Is access to health care a basic human right: or a privilege?

Apparently I was not clear enough. It take more than just a free market or government run. Neither are sustainable by themselves.

 

So you suggest a hybrid like we have in Australia? Isn't the current US system already a combination of free market and government run? There must be something different from the current system you are suggesting.

Also, I don't think JohnDeerefan would agree with your statement, but I'll let him speak for himself.

 

No, Free market alone can't do it, government run can't do it, hybrids cannot do it. They will all fail because they are only dealing with the symptoms. Again what are the problems occurring that make health care un-affordable? Can you name some of them?

 

Poverty
Cost of educating health care professionals
Cost of health care infrastructure
Cost of developing and distributing medications
Expectations of what constitutes as quality health care

 

These are just some, so what can be done to change these issues for the better, and in a way that makes health care more accessible to everyone?

 

I was waiting for you to tell me.

 

Oh boy. My list would look something like this:

Linkage of health care insurance with job benefits
Employer based plans are tax deductible
The tendency of health insurance companies to cover any and all treatments
The tendency of health insurance companies to cover any and all diagnostic methods
Excessive testing of patients because of...
....Medical malpractice lawsuits
Administrative costs--Plethora of insurance non-standard non-electronic documents and coding systems.
Over reliance on specialists, general practitioners are quick to refer to specialists because of...
...Medical malpractice lawsuits
Expensive pharmaceuticals (in part because of spending on advertising.)

 

Why are people in poverty? Just looking at the US it is because of several reasons. 1. People make some bad decisions, 2. people make bad decisions coupled with difficult circumstances, 3. people face difficult circumstances but are unwilling to go the extra mile to overcome them, 4. there tends to be a victim mentality that leads to poor decisions, 5. some people choose to live in poverty.

We need to address these issue as a country rather than just feeding the problem by putting them on the government dole permanently. I do not mind temporary public assistance but some people rely on them for a lifetime and governments are willing to accommodate that. It is irresponsible living and it needs to stop.

Which are unnecessary and we need to work on bringing these costs down. Education in all areas is why too high and unnecessarily.

Again it is not necessary that they be so high. We need to deal with these high costs instead of just building them into the costs of personal health care.

There are several factors involved in this some of which are the risks (liability) of using them which leads to all kinds of law suits. We need to deal with the excessive law suits instead of just building those costs into health care. There is the greed factor of the companies. I also believe we need to investigate the processes of how the drugs are put our and make sure everything is honest and transparent.

I think that part of this is doctors who see the health care field as a scheme to make lots of money. It effects the quality and nature of the business side of things that I believe lowers the quality.

I will add:

Built in to the costs of health care is the costs associated with the liability doctors have. We need to deal with this and I do not means just remove all personal liability from them but the current system in our country is far too easy to sue without putting any skin in the game. So doctors settle law suits not because they actually did anything wrong but because it is too cheap and easy to being a suit and it is just cheaper to settle than to fight in court.

 

Healthcare costs have been skyrocketing ever since all those technological advances in medicine early last century. All of a sudden, all these diseases (polio, diphtheria, etc) became treatable and then it went from there. Insurance companies came along and started offering these health plans but at retirement age, they were very expensive and those people were the ones that actually needed healthcare. Thus, Medicare was born in the US.

Truman tried to get single-payer through but the AMA threw a fit. Medicaid is a totally different thing, it came along back when Medicare did but the states have always had an opt-out/experimental feature to Medicaid, unlike Medicare.

Come to think of it, Obamacare does have actually fascist elements to it, it's just a marriage of insurance and government. It has proven to be a huge disappointment, but even states like Vermont can't play around with single-payer because the costs are at least double for the entire state's budget. And when you push it by some ballot initiative (Colorado 69, Oregon 23), it goes down in flames.

If you take enough mathematics, you realize that some problems have no solution. Maybe keep Medicare/Medicaid, do some tort reform, issue vouchers? Also need to rein in private insurance companies, they are making a killing with Obamacare and before that.

 

I will add some more: 7. People are dealt a lousy hand in life from birth and are unable to overcome it because the deck is stacked against them. 8. People are ok until they are struck down by an unforeseen circumstance: a medical condition, an economic recession etc. How do you propose to address those causes of poverty?

 

Baloney

 

Thanks for you 'Christian' response.

 

No such thing as "unable to overcome it because the deck is stacked against them" what is true is they may have to work harder of differently than others but it is untrue that they are not able to at all.

 

You seem to have a thing for calling people names. You realize that "ad hominem" arguments are least lowest and least effective form of debate, right? Do you actually believe Marxism isn't about government control. Stalin was a Marxist. Hitler was a Fascist. Two sides of the same coin, a dictatorship to control the government. Equating the Republican Party and the Church is what's taking down the church.

 

Try telling that to a black man pre- and even post-Civil Rights Act.

You really don't get the concept of privilege, do you? Wow, just.. .wow

 

Socialized medicine, which you are advocating, is about government control. Liberty and free markets, which I am advocating are not, and are not, by any definition, "fascist". Now, are you able to answer the question or not?

 

Socialized healthcare never works. That has been shown worldwide for decades yet people still think that America should spend trillions on something that is already proven not to work. Liberals want to make life and death decisions through the government so that liberals can control people by controlling government and turning every doctor into a cheap government worker.

 

RevMitchell, I'm impressed that you attempted to address these individually. There are hundreds of other reasons for expensive health care in addition to the ones I listed off the top of my head. If your approach to affordable health care is to tackle all of them, I don't see how your solution will ever produce an affordable health care system without significant government intervention and likely several decades if not centuries of time. In the meantime, people need quality health care today.

I don't really agree with your reasoning and approaches to any of these. But even if I did, I don't see much in the way of a solution that is achieveable in the real world. Wishing there were no poor people and that these costs can be reduced with ideology will not make it happen.

Risk of litigation is something that can easily be reduced. The rest of the world has significantly reduced medical indemnity fees compared to the US. But of course government intervention in the form of tort reform is needed. Of the things you mentioned, this is something actually achieveable.

 

How in the world can you consider tort reform to be "government interference"? It means changing to a "loser pay" system. And it is achievable, seeing that it's been achieved in Georgia, California, and Texas already.

Some of the hostility you're experiencing from certain posters in this thread could be because you're some Canadian living in Australia criticizing the American healthcare system, when your countries could use a little reform themselves. Physician, heal thyself.