'we dont have a spending problem'

[dogtowner]

France has the best health care so I hear -- much better than the US. We can't emulate them because we are too entrenched in what we have. Taxes are higher in France (esp. for the wealthy), but ultimate costs to the consumer are lower. But of course France is feeling the problem of an aging population too.

The dilemma in health care financing in the US is the government is too stupid, and the insurance companies are too greedy.

-sigh-

For 2008, the health insurance companies in the Fortune 500 had a profit margin of 2.2% — ranking this sector 35th on the Fortune 500 list by industry. This means that for every $1 in revenues, the health insurance companies made only 2.2 cents in profits.

Those obscene profits are elsewhere in the healthcare mix Lag.

Industry RankIndustry2008 Profits
as % of
Revenues
1 Network and Other Communications Equipment 20.4
2 Internet Services and Retailing 19.4
3 Pharmaceuticals 19.3
4 Medical Products and Equipment 16.3
5 Railroads 12.6
6 Financial Data Services 11.7
7 Mining, Crude-Oil production 11.5
8 Securities 10.7
9 Oil and Gas Equipment, Services 10.2
10 Scientific, Photographic, and Control Equipment 9.9
11 Household and Personal Products 8.7
12 Utilities: Gas and Electric 8.7
13 Aerospace and Defense 7.6
14 Food Services 7.1
15 Industrial Machinery 6.9
16 Food Consumer Products 6.7
17 Electronics, Electrical Equipment 6.5
18 Commercial Banks 5.2
19 Telecommunications 5.1
20 Chemicals 5.0
21 Construction and Farm Machinery 5.0
22 Insurance: Life, Health (stock) 4.6
23 Information Technology Services 4.5
24 Computers, Office Equipment 4.3
25 Metals 3.9
26 Wholesalers: Diversified 3.5
27 Insurance: Property and Casualty (stock) 3.3
28 Specialty Retailers 3.2
29 General Merchandisers 3.2
30 Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services 3.0
31 Packaging, Containers 3.0
32 Beverages 2.9
33 Engineering, Construction 2.7
34 Health Care: Medical Facilities 2.4
35 Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care 2.2

 

[Lagboltz]

-sigh-

For 2008, the health insurance companies in the Fortune 500 had a profit margin of 2.2% — ranking this sector 35th on the Fortune 500 list by industry. This means that for every $1 in revenues, the health insurance companies made only 2.2 cents in profits.

Those obscene profits are elsewhere in the healthcare mix Lag.

I suppose I should know better at making blanket gut feeling health care statements with you around.

 

[Gipper]

I suppose I should know better at making blanket gut feeling health care statements with you around.

You have stated that France has better healthcare than the US. I know this was reported in the statist media, the same media the desperately wants government run healthcare, and the study was done by an organization that desperately wants government run healthcare. Do you think the study might be skewed? Do you think the statist media would report it if the study found US healthcare the best?

This healthcare issue is much like the AGW debate. Those who promote AGW lie repeatedly and distort the data...and the statist media promotes their lies and distortions....and leftists believe the lies and distortions.

The problem with American healthcare is it is too expensive and Americans have too much access. However, the care is the best in the world. If you needed heart surgery or any kind of surgery tomorrow, you could get it in the US. Try that in the socialist systems? Does that mean anything to you?

What is not readily reported are the long waits many Frenchies, Canucks, Limeys, and other nationalities are subjected to in the socialist systems and the poor care. But you don't KNOW this because the statist run media refuses to the report the truth....just like they do with AGW....and so many other issues, which result in those who believe the statist media like YOU, being misinformed.

 

[Hobo1]

That's the huge problem with democracy. To get elected, you must look and act like you are helping the people how vote - otherwise you won't get re-elected. With that as the number one priority, it is easy to rationalize: lets make a law that gives people stuff. Okay, I know it is expensive, but I can worry about that later.

Its the same mentality that so many Americans have with credit cards. I want it, so I will use my plastic and worry about paying for it later. And like so many other Americans, their debt overwhelmed them. THERE IS NO WAY THEY DIDN"T KNOW...but they kept on spending.

 

[Lagboltz]

You have stated that France has better healthcare than the US. I know this was reported in the statist media, the same media the desperately wants government run healthcare, and the study was done by an organization that desperately wants government run healthcare. Do you think the study might be skewed? Do you think the statist media would report it if the study found US healthcare the best?

This healthcare issue is much like the AGW debate. Those who promote AGW lie repeatedly and distort the data...and the statist media promotes their lies and distortions....and leftists believe the lies and distortions.

The problem with American healthcare is it is too expensive and Americans have too much access. However, the care is the best in the world. If you needed heart surgery or any kind of surgery tomorrow, you could get it in the US. Try that in the socialist systems? Does that mean anything to you?

What is not readily reported are the long waits many Frenchies, Canucks, Limeys, and other nationalities are subjected to in the socialist systems and the poor care. But you don't KNOW this because the statist run media refuses to the report the truth....just like they do with AGW....and so many other issues, which result in those who believe the statist media like YOU, being misinformed.

You and your statist media thing again. Your statement, "However, the care is the best in the world." comes from looking at the wrong media. Do you have non media data on "the long waits"? Whether there are long waits or not, the facts are that people in the US are getting inferior health care by any measure you can make. It looks like you are making blanket statements from gut feelings.

The government has very detailed information at
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/rankorderguide.html
Here is the data for industrialized countries.

US is 37th in the World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems. Communist Cuba is only two rankings worse at 39th.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/

The US is ranked number 14 in preventable deaths. (US: 110 per 100,000; France: 65 per 100,000)
http://www.allcountries.org/ranks/preventable_deaths_country_ranks_1997-1998_2002-2003_2008.html

The US is 24th in life expectancy.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthy_life_table2.html

The US is the 72th in health performance
http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_performance_ranks.html

The US has the second highest total expenditure on health.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/total_health_expenditure_as_pecent_of_gdp_2000_to_2005.html

In infant mortality US is close to twice as bad compared to Canada, France, Germany, Spain, etc and many with socialized medicine.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

So being the second from the top in money spent on health care it certainly looks like we are not getting our money's worth and it certainly looks like we are not "the best care in the world"

You say the problem is that health care is too expensive or that Americans have too much access. I would say that a major problem is that America is number one in obesity. But then the right wing objects to interfering with the liberties of what children eat at school. If we could get by the right wing crying foul at taking away liberties for kids to eat crap at McDonalds, or cookies from school vending machines we might be able to raise the ranking of the US. Health care. Maybe our health care system should try more for preventative care rather than paying money to patch up fat people.

 

[Gipper]

You and your statist media thing again. Your statement, "However, the care is the best in the world." comes from looking at the wrong media. Do you have non media data on "the long waits"? Whether there are long waits or not, the facts are that people in the US are getting inferior health care by any measure you can make. It looks like you are making blanket statements from gut feelings.

The government has very detailed information at
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/rankorderguide.html
Here is the data for industrialized countries.

US is 37th in the World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems. Communist Cuba is only two rankings worse at 39th.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/

The US is ranked number 14 in preventable deaths. (US: 110 per 100,000; France: 65 per 100,000)
http://www.allcountries.org/ranks/preventable_deaths_country_ranks_1997-1998_2002-2003_2008.html

The US is 24th in life expectancy.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthy_life_table2.html

The US is the 72th in health performance
http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_performance_ranks.html

The US has the second highest total expenditure on health.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/total_health_expenditure_as_pecent_of_gdp_2000_to_2005.html

In infant mortality US is close to twice as bad compared to Canada, France, Germany, Spain, etc and many with socialized medicine.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

So being the second from the top in money spent on health care it certainly looks like we are not getting our money's worth and it certainly looks like we are not "the best care in the world"

You say the problem is that health care is too expensive or that Americans have too much access. I would say that a major problem is that America is number one in obesity. But then the right wing objects to interfering with the liberties of what children eat at school. If we could get by the right wing crying foul at taking away liberties for kids to eat crap at McDonalds, or cookies from school vending machines we might be able to raise the ranking of the US. Health care. Maybe our health care system should try more for preventative care rather than paying money to patch up fat people.

Sorry but I don't accept the propaganda you have chosen to accept. You, like most lefties, have been brainwashed and will gladly allow the elitists to destroy the our healthcare system purely for political reasons. No question we have problems, but our HC system is much better than you think.

You fail to recognize that many patients in socialist nations wait months...even years....for care. Yet in the US, most get care within days, if not hours. But don't let the facts affect your opinion.
This might help, but I doubt it.

Here’s a Second Opinion

by Scott W. Atlas
Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose. By Scott W. Atlas.

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America’s health care system.
1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.
3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit from statin drugs, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease, are taking them. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons, and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
4. Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:

• Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
• Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.
• More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).
• Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).

5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”
6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”
8. Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).
9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.
10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.
Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and care for the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/5589

 

[dogtowner]

I suppose I should know better at making blanket gut feeling health care statements with you around.

its a lie told too often. not calling you a liar but somehow the idea make its way to your gut.

thats why i couldnt let it go.

 

[Lagboltz]

Sorry but I don't accept the propaganda you have chosen to accept. You, like most lefties, have been brainwashed and will gladly allow the elitists to destroy the our healthcare system purely for political reasons. No question we have problems, but our HC system is much better than you think.

You fail to recognize that many patients in socialist nations wait months...even years....for care. Yet in the US, most get care within days, if not hours. But don't let the facts affect your opinion.
This might help, but I doubt it.

Can't you find better opening material in your posts. It tedious reading the sameold "....propaganda .... lefties ... brainwashed ... political reasons ...

Now it is very ironic that you claim leftist propaganda and then quote rightist propaganda from the Heritage Foundation. I prefer my facts from the World Health Organization. The facts are that American's come out poorly in the health care statistics of the world.

 

[Gipper]

Can't you find better opening material in your posts. It tedious reading the sameold "....propaganda .... lefties ... brainwashed ... political reasons ...

Now it is very ironic that you claim leftist propaganda and then quote rightist propaganda from the Heritage Foundation. I prefer my facts from the World Health Organization. The facts are that American's come out poorly in the health care statistics of the world.

Okay...I will work on my material.

I prefer to get my information from NON-statist organizations. I suggest you do the same. Statist organizations naturally promote the STATE!!!! How about them apples??? Is that commonsense or what my socialist friend??? As such, they promote socialized medicine just as many statist organizations promote policies you agree with, such as gun control, abortion, global warming, growth of government, higher taxation, public education, unions, etc....and they regularly distort and lie.

So you see it is much better to get information from sources NOT controlled by the state, if you want the TRUTH. Are you man enough to accept the TRUTH?

 

[Cruella]

It's funny how many people from socialist countries come here for treatment. Must be for our inferior medical care.

 

[Lagboltz]

Okay...I will work on my material.

I prefer to get my information from NON-statist organizations. I suggest you do the same. Statist organizations naturally promote the STATE!!!! How about them apples??? Is that commonsense or what my socialist friend??? As such, they promote socialized medicine just as many statist organizations promote policies you agree with, such as gun control, abortion, global warming, growth of government, higher taxation, public education, unions, etc....and they regularly distort and lie.

So you see it is much better to get information from sources NOT controlled by the state, if you want the TRUTH. Are you man enough to accept the TRUTH?

The Heritage Foundation and the World Health Foundations addressed different aspects of health care. The HF had some myopic cherry picked points, and not the full gamut as WHO.

If you want to call WHO a statist organization, be my guest. Statism is just a label for you to plaster on things you don't like.

 

[dogtowner]

Can't you find better opening material in your posts. It tedious reading the sameold "....propaganda .... lefties ... brainwashed ... political reasons ...

Now it is very ironic that you claim leftist propaganda and then quote rightist propaganda from the Heritage Foundation. I prefer my facts from the World Health Organization. The facts are that American's come out poorly in the health care statistics of the world.

is it just possible that WHO might have set the criteria for how it measures this is a way that favors those who are of a like mind as they ?

as lack of universal healthcare (by their definition) is a strike against you its to some extent so.

 

[Lagboltz]

is it just possible that WHO might have set the criteria for how it measures this is a way that favors those who are of a like mind as they ?

as lack of universal healthcare (by their definition) is a strike against you its to some extent so.

The properties WHO used to analyze health care involve counting the number of specific health care incidents. That is most likely unbiased across nations. But I would grant that their final "score" published in.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
where US scored low is based on subjective criteria of what WHO thinks is important. One could easily imagine bias there, but the less biased data that went into that ranking was poor enough for the US that it's hard to imagine the ranking improving much, even if done by the Heritage Foundation.

 

[Lagboltz]

Are you in Florida?..I was born in APOPKA..stands for Big potato..in Seminole indian Language

Tampa Bay area. Tampa stands for "Land of the !@#$% hurricanes" but don't quote me on that.

 

[Hobo1]

If y0u look carefully - and the statistics don't show it - the US is great medical care for complex diseases. In the cases where the fancy, high tech equipment is needed, every hospital has them all. However, for a broken leg, this equipment is not needed. Still the hospital's cost of keeping everything up to date is passed on to all the patience. Every hospital has the latest and greatest equipment and other high tech stuff.

In other countries, only a few hospitals are well equipped. And still not up to US standards. But for a broken leg, all you need is an X-ray machine. These lesser equipped hospitals have quality care, but not costly equipment.

So here's the concept: different grade hospitals for different illnesses (and different budgets). We also need "no fault" medical malpractice. That would lower costs tremendously to get the lawyers out of the operating room. Lots of good ideas if we looked at other countries - but not the single payer, State run health care program like Europe and Canada. That kind of medical program quickly takes on the inevitable "government bureacracy" inefficiency - with lazy, rude workers, and long wait time.