Comments by "Jim Werther" (@jimwerther) on "ReasonTV"
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@schumanhuman
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. As the great Thomas Sowell notes, "It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it."
As to Denmark and other Scandinavian countries, the best study done on what has worked there and what hasn't was done by the scholar Nima Sanandaji, who wrote two books about it. I recommend "Scandinavian Unexceptionalism", which will wreck your claim herein.
Universal healthcare is a slow motion disaster. Here is a highly relevant article, which appeared in Forbes magazine:
What Socialized Medicine Looks Like
John C. Goodman
Left-wing Democrats in Congress have decided on a new version of “Medicare for All.” Turns out its going to be nothing like the Medicare program seniors are used to. What they have in mind is what we see in Canada.
Everyone (except American Indians and veterans) will be in the same system. Health care will be nominally free. Access to it will be determined by bureaucratic decision making.
Here’s what to expect.
Overproviding to the Healthy, Underproviding to the Sick.
The first thing politicians learn about health care is this: most people are healthy. In fact, they are very heathy – spending only a few dollars on medical care in any given year. By contrast, 50% of the health care dollars will be spent on only 5% of the population in a typical year.
Politicians in charge of health care, however, can’t afford to spend half their budget on only 5% of the voters, including those who may be too sick to vote at all. So, there is ever-present pressure to divert spending away from the sick toward the healthy.
In Canada and in Britain, patients see primary care physicians more often than Americans do. In fact, the ease with which relatively healthy people can see doctors is probably what accounts for the popularity of these system in both countries.
But once they get to the doctor’s office British and Canadians patients receive fewer services. For real medical problems, Canadians often go to hospital emergency rooms – where the average wait in Canada is four hours. In Britain, one of every ten emergency room patients leave without ever seeing a doctor.
A study by former Congressional Budget Office director June O’Neill and her husband Dave O’Neill found that:
* The proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice the U.S. rate.
* Three times as many Canadian women have never had a pap smear.
* Fewer than 20% of Canadian men have ever been tested for prostate cancer, compared with about 50% of U.S. men.
* Only 10% of adult Canadians have ever had a colonoscopy, compared with 30% of US adults.
These differences in screening may partly explain why the mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cancer, and 13% higher for colorectal cancer.
A study by Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron and his colleagues found that:
* Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners as the U.S. and one-third as many MRI scanners.
* The rate at which the British provide coronary bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth of the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds of the U.S. rate.
* The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients age 45 to 84 and nine times higher for patients 85 years of age or older.
We can see the political pressure to provide services to the healthy at the expense of the sick in our own country’s Medicare program. Courtesy of Obamacare, every senior is entitled to a free wellness exam, which most doctors regard as virtually worthless. Yet if elderly patients endure an extended hospital stay, they can face unlimited out-of-pocket costs.
Rationing by Waiting.
Although Canada has no limits on how frequently a relatively healthy patient may see a doctor, it imposes strict limits on the purchase of medical technology and on the availability of specialists. Hospitals are subject to global budgets – which limit their spending, regardless of actual health needs.
In addition to having to wait many hours in emergency rooms, Canadians have some of the longest waits in the developed world for care that could cure diseases and save lives. The most recent study by the Fraser Institute finds that:
* In 2016, Canadians waited an average of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner to receipt of treatment by a specialist – the longest wait time in over a quarter of a century of such measurements.
* Patients waited 4.1 weeks for a CT scan, 10.8 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound.
Similarly, a survey of hospital administrators in 2003 found that:
* 21% of Canadian hospital administrators, but less than 1% of American administrators, said that it would take over three weeks to do a biopsy for possible breast cancer on a 50-year-old woman.
* 50% of Canadian administrators versus none of their American counterparts said that it would take over six months for a 65-year-old to undergo a routine hip replacement surgery.
Jumping the Queue.
Aneurin Bevan, father of the British National Health Service, declared, “the essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth is not advantaged.” Yet, more than thirty years after the NHS was founded an official task force (The Black Report) found little evidence that the creation of the NHS had equalized health care access. Another study (The Acheson Report), fifty years after the NHS founding, concluded that access had become more unequal in the years between the two studies.
In Canada, studies find that the wealthy and powerful have significantly greater access to medical specialists than less-well-connected poor. High-profile patients enjoy more frequent services, shorter waiting times and greater choice of specialists. Moreover, among the nonelderly white population, low-income Canadians are 22% more likely to be in poor health than their U.S. counterparts.
These results should not be surprising. Rationing by waiting is as much an obstacle to care as rationing by price. It seems that the talents and skills that allow people to earn high incomes are similar to the talents and skills that are useful in successfully circumventing bureaucratic waiting lines.
No Exit.
The worst features of the U.S. health care system are the way in which impersonal bureaucracies interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. Those are also the worst features of Canadian medical care. In Canada, when patients see a doctor the visit is free. In the U.S., the visit is almost free – with patients paying only 10 cents out of pocket for every dollar they spend, on average. In both countries, people primarily pay for care with time, not with money. The two systems are far more similar than they are different.
In Britain, private sector medicine allows patients to obtain care they are supposed to get for free from government. Middle and upper-middle income employees frequently have private health insurance, obtained through an employer. A much larger number of Britons use private doctors from time to time. The rule seems to be, “If your condition is serious, go private.”
Canada, by contrast, has basically outlawed private sector medical services that are theoretically provided by the government. If doctors, patients and entrepreneurs think of better ways of meeting patient needs they have no way of acting on those thoughts.
This is where the U.S. system is so much better—even though, as in the Canadian system, U.S. Medicare pays doctors the same way it did in the last century, before there were iPhones and email messages. Many U.S. employer plans are just as bad.
But because U.S. employers are free to meet the needs of their employees rather than live under the dictates of a politically pressured bureaucracy, one of the fastest growing employee benefits is concierge care. For as little as $50 a month for a young adult, patients can have 24/7 access to a doctor by phone and email and all the normal services that primary care physicians provide.
Uber-type house calls, consultations by phone, email and Skype, cellphone apps that allow people to manage their own care and other innovations in telemedicine are taking some parts of the private sector by storm.
These are the kinds of innovations that would be outlawed if the congressional Democrats have their way.
For more on these and other issues, interested readers may want to consult my congressional testimony, delivered with Linda Gorman, Devon Herrick and Robert Sade.
*
So, there is your beloved single-payer system in a nutshell.
Lastly, you can't expect to be taken seriously when you unironically employ a term like "copium", which I wasted my time Googling. Spend your energy educating yourself instead of writing nonsense.
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@annathemaanderson4448
There are many articles explaining different aspects of the abject failure of socialized medicine. If you are looking for me to explain all of what I wrote, I guess I could, although it gets pretty long. You can start by reading a short article by John C. Goodman, called "What Socialized Medicine Looks Like", and by watching a short YT video by Thomas Sowell, called: "Healthcare: What Politicians Don't Want You To Know" here on YT. You can also read a short book review of a tome by Sally C. Pipes. The article is titled, "Thomas Sowell: Book busts myths about other nations’ universal health care".
Elsewhere, Sowell summed it up succinctly: "It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it."
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@noltihernandez1573
People have asked me, a Jew, if I'm from Israel. I say, no, I'm from New York. They say, yeah, but where are you really from? I repeat, New York. "And your parents?" "They were born in Germany, and escaped Hitler." I find it amusing, not a "microaggression", FFS.
Another story: Sweeny Murti is a well-known sports radio personality in NY. I interned at the station where he works: Dude is dark as hell, and has a weird name. I said, "Where are you from?" He said, "Pennsylvania". I looked him in the eye and said, "Get the hell out of here." He then told me his parents are from India. Did Sweeny care? I really, really don't think so.
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@anaveragehuman2937
Well, I'll explain why you're wrong, in the hope that you actually care for a real answer.
This video is about Joe Biden lying about the deficit. You then commented about Biden lying about everything, a departure from the video's discussion of a specific, false claim, turned instead into a personal attack on Biden. It was designed to show that lying is a Biden trademark.
Considering, though, that Biden's predecessor was and is a more prolific liar than Biden is, it is disingenuous to act as if lying is endemic to Biden and Biden alone.
Meaning, if I posted an original comment in response to the video, saying, "But Trump lied about the election!", then that would be off-point, and a total what-about-ism. But once you've tried to paint congenital lying as a Biden-specific issue, it rather obviously comes off as blindly partisan because Biden's predecessor lied even more than Biden does. My comment is very relevant to yours.
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@blonze_brick
I can't link to anything because YT automatically deletes any comment I post with a link in it.
The arguments to make radical changes in our use of fossil fuels because of the danger of climate change are absurd on their face. I'm not a scientist, but how is it that in the 1970s, when dirty oil and very dirty coal was used with abandon, the great concern was global cooling? That's less than 50 years ago. Other historical indicators also show that sometimes the earth warms and others the earth cools, and we all adjust. Are we responsible for much of that change? I'm skeptical. Even if we are, handicapping ourselves now when we absolutely need oil in order to address a possible future issue is absurd and irresponsible. Go explain to the Ukrainians getting killed why there is such a need for Russian oil, because the west unilaterally disarmed on that front. It's as if someone's house is on fire, and the fire department refuses to come since they believe that we need to conserve water.
Even if the worst-case scenarios come true, we could easiy migrate over the course of genrations. There are millions of miles of uninhabitable lands (Greenland, Canada, North and South Pole areas, and much more) because they are too cold. Say 100 years from now - again, under only the absolute worst-case scenarios - there is some movement away from equatorial areas, and migration to colder climates?
And that also ignores the possible solutions that will be available by then, such as carbon capture. There are many who believe that such things should be usable within a few years.
But instead the west unilaterally disarms, and weakens ourselves in relation to some of the world's worst governments who, it should be noted, drill in ways far less clean than the west does. So all our current "conservation" is actually making things worse. And nothing we say or do will make a dent in how China and Russia and other bad actors go about their business. There is literally no reason whatsoever for the Keystone Pipeline to have been shut down. It hurts the West, the US in particular, and hurts the climate. It does, however, please the climate radicals.
And therein lies the rub. It is hard not to notice that every single one of the environmental radicals who want the US to drill less are also on the far left of the political spectrum on every other issue, and want to weaken the US in any way they can. Considering their overwhelming bias, why would I take them seriously about anything?
That's when you start to notice people like Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg, environmentalists who are not radicals, and who clearly explain how the goals of the environmental loonies who dominate the conversation in the US media are quite harmful. The mainstream/leftist media refuses to grant them a voice, because their opinions fail to comport with the media's goals of weakening the United States. Same goes for the environmentalists who want to make use of nuclear energy. The media does not want you to know they exist.
But they do. Feel free to check out not only Reason and John Stossel, but also Lomborg, Shellenberger, Thomas Sowell, Jordan Peterson, the pro-nuclear environmentalists and many others who dare to put their own careers at risk by refusing to go along with the media's chosen narrative. There is plenty there for you to chew on. Lomborg, for example, notes that more people die each year globally from excess cold than from excess heat. As such, getting a degree or two warmer over the next 50 years hardly seems problematic.
Remember that the claim that 97% (or whatever) or scientists believe that global warming is a massive issue which requires an immediate and massive cutback in fossil fuel use is utterly, completely and absolutely false. The media makes is seem that way with their propaganda, but you should have already seen enough to know otherwise. And now I gave you plenty more to follow up on.
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Actually, the rich are paying above 50% in taxes. I'm not rich, yet I'm paying around 50%. How's that? 22% federal income tax, 3% state income tax, $12k in property tax, plus sales tax, gas tax, tolls, water tax, phone tax, electricity tax, etc. etc. etc. We already live under democratic socialism. The Democrat Party is pushing full socialism at this point.
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@hollyweirdland940
Mar 5, 2019,
10:01am EST
|
30,072 views
What Socialized Medicine Looks Like
John C. Goodman
Contributor
Policy
I offer market-based healthcare solutions.
This article is more than 2 years old.
More From Forbes
0:00
Left-wing Democrats in Congress have decided on a new version of “Medicare for All.” Turns out its going to be nothing like the Medicare program seniors are used to. What they have in mind is what we see in Canada.
Everyone (except American Indians and veterans) will be in the same system. Health care will be nominally free. Access to it will be determined by bureaucratic decision making.
Here’s what to expect.
Overproviding to the Healthy, Underproviding to the Sick. The first thing politicians learn about health care is this: most people are healthy. In fact, they are very heathy – spending only a few dollars on medical care in any given year. By contrast, 50% of the health care dollars will be spent on only 5% of the population in a typical year.
Politicians in charge of health care, however, can’t afford to spend half their budget on only 5% of the voters, including those who may be too sick to vote at all. So, there is ever-present pressure to divert spending away from the sick toward the healthy.
In Canada and in Britain, patients see primary care physicians more often than Americans do. In fact, the ease with which relatively healthy people can see doctors is probably what accounts for the popularity of these system in both countries.
But once they get to the doctor’s office British and Canadians patients receive fewer services. For real medical problems, Canadians often go to hospital emergency rooms – where the average wait in Canada is four hours. In Britain, one of every ten emergency room patients leave without ever seeing a doctor.
A study by former Congressional Budget Office director June O’Neill and her husband Dave O’Neill found that:
The proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice the U.S. rate.
Three times as many Canadian women have never had a pap smear.
Fewer than 20% of Canadian men have ever been tested for prostate cancer, compared with about 50% of U.S. men.
Only 10% of adult Canadians have ever had a colonoscopy, compared with 30% of US adults.
These differences in screening may partly explain why the mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cancer, and 13% higher for colorectal cancer.
A study by Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron and his colleagues found that:
Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners as the U.S. and one-third as many MRI scanners.
The rate at which the British provide coronary bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth of the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds of the U.S. rate.
The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients age 45 to 84 and nine times higher for patients 85 years of age or older.
We can see the political pressure to provide services to the healthy at the expense of the sick in our own country’s Medicare program. Courtesy of Obamacare, every senior is entitled to a free wellness exam, which most doctors regard as virtually worthless. Yet if elderly patients endure an extended hospital stay, they can face unlimited out-of-pocket costs.
Rationing by Waiting. Although Canada has no limits on how frequently a relatively healthy patient may see a doctor, it imposes strict limits on the purchase of medical technology and on the availability of specialists. Hospitals are subject to global budgets – which limit their spending, regardless of actual health needs.
In addition to having to wait many hours in emergency rooms, Canadians have some of the longest waits in the developed world for care that could cure diseases and save lives. The most recent study by the Fraser Institute finds that
In 2016, Canadians waited an average of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner to receipt of treatment by a specialist – the longest wait time in over a quarter of a century of such measurements.
Patents waited 4.1 weeks for a CT scan, 10.8 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound.
Similarly, a survey of hospital administrators in 2003 found that:
21% of Canadian hospital administrators, but less than 1% of American administrators, said that it would take over three weeks to do a biopsy for possible breast cancer on a 50-year-old woman.
50% of Canadian administrators versus none of their American counterparts said that it would take over six months for a 65-year-old to undergo a routine hip replacement surgery.
Jumping the Queue. Aneurin Bevan, father of the British National Health Service, declared, “the essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth is not advantaged.” Yet, more than thirty years after the NHS was founded an official task force (The Black Report) found little evidence that the creation of the NHS had equalized health care access. Another study (The Acheson Report), fifty years after the NHS founding, concluded that access had become more unequal in the years between the two studies.
In Canada, studies find that the wealthy and powerful have significantly greater access to medical specialists than less-well-connected poor. High-profile patients enjoy more frequent services, shorter waiting times and greater choice of specialists. Moreover, among the nonelderly white population, low-income Canadians are 22% more likely to be in poor health than their U.S. counterparts.
These results should not be surprising. Rationing by waiting is as much an obstacle to care as rationing by price. It seems that the talents and skills that allow people to earn high incomes are similar to the talents and skills that are useful in successfully circumventing bureaucratic waiting lines.
No Exit. The worst features of the U.S. health care system are the way in which impersonal bureaucracies interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. Those are also the worst features of Canadian medical care. In Canada, when patients see a doctor the visit is free. In the U.S., the visit is almost free – with patients paying only 10 cents out of pocket for every dollar they spend, on average. In both countries, people primarily pay for care with time, not with money. The two systems are far more similar than they are different.
In Britain, private sector medicine allows patients to obtain care they are supposed to get for free from government. Middle and upper-middle income employees frequently have private health insurance, obtained through an employer. A much larger number of Britons use private doctors from time to time. The rule seems to be, “If your condition is serious, go private.”
Canada, by contrast, has basically outlawed private sector medical services that are theoretically provided by the government. If doctors, patients and entrepreneurs think of better ways of meeting patient needs they have no way of acting on those thoughts.
This is where the U.S. system is so much better—even though, as in the Canadian system, U.S. Medicare pays doctors the same way it did in the last century, before there were iPhones and email messages. Many U.S. employer plans are just as bad.
But because U.S. employers are free to meet the needs of their employees rather than live under the dictates of a politically pressured bureaucracy, one of the fastest growing employee benefits is concierge care. For as little as $50 a month for a young adult, patients can have 24/7 access to a doctor by phone and email and all the normal services that primary care physicians provide.
Uber-type house calls, consultations by phone, email and Skype, cellphone apps that allow people to manage their own care and other innovations in telemedicine are taking some parts of the private sector by storm.
These are the kinds of innovations that would be outlawed if the congressional Democrats have their way.
For more on these and other issues, interested readers may want to consult my congressional testimony, delivered with Linda Gorman, Devon Herrick and Robert Sade.
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@schumanhuman
I keep writing the same points because you're too dense to get it. Have someone explain it to you. Perhaps a fourth grader will do.
The US not only underwrites much of the world's R&D expenses, but also its spending on medication. We in the US pay full price, and then some, while everyone else gets it below cost.
There are dozens of articles and studies that can be easily found online which show that waitlists in the UK, Canada, and other countries with socialized medicine can get outrageously long, and causes the deaths of many thousands. YT won't allow me to post links, but anyone can find them in a minute. Assuming they are honest enough to want to know the facts, anyway.
Two closing notes to this comment - your ELA skills, as represented by your comments, are disastrous. And your claim that you are done responding is apparently as worthless as your incoherent, foolish arguments.
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@mackcummy4976
Mar 5, 2019
What Socialized Medicine Looks Like
John C. Goodman
Left-wing Democrats in Congress have decided on a new version of “Medicare for All.” Turns out its going to be nothing like the Medicare program seniors are used to. What they have in mind is what we see in Canada.
Everyone (except American Indians and veterans) will be in the same system. Health care will be nominally free. Access to it will be determined by bureaucratic decision making.
Here’s what to expect.
Overproviding to the Healthy, Underproviding to the Sick.
The first thing politicians learn about health care is this: most people are healthy. In fact, they are very heathy – spending only a few dollars on medical care in any given year. By contrast, 50% of the health care dollars will be spent on only 5% of the population in a typical year.
Politicians in charge of health care, however, can’t afford to spend half their budget on only 5% of the voters, including those who may be too sick to vote at all. So, there is ever-present pressure to divert spending away from the sick toward the healthy.
In Canada and in Britain, patients see primary care physicians more often than Americans do. In fact, the ease with which relatively healthy people can see doctors is probably what accounts for the popularity of these system in both countries.
But once they get to the doctor’s office British and Canadians patients receive fewer services. For real medical problems, Canadians often go to hospital emergency rooms – where the average wait in Canada is four hours. In Britain, one of every ten emergency room patients leave without ever seeing a doctor.
A study by former Congressional Budget Office director June O’Neill and her husband Dave O’Neill found that:
* The proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice the U.S. rate.
* Three times as many Canadian women have never had a pap smear.
* Fewer than 20% of Canadian men have ever been tested for prostate cancer, compared with about 50% of U.S. men.
* Only 10% of adult Canadians have ever had a colonoscopy, compared with 30% of US adults.
* These differences in screening may partly explain why the mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cancer, and 13% higher for colorectal cancer.
A study by Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron and his colleagues found that:
* Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners as the U.S. and one-third as many MRI scanners.
* The rate at which the British provide coronary bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth of the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds of the U.S. rate.
* The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients age 45 to 84 and nine times higher for patients 85 years of age or older.
We can see the political pressure to provide services to the healthy at the expense of the sick in our own country’s Medicare program. Courtesy of Obamacare, every senior is entitled to a free wellness exam, which most doctors regard as virtually worthless. Yet if elderly patients endure an extended hospital stay, they can face unlimited out-of-pocket costs.
Rationing by Waiting.
Although Canada has no limits on how frequently a relatively healthy patient may see a doctor, it imposes strict limits on the purchase of medical technology and on the availability of specialists. Hospitals are subject to global budgets – which limit their spending, regardless of actual health needs.
In addition to having to wait many hours in emergency rooms, Canadians have some of the longest waits in the developed world for care that could cure diseases and save lives. The most recent study by the Fraser Institute finds that:
* In 2016, Canadians waited an average of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner to receipt of treatment by a specialist – the longest wait time in over a quarter of a century of such measurements.
* Patients waited 4.1 weeks for a CT scan, 10.8 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound.
Similarly, a survey of hospital administrators in 2003 found that:
* 21% of Canadian hospital administrators, but less than 1% of American administrators, said that it would take over three weeks to do a biopsy for possible breast cancer on a 50-year-old woman.
* 50% of Canadian administrators versus none of their American counterparts said that it would take over six months for a 65-year-old to undergo a routine hip replacement surgery.
Jumping the Queue.
Aneurin Bevan, father of the British National Health Service, declared, “the essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth is not advantaged.” Yet, more than thirty years after the NHS was founded an official task force (The Black Report) found little evidence that the creation of the NHS had equalized health care access. Another study (The Acheson Report), fifty years after the NHS founding, concluded that access had become more unequal in the years between the two studies.
In Canada, studies find that the wealthy and powerful have significantly greater access to medical specialists than less-well-connected poor. High-profile patients enjoy more frequent services, shorter waiting times and greater choice of specialists. Moreover, among the nonelderly white population, low-income Canadians are 22% more likely to be in poor health than their U.S. counterparts.
These results should not be surprising. Rationing by waiting is as much an obstacle to care as rationing by price. It seems that the talents and skills that allow people to earn high incomes are similar to the talents and skills that are useful in successfully circumventing bureaucratic waiting lines.
No Exit.
The worst features of the U.S. health care system are the way in which impersonal bureaucracies interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. Those are also the worst features of Canadian medical care. In Canada, when patients see a doctor the visit is free. In the U.S., the visit is almost free – with patients paying only 10 cents out of pocket for every dollar they spend, on average. In both countries, people primarily pay for care with time, not with money. The two systems are far more similar than they are different.
In Britain, private sector medicine allows patients to obtain care they are supposed to get for free from government. Middle and upper-middle income employees frequently have private health insurance, obtained through an employer. A much larger number of Britons use private doctors from time to time. The rule seems to be, “If your condition is serious, go private.”
Canada, by contrast, has basically outlawed private sector medical services that are theoretically provided by the government. If doctors, patients and entrepreneurs think of better ways of meeting patient needs they have no way of acting on those thoughts.
This is where the U.S. system is so much better—even though, as in the Canadian system, U.S. Medicare pays doctors the same way it did in the last century, before there were iPhones and email messages. Many U.S. employer plans are just as bad.
But because U.S. employers are free to meet the needs of their employees rather than live under the dictates of a politically pressured bureaucracy, one of the fastest growing employee benefits is concierge care. For as little as $50 a month for a young adult, patients can have 24/7 access to a doctor by phone and email and all the normal services that primary care physicians provide.
Uber-type house calls, consultations by phone, email and Skype, cellphone apps that allow people to manage their own care and other innovations in telemedicine are taking some parts of the private sector by storm.
These are the kinds of innovations that would be outlawed if the congressional Democrats have their way.
For more on these and other issues, interested readers may want to consult my congressional testimony, delivered with Linda Gorman, Devon Herrick and Robert Sade.
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