Health Care 10.06.07 And The Pandora Prescription

[Cops]

Edit: And doesn't anyone else find it odd that the people in this thread trying to push universal health care onto the U.S. aren't from the U.S.? Someone tossed in an argument that Jerome isn't as credible because he's not a doctor like Epi. I can take that same argument and say you don't know shit about the U.S. because you're not from here nor do you live here and therefore aren't as credible.

I have never lived in the U.S, I have been there and I do have personal experiences with people who have received medical treatment and from what I see and hear you guys get really fucked over when it comes to dishing money out of your own pocket. It's almost like playing the lottery, hope that you don't get sick otherwise you're fucked. We pay much less per capita, yet we receive the same amount of treatment and yet we don't pay thousands of dollars to health care companies (which are useless) or take loans to pay off health care expenses.

The humanist in me feels like something got lost in the translation, a country such as the U.S that spends billions on foreign military campaigns cannot even afford to provide it's citizens with the basic form of health care. I find this stand point ignorant, ignorant to the people who live and die in your country, ignorant to them as people, ignorant to the handicapped and mentally ill. Basically when you say no we shouldn't provide people with the basic necessities of life you're turning your back on them, your own fucking people, wow.

[Cops]

Yes. Because if you can make more money than me, you deserve it. I won't question it, as any man before Heart Transplants didn't question it.

Once again human life does not have a price tag. Even if you don't believe in Universal Health Care I can't believe you would say someone who doesn't immediately need the heart deserves it over someone who needs it right away. I should get some money maybe you'd have more respect for me as a person, you completely fell in love with capitalism, it's almost sickening.

Do you believe your bullshit so much that if your mom was in this situation or even pavement that you would say he does not deserve the heart over someone who has more money? You've turned into a shallow person Jerome.

[genocidal]

Unfortunately, every human's life has a price tag.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Once again human life does not have a price tag. Even if you don't believe in Universal Health Care I can't believe you would say someone who doesn't immediately need the heart deserves it over someone who needs it right away. I should get some money maybe you'd have more respect for me as a person, you completely fell in love with capitalism, it's almost sickening.

Do you believe your bullshit so much that if your mom was in this situation or even pavement that you would say he does not deserve the heart over someone who has more money? You've turned into a shallow person Jerome.

My beliefs towards humanity are still as benevolent as ever. But when real action is needed, I think rationally and economically and efficiently.

I beliebe that through Capitalism, perhaps one day we won't even worry about heart disease.

I love humanity no less than you do, I just believe in a different code of ethics towards solving human need.

Edit: and your system of "prioritization" is basically economics with no money, but human life itself reduced to currency - what patient is more "valuable" to save. Money objectifies value, and spares human life that sort of categorization.

[Money]

ANYWAYS




the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ARE BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE...thats all that matters

[Sleepy Weasel]

My Economics teacher is a fraud. Better tell him to return his Ph.D

Technically Epi was right when he said "actually mileage in American cars hasn't changed in decades". It's been basically steady for 2 decades.

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s06003.htm

I just wanted to point out your economics teacher may in fact be a fraud.

[Reaver]

I have never lived in the U.S, I have been there and I do have personal experiences with people who have received medical treatment and from what I see and hear you guys get really fucked over when it comes to dishing money out of your own pocket. It's almost like playing the lottery, hope that you don't get sick otherwise you're fucked. We pay much less per capita, yet we receive the same amount of treatment and yet we don't pay thousands of dollars to health care companies (which are useless) or take loans to pay off health care expenses.

The humanist in me feels like something got lost in the translation, a country such as the U.S that spends billions on foreign military campaigns cannot even afford to provide it's citizens with the basic form of health care. I find this stand point ignorant, ignorant to the people who live and die in your country, ignorant to them as people, ignorant to the handicapped and mentally ill. Basically when you say no we shouldn't provide people with the basic necessities of life you're turning your back on them, your own fucking people, wow.

I don't understand, are you trying to prove my point then? I've been saying all along that we spend too much on health care which is what I think we need to solve, which is the basis of my idea. The U.S. spending too much on our military is a whole different thread, but I agree. I can't tell if the remaining part of your second paragraph is aimed at me, if so you need to re-read what I'm suggesting.

[Epinephrine]

I offered a solution to this problem (in this thread) that doesn't involve universal health care. Our health care system isn't really an open market in the sense that other industries in the U.S. are. Hospitals and doctors should compete for customers. They don't, in fact it's quite the opposite as you know and as a result there's no need to lower costs. People don't care how much things costs because insurance takes care of it, which is why it doesn't work, which is why the costs are so high. So although universal health care is a solution, it's not the only solution for America.

Edit: And doesn't anyone else find it odd that the people in this thread trying to push universal health care onto the U.S. aren't from the U.S.? Someone tossed in an argument that Jerome isn't as credible because he's not a doctor like Epi. I can take that same argument and say you don't know shit about the U.S. because you're not from here nor do you live here and therefore aren't as credible.

No one's trying to push anything on the US. While the caring human in me wishes that millions of people in the richest country in the world didn't have to die because no one cares about them, really it is your country. I'm just defending my own country, and wondering aloud at the sillyness that people lik Jerome like to call our system socialist. As if we're a communist country like the USSR or China with all that implies. Even if he didn't explicitly say it, that's his implication, and it's pretty ridiculous.

[Epinephrine]

Wow Epi are you actually trying to make the argument that socialized health care system would reap the same benefits in innovation as a privatized one? Fucking how? People aren't these complete benevolent motherfuckers like you want them to be. People invent drugs because it makes them money. My uncle works for a very large private firm that develops treatments for Hepatitis and he makes at least a few million a year. If he didn't make that kind of money he would have chosen another career path, and he's said that.

I'm a pretty nice guy with a divine spark of humanity but I'm going to get a law degree and work for a private law firm rather than a non-profit. Why? I need money and power, and hopefully I can achieve more once I have those than working my ass off for $60,000 a year defending fruit workers' rights or something.

You're damn lucky the best and the brightest not only are in America but are coming to America to be trained to make money or else your socialized system would be giving out Advil for AIDS.

1) People can still invent drugs for money. We pay money for drugs. We have basic drugs which are free for the poor, but generally everyone pays for their own drugs in Canada. As well, we offer basic services for free. If you want to pay for a more expensive service, you can as well. An example is cataracts. You can get the old style glass replacement lens for free in British Columbia, or you can pay $1000 and get new ones which tint to sunlight and so on. The the procedure to get the cataract replaced is still free.

Our system guarantees that medically necessarily procedures are done, but it also allows those who want something extra or cosmetic to pay for it.

2) Most medical research in the US is actually funded by the National Institutes of Health and by universities. It is funded from foundations, and private donations (think Bill Gates' foundation), and things like 'walk for cancer' and so on. This is the same in Canada. Most researchers in medicine work at universities.

Yes some of their research is also funded by drug companies, and guess what? Even in Canada there's PLENTY of medical research. In fact the University of Toronto Medical School is the 2nd most cited medical school in the world, if you take an aggragate of all journal articles related to medicine in the entire world.

3) Most new medical processes and drugs developed are basically 'me too' drugs and processes that rarely show any real improvement over old processes. Even when they do, it's in the matter of single digit percentiles. Without going into very complex scientific arguments about why that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, you'll just have to believe me. Or you can become a well informed medical researcher and then we can have a legitimate argument on that. Just because a drug/process is well marketed doesn't truly make it any better than what's already out there.

Capitalism guarantees that all of these copies will be made, aggressively marketed even if their claims of improvement are dubious (i.e. purely sponsored by the companies that mde them). Many people buy into this, and we have spectacular cases like the entire Vioxx debacle that shows us how aggressive and unethical drug companies and the such can actually be if you let them go too far.



So would medicine still progress even in the public system? Absolutely. Would cosmetic or medically unnecessary procedures still be as advanced, probably not, but then again those aren't free in Canada either, so I gather they would be quite advanced sort of like laser eye surgery which is renouned in Canada.

[MetalHeadz]

And yeah, I'm a cocky asshole. But when I have contributed as much thought as I can into my argumentation, when I spend time double-checking what I say and editing everything... and you guys wind up ignoring most of it, and stick to the very shit that I am criticizing... you're the asshole, dude. I

Ok, I don't have to read your entire posts to understand the free market argument. Here's my main argument against it:

Provision of healthcare by the state should be, in my opinion, a human right that everyone is entitled to. It's unethical to provide no health service to people who cannot afford it, in my opinion. Healthcare should be at the heart of a given countries priorities: why is there this attitude that a maximum level of funding can be applied to 'defence' budgeting but with domestic issues it's a minimum level.

[Epinephrine]

I worked in a body shop for a few weeks. Do I have more credentials than Henry Ford, who never actually worked on an assembly line?

Your googling a few articles doesn't make you a medical expert if that's what you're getting at. Medicine is so complicated, that even for extremely smart and well informed people, unless you have had proper training in it, it is hard to really grasp. Even harder still when you proport to know everything there is to know about another country's system when you've never used their system or worked in it compared to someone who has done both almost their entire life.

[Epinephrine]

I do not attack your method of argumentation. Please, engage me as an intellectual, not a child.

Maybe if you stopped speaking in politician soundbites (i.e. 'people are dying!'), I'd take your arguments seriously.

You make the assumption that in a social vacuum, companies would not engage in "product testing". Which they do. Alot.

Vioxx has its balls deep in the pockets of social beauracrats.

I have no idea what you're talking about when you say 'in the pockets of social bureaucrats'. As for the rest, yes companies do testing. And in medicine, time and time again, companies who pay for their own testing only show positive results. Only in large publicly funded studies do we usually see discrepancies. But then sometimes even in their own studies there are subtle problems which they choose not to advertise. Vioxx is such a case, where early trials actually SHOWED some of the problems they had, yet they still covered it up. If regulatory bodies like the FDA didn't exist, perhaps they'd still be selling that product to people who just didn't hear about it in the news. While Vioxx is the most famous example, there are tons of drugs pulled every year that regular people never hear about, and even doctors don't hear about because doctors don't have all the time in the world to keep up. That's what regulatory bodies are for, to protect everyone.

A perfect example is China, where there is no regulation, and where people regularily die from inferior products. They hide behind a veneer of 'capitalism' of having cheap products which incidentally kill thousands a year. Sure some are eventually found out, but not all, and without any real regulation there, there is no guarantee that it wouldn't happen over and over again. Even if the media were completely free in China, it would be hard pressed to expose even 5% of all problems with their under regulated industries to a point where consumers would actually be protected.

And because of it, people are waiting years to get treatment to save their lives. A quick check-in to a private clinic saved a Canuck his life, because they found a brain tumor requiring immediate surgery, which was arranged in America.

You're using anecdotal evidence to back up your claims.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...us.html#People

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...ca.html#People

Take a look at the CIA world factbook. USA, higher infant mortality rates. USA lower life expectancy. USA higher mortality rates.

Sure there are some people who might be better off, but overall your system fails.

All medical care is a choice. Every human chooses whether or not to have health care. Before doctors, there was no "right" to health care. Who's to say Canada won't socialize Lasik, as well? By your moral standards, it, too, should be socialized.

Before the Greeks, the concept of individual rights didn't exist either. I don't understand your point.

I would say as a society have evolved to the point where if we can provide something to everyone at a really cheap cost, there's no reason why we shouldn't do it if we are to have a moral society. I really do not see why if we have the means to let people have such a basic and dreadfully important thing at a very reasonable cost that we shouldn't do it. You're probably against universal education too... I hope you go to a private college and not a state school which is taxpayer funded. I hope you never attended a public school either nor will any of your children, relatives or anyone you've ever cared about.

Check your premises. Economics is not about creating pools of wealth. Economics is about distribution, exchange, choice and benefit. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have a means to convert that wealth into a product or service, it is useless. And that's why your pools of money are still causing agonozingly long waiting periods.

I really don't understand what you're arguing here. You're still assuming that the aim of the universal system is some utopian perfect system that has no flaws and that's what we all believe up here in Canada. That couldn't be futher from the truth. I merely argue that our system overall works better (as shown by global health indicators), and that our system is more compassionate as it helps everyone.

Medical expirements should not be allowed, yet social expirements like Stalinist Russia and Maoist China are? Social healthcare is a medical expirement, too: the hypothesis, "if we throw money into a pool, people will receive equal treatment". You completely disregard the economic means of achieving that end, and that's why it fails.

Who said anything about Russia and China? Completely straw man. I honestly have no idea why you keep bringing those places up. If anything Canada is probably the most like the United States of any other country in the world.

You sound like George Bush. If you don;t support the war in Iraq, you hate freedom.

You sound like George Bush. Oh no, people are dying in the public system, therefore private is better.

We have the antibiotics thanks to capitalism. And the medical procedure to safely remove my leg and not cause gangrene.

Had your Canada enacted this policy a hundred years earlier, people would have the right to have their leg amputated. You would be denouncing people who die from gangrene.

Now you're just making things up.

I can just as easily make wild claims, but then I'd be Tone.

I did not imply that Trudeau created universal healthcare.

Then why mention him at all?

Toilets, healthcare, food, education... all can be socialized, and all will have the same moral implications.

You accuse me of denying people treatment? What do you think socialized healthcare is? People who choose to have private treatment are denied it. People who want to pay money for the best doctor are denied it. People who want to choose immediate service over "priority lists" are denied it. Check your premises.

If you equate toilets with health care, yet again you are complete ignorant.

First of all, in Canada you have the option of having as many second (or third of fourth) opinions as you want. You can go to any doctor you want as long as they have room for you.

As I understand it, in the US you are limited by your insurance company which doctor you are allowed to see. Even in the dreamworld of a so called 'perfect capitalistic' system (one where I assume you probably wouldn't have been able to so easily afford your cancer treatment on your back unless you were a millionaire) where there is no insurance and where you just pay each time, physical limits on how many patients a doctor can see will similarly limit which doctor you can see.

And while we don't rank our doctors in Canada like is done in the USA, I don't really believe in those rankings. They are extremely artificial, because there are many factors in medicine that simply cannot be measured. Is someone a better doctor just because they work for a famous hospital or invented some process? Or maybe someone else is a better doctor because they simply spend more time with a patient to help them and care more. Either way, you really cannot realistically measure these things, and as such it's pretty stupid to say that you have the choice of getting 'better' doctors in the US.

Actually as a whole, medicine is much more uniform in Canada, and I'd wager our doctors as a whole are a lot better than in the US. Even if you just look at how it is harder to get into medical school in Canada and the US will show that we are more selective for quality.

[Reaver]

No one's trying to push anything on the US. While the caring human in me wishes that millions of people in the richest country in the world didn't have to die because no one cares about them, really it is your country. I'm just defending my own country, and wondering aloud at the sillyness that people lik Jerome like to call our system socialist. As if we're a communist country like the USSR or China with all that implies. Even if he didn't explicitly say it, that's his implication, and it's pretty ridiculous.

Almost as silly as someone (not you) insinuating that I don't care that millions of people are dying

[Epinephrine]

The crux of my argument is that there is no perfect pragmatic system, but capitalism is the most efficient way to satisfy the most people's desires by voluntary, mutual cooperation.

The crux of my argument is that there is no perfect system either. I've never claimed our system is perfect, nor do I claim it solves everything. It's you that claims that we actually believe that. My only claim is that aside from all the pointless boasting and anecdotal evidence, if you look at overall health indicators, we fare better than you, and we pay 1/2 as much money per capita for health care.

My Economics teacher is a fraud. Better tell him to return his Ph.D

See Sleepy's reponse.

We looked at Somaliland, the most peaceful country in Africa.

Yet again, you just give random and pointless examples. I honestly have no idea what Somaliland has to do with anything in this argument.

Show me one instance where a non-profit orginization crerated something better than its market equivalent and I will give you the argument. (You cannot use "murder", though.)

Considering most (actually the vast majority of) research is paid for by the government, and done by universities which are generally non-profit... I think that speaks for itself. The government and public budgets for medical research VASTLY outstrip that of private enterprise. And unlike corporations, government research supports all research. Private enterprise supports research to make slightly better products that can make the most money. This rarely translates to the 'greater good'. Just because I can pump billions to make another statin to rival lipitor, it really doesn't mean the public is really that much better off as a whole.



But then again you also completely misrepresent our system as well. In your view, there is absolutely no capitalism in our system, which is yet again false. I quite believe in capitalism as an efficient way to distribute resources in fact, and I acknowledge that capitalism has many goods. The difference between you and me is that, I have never believed that unfettered capitalism is really that great because I think if market forces were left to their own devices without ANY government regulation at all (i.e without the public making sure corporations didn't get away with too much), then we would be rife with abuse in the system.

The problem with capitalism is that, those who believe it blindly such as yourself, always believe that the best ideas win out in the end. But in reality that is very far from the truth, but that's another debate altogether. If you want a medical aspect from it, it is FAR more profitable for corporations to find drugs and processes that only make a person marginally better. If they ever truly fully cured a person, they'd have no need to take the drug ever again. Best to have a drug that a person has to take every day for the rest of their lives if you really want to make money. So resources would not be directed to things that would generally help everyone.

Eventually they would perhaps, but why should we have to wait for many years and let many people be harmed and using your line of thought 'let people die' because companies aren't bothering to develop cures for things which aren't as profitable but important for health?

[Epinephrine]

Almost as silly as someone (not you) insinuating that I don't care that millions of people are dying

Actually in this thread, I think Jerome is the only one who's opening willing that, because in his worldview, casualties are necessary for progress. Sounds a bit like the Nazis to me.