial exploitation of those in need of care.

Incidentally, when you Google "The Common Good in the Constitution", the first thing that pops up is from the Heritage Foundation. How fucked up is THAT? Those sociopaths do NOT do "Common Good", or "General Welfare". They do greed, malice, and deceit.

we can change this if we simply elect people in both parties that are not paid employees of the billionaire class.

But whining is not the same as informed voting.

Wake Up, Wake Up, Wake Up!

that's also its URL. They recognize how Citizens United, the regulatory revolving doors, etc. have enabled Big $ to capture Congress, and they've formulated what's just about the only plan I know of that might have a chance to actually reverse that tide.

The plan involves getting honest people into the political pipeline at the local level so that there will eventually be better candidates available up the food chain, as well as measures to improve accountability to voters and systematically close the loopholes that currently allow "legalized corruption."

They blocked going for a national health system in the 1940s as the Dixiecrats refused to cover minorities. Then the AMA decided to keep the number of medical students too low to provide enough Doctors for a growing population. Everywhere else went universal between the 40s & 70s.

If everything falls apart in the coming few years, I’m going to fight for truly good, affordable, accessible healthcare. The easiest transition I’ve read about is Medicare for All.

We hear all the time about people coming to the US for medical care. I'm pretty sure those people are wealthy enough to afford it. Why else would Americans go overseas for medical care that they can afford.

whenever someone says we have the best health care system in the world, he corrects them.

He says we have the best health care INFRASTRUCTURE in the world, combined with a system that is designed to move cash from the people who can't afford it to the people who don't need it and it is VERY efficient at the task it has been designed for.

The sad thing is that our system could deliver care to our population, but being designed for each step of care costing more than the one before and insurance able to deny at any step of the process, that doesn't happen far too often.

And miss me with "but health insurance companies are the BEST".

We stole land from indigenous Indians.
We stole work from slaves.
We stole raw materials from poor countries who owe us for the munitions we sold them.
We stole potential Social Security money by giving it to the rich in the form of tax breaks.
We stole even more to pay interest on the money we borrowed in order to give those tax breaks.
We have little left but to steal from each other. Got health care? Here we come!