Clinton calls for socialized health care

My experiences with hospitals stem from the German, the American and the Scottish/British system. All three had their disadvantages; the experiences with Germany were the most negative. Of course that makes me biased, but everyone is biased in terms of their experiences and the information they look to find to support them.

As for measuring quality, although it would be controversial, I would again suggest getting a lot of data from the patients themselves and their families on more than one spectrum in the form of a semi-structured evaluation. There isn't simply "good treatment" and "bad treatment", more factors need to be taken into consideration, and any simplistic survey would always disregard the breadth of experience. Of course this kind of research would be expensive and time consuming, which, I agree, is a problem.

In terms of the extreme cases skewing the data (which is the case in any statistical evaluation), I would suggest considering the mean, mode and median equally, as well as the standard deviation or the range. Since the mode is not affected by these cases, it could "balance it out".

The Dartmouth data is certainly interesting, however, the main danger with its implications is that any such action could easily backfire. Cutting the resources of a hospital may help them manage the resources more effectively, but that assumption presupposes an abundance of resources to begin with. If the hospital does not have that kind of money and is already struggling, reducing its resources would only hit the people at the bottom once again, the people who are the least profit for the facility.

In my opinion, health care and profit should either become increasingly independent to avoid incentives to priviledge some patients, but not others, or include new incentives for treating the people who belong to the less priviledged section of society.

Originally Posted by Cetra

It's not an issue of being able to afford medical treatment for the population rather being unable to afford medical treatment in its current form and on top of that continue to pay into world leading research and development programs. Maybe most people just don't realize just how much better US medical treatment is compared to the rest of the world and how much it would really cost to continue to offer this level of treatment as well as provide medical coverage for everyone in the nation. Taxes probably couldn't be raised enough to cover it so the only way to meet the demand would be to lower the medical treatment quality of the nation.

I don't know, dude. It seems counter-productive to me that, when people are flown into Germany and Thailand and Canada and shit to have extensive medical work done by some of the world's leading practitioners, that you could say blankly that the US has the best health system in the world, bar none. I mean, I'm sure we lead the world in a lot of very specific ways, and no doubt we have the largest population of the best surgeons and doctors and shit, but we don't have all the best, and furthermore, I'd say it's arguable whether the health care for the average American is better than the health care provided to the average Briton or whatever.

Quote:

As I said above, the better medical treatment found in the United States costs more money. We pay top dollar for the newest equipment, the best doctors in the world and put more money into medical research and development than the next ten best countries combined.

This is another point. Why should the bulk of the world's cost into researching new medical treatments and pharmaceuticals be paid for out of Americans' own flesh?

Anyway there's too much talking. I would not object in the slightest for tax dollars to be spent insuring americans, but I don't also object to scouring the country of for-profit insurance companies that rape everyone, hospital or schmuck alike. I don't object to providing more baseline care that gives the best bang for the buck, even if there are fewer world-class hospitals available (mostly because I don't need nor could ever afford world-class service but you know). Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree that the pack of liars that hold office currently are not the best people to be in charge of life or death decisions such as health care, but I just don't see how they're any different than the other pack of liars we have currently.

also I think Night Phoenix, like George W. Bush, feels that 'changing your mind due to increased experience' means you're a hypocrite and should be avoided at all costs. not that it affects me though

Originally Posted by a lurker

I don't disagree that the pack of liars that hold office currently are not the best people to be in charge of life or death decisions such as health care, but I just don't see how they're any different than the other pack of liars we have currently

Maybe it's because healthcare doesn't have to be dominated by either the government or for-profit insurance agencies.

This isn't a binary problem.

Time to try my hands at a little bit of arguing.

So, in this post, I will investigate the issues in the medical system in the status quo, and two different alternatives that have been suggested by members of the board: socializing medical health care and shifting control of the health industry to the states. Notice that when I say "socializing health care," I do not suddenly mean that the United States is socialist, but I say that some individuals believe that health care should be controlled by the federal government directly in a national system. As such, the three options for health care that I am investigating are simply: capitalism/businesses, federal government, state government.

The Issue At Stake

We all know that the current system of health care indeed has its faults, and we seek to find solutions to the status quo. Two questions will mainly arise when we consider the different alternatives. First, can we guarantee stability in terms of a future medical system that has more advantages than the status quo? Second, how can we go about implementing such a new medical care system.

One of the first main problems that we have at the moment is the fact that poorer individuals cannot afford medical care. This, of course, is a byproduct of the capitalist system. I agree that many individuals who cannot afford such care do not attempt to save up money in the future, and in essence, do not truly deserve A+ treatment; however, we cannot assume that all poor people deserve to be ignored.

The next major issue I would label as the citizen cost argument. The United States currently holds the most costs in terms of treating individuals at a per-citizen basis. There is a tendency for Americans to over-react when becoming sick and going to the doctors office when they do not need treatment. This in effect leads to medical insurance companies having to foot the bill, and this in return leads to higher costs for insurance.

Old people. Medicare is in a greater need of attention than social security right now, for one or two reasons. The United States has a tendency to morally extend the life of old individuals simply because we have the medical capacity to do so. What we ignore, however, is the fact that these six months of treatment can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars per person. Imagine what will happen when the baby-boomer generation ends up retiring and requiring federal assistance. Taxes will end up increasing for the middle-class, and assuming a progressive type of increase in taxes, our medical system will completely collapse. Notice, that the current system of medicare is completely federally controlled. In a 2006 study by the AP, a huge majority of federal spending went into social security and medical care, with the money split in between the two major programs quite evenly.

Why a Federal System is NOT the Solution

As I make my arguments, remember that we need to understand that an industry based medical solution would actually suffice in terms of stability. We can all agree that this may not be the best way to handle medical care, and that there will always be certain individuals who end up bitterly destroyed by the system, but we must agree that it at least is stable.

First, the biggest reason why federalized medical care would never work is actually right in front of us. In fact, I already just stated it: old people. Medicare in itself is a program that does save a few lives here and there, but accrues amazing costs in terms of government spending, and will become a major issue in the future. If the government were to control every existing medical program in the United States, then it would have the heavy burden of deciding when to allow and disallow treatment. Of course, due to moral standards and Christian conservative groups, the federal government will be indefinitely pressured to save every last remaining soul on the planet. What this will end up causing is either insanely long operation lines or a massive spending increase by the United States. Of course, the second option will probably not happen because the massive cost of operations would overtake the amount of taxes that the middle class would pay, so we would instead have the longest lines that anyone has ever seen. Considering the fact that the United States is one of the largest countries and has to deal with more people than other locations, the lines would probably be two times greater, and more people will die because they "didn't have an operation when they needed it." An advantage to an industry based medical system is actually, in fact, that competition leads to the treatment of only people who truly need it. The medical insurance companies have a financial obligation to choose only those who are most likely to survive an operation for a long period of time, and so, we do not spend as much money treating people.

The second issue I shall discuss deals with implementation. If we trust the federal government to create a national health care system, what would probably end up happening would be that the federal government would control and take over the industry. This in turn would lead to the government injecting tons of federal employees into each of the insurance businesses through a take-control method, and the doctors will be placed under these federal groups, having to treat everyone. Of course, we would have to consider research obligations, which have always been fueled by insurance companies as well as medical corporations. These two would be even more regulated by the government, and probably in turn lead to instability issues.

Ultimately, the question is actually pretty simple: do you want a completely unstable system of medical attention for a national government, or do you want a system in the status quo that has not completely failed yet?

A State Solution

I cannot go deeper into the issues of shifting to such a solution because I'm actually running out of time here, but I believe that this type of system is something that we should at least place a little of research into. A state system would probably have a few of the same issues as a federal system, but only to a smaller degree. If we were to truly consider the framing of the constitution, a Lockian vision would hold that health care should be controlled by the states. After all, health care has traditionally been given as a power to the states, and it has only been a shift of federalism that caused parts of it to become nationalized.



-- I apologize for sucking at grammar lately. I used to be a debate for four years, but ended up becoming a computer science major, and technical writing is completely different from English writing

Originally Posted by Rasputin Forever

I know this may sound crazy, but I trust my government just a bit more than an insurance company. That's just me.

That's how I feel, we have free health care in Canada, you do get some people complaining but at least you don't have to choose between your health and a house payment.

Originally Posted by Chibi Neko

That's how I feel... in Canada

A government-chartered corporation in the same vein as the Tennessee Valley Authority would be pretty rad, but I wouldn't want that shit run by the federal government or even my state.

Really, my state is the worst, holy Christ.

BOOO CLINTON!

Originally Posted by quintman

BOOO CLINTON!

HOORAY BEER!