The Socialist Nightmare

[FlashLackey]

What are the alternatives? I mean, Medicare/Medicaid are both going to bottom out with the current world projections of 7 billion people by 2011.

Exactly. So, why would we want to apply that model to more people?

Of that, most are getting elderly and going to tax any current system in place. So... I'm being honest here... what are the alternatives? To hear that a government system that you can pay into is an option, not solution, option is met with this much resistance, then the alternatives should be as clear.

The alternative that I mentioned could be applied to elderly people as well. Make the health industry compete for that business.

The reason the public option idea is met with resistance is that it is not an option. You can opt to take the plan. But, you can't opt to not pay for the subsidies it asks for via taxes. Whether your taxes are raised directly or indirectly via increased costs of goods, lower salaries or increased unemployment, we are all on the hook to pay for it, without an option.

I didn't mean you, per se. It's just that socialism is not as evil as people put it. Nor are we any closer to a socialist situation.

I don't see how socializing health care doesn't make a country that much more socialist than they were before. I don't think it's evil. It just doesn't serve the people as well as alternatives.

Who said it'll be free? Everything I've read was it'll be competition. Don't like it, stick with your current coverage. Nobody's forcing you.

Unless I am mistaken, the expressed goal is that all of the 47 million uninsured will have insurance. If Obama's plan costs anything, it will surely fall short of that goal since many people either choose not to or cannot afford to pay anything.

They say that they will make an "affordable plan" but I've yet to see that defined. Perhaps it is misleading for me to say "$0.00" (except for people that don't have money?). The same problem exists in that it's not a competition. Competition is when two parties compete according to the same rules. Subsidizing part of the cost of making one product to "compete" with another product is like giving one basketball team 50 points to start a game and calling it a competition.

You very well might have. Care to link to it? Some of your better posts get buried or I (honestly) get disinterested in the conversation because I have to switch to "moderator mode" and fan down flames from all directions.

Makes sense. I'd rather not dig through old posts to find it. Besides, its possible that I was posting it on another forum. Getting closer to medicare age, you know.

But there's some limitations to this, no?

I don't see what they would be? As with any course of business involving lots of people, there would be new issues to work out. But, fundamentally, I think it would maximize competition to work for us, create a baseline cost pace matching the costs of other goods and everyone would have coverage.

I think that broader competition would force companies to offer "no drop" plans. But, if that became a concern or problem, that's one piece of legislation. It doesn't take reforming the entire industry to solve that issue.

[gerbick]

Hmm, good points. Allow me a while to ponder retorts.

[david petley]

Both the Commonwealth Fund and WHO are socialized health care advocates. So, you have a lobbyist groups analysis of the biased findings of the WHO.

Please tell me where else to find world health statistics and analysis that you don't just dismiss as socialist. Which worldwide organisation with representitives from many countries do you advocate for their collection of statisitcal data?

Is there one that I wouldn't just dismiss as right-wing bollocks as easily as you seem to dismiss the world health organisation?

It seems strange to me that WHO would use different criteria for analysis of US data than they do the rest of the world.

...seems to me that they would apply their statistical analysis using the same methods for all countries, so how does a collection of information provided by governments all over the world, with some simple bean counting to provide a best to worst list, become biased?

Blithely intimating that, because the US leads the world in Cancer treatment, the US Health Care system is doing ok seems a little disingenuous to me.

david

<edit> especially if many people can't afford the cancer treatment</edit>

[cancerinform]

... we are all on the hook to pay for it....

The word "we" is missing in the language in US. We all pay for our health in one pot like we pay for social security. The health insurances only want to insure the healthy and preferably young and throw out people who need expensive treatment. As long as health insurance follows pure capitalistic rules as it does in the US without government regulation it does not work as we all can see now. It is a similar disaster as with the banks, since the insurance is driven by profit.

[Loyal Rogue]

If you get cancer in the US, you have a better chance of surviving it than in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. Cancer is the second leading cause of death for all humans in the world. The US would have to be the absolute last in every other health category in order to fall out of the top 5, considering their performance with cancer. That is, of course, assuming an analysis with any semblance of objectivity.

Frankly, I find the notion that the US is #1 in cancer but horrible in everything else to lack plausibility.

I agree with your last statement... it doesn't sound plausible, but for a different reason.

Can you provide some source so I can see the methodology used for the stats you are are providing?

I have read that those cancer numbers have been twisted by some rightwing thinktanks to misrepresent the facts.

Remember Guiliani stating during his campaign,

"I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago. My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44% under socialized medicine."

Politifact looked into it and discovered a few problems with the premise.

Wrong numbers, off point

Rudy Giuliani was seeking to make a point about socialized medicine by drawing upon his own experience of having been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
But his statement caused an instant controversy as medical experts disputed his statistics and declared his comparison unfair.

In fact, the numbers are wrong.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the five-year survival rate in the U.S. actually is above 99 percent. In the United Kingdom, it's nearly 75 percent, according to their Office for National Statistics.

Giuliani's campaign defends the numbers it used from City Journal, a quarterly magazine funded by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in New York.

"The bottom line is, the mayor is illustrating a point that you are essentially better off in the U.S. system than the European system,'' said campaign spokesman Elliott Bundy. "You are better off in a system of competition and choice rather than a government-mandated health care system."

Cancer experts say there are two big problems with the City Journal article. For one thing, the numbers quoted in the story are an extrapolation of statistics from the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that supports health policy research, and that group says its numbers were misused in the City Journal article.

The Commonwealth Fund issued a statement saying that its study of incidence of cancer and mortality rates should not be used to compute survivability rates.

"The numbers basically aren't right," said fund president Karen Davis.

But a gap still exists in the five-year survival rate between the U.S. and the UK. Even if Giuliani's numbers are wrong, could his point still be right?

No, according to cancer experts.

The difference between the two countries comes down to a matter of medical philosophy, experts said.

U.S. officials believe in aggressive testing to find early cases of prostate cancer, while some cancer experts say that since that many cases of prostate cancer develop late enough in life that patients are likely to die of something else, screening everyone for cancer isn't worth the difficulties those treatments can cause.

U.S. men are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer as men in the U.K. because they are more likely to be screened for the disease. That artificially inflates the survival rate, since many of the U.S. men treated would never have developed symptoms of disease.

A more accurate comparison would be to look at mortality rates, said prostate cancer epidemiologist Lorelei Mucci, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. In the U.S., about 15.8 of every 100,000 men die of prostate cancer, while in the U.K., the figure is 17.9 deaths.

"They're essentially quite similar," she said.

The statistics Giuliani uses are wrong. The Giuliani campaign insists that it's making a legitimate point about the merits of health care in the U.S. over Britain, but the statistics that say the chances of surviving prostate is higher in America also say the chances of having it are higher in the U.S., too.

We find his statement false.

[Loyal Rogue]

Digging a little deeper into the cancer stats I find that the US only looks really good on cancer if you only count breast and prostate and only if you use a specific criteria of 5yr survivability whether the cancer was life threatening or not (that's how the aggressive testing mentioned before can really skew the numbers).

Looking at an overall cancer mortality rate, the US doesn't come close to being #1.
Actually, the UK with national healthcare is at #1.

[random25]

Kinda off subject, but I have to gripe a little today...

After 6 months of waiting for my Oklahoma tax return to arrive, I instead receive a bill from the Oklahoma tax commission for $276.
Seems the last time I went to the ER the hospital neglected to give my insurance info to the doctor that saw me, he sent the bill to collections and they had it deducted from my taxes.
I contacted my insurance company and they tell me I am out of luck because the bill was from more than 6 months ago!

[WannaBe_80z]

^ouch.

america at it's finest.

[jAQUAN]

After 6 months of waiting for my Oklahoma tax return to arrive, I instead receive a bill from the Oklahoma tax commission for $276.
Seems the last time I went to the ER the hospital neglected to give my insurance info to the doctor that saw me, he sent the bill to collections and they had it deducted from my taxes.

So wait, the tax commission paid your hospital bill? Yeah, no socialism here.

[cancerinform]

You might want to have a look at this

http://worldlifeexpectancy.com/

Death and life is not only related to healthcare but also to the way of life in a country. Like in Japan women have the highest life expectancy. In certain areas in Japan where people grow green tea, the life expectancy is high etc.

Prostate cancer is the worst example to choose. The main problem is that the tests are not accurate and do not necessarily tell whether you have prostate cancer or not. An enlarged prostate or increase in PSA (Prostate specific antigen) does not necessarily mean cancer. Also as mentioned the age it occurs is usually quite high and most patients die of something else. Some men actually refuse to undergo treatment, which eliminates the prostate, because their sex life is endangered. Prostate cancer grows very slow.

The US was for example a frontrunner in the world in the fight against smoking. It is just now that the European countries follow. This has nothing to do with healthcare. Therefore, to dig up statistics about death is a dangerous thing to do.

[FlashLackey]

Please tell me where else to find world health statistics and analysis that you don't just dismiss as socialist. Which worldwide organisation with representatives from many countries do you advocate for their collection of statisitcal data?

Why would good data have to come from a "worldwide organisation with representitives from many countries"?

I'm sure that some of their statistics are good. However, their criteria for rating the quality of healthcare between nations is leveraged to score socialized health systems higher, despite basic statistics (like cancer survival rates) that contradict their outcomes.

Is there one that I wouldn't just dismiss as right-wing bollocks as easily as you seem to dismiss the world health organisation?

I don't know what you would or would not dismiss.

Here is an article going over the findings: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...in-Europe.html

Unfortunately, it appears that you have to pay to read the journal, but there is some information about their methodology here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...article_upsell

...seems to me that they would apply their statistical analysis using the same methods for all countries, so how does a collection of information provided by governments all over the world, with some simple bean counting to provide a best to worst list, become biased?

The first thing you learn in Statistics 101 is that there are many ways to distort statistics to conclude whatever a person or group wants to.

Blithely intimating that, because the US leads the world in Cancer treatment, the US Health Care system is doing ok seems a little disingenuous to me.

Interesting. It seems more like the bottom line to me. What are your chances of surviving a serious illness once the system discovers it? I don't think there is anything disingenuous about me wanting my chances to remain amongst the best in the world.

<edit> especially if many people can't afford the cancer treatment</edit>

The study applies to the entire population. That means that our high rating includes anyone who might not have insurance (for whatever reason). Everyone being covered in other nations is not resulting in more people surviving the disease after diagnosis.

The word "we" is missing in the language in US. We all pay for our health in one pot like we pay for social security. The health insurances only want to insure the healthy and preferably young and throw out people who need expensive treatment. As long as health insurance follows pure capitalistic rules as it does in the US without government regulation it does not work as we all can see now. It is a similar disaster as with the banks, since the insurance is driven by profit.

Call it a disaster all you want. It performs better at keeping people alive when they get diagnosed with cancer.

There are serious issues to work out to make it more cost efficient, to perform even better and to cover more if not all people. However, if it's a disaster, what are the other nations not performing as well fighting the most common diseases humans get? Double disasters?

Can you provide some source so I can see the methodology used for the stats you are are providing?

They are from the Lancet that I linked to above. Unfortunately, you have to pay to read the journal.

The reasoning put forth by AN "expert" in the politisomething article you quote doesn't make sense to me. How is early screening and treatment not part of our health care system and a valid comparison of what we do that is working to keep people alive? Choosing not to screen because in many cases it's not worth it sounds like rationing to me, a symptom of socialized medicine. "That old guy is probably going to die of something else, so it's not worth checking to see if he has prostate cancer." WTF.

Digging a little deeper into the cancer stats I find that the US only looks really good on cancer if you only count breast and prostate and only if you use a specific criteria of 5yr survivability whether the cancer was life threatening or not (that's how the aggressive testing mentioned before can really skew the numbers).

The reason survivability is more relevant in comparing health care is that it is based on what the health care system does once it recognizes the disease rather than factoring in decisions people might make that have nothing to do with health care. For example, a higher rate of people in one country eating badly or smoking more is a problem. But, it is not an indication of the quality of the health care system.

Prostate cancer is the worst example to choose. The main problem is that the tests are not accurate and do not necessarily tell whether you have prostate cancer or not. An enlarged prostate or increase in PSA (Prostate specific antigen) does not necessarily mean cancer. Also as mentioned the age it occurs is usually quite high and most patients die of something else. Some men actually refuse to undergo treatment, which eliminates the prostate, because their sex life is endangered. Prostate cancer grows very slow.

The US was for example a frontrunner in the world in the fight against smoking. It is just now that the European countries follow. This has nothing to do with healthcare. Therefore, to dig up statistics about death is a dangerous thing to do.

I agree that mortality rates are prone to non-health-care related factors. Socialized healthcare advocates also try to skew what is happening by citing life expectancy in the United States as being relatively low. But, if you remove deaths resulting from fatal injuries (violence, car accidents and other non-health-care related events) the rate is amongst the best in the world.

[Frets]

Here we go again.

[david petley]

nah, not from me ...I know too little about american health care except that it is very expensive, and rumour has it the poorer you are the less you get of it.

If there are a bunch of people over there who want it to stay like it is...good for them, they must be wealthy.

david

[cancerinform]

nah, not from me ...I know too little about american health care except that it is very expensive, and rumour has it the poorer you are the less you get of it.

If there are a bunch of people over there who want it to stay like it is...good for them, they must be wealthy.

david

You got the point. That's why the rich are afraid of socialism and fight it. Everybody gets a bit closer to each other

[Loyal Rogue]

That's fine, FL.
If you choose to believe in a single study that has already been shown to be purposefully distorted (ala statistics 101) to stake your claim upon, then that is your right.
(Surviving a false positive test result for more than 5 years is not a good basis for a trustworthy study.)

Personally, I will choose to use the greater body of knowledge and analysis by experts outside of our political system to help make an informed decision.
It only makes sense to me to put more trust in the reviews of a product from multiple outside sources than a single review of the product by the manufacturer or distributors of that product.

[FlashLackey]

nah, not from me ...I know too little about american health care except that it is very expensive, and rumour has it the poorer you are the less you get of it.

If there are a bunch of people over there who want it to stay like it is...good for them, they must be wealthy.

It is expensive. On one hand, I think that costs need to be brought under control. But, on the other, the amount we spend on health care drives the quality up for everyone in the form of high demand for new treatments, methods, medicine and availability of top specialists.

As I've pointed out, wealthy and poor included in the equation, the US system performs better over-all. So, whoever is being failed in the other systems (rich and poor alike), it's more of them than here.

That said, I don't object to a health savings account system that would guarantee everyone an insurance policy. That can be done while keeping a market system and not trying to administer health care through the government (which has a history of doing things the expensive and often times ineffective way).

That's fine, FL.
If you choose to believe in a single study that has already been shown to be purposefully distorted (ala statistics 101) to stake your claim upon, then that is your right.
(Surviving a false positive test result for more than 5 years is not a good basis for a trustworthy study.)

Personally, I will choose to use the greater body of knowledge and analysis by experts outside of our political system to help make an informed decision.
It only makes sense to me to put more trust in the reviews of a product from multiple outside sources than a single review of the product by the manufacturer or distributors of that product.

Where has the Lancet study been shown to be purposefully distorted?

As far as your other assertions about the study go:

The Lancet first appeared on Oct 5, 1823. From the beginning, Wakley's aim was to entertain, instruct, and reform. Instruction came in the form of transcribed medical lectures from the London teaching establishment; entertainment in the early days of the journal came in the form of theatre reviews and piquant political comment.

...

The journal was, and remains, independent, without affiliation to a medical or scientific organisation. More than 180 years later, The Lancet is an independent and authoritative voice in global medicine. We seek to publish high-quality clinical trials that will alter medical practice; our commitment to international health ensures that research and analysis from all regions of the world is widely covered.

http://www.thelancet.com/lancet-about

Do you know that the study included false positives? Or, is that wishful thinking? Perhaps the US afforded the system to catch and treat early positives. According to the Telegraph, the Lancet study concludes that long waits for radiotherapy and other cancer treatments in the UK are a factor causing the disparity.

Regarding mortality versus survival rates when looking at a health care system, one only has to do the math to see why one is more relevant than the other:

According to the OECD, as you posted, in a group of 100k, 322 people in the US died of cancer and 253 in the UK. If you take into account the survival rates of each country, the total number of people per 100k diagnosed with cancer should be 910 in the US and 494 in the UK. That means that, in five years after diagnosis, the US system kept 588 of 910 people alive while the UK system kept 241 of 494 alive.

If the US system performed as badly as the UK after diagnosis, an additional 51 Americans per 100k would have died within five years.

The reasons why Americans get cancer in the first place at a higher rate is certainly an important issue. I suppose you might argue that convincing people to exercise more, eat better, not smoke, etc. should be part of health care. However, if someone hears that advice and ignores it anyway, I'm not sure how you can fault the quality of the health care system.

[Frets]

It's not the costs that need to get under control. Its the profits
UnitedHealthcare CEO Stephen Hemsley owns $744,232,068 in unexercised stock options. received as compensation in addition to his annual salary of $3,200,000

[FlashLackey]

CEO compensation is a cost, not profit. If there was greater competition in that industry, any excessive costs would go down.

[TallGuyLittleCar]

So... when will we see FL and TGLC screaming at their local senators?

never. vote or violently rebel. anything in between is attention whorism

I think what's really funny is the word socialism being pushed around like it's disastrous. Works in Switzerland - who's doing rather damn well (I bet Subway is giggling his ass off somewhere since I'm publicly recognizing it).

The u.s. didn't take gold from the nazi's.. just rocket scientist. If Switzerland was not propped up by the bank accounts of capitalist nations would it be going rather well?

Anyway, let's put it out there. Name your alternatives. Having competition is that bad?

expand medicaid into actual healthcare not just health insurance, but limit it to children and pregnant women. Fund with vice taxes. Get some sort of tort reform through.

Or pretty much model the U.K. system but heavily tax foods that contribute to poor health. Maybe even give checks to individuals that get regular health exams and pass a fitness test. And use genetic engineering to breed a giant dog that craps gold and pisses gasoline.. cause that is really just as likely as getting something that performs well through congress.

[Loyal Rogue]

As I've pointed out, wealthy and poor included in the equation, the US system performs better over-all.

You've certainly tried to make that claim, but no statistics or facts back you up.
As a matter of fact, every indicator proves you wrong.
We spend more per capita than any other country and our quality of care lags us behind almost every other industrialized western nation with national healthcare in almost every indicator.

That said, I don't object to a health savings account system that would guarantee everyone an insurance policy. That can be done while keeping a market system and not trying to administer health care through the government (which has a history of doing things the expensive and often times ineffective way).

Unfortunately, a health savings account will NOT guarantee everyone an insurance policy.
How many people making $7-10 an hour will be able to save enough to put anything into that savings account?
Basically none unless they can give up eating, electricity, or having a roof over their head.
Do you really not know anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck?
Most people I know are one paycheck away from disaster?
What about people who have their hours cut, get laid off, or can't find a job?
How is a savings account going to help them?
This is a question about how a country and society treats the least of us with something as basic as healthcare.
(Remember those unalienable rights to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"? If healthcare doesn't qualify as "Life" then those words may as well mean less than nothing.)

As for your other statement about government and expense/effectiveness... the reality is exactly the opposite.
Other countries with national health care spend much less and cover everyone.
We spend much more in our privatized system and only cover a percentage of the population.

Where has the Lancet study been shown to be purposefully distorted?

First of, there was no study done by the Lancet.
The Lancet just publishes other people's papers... and they have been fooled into publishing hoaxes before.

As pointed out earlier, those survivability stats were already shown to be faulty because they only took into account one or two types of cancer that had extremely aggressive early testing in the US, which as our resident cancer expert stated,

Prostate cancer is the worst example to choose. The main problem is that the tests are not accurate and do not necessarily tell whether you have prostate cancer or not. An enlarged prostate or increase in PSA (Prostate specific antigen) does not necessarily mean cancer. Also as mentioned the age it occurs is usually quite high and most patients die of something else. Some men actually refuse to undergo treatment, which eliminates the prostate, because their sex life is endangered. Prostate cancer grows very slow.

Not that any of the opposing facts will make a difference to you or anyone else of your ideology that has their mind made up.
The big insurance and drug companies control the message and the government.
Obama is finding that out the hard way.
If they can't bribe a legislator, they can still blackmail them by threatening to run multi-million dollar ad campaigns against them in their home state when they come up for reelection.
We are seeing the result of that now with the dems backing down in congress.
The public option for national healthcare died this morning. R.I.P.