Evil Smurf said:
Daystar Clarion said:
If many Americans weren't so damn gung ho about paying less taxes, then it wouldn't be an issue.
It's 2013 and they still have no universal healthcare. It boggles the mind that a first world country lacks such a system.
Here's a thought.
You know that obscenely huge military they have? You know, the big one.
Take like 5% of that budget, and there's your universal healthcare. No extra taxes, just the money redistributed elsewhere.
You should probably look after the people in your own country before making something to kill the populace of another.
That sounds like communism son. What would you know anyway? It's not as if any other countries have socialised healthcare.
I'm hoping that's sarcasm.
I come from a family of doctors and am engaged to a medical student whose family members are all doctors up to their grandparents. And here's the general opinion they have:
Universal healthcare will lower THEIR wages, making their time in medical school (8+ years mind you including undergrad and residency, not considering specialization.) significantly less profitable. Why bother with wasting a decade of your life and over 100 thousand dollars when you could just grab an engineering degree in 4 and maybe a business degree on top of that in another 1-2 years?
Now this brings up a few issues: Unlike in other countries medical schooling comes AFTER undergraduate. Americans treat it like a post-graduate course while most other countries will teach you medicine concurrently with undergraduate. In a sort of trade-school like way. This means we have long schooling times. Additionally privatization of medical school raises the barrier of entry. If medical school's expensive, doctors intend to make money back. I think my cousin calculated he will break even when he's 40 years old. Yep 40.
Healthcare isn't inherently more expensive because it's in the US. If anything it should be significantly cheaper. The issue is that insurance companies will do anything they can to avoid paying hospitals because there's hardly any regulation in these transactions and the billing code system is completely fucked up. It's been touted that cleaning up the byzantine medical coding system could almost pay off insuring the uninsured.
Also, pharmaceutical companies strong arm their way into price fixing. For whatever reason the US government thinks it's okay to subsidize corn and corn syrup which is killing the american populace and not the drugs that can potentially save them. Big pharma bribes and litigates their way into selling their drugs for whatever they want and to whoever has the best insurance.
Basically what the US lacks before universal healthcare is any form of regulation.
1. Medical schools need more public support.
2. Existing Insurance companies need more oversight
3. Medical billing needs overhaul
4. Big pharma needs to be kept in check. This involves changing copyright laws and cleaning up the governance in general.
5. Preventative care should be emphasized. The U.S. has the bad habit of the "what's wrong with me doc?" mentality. It should be more like "How healthy am I?"
And yes I am in favor of universalized health care. But there are inherent structural problems with implementing a plan like this. My intended line of occupation is also in drug discovery and research. So take it for what you will.
Both parties just need to realize when profit margins are involved, human decency is tossed into the trash.