Forum Post: Universal Health Care Sounds Wonderful Until You Have to Use It
Posted 12 years ago on April 22, 2012, 11:01 p.m. EST by Frank
(19)
from Washington, DC
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Had a personal experience here that I'd like to relate. Needed to consult specialist about Kidney stones and got appointment within a few days. Turns out I had one stone that was too big to pass, got surgical out patient procedure done within a week. As it turns out the stone dropped the day before the procedure in my bladder and I was extremely lucky that it hadn't moved further down (almost always does within 48 hours).
Out of curiosity I checked the Canadian system and found through their official statistics that average wait time was about 2 months just to see a urologist. Seriously?
Even the Canadians (see this study excerpt) admit their system doesn't work and are struggling to incorporate a private one (75% of Canadians have private health insurance as well):
"Of the 440 emails sent out, 90 surveys were returned. Respondents believed that a parallel private heath care system would shorten wait times and improve access to care (74%), improve outcomes for those with private health care (58.8%), would not impair the outcomes of those without private health care (74.2%) and would not interfere with the accessibility of health care for most Canadians (73.3%). Most respondents (91.1%) believed that, if privately delivered health care was allowed, urologists should spend a fixed amount of time providing services within the public health care system as well."
There are different people of different means and circumstances. However much I hate government paternalism for all, it is preferable to provide for a basic social safety net for all. This will in no way hamper the financially capable people from seeking private health care. Single-payer option will just lower the costs of all the paper/electronic shuffling, insurance codes, coverage fine-print interpretations, etc. that are subject to corporate shenanigans. The government people will at least have the profit motive removed from them when they are deciding whether to play the denial-of-claim tricks. There is a segment of us in the U.S. who are better suited for benevolent government paternalism so let us be realistic and recognize that.
Either go single payer or get the gov out 100%.
Forcing the people to buy from corrupted oligarchies is probably the worst type of reform we could have gotten.
2,600 pages of bullshit shoved down the people's throats that does nothing to solve the core problem- costs keep rising.