These are also Swedes we're dealing with here [video=youtube;aYBkDxao3wg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYBkDxao3wg[/video]
Someone to cover his shift? There are no backups in socialized medicine. I don't think people realize how the patient to healthcare providers ratios increase. For example, there are roughly six patients for every nurse in hospitals in the US. In Britain, the ratio is 15:1.
That's because many US citizens don't have insurance and thus avoid hospitals and the wave of medical bills that follow hospital visits . . . the fact people are choosing to avoid medical costs, to the detriment of their health, is the problem.
The UK also pays about 1/3 of what the US pays per person and that gap is increasing. The UK also has a longer life expectancy than the US by a significant margin. In other socialized medicine news, Cuba has the highest doctor to patient ratio in the world. I'm not sure how socialized became a bad word in this county.
Next time you're in the Cayman Islands, at the bank, ask the American physician standing next to you.
You're using the wrong metric. Life expectancy has too much to do with lifestyle, where what you really want to measure is how a patient does once they enter the system. And the metrics show the US health care system is the best in the world. For example, breast cancer survival rates in the UK are 77%. In the US, it's 94%. As for Cuba, garbage in, garbage out. It doesn't matter how many medical workers they have.
Scroll down to the U.S. section of this. http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news...tries-that-spend-the-most-on-health-care?lite
Only because we spend far more per patient. Our system is the least cost-effective in the world, making the pre-Obama system unsustainable. Check out this article. http://sportstwo.com/threads/221349-Health-Care-is-a-Mess
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health...rate-down-life-expectancy-up-in-US/44935852/1 Death rates for 10 of the 15 leading causes of death decreased significantly between 2008 and 2009, including for heart disease, cancer and stroke. For white males, life expectancy is 75.7 years; for white females, 80.6. For black American males, life expectancy is 70.9 years; for females, 77.4 years.
It’s no more wrong of a metric to use than your example of one poor decision equating to all of social medicine. And while there are many variables that go into life expectancy I would argue that it is a valuable metric as lifestyle/education and preventative medicine are just as important as reactive medicine. As for Cuba, they are not a garbage medical system. For a "third world" country they rate equal to or better than many first world countries in medical care.
The point I was trying to make in the article--I lived with VardVal for a few years--was that when you begin to treat health care providers like bureaucrats with rules instead of people hired by the patient and directly responsible for them, you get these kind of outcomes. One more thing: Preventitive health care is when it gets fucking scary in socialized health care. When health care is collectively paid by the people, your personal health becomes the business of society. Systembolaget (Sweden's liquor store monopoly) tracks your personal purchases and limits them by time and quantity. Who wants to live in a country where you're limited on how much alcohol you choose to purchase for yourself? Not me. If someone wants to drink themselves to death, it's none of my concern (as long as they don't drive). My body and my health is my business. I want yours to be yours. I find it creepy that my health was viewed as the business of complete strangers. I don't find the argument "Cuban health care sucks less than the rest of Cuba" very convincing.
Good point and valid concern, that’s not an environment I want to live in either and there is a potential slippery slope. The cost on society and health care is however the same argument that the anti tobacco movement is using and peoples hospital care, as a result of lifestyle choices, already costs you a lot in premiums and exaggerated care costs, so on that level it should be your concern. I am more of the mindset though to give people the information they need to make healthy decisions and make the rehab, health care, and mental health care available to them to become healthy members of society again. There will always be outliers though that choose to kill themselves with drugs, alcohol or cheeseburgers and all you can do is mitigate their impact on the rest of us as much as possible. Your fears are also similar to the ones voiced by the anti physician assisted suicide group, who feared that government and doctor death squads would run rampant euthanizing the people who can’t afford their care for terminal illnesses. That law has turned out ok and I just don’t see a socialized health care playing out like your worse case example. There would be plenty of opportunity to put checks and balances in place and to potentially even keep a pay base system for extra care. Maybe I’m just too Utopian in my views, but to dismiss other countries as garbage is arrogant and ignorant. Cuba is not perfect but they view health care and education as a human right, I think we could learn a few things from them and from other countries.
