AMERICAblog: France's health care costs half per person as ours
Dateline_Molly
· 4 months ago
They don't care about the cost. All they care about is making their health insurance company donors happy.
REading stuff like this is like banging your head against the wall. We all know it. It's been proven in study after study after study that our health care "system" is probably the most inefficient in the world.
Nobody in Congress cares!! And they won't care until millions of us show up at the gates of the White House and CAMP THERE. Until the MSM cameras start rolling after Obama greenlights the military on innocent protesters ("low level terrorists") on public property, we won't get single payer.
People have already been arrested in D.C. for attempting to make Congress aware that the Single Payer platform doesn't even have a PLACE AT THE TABLE. Doctors, nurses, and other concerned citizens have been carted away after they DARED to remind Congress members that a discussion of single payer was not even allowed in the health care debate.
libertydan
· 4 months ago
I agree our healthcare system blows but I want a less government solution not more, it worked in the past.
cufford
· 4 months ago
Another completely nonsensical, repeating the "talking points" he's been given, ignorant comment.
timncguy
· 4 months ago
it worked in the past when? Please explain? When was this fanciful time in the past when EVERYONE got the healthcare they needed at a cost they could afford?
libertydan
· 4 months ago
What about like 50 years ago, didnt seem to break so many families back then, cash for doctor appointments, insurance for big things only
PrahaPartizan
· 4 months ago
It didnt' work fifty years ago. That's why Medicare was passed, because retirees and thh elderly were being bankrupted.
Further, it worked because many more Americans were covered totally by their employers than is the case today. The corporations have abandoned their employees because only the shareholders count in the modern market capitalist world. Especially, when you can run off to some third-world dictatorship and have your employees pay for the move and their firing finance your bonus.
Finally, much of the advance in medicine has come because of the development of drugs which help chronic diseases. They didn't exist fifty years ago, so the heath plans didn't cover them. They do make sure that the ill don't go into the hospital for major health events though, which makes the drugs useful. They're just expensive, sometimes, and the health plans don't want to pay for them, even though they said they would when they pole-axed Hillary Clinton's plans fifteen years ago.
That's why we need a public option, to keep all of the private entities who promise things honest after the debate is over. They've proven they can't be trusted for a moment.
Dateline_Molly
· 4 months ago
Can you prove that every American had access to it at an "affordable" rate? At every point in American history, there have been dirt-poor people who could barely afford to feed themselves. That's the natural blowback of capitalism. And if you can barely afford the necessities of living, you are going to see health care as a luxury that is unaffordable. So I would argue that 50 years ago, the petty bourgeousie and the upper class could afford the health care they needed. But the poor never could.
We aren't living 50 years ago, so it doesn't even matter.
We are where we are right now BECAUSE of private insurers, not IN SPITE OF THEM.
I actually thought you were going to give us the "agrarian" argument - like back before the rise of industrialism, when the local general practitioner made house calls in the community and got paid with a couple of chickens and a bushel of corn. When there weren't any expensive procedures or "big things" because people just up and died due to the lack of antibiotics and such.
Let's stop dreaming about a "time that never really was" as some fantasy throwback era - leave that to the Republicans, who never got over the '60s.
Here's an idea: Let's deal with the reality based evidence on the ground instead of engaging in magical thinking. People are going bankrupt because they have no health care. The costs per capita are astronomical and we get shitty care in return. Capitalist CEOs are the only ones profiting from our health care system. Health care should be a right afforded to everybody, no matter your work status, disability status, "smoking" or "obesity" status, or any other condition or living situation.
Stop gap measure. Absolutely ludicrous in today's economic climate and complex society.
The costs of a single surgical procedure can run over $100,000 or more depending on what it is and the care you need pre- and post-op. Nowhere in that article did libertarian "Dr. Paul" address how people would pay for surgeries or hospitalizations or chronic medication that they need on an ongoing basis, like insulin, heart and pulmonary drugs, antihypertensive meds or anything else. They are "lucky" that the good doctor put out a shingle and is only charging $35 for an office visit. What about further hospital care? Who pays for that? Surgeries? Pregnancies? Medications and durable equipment? Hospice care? Cancer drugs? ad nauseam......
Where do you suppose the poor people being treated by the doctor in this article will get $100,000 to pay for a surgery? Paul acknowledged these people "fall through the cracks" and can't afford health care but make too much for social services. Where does that leave them?
That article does explain one thing: It explains why it's a horrible idea to leave health care to the free market.
vkobaya
· 4 months ago
but I want a less government solution not more
That's another idiotic argument that government is too corrupt, dishonest and inefficient. Bunk! People are people regardless of whether they work for government or corporations.
I've seen corporate workers milk their corporations for all they got and even more. Parties, holidays, prostitutes, gold bricking, and oh, talk about theft. Look at the current bonus scandal for Wall Street. Might even argue that it proves that private enterprise is more corrupt as there is more oversight in government.
Oh yeah, and talk about mistakes. I find that often when I order anything off the internet or mail order, they screw up in my favor, duplicate orders, or send me extra items I didn't order. It happens more often than not and across the board from many, many companies.
When I worked as a cashier at Sears, the amount of employee theft was staggering, and I've seen that repeated in many other companies.
Worked for Occidental Petroleum and several of the directors had mistresses on the payroll who never did a lick of work. One of them broke up with his girlfriend and when she left, she backed up her car to the supply office and left with the car loaded with supplies, not that many, many of the employees weren’t above supplying their homes with anything they could get and ordering costly items for personal or even home use. I never saw anyone order home furniture, or large appliances, but thinking back on it, I was probably naïve.
The idea that government is untrustworthy and can't do anything right may be true, but if so, from what I've seen, private industry is far, far worse.
LasloPratt
· 4 months ago
But does it pay a small group of people tens of millions of dollars a year? That should be the primary goal of any health care system, after all. Sounds to me like the French have failed.
Grrrowler
· 4 months ago
It's not about how much the system costs. It's about how much money certain people can make off the system.
gonzalez
· 4 months ago
Will some one please send this to the COWARDS in Congress. What did we put the Democrats in power for!!!!!!!!!!!! Just to kiss republican's ASS?
libertydan
· 4 months ago
I'll support it if obese people and smokers have to pay extra taxes for it lol, it's only fair right?
cufford
· 4 months ago
What a moronic thing to say, because, obviously, you're a moron.
Jophus
· 4 months ago
People who drink alcohol, eat sugar, have sex, and/or sit in the sunlight. Not to mention truly giant assholes, like yourself.
timncguy
· 4 months ago
and people who ride motor cycles, and mountain climbers, and bungee jumpers, and people who fly hang gliders or parachute out of planes and people who do any one of a "multitude" of dangerous activities.
Dateline_Molly
· 4 months ago
Don't forget the marathon runners. I probably use thousands of dollars in orthopedic services every year on my plan. Why don't I just stop working out so much, or "pay extra" for my sports injuries?
You can't cherry pick, sorry. If you have a beef (sorry!) about obesity and smoking, you need to make sure you put legislators in office who will work to make education programs available for those who want it. Good education about these health issues also starts in the doctor's office.
And if people don't have health care in the first place, they don't get to have that dialogue with the doctor.
Are you a libertarian? You sound like one. Except for "tax the obese and the smokers," I could swear you are a libertarian. Most people outgrow that "theory" before age 18.
PrahaPartizan
· 4 months ago
My spouse and I have often joked that we would have no objection to the restrictive provisions some folks call for, if the health maintenance organizations were willing to send a chef over to our residence to prepare healthful dinners for us every day. Too many people in this society are totally overwhelmed by the demands of daily life to shop and prepare healthful meals from scratch. Somebody needs to pay for it, but those who might benefit the most want to escape their participating in bearing the cost of helping all of society prosper.
vkobaya
· 4 months ago
Too many people in this society are totally overwhelmed by the demands of daily life to shop and prepare healthful meals from scratch.
All that unhealthy commercially prepared food results in massive profits for the food corporations and sold to us by the advertizing industry.
That is to say nothing of the corporations that pay less than living wages forcing workers to work overtime or work two or even three jobs to earn a modest living.
Matthew Munson
· 4 months ago
I am more for a system like France, but a Canadian or British type system would be just as bad as the Insurance industry controlling medical care. We need to find out the best parts of the systems that cover health care and go from there.
Horror stories like British pulling their own teeth because they can not find or afford a dentist, or in Canada with their super long waiting lists which is counter productive because with the more time you wait the more it may cost to treat the patient.
I want us to take time and go through it thoroughly. I dont want a bill made at the dead of night like the stimulus OR climate control. People should know what is in the legislation so we do not have any surprises. Where is the transparency?
vkobaya
· 4 months ago
Horror stories like Horror stories like British pulling their own teeth
Lots of the best fiction writers work for the advertizing industry writing the advertizing for the insurance agencies.
Talk about horror stories, I was driving by one of the hospitals and nearly rammed and driven off the road by a limousine with a license plate saying some abbreviation of Brain Surgeon with a doctor and carload of prostitutes in the back seat.
Bzwax
· 4 months ago
Super long waiting lists in Canada? Are you kidding?. I have been in canada for the last 36 years and I and anyone I know have never experience the long lineup that you are talking about. I can see my doctor anytime I please and I waited in the office no onger that 30min. Please get out of the box and pay more attention to what is going on outside of USA.
PrahaPartizan
· 4 months ago
The European systems also don't allow the medical specialties to make a gazillion dollars either, which most folks don't want to talk about. Some people's ox will be gored with passage of any sort of national health insurance. The family medicine physicians should do better under the new approach, but their success will mean that the specialties will do worse. If family medicine does really well, the specialties will do very badly. So, lots of people are concerned about the changes they see being proposed, even though nobody has fully grokked yet that change is coming one way or the other. We either guide and direct it, or it develops randomly as happened over the last fifteen years.
Butch1
· 4 months ago
I feel like a little kid looking into a pastry shop. The French have access to those pastries and, we on the outside looking in don't unless we have a lot of money to pay the full price.
cufford
· 4 months ago
No shit!?
lucia4
· 4 months ago
Hey John The brazilian supreme court (stf) just recognized the right of including a homosexual civil union partner in the government health care http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/mat/2009/07/06/com... It is so weird to have more fundamental rights in Brazil, an extremely conservative country, then in the USA.
Jophus
· 4 months ago
I wish people would stop assuming America was first or best at anything.
DwightDBaker
· 3 months ago
Again another non pro statement about America, way to go Jophus, I wish more people (excuse me, American people) would get there self righteous heads out of the sand and see the reality that is before us - America is not the greatest nation on earth!!!!
grammarian
· 4 months ago
"THAN in the USA," not "then in the USA."
And no, the USA isn't leading the world in everything, certainly not many social issues.
Chase
· 4 months ago
This post is a perfect example of the fallacy of composition. Just because France is able to successfully put into place great health care policies does not mean that it would work for the United States while still benefiting all of society. The United States provides great incentive for medical advancements through the costs we incur. Therefore, other countries can easily put a cap on the price they are willing to pay for such services. Without the incentive of the profits, the ingenuity of the medical world would not remain as it is today. This is the catch 22 of the health care situation in America that overshadows us. People come to America from around the world for serious health issues for this reason: It is the best in the world.
Doug
· 4 months ago
Chase if you are going to argue this put up your facts.
What you seem to be saying in only America is contributing to medical advancement - well lets just remember who identified the HIV virus - France. Who is pioneering facial transplants - France etc etc.
Americans so often live in their own self perpetuated bubble of perceived 'greatness'. Its an exercise is self delusion - get over it for your own sakes!!!
PrahaPartizan
· 4 months ago
Since the US also has no industrial policy so that the nation as a whole can benefit from this benevolent policy, perhaps implementing a public option and negotiating with all of those medical advancement "freeloaders" (since that is what you are alleging) to help underwrite the development costs of those advances. I didn't realize that the right-wing was so heavy into foreign philanthropy these days, because you advocate just the opposite policy - we pay first, second and third-hand while those foreigners go along for the ride.
elizabethcostello
· 4 months ago
It's not just France. Japan, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Germany, and nearly all the other major industrialized countries have universal health care--universal--yet spend HALF the amount we spend in the US. This is a basic fact that the mainstream media refuse to report. You have to ask why. Also, Japan's system is a model we might emulate, as it has both private ensurers and a public option. People there use more health care than we do and stay in the hospital longer than we do. They also spend HALF what we do in the US. Go figure.
zedy
· 4 months ago
I had to go to the doctor in France with no insurance and it cost a whole 22 euros (I was paying 20 copay in the states before). My 4 prescriptions that I was given cost 28 euros total. Not too bad I have to say!
mbs
· 4 months ago
France's system is going broke, as any system that provides "free" health care will, due to the incentives for overconsumption.
Guest
· 2 months ago
How refreshing to see others who also are disenchanted with America. What a joke, America the greatest nation on earth, yea right, give me a break.
DwightDBaker
· 3 months ago
How refreshing to see others who also are disenchanted with America. What a joke, America the greatest nation on earth, yea right, give me a break.
DwightDBaker
· 3 months ago
Obviously there are many good things about America, but I for one choose to vacate America when I retire and move to Russia. Why if the majority of the world is using universal health care can't America? Because of the greed factor of capitalism. Health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and other such entities are concerned only about one thing - how much profit they can generate, not the health of Americans. Sad.
All Comments
REading stuff like this is like banging your head against the wall. We all know it. It's been proven in study after study after study that our health care "system" is probably the most inefficient in the world.
Nobody in Congress cares!! And they won't care until millions of us show up at the gates of the White House and CAMP THERE. Until the MSM cameras start rolling after Obama greenlights the military on innocent protesters ("low level terrorists") on public property, we won't get single payer.
People have already been arrested in D.C. for attempting to make Congress aware that the Single Payer platform doesn't even have a PLACE AT THE TABLE. Doctors, nurses, and other concerned citizens have been carted away after they DARED to remind Congress members that a discussion of single payer was not even allowed in the health care debate.
Further, it worked because many more Americans were covered totally by their employers than is the case today. The corporations have abandoned their employees because only the shareholders count in the modern market capitalist world. Especially, when you can run off to some third-world dictatorship and have your employees pay for the move and their firing finance your bonus.
Finally, much of the advance in medicine has come because of the development of drugs which help chronic diseases. They didn't exist fifty years ago, so the heath plans didn't cover them. They do make sure that the ill don't go into the hospital for major health events though, which makes the drugs useful. They're just expensive, sometimes, and the health plans don't want to pay for them, even though they said they would when they pole-axed Hillary Clinton's plans fifteen years ago.
That's why we need a public option, to keep all of the private entities who promise things honest after the debate is over. They've proven they can't be trusted for a moment.
We aren't living 50 years ago, so it doesn't even matter.
We are where we are right now BECAUSE of private insurers, not IN SPITE OF THEM.
I actually thought you were going to give us the "agrarian" argument - like back before the rise of industrialism, when the local general practitioner made house calls in the community and got paid with a couple of chickens and a bushel of corn. When there weren't any expensive procedures or "big things" because people just up and died due to the lack of antibiotics and such.
Let's stop dreaming about a "time that never really was" as some fantasy throwback era - leave that to the Republicans, who never got over the '60s.
Here's an idea: Let's deal with the reality based evidence on the ground instead of engaging in magical thinking. People are going bankrupt because they have no health care. The costs per capita are astronomical and we get shitty care in return. Capitalist CEOs are the only ones profiting from our health care system. Health care should be a right afforded to everybody, no matter your work status, disability status, "smoking" or "obesity" status, or any other condition or living situation.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul175.html
The costs of a single surgical procedure can run over $100,000 or more depending on what it is and the care you need pre- and post-op. Nowhere in that article did libertarian "Dr. Paul" address how people would pay for surgeries or hospitalizations or chronic medication that they need on an ongoing basis, like insulin, heart and pulmonary drugs, antihypertensive meds or anything else. They are "lucky" that the good doctor put out a shingle and is only charging $35 for an office visit. What about further hospital care? Who pays for that? Surgeries? Pregnancies? Medications and durable equipment? Hospice care? Cancer drugs? ad nauseam......
Where do you suppose the poor people being treated by the doctor in this article will get $100,000 to pay for a surgery? Paul acknowledged these people "fall through the cracks" and can't afford health care but make too much for social services. Where does that leave them?
That article does explain one thing: It explains why it's a horrible idea to leave health care to the free market.
That's another idiotic argument that government is too corrupt, dishonest and inefficient. Bunk! People are people regardless of whether they work for government or corporations.
I've seen corporate workers milk their corporations for all they got and even more. Parties, holidays, prostitutes, gold bricking, and oh, talk about theft. Look at the current bonus scandal for Wall Street. Might even argue that it proves that private enterprise is more corrupt as there is more oversight in government.
Oh yeah, and talk about mistakes. I find that often when I order anything off the internet or mail order, they screw up in my favor, duplicate orders, or send me extra items I didn't order. It happens more often than not and across the board from many, many companies.
When I worked as a cashier at Sears, the amount of employee theft was staggering, and I've seen that repeated in many other companies.
Worked for Occidental Petroleum and several of the directors had mistresses on the payroll who never did a lick of work. One of them broke up with his girlfriend and when she left, she backed up her car to the supply office and left with the car loaded with supplies, not that many, many of the employees weren’t above supplying their homes with anything they could get and ordering costly items for personal or even home use. I never saw anyone order home furniture, or large appliances, but thinking back on it, I was probably naïve.
The idea that government is untrustworthy and can't do anything right may be true, but if so, from what I've seen, private industry is far, far worse.
You can't cherry pick, sorry. If you have a beef (sorry!) about obesity and smoking, you need to make sure you put legislators in office who will work to make education programs available for those who want it. Good education about these health issues also starts in the doctor's office.
And if people don't have health care in the first place, they don't get to have that dialogue with the doctor.
Are you a libertarian? You sound like one. Except for "tax the obese and the smokers," I could swear you are a libertarian. Most people outgrow that "theory" before age 18.
All that unhealthy commercially prepared food results in massive profits for the food corporations and sold to us by the advertizing industry.
That is to say nothing of the corporations that pay less than living wages forcing workers to work overtime or work two or even three jobs to earn a modest living.
Horror stories like British pulling their own teeth because they can not find or afford a dentist, or in Canada with their super long waiting lists which is counter productive because with the more time you wait the more it may cost to treat the patient.
I want us to take time and go through it thoroughly. I dont want a bill made at the dead of night like the stimulus OR climate control. People should know what is in the legislation so we do not have any surprises. Where is the transparency?
Lots of the best fiction writers work for the advertizing industry writing the advertizing for the insurance agencies.
Talk about horror stories, I was driving by one of the hospitals and nearly rammed and driven off the road by a limousine with a license plate saying some abbreviation of Brain Surgeon with a doctor and carload of prostitutes in the back seat.
The brazilian supreme court (stf) just recognized the right of including a homosexual civil union partner in the government health care
http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/mat/2009/07/06/com...
It is so weird to have more fundamental rights in Brazil, an extremely conservative country, then in the USA.
And no, the USA isn't leading the world in everything, certainly not many social issues.
What you seem to be saying in only America is contributing to medical advancement - well lets just remember who identified the HIV virus - France. Who is pioneering facial transplants - France etc etc.
Americans so often live in their own self perpetuated bubble of perceived 'greatness'. Its an exercise is self delusion - get over it for your own sakes!!!
Why if the majority of the world is using universal health care can't America? Because of the greed factor of capitalism. Health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and other such entities are concerned only about one thing - how much profit they can generate, not the health of Americans. Sad.