Comments (5) Jump to Comments Form

1. 

   tpenna said, 5 months ago

   Yep. That’s healthcare in America, boys and girls!

2. 

   Ph00ey said, 5 months ago

   Geez! ain’t that the truth!

3. 

   pschearer said, 5 months ago

   A friend of mine is a physician who came to the U.S. from Canada to get out from under their national health service. He tells the same kind of medical horror stories I heard for years from England and Sweden.

   I admit the current system is broken on two counts: 1) It is a crippled, already semi-nationalized system overwhelmed by decades of Medicare and Medicaid billions bidding up prices; 2) The system overly relies on employer-provided insurance, which under the influence of price increases caused by item 1 is making more and more employers scale down coverage.

   Both these items are a result of existing goverment intrusions into health care. Item 2 is a remnant of WWII price controls which forced employers to offer medical benefits in lieu of higher pay to compete for workers made scarce by military manpower needs. After the war the system was maintained by tax structures that favored employer-paid medical benefits over higher salaries.

   Here’s just one example of the degree of intrusion of the federal government into health care: Watch old movies on Turner Classics set in hospitals. Ever wonder why there are no more hospital wards like there used to be? Because Medicare and Medicaid long ago announced they would only pay for semi-private rooms. Killing off the cheaper option was not the purpose of the policy, but it shows the law of unintended consequences. But I’m not sure that under Obama and his pack of “social democrats” the consequences will be so unintended.

4. 

   nachoburritos said, 5 months ago

   Genius, you are indeed brainwashed (or brain dead). Any “horror stories” from the UK or Sweden are doubled in spades by those from the good ol’ USA. A single-payer government plan is the only way out of our deep, deep hole. But such a sensible solution is blocked by the profitable health care industry, politicians who want to keep their jobs and set-in-concrete conservatives.

5. 

   Randy_B said, 5 months ago

   pshearer’s point of view is consistent, but assumes that “government intrusions” are intrinsically destructive, and, where they exist, only cause bad consequences (and can be tagged as the cause of ANY bad consequences). This is ideology, not analysis.

   American medicine’s state-of-the-art capabilities are getting further and further out of reach of most American citizens. We need guaranteed basic preventive medical care (as an extension of public health) and basic injury and illness treatment. This should be cheaper than using hospital emergency rooms for basic medical care, and should give a big boost to productivity for the working poor and the businesses that employ them.

   I have very good medical insurance, and I actively manage my health care, but I’m very aware that “the system” doesn’t “work great”. Not even for me.