Is it moral...?

[quatona]

"To steal" = "To take from them without their knowledge".

Well, that´s a pretty...err...unusual definition.

 

[ebia]

Ebia, the healthcare system of the USA is one of the most heavily regulated in the planet. Regulations, which cartelize the sector, always benefit the few providers by allowing their price to soar. And then people must pay most of their hard-earned salary to get a simple prescription for a common pill.

Why the price of healthcare is higher in the US than the UK today is a question of economic history, the answer to which would require going through a lot of historical data which I do not possess.

What economics proper can say is this: if the UK did not have universal health care, its population would live better.

And the conclusions of economic science are arrived at deductively from the category of human action; they do not depend on the contingencies of history (in other words, statistics and empirical evidence in general are useless when it comes to economics).

Is this supposed to sound as ridiculous as it does, because you appear to be saying "Economic theory doesn't fit the evidence so we will define the theory to be right and the evidence to be wrong."

Economics is hardly the most trusted so-called "science" at the best of times - comments like the above are hardly likely to compel me to trust it.

 

[ebia]

Expensive? Yes, this is a real issue. For example, if they are going to take out much more taxes - than I'm not interested. Also, how would the quality be? My understand it wouldn't be as good.

Australia provides a good system of universal healthcare from taxes comparable to what you already pay. We have better healthcare, for a lot less money, available to all. Admittedly it's not always completely free at point of use.

Similarly, the NHS in the UK provides a good (albeit constantly complained about) level of service to all for quite a reasonable price by the time the cost is spread over all taxpayers.

Where the Australian system does better is the cost of private healthcare if you want to go private. "Going private" here will cost you about one-third of what it costs in the UK. I'm guessing we compare at least as well against the US, if not better.

 

[Wordgazer]

I don't know what the solution is, but what I am certain of is that the private system we have now in the US isn't working.

My husband's plant where he's worked for 14 years just shut down. My small lawyer's office offers no coverage. So here we are, down to one income plus unemployment, with two kids. COBRA (continuation of benefits under his employer's insurance carrier) would cost $1500 per month for our family! One of us is "high-risk" for a certain medical condition, so we have to have high-risk coverage. So we put the high-risk one in the State's high-risk insurance pool because no individual policy will cover him. The other adult took an individual policy. The two policies together cost $384 per month. Where are we going to come up with that kind of money on one income plus unemployment?

As of right now the kids aren't covered at all. Since they're young, they have no health issues, and we can't afford to cover all of us. . . So we're going to try to get them covered by our state health plan for low-income people, but we probably make too much money for that.

If we can't get the health plan for them, we'll take some money out of savings to buy a catastrophic-only, high-deductible temporary policy to cover them for six months, and hope for the best. And probably watch what's left of our savings whittled away paying for coverage for the adults every month.

I was complacent about this issue when we had good employer coverage. Now I can't afford to be anymore. I don't know how to fix this, and I don't know if universal coverage is the answer, but something's got to change in this country. That's all I know.

 

[Rorshack]

"To steal" = "To take from them without their knowledge".

As long as the tax collectors don't sneak in your house to take the money it is not theft.

All taxes are collected by those who have a gun to your head. You do not pay taxes they want to put you in jail. You resist going to jail and they shoot you.
Tax is theft, armed robery, and extrotion.

However since the US government will bepaying nearly half of the medical bills in the usa by 2018, it would be CHEAPER to have the govt provide universal health care. And it would be ok if persons could still hire private medical care if they wanted to.

 

[BibleMadeMeDoIt]

My question -- is it moral for the U.S., a country that possess a great deal of wealth and resources, not to provide universal health care?

Yes, it is immoral and pathetic how many people live without health insurance considering how much American's pay in taxes every year. I was just looking at my husbands tax forms and we pay around the same percentage but he gets more for his bucks.

I'm an American married to a Canadian so I'm familiar with universal health care, the good and the bad.

are you willing to look your loved ones in the eyes and tell them dollars are more valuable than people?

I dont think they will say that to their loved ones but to their neighbors they would not care.

"Universal health care will create long waits in the doctor's office" -- Could be, but I can assure you, as an uninsured person I'd rather have to wait my turn and be patient than suffer without end because health care is too expensive and unavailable.

Here in Quebec people have the whole waiting problem and they hate it of course but most are happy to have the option of care.

Since I have been staying in Canada I have learned something interesting about the reason many places have such a long waiting period. There is a huge doctor shortage here thanks to America. Many Canadian doctors leave for the States because they can make double and triple what they would make in Canada. It would be interesting to see where the American doctors would go if their pay was cut drastically.

 

[Upisoft]

All taxes are collected by those who have a gun to your head. You do not pay taxes they want to put you in jail. You resist going to jail and they shoot you.
Tax is theft, armed robery, and extrotion.

I was not acquiant with your tax collecting customs. I was glad to learn something new.

 

[JGG]

The attempt to provide universal healthcare has only one effect: the intensification of disease and poverty.

It encourages disease and carelessness, discourages health, punishes capital accumulation and mis-allocates capital where it will not satisfy the people's most urgent needs. Plus, government officials have no means of knowing whether their expenditures are worth their cost or not (afterall, it is only the market mechanism of profit and loss which allows the entrepeneur to know whether the resources he used could or could not, according to the consumers, whom he serves, have been better used in some other project). On top of that, they have an incentive to spend the money badly (it is harder to spend the money well than badly; and they will gain nothing by spending it well). This ensures that the government program will be wasteful and inefficient, throwing away what could have been used to improve people's living conditions.

For all that, universal healthcare can only make society as a whole worse off, even in the eyes of those who championed the program in the first place.

Canada has universal healthcare, and it enjoys a higher standard of living, higher birth rate, and higher life expectancy than the United States.

On top of that, Canada practices advanced medical techniques, utilizes state of the art medical equipment, and is ahead of the curve in terms of medical research.

 

[parsa]

>>So, you can justify the taking of that which is not yours.
I repeat the question,
Who will you take from?<<

Yeah it sounds kind of strange when you put it that way. It kind of sounds like someone is making you buy health insurance, I mean by taxing you for universal health care.

But as far as I have read there's a whole lot of money being wasted by insurance companies who hire people to help them find ways to not pay people and doctors. And then there's a whole lot of money that doctors and hospitals spend paying people to make insurance companies pay. It's really silly.

Paying taxes is a controversial idea I guess. And I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The problem is that the outcome is always dictated by the majority, so if you don't like to pay taxes it's kind of like someone is stealing from you.

But maybe one could think of health care the same as the military. It doesn't seem like a good idea (at least to me) that I go buy individual protection from a company that is set up to protect me from foreign invaders and someone else pays into another company and then I sit there and think that these companies have a huge interest in making profit and will compete against each other. Personally, I would like something like this to be under one unified company (currently the government). I understand that this is not ideal since people still have political agendas too, but it seems better than the alternative.

Health care is kind of (though not exactly) like that too. The health of the society effects me too. It effects everyone financially for sure, and personally even though I or anyone I care for may never have a financially destroying illness, I would like to pay into a system that would take care of those that do.
This is just something in my head and my thoughts, I understand that. But saying that this is my money and I don't want to pay for anyone else's health problems, though is totally a person's right, it's just down right scary for me. I'm kind of from a country that has that attitude, I mean the people do and all I can tell you is that it ain't pretty! It doesn't show at first but as time goes by life becomes just harder and uglier for everyone. I also understand that this is just my experience and it doesn't mean that it will be repeated every where else.

 

[Beanieboy]

So, you can justify the taking of that which is not yours.
I repeat the question,
Who will you take from?

If you have children that went to public school, or public universities, you "stole" that money from me, because I don't have children.

However, I don't view it as "stealing", but investing in my community, and caring for my neighbor.

Why other people have to drill this into the heads of Christians boggles the mind.

Maybe you don't care if people don't have healthcare, but if you are christian, it goes against the commandments of Christ.

 

[Pepperoni]

do you have health insurance through your employer? does your husband? if SO, i hope the two of you will immediately drop that insurance. i mean, after all, you should stand on principle! it'd be highly hypocritical for you to say 'oh it shouldn't be this way, we shouldn't be doing X because it's not right.' all the while benefiting from X.

No to both questions. Thanks for asking.

and if you DON'T have health insurance through your employer, well, i sure hope you don't come down with a debilitating disease. i mean unless you want your family's life ruined by medical bills. who needs a house, anyways?

I never said I didn't have health insurance. Just not through an employer.

That offers no possibility for the high-risk individual. A collective arrangement (whether employers insurance or state healthcare) enables high risk individuals to be covered by bundling them up with low risk individuals.

Individual health insurance does not (and cannot) cover them except at prohibative cost.

Yeah, imagine that. I know about it first hand. I have a child with a health problem.

 

[WalkingforHim]

Excuse me, but can anyone point to me one single program implimented by the US governmen in the past 30 years that has been run efficeintly without little waste and disappearance of millions of dollars?

And then can you tell me why you would want the government, the worst beaurocracy in the world, to deal with our health care. It would be like one massive HMO.

 

[JGG]

And then can you tell me why you would want the government, the worst beaurocracy in the world, to deal with our health care. It would be like one massive HMO.

And you prefer the thousands of littler HMO's.

Here's why: Right now there are millions of Americans who have no health insurance at all. Universal healthcare would provide for them.

There are even more Americans with minimal coverage. This are already government regulated health care, and only covers bare minimum health costs: Doctors visits, and emergency care. No long term treatment, care, or hospital visits.

HMO's and profit-based hospitals are incredibly inefficient, and are designed to make money, not to take care of you. If you can't pay for your treatment, you'll either have to live with your condition (perhaps death), or settle for a less effective one. HMO's frequently refuse to pay for a procedure that is highly effective, and safe, instead insisting on a less effective one, which happens to cost less.

 

[ebia]

Yeah, imagine that. I know about it first hand. I have a child with a health problem.

So help me join the dots:
Your solution is for people to get private health insurance, and if they can't because they are high risk they have to settle for not having a solution?

 

[ebia]

Excuse me, but can anyone point to me one single program implimented by the US governmen in the past 30 years that has been run efficeintly without little waste and disappearance of millions of dollars?

And then can you tell me why you would want the government, the worst beaurocracy in the world, to deal with our health care. It would be like one massive HMO.

From what I understand your health system already is massively wasteful.
Partly for some of the reasons outlined in posts above, and also because there are cost savings in universal healthcare:
Better, universal, preventative and screening measures reduce costly proceedures later.

Good, universal, access to general practitioners and other medical services dramatically reduces the number of presentations to emergency/casualty departments (which are very expensive places to treat people by comparison with g.p.'s surgeries).

(Potentially) much reduced need for paperwork, marketing, etc.

Less people off-sick means better productivity and more taxes collected for the same burden on people and business' pockets.

etc.

Whether the government operates the hospitals, etc, directly or whether it contracts them out is a separate question. The hospital here is privately run within a governement-funded system. Most hospitals in australia are publically run. The experience here is that a privately run hospital offers at best small cost savings to the government while offering noticably worse services, but either way that's a separate debate to universal health-care.

 

[Lifesaver]

Canada has universal healthcare, and it enjoys a higher standard of living, higher birth rate, and higher life expectancy than the United States.

Were it to do away with this waste of resources and allow the people to transact voluntarily, Canadians would live better than they do now.

On top of that, Canada practices advanced medical techniques, utilizes state of the art medical equipment, and is ahead of the curve in terms of medical research.

This is what we all can see.
What we can't see is: what if all the resources that went to keep Canada "ahead of the curve" in health-care had been in other ways? Imagine all the wonderful things that could have been achieved.

The Brazilian government may decide to spend 100% of its budget on health care (we also have universal health-care; but as the country is poor, it is terrible).
We'd probably have the best health-care system in the world. But would it be worth it? Of course not. There are more urgent needs.

Furthermore, since the State officials cannot know whether their expenditures are or not worth it, and since they have an incentive to do their jobs poorly, it is guaranteed that they will have to spend more resources to reach the same results that private initiative would reach with less.

 

[Piepiepieandpie]

I really want universal health care. But it does have it's faults.

I have a friend who's aunt lives in a country with universal health care. She had to go to a doctor because she had a pain. She got on the waiting list and a couple months later, got to see a doctor. In the time she spent waiting for a doctor, the little cyst that had been causing her pain had grown into something larger and more dangerous. She had to wait because there were a lack of doctors and a plethora of patients.

Moral of the story: I don't know if universal health care will solve the problem. More people would be unable to get to doctors and would only be able to under emergency situations, much like it is now.

 

[blackwasp]

Many Canadian doctors leave for the States because they can make double and triple what they would make in Canada. It would be interesting to see where the American doctors would go if their pay was cut drastically.

The job would be far less desirable which would lead to a decrease in competition and thus, quality of doctors.

Humans, like all other organisms, are born with no rights except death. Universal healthcare is a disgusting idea. The only medical care the state should provide is birth control and abortions, as to attack the problem at its source: the world's bloated population.

 

[jayem]

Universal health INSURANCE (not health care) does not have to be a government program at all. There would be regional funds, into which all employees and employers would pay. Probably a portion of all pension and investment income will also have to be withheld for the funds. And very likely, an additional sales tax on all items will go into the pot. These funds could be state/private partnerships, or even completely private. But they must be non-profit. Every resident would enroll in their regional health insurance fund. All doctors, hospitals, and other providers would also be completely private enterprises. They would bill the fund for their services. Government's role could be limited purely to regulation and oversight. There should still be deductibles and co-payments to limit overutilization. It will still be hugely expensive, and benefits may have to be limited to fairly basic and catastrophic coverage. But everyone will have access to some level of health insurance that is not dependent on their employment or their state of health. At least, a pilot program needs to be tried somewhere.

 

[ebia]

Were it to do away with this waste of resources and allow the people to transact voluntarily, Canadians would live better than they do now.

Where is your evidence for this?

And do you specifically mean that all Canadians would live better, most Canadians, or just some?