"Michael Moore's Shticko"

[sirs]

Hmm, "Blessed are the Peacemakers", so, therefore, I propose a middle position: keeping the existing system while imposing a surtax (2%???) on pay to fund proper health care for those who cannot afford it.

Unfortunately, I'm too intimate with the current Health Care industry to support ANY form of universal health care, especially at the Federal level, though I'd be willing to consider Bt's ideas of locally funded programs.  AND I'd want it put to the will of the voters, and not simply imposed by the Government.  Let those who would be responsible for paying for it have the say on if its to be passed or not

[Amianthus]

Hmm, "Blessed are the Peacemakers", so, therefore, I propose a middle position: keeping the existing system while imposing a surtax (2%???) on pay to fund proper health care for those who cannot afford it.

My prediction if this is imposed:

Many companies (that already pay 5-10% of the payroll on medical insurance) will drop their employees' medical coverage, and give them a bonus equal to the 2% surtax. The company saves money, and the employees can get government sponsored health care. It's a win-win situation for the companies and the employees - both will save money. It will only cost the government.

[sirs]

It's a win-win situation for the companies and the employees - both will save money. It will only cost the government.

Keeping in mind of course that "cost the government" = cost the taxpayers     

[Amianthus]

Keeping in mind of course that "cost the government" = cost the taxpayers     

Oh, I'm fully aware of that - but apparently most of the voters are not. Most of them would think that 2% they're paying should cover it...

[BT]

Sounds like the WalMart approach. And for some reason folks were not happy with that solution.

[Brassmask]

If the government can decide to take us into an illegal invasion with only a little over half of the country's support then I think that universal health care with support in the 60's shouldn't be too hard to swallow for some of you pathetic bastards.

You're all gung ho for killing folk when you want to but not for healing folk.

Have you ever thought about that paradox?

"pro-life" but pro-death penalty
against universal health care but pro-illegal invasion of Iraq
against safe sex classes but anti-abortion
Give all your devotion to your country but none of your wages.

Basically, you come across as "My way or the highway" on every topic.

There is a god, believing otherwise is the worst thing a human can do.

[Universe Prince]

I do think these two paragraphs are complete crap, or at least are using the very tactics they are alleging that Moore uses by painting a very false picture and presenting it as fact.

Using the link provided in the Reason article, I found The Independent's January 12, 2007, article that Moynihan quoted. It does in fact say

The soaring salary levels of doctors are worsening the NHS cash crisis. Two-thirds of NHS trusts are in deficit and have cancelled operations and extended waiting times. Primary care trusts, including those in Yorkshire, Sheffield, Norfolk and Surrey, have ordered GPs to delay referrals to save money. Leaked documents published last week show the Department of Health is planning to shed 37,000 posts this year in an effort to balance the books.

Which supports Moynihan's point that the NHS is facing a financial problems.

For example:



This was from an IPSOS-MORI poll, a well-respected polling group in the UK. Try finding support that high for the United States health care system.

Here is the article that went with it: link

One excerpt from the article:

The British general public continue to view the NHS as one of the best of its kind in the world.

The report highlights that the public remain very concerned about funding the NHS and see this as the biggest issue facing the service. This is despite the fact that waiting times and waiting lists have been cut in recent years -- far more people in Britain still believe waiting times are increasing rather than falling.

I see there in your quotes that the issue of fund comes up again. But Moyinhan also linked to an Ipsos MORI web page. One question there was, "Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the running of the National Health Service nowadays?" The results stacked up like this:

Very satisfied    Quite satisfied    Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied    Quite dissatisfied    Very dissatisfied    Don't know / Refused      Satisfied    Dissatisfied    Net satisfied

11 33 8 22 24 2   44 46 -2

And the next question was, "Which of the following statements best describes your view about the current state of the NHS?" And these are the results Ipsos MORI give for that question:

It is under-funded    It has enough money but too much money is wasted    It has enough money and the money is spent well    It is over-funded    Don't know

29 64 4 1 2

So I don't see that Moynihan is painting a false picture.

Student debt is a different issue. The Tories and New Labour removed universal free higher education and introduced subsidised student loans and variable tuition fees. Costs have soared since that time, unrelated to the NHS.   

Okay, but that doesn't refute Moynihan's point that British medical students, like American medical students, are accumulating debt. And my first question about the Tories and New Labor removing universal free higher education is, was there an issue with funding? (The sarcastic side of me wants to add, "Or were they just doing it to piss off their constituents?" But that probably isn't a fair question.)

[Universe Prince]

You're all gung ho for killing folk when you want to but not for healing folk.

You're making sweeping generalizations, but I've argued against the war as well.

Basically, you come across as "My way or the highway" on every topic.

That's kinda funny coming from someone supporting government licenses for having children.

Have you ever thought about that paradox?

Have you ever thought about the "paradox" of being against private business monopolies but being for government monopolies?

[_JS]

The soaring salary levels of doctors are worsening the NHS cash crisis. Two-thirds of NHS trusts are in deficit and have cancelled operations and extended waiting times. Primary care trusts, including those in Yorkshire, Sheffield, Norfolk and Surrey, have ordered GPs to delay referrals to save money.

Yes, NHS Trusts are an interesting thing unto themselves. They are part of the "internal market" of the NHS, which is a Thatcherite invention modified by John Major and Tony Blair to allow local markets and decision-making into the NHS. Basically, some NHS Trusts run remarkably well and others run not-so-well. Some are really and truly in debt and in need of more funding, others are in debt because that's how they can get the Government to provide more funds.

So I don't see that Moynihan is painting a false picture.

Oh, I think you're missing a huge question from your list. Ask the British if they prefer the NHS or the American healthcare system? I think you'll be amazed at the answer.

More than that, you have to look at the polls themselves. Consider the following article from the BBC: Link

By no means is the NHS perfect. If you try to place any healthcare system against perfection it will fail. There is no utopian answer, whether in Libertarianism or Socialism.

What you will not see in Britain is David Cameron or Gordon Brown calling for an end to the NHS. Hell, even Thatcher didn't do that, though she may have been the closest to actually wanting to (perhaps Tebbit).

And my first question about the Tories and New Labor removing universal free higher education is, was there an issue with funding?

Not really. The issue, as always, is with prioritisation. There are plans from some MP's in all three parties to bring it back. Other EU states still have it. A budget is first and foremost a policy document and budgeting itself is the task of prioritising resources. In this case it was an easy target and the idea of equality has been assaulted by both the right and left for a few decades now, to the point that the political ramifications for New Labour were minimal.

After all, a Government can spend its money on all sorts of other useless shit, why should you bother educating the public?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Might I suggest that the health of the American people isa of far, far FAR greater importance to the American people than the type of government that Iraq has?

And yet we are pissing away millions of dollars a day on Iraq.

[Universe Prince]

Oh, I think you're missing a huge question from your list. Ask the British if they prefer the NHS or the American healthcare system? I think you'll be amazed at the answer.

More than that, you have to look at the polls themselves. Consider the following article from the BBC: Link

Okay, don't we have the same thing here? Polls show many Americans think health care needs reform but many also are quite satisfied with the care they receive?

By no means is the NHS perfect. If you try to place any healthcare system against perfection it will fail. There is no utopian answer, whether in Libertarianism or Socialism.

Of course not. I'm not looking for a utopian answer, though I think Michael Moore is. I'm just looking for a better answer than what I see in countries with socialized medicine.

What you will not see in Britain is David Cameron or Gordon Brown calling for an end to the NHS. Hell, even Thatcher didn't do that, though she may have been the closest to actually wanting to (perhaps Tebbit).

You won't see politicians calling for an end to Social Security either. Not even Ron Paul does that. But that doesn't make Social Security a good plan that needs to continue.

After all, a Government can spend its money on all sorts of other useless shit, why should you bother educating the public?

Ha. Well, you can already guess what I think about government funding education. But then, I tend to be against government spending money on "other useless shit" also.

[_JS]

Once again, I don't really care or know what Michael Moore is doing.

The NHS is a good system. In my opinion it is far superior to what we have here in the United States. Are there problems? Of course. Any large organisation, public or private, is going to have problems and the NHS itself somewhere around 1.3 million people. I'd say that qualifies as a large organisation.

The budget for the NHS is roughly 104 Billion pounds and it is somewhere around 7 billion pounds in debt. The majority of Trusts break even at the end of a fiscal year, some don't (clearly) and hence the 6.7% overspending.

I find it very interesting that other nations are being attacked for the expense of healthcare! That is one area where the United States is far and away the worst in the world.

The U.S. spends nearly 15% of her GDP on healthcare. That is more than any other country in the world. No nation with universal healthcare spends even close to that much. According to an OECD Report the U.S. has fewer physicians, nurses, and hospital beds than the median OECD country. Worse than that:

while the U.S. adopts many clinical technologies earlier than other nations, ultimately it does not make them more widely available, nor does it always provide the most sophisticated procedures compared with other countries.

In this article there are a number of good points made.

Factoring in costs borne by government, the private sector, and individuals, the United States spends over $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare expenses, more than any other industrialized country. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School estimate the United States spends 44 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the country with the second highest expenditures, and 134 percent more than the median for member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These costs prompt fears that an increasing number of U.S. businesses will outsource jobs overseas or offshore business operations completely.

Elsewhere in the world, healthcare systems are much less reliant on private sector support?and much less expensive. For example, the U.S. system costs 83 percent more per capita than the Canadian system, where public funds collected through taxes pay for up to 70 percent of healthcare coverage. A number of East Asian systems also enjoy high quality of care for a much lower cost. An article in Cambridge University?s Journal of Social Policy looks at what it calls the ?remarkable? performance of healthcare systems in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, where the authors argue the legacy of British colonialism has encouraged a strong state role in the healthcare system.

Quite frankly, I think we will see a universal healthcare system because we cannot afford the awful system we have now. Unfortunately Americans are so afraid of anything European and too proud to adopt Canada's system that I'm guessing we'll be caught in some quagmire of public/private HMO hell for a number of years before this stark realization hits us.

[Universe Prince]

Quite frankly, I think we will see a universal healthcare system because we cannot afford the awful system we have now. Unfortunately Americans are so afraid of anything European and too proud to adopt Canada's system that I'm guessing we'll be caught in some quagmire of public/private HMO hell for a number of years before this stark realization hits us.

I'm guessing we will get some form of socialized medicine eventually because enough people will demand that something be done, and some politician is going to build his political legacy around "fixing" the medical industry. And then all those smoking bans and trans fat bans are going to seem like the tip of the iceberg. And of course, then we will really have a fight regarding immigration because all those folks who complain now about immigrants abusing our health care system will really get pissed when they see what the immigrants do to a U.S. with socialized medicine.

[sirs]

As I said already, despite our current Health Care's flaws, I'd take it hands down over any other, when taken in their totality.  And with my intimate understanding of our current Health Care industry, there's no Federal Universal Health care plan, I could ever support.  Simple concept of Quality over Quantity

[Plane]

Immoral according to whom? Is there some Great Phlabog sitting up there, telling you what is moral and what is not?
Shared risk and universal management works. It has worked quite well for Social Security.

I love it when an argument contains its own disproof.

Social security is like a clock built to wind itself , it will run down ,there is no avoiding it .