A Discussion on Universal Health Care

The fear-mongering meme traveling around the right-wing is the all-out frontal assault against Socialized medicine.  Now that it's an inevitability they are grasping at every handhold to deride nationalized health care as inept socialism.

Socialized medicine, or any type of government-backed health care program for that matter, has never worked.

Let's just put some facts on the table. I picked two important factors of Health and explored how the U.S. Matches up: Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality.

Lest I be accused of cherry-picking the stats, I picked those two because they show how well the health care system provides for a nation’s babies and also how well it cares for the populace on average throughout their lives. I think these are more important than lines, or waiting lists, etc. These are statistics that take the average of all factors and matches it with the priorities of keeping people alive. What I’m saying is that I didn’t just look through a bunch of tables until I found the two that best supported my position.

So, I took the two lists from the CIA Factbook and compared them for similarities. Every Nation scoring better than the U.S. in BOTH criteria, I put in a list and then searched the web to find what kind of health care system that nation has. Some are Nationalized, some are Mixed, and some are private. I couldn’t ascertain the system of only one nation: Macau.

So, my conclusion is that for an awful lot of nations, Nationalized Health Care (Socialism) is working better than our system.

Here are the rankings, the first number is the average ranking (best = 1) for each nation for both lists.

2.5 - Singapore - Private
4 - Hong Kong - Private
4.5 - Sweden - Nationalized
5 - Japan - Mixed
5.5 - Andorra - Nationalized
7.5 - Macau - ??
8 - Iceland - Nationalized
11.5 - Switzerland - Nationalized
13.5 - Norway - Nationalized
14 - Australia - Nationalized
14 - France - Nationalized
16 - Guernsey - Nationalized
17 - Spain - Nationalized
17.5 - Canada - Nationalized
18.5 - Malta - Nationalized
18.5 - San Marino - Nationalized
19.5 - Liechtenstein - Nationalized
21.5 - Gibraltar - Mixed
22.5 - Austria - Nationalized
22.5 - Finland - Nationalized
22.5 - Germany - Nationalized
24.5 - Monaco - Nationalized
26 - Italy - Nationalized
26 - Jersey - Nationalized
27 - Belgium - Nationalized
27.5 - Luxembourg - Nationalized
27.5 - Netherlands - Nationalized
29 - Greece - Nationalized
30 - Aruba - Nationalized
31 - Faroe Islands - Nationalized
33.5 - United Kingdom - Nationalized
34 - New Zealand - Mixed
34 - Portugal - Nationalized
38.5 - Isle of Man - Nationalized
45.5 - United States - Mixed

Comments

[a rose is a rose]

did you know that both guernsey and faroe are knitted items?

ok, so i drifted a bit. i can't argue with you on this (nor do i want to for that matter).

how the heck do you find time to do THIS too (research)?

[hm-uk]

Where do I begin? Nationalised health care is something that I take for granted, now. I do, however, remember a time when I lived in the US that I couldn't afford to visit a doctor because I didn't earn enough money to take care of my co-payment, even though I had insurance. Living in the UK, I see the problems associated with socialised medicine - some longer waiting times for surgery, people who abuse the system, etc. The medical care I have received here has been absolutely brilliant, though. I hope that the US finds a way to introduce a comprehensive system whereby anyone can see a doctor and be treated for illness. Many services in the US are already socialised (police, firefighters, teachers, Medicaid/Medicare), so what's the big deal? As long as the system is funded, it will provide a decent service...that means pay everyone well and invest in more hospitals, recruit good staff and then, raise taxes. It just has to happen. I'm HAPPY to pay 25% of my wages to help contribute to the NHS. It's a brilliant safety net and one that, I believe, everyone deserves to have.

[C. L. Hanson]

I've talked about health care in France (vs. in the US) on my blog here and here.

I'm not sure where these stories of lines and waiting lists are coming from. I can call up my doctor or my kids' doctor and make an appointment any time I feel it's necessary, and if it's an emergency, the doctor will see me that day. If there's an emergency after hours or on a weekend, I just call SOS medecins and a doctor will come to my house within the hour. And it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. The preventative care is excellent, the pediatric care, the pre-natal care I got while expecting my two kids, all excellent. Quality health care is one of the big reasons why I don't want to move away from Europe.

[Tim Mulcahy]

The thing that I find interesting about nationalized health care systems is how they play out politically. I have the sense that they tend to help life expectancy and infant mortality statistics because the system manages to provide basic health care to a sector of the population that normally doesn't have it and tends to have higher infant mortality rates which tends to hurt both of those statistics.

Having spent a lot of time in Canada (I worked for a Canadian company and have many Canadian friends) the complaint I hear most is that the system increases wait times and is subject to abuse. People in the middle class tend not to like it for this reason, because it tends to limit their health care choices. They are at a point where they get basic health care but can't afford to go outside the system and pay for needed medical care.

An example is a friend who had cancer and couldn't get surgery before she was expected to die. She actually had to come to the United States to get the surgery. She's still alive and doing fine, by the way.

That doesn't mean throw the baby out with the bath water. It just means that such a system would need to be tweaked so that it works better and meets the expectations of all citizens that rely on it.

[Cele]

I see both sides, what I know is that middle income Americans suffer the most. I am insurance poor. You have to either be poor and have nothing to lose to get state backed insurance or rich and can afford medical attention at no cost. If not you stand to lose everything you have worked hard for if you face a major medical emergency in America...and that is after the insurance pays their paltry share.

For those of you who need a definition for the word insurance, I'll offer up my own.

Insurance - a government backed pyramid scam.

[ujlapana]

Those two statistics, while widely used, are nearly useless to the average citizen considering healthcare costs. Pertinent questions are 1) what share of GDP is the cost, and 2) how good are the outcomes? Life expectancy is pulled down by violence and infant mortality. Infant mortality is subjective (was that baby stillborn or not--who's reporting and how coercive is their government?) and damaged in the US by our ability to turn potential miscarriages into successful births (of what are sometimes tragically short lives). My father has been in OR's in France (in the last 5 years) that had open windows to let in the breeze.

Morally this is easy--your "right" to healthcare is no more self-evident than your "right" to food and clothing. Would you expect the government to take from the successful and hard-working in order to provide everyone with uniforms and cafeterias?

The only problem I see in the US is cost. But that's what's driven the technology that the rest of the world gets at a bargain. The Great Satan hard at work! Still % of GDP is still probably less then the % of GDP used to be for food and shelter. Is it better to be spending our economic might on more iPods?

[CV Rick]

ujlapana, you are absolutely and totally wrong. Those two statistics are very indicative of the strength of not only a nation's health care and it's ability to care for all strata of society, from the weak and impoverished to the strong and wealthy, but they are direct correlations to how preventive versus reactive a health care system is.

Further, your next two points are simply strawmen. Please, take your right-wing nonsensical strawman arguments back over to Fox News where they're treated as valid. Here we speak with logical direction and valid conclusions.

Want to start a topic about rights? Go right ahead and start one. Want to start a topic about iPods? Go right ahead and start one. Making up a position and then trying to argue it on my blog is a declaration that you've run out of anything pertinent and can't actually argue the point under discussion.

[Ujlapana]

Sayin' it is don't make it so. If you'd like to get a little more information on infant mortality and its subjective nature, start with "Infant Mortality" on Wikipedia. There you will a find well-cited (important for Wikipedia, of course) description of how other countries do not include many of the weaker infants that the US does or have strangely high stillborn-to-live birth ratios. So while you bear a good testimony, that's not going to be sufficient in the face of skepticism.

Life expectancy is calculated using the death-rates of people alive today and applying them to children born today. There is no actual cohort of people that are followed from birth to death--it's impossible. So recent advances in medicine and new diseases both affect life expectancy in a way that isn't captured. In addition, honest reporting of neonatal mortality is compounded in this number. The WSJ ran a great article on this on 7/23--I suggest you read it.

You have not yet demonstrated (using logical reasoning, rather than emphatic verbage) that life expectancy and infant mortality are the two most important things to use in evaluating the efficacy of a healthcare system. You state above that these "take the average of all factors and matches it with the priorities of keeping people alive." Unfortunately, these numbers are difficult to actually pin down (as discussed above) and are also influenced by genetics, lifestyle, societal violence, or (in the case of infant mortality) deception. So if you want to castigate the US healthcare system, go right ahead, just get some better data.

We can save the discussion on rights for another time....

[CV Rick]

So now Wiki is your source. The fact of the matter is that Health Care in this nation is uneven and failing for large percentage of its citizens. Not only that, it's crippling small businesses and is the leading cause of financial ruin among families.

Further, you spew right-wing talking points like a regular contributor to the comments section of Bill O'Reilly's blog.

Since the figures I took were from the CIA Factbook, the numbers were already adjusted for factors described in the wiki account - if you pursued the information in the Factbook you'd have noticed the footnotes to that effect. It's the principle reason I didn't take World Health numbers, or that of the Red Cross, or whatnot. These numbers come from our intelligence service and are the closest figures equalizing the myriad of factors indicative of complex societies.

Nice try tho.

[Ujlapana]

"The fact of the matter is that Health Care in this nation is uneven and failing for large percentage of its citizens."

Uneven? Yes, but that's nothing to be critical of is it? Should we all have the same body-mass index? Have the same genes? Go to the same hospital and see the same doctor? If a new drug is being tested, should we say "everyone or no one" must be in the test? If the test is successful but the drug is very expensive to manufacture, do we say "everyone or no one" can have access to the drug?

Failing? Depends on how we define this. You have said that infant mortality and life expectancy are the best two indicators of success. You are not alone--I realize that many people use these indicators, presumeably because they are impacted by healthcare and easy to compare (vs. hospital infection rates, average delays to treatment, cancer survival rates, etc.). I have presented reasons why they are poor indicators, largely due to data-collection issues and noise factors. You have not yet responded with a convincing counter-argument, although I await one*.

You seem to be suggesting that bankruptcy is a good indication that the system is failing. It's certainly a good indication that the system is expensive. I never said it wasn't. The question is, is it worth what you get? And that "what you get" part takes us back to your two chosen variables.

"Further, you spew right-wing talking points like a regular contributor to the comments section of Bill O'Reilly's blog."

Hmmm. Is this your idea of a logical counter-argument? Does it have any bearing on the relevance of my rebuttal? In my experience, rhetoric is a great way to look cool for your friends, but not a very good way to collectively seek truth. If your objective is the former, I'll bow out of this discussion.

*I read the notes in the CIA factbook--they do not mention anything about infant mortality reporting differences or non-healthcare-related impacts on life expectancy. If they do (and I missed it), a URL and/or direct quote would be helpful.

[CV Rick]

Uneven isn't a thing to be critical of? Are you fucking serious? When preventive care is unavailable for millions of people - from check-ups to regular maintenance of conditions from Allergies to Asthma - leaving their only access relegated to emergency room care for condition that shouldn't warrant such expense to "just a little too late" care for conditions that should have been cared for in a functioning system. Yeah, I'd say uneven care is something to be goddamned critical of. Jesus Christ, you must be fucking dim to believe that uneven care isn't a problem. If you don't think it's a problem, you're a goddamned retard.

Then you follow that up with the typical strawman . . . who they hell said everyone should have the same of everything? NO ONE. But you act as if that is the issue now. Why? Because you can pretend that it's worth arguing about and your talking points bullshit gives you answers to unasked questions allowing you to pretend authority. Strawmen and Appeals to Authority are for the weak-minded in debate.

I seem to be suggesting that bankruptcy is a good indication of a failing system? Yeah, damned right I am, pal. Of course I am. When we live in a nation which has the highest per capita bankruptcies and the leading cause of those bankruptcies is medical emergency, then yes . . . it's a further indication of that problem of access I was talking about earlier . . . see this is me staying on point and not pretending that there's a strawman to argue. Damned right our medical expenses which translate to financial ruin is, in fact, an indication of a fucking problem.

My ideas of logical counter-argument seem to not be able to dissuade you from spewing right-wing talking points and lazy strawmen like an automaton from talk-radio land.

"Look cool for your friends" . . . This isn't a fucking playground pissing match . . .this is about the health care access and system for our entire fucking country, pal. Play around with pissing match techniques if you'd like and bow out however you will . . . but in real life there isn't always two valid sides to arguments . . . sometimes there's right and wrong. Give that a thought.

Oh, and if you feel like you can't relate to me or people on this blog because I, or they, don't answer like numnuts on Fox News, then take a hike. I don't need you, your comments, or your fascist 'defend the corporations, protect the rich at all cost' rhetoric.

[rebecca]

Ujlapana, I'm going with CV Rick on this. Your side of the fence might have some merit, but it's not being demonstrated here. As CV Rick stated, you've got some lovely straw men knocked to the ground, but you've also got a pretty textbook example of equivocation (with the switcheroo you pull on the particular definition CV Rick is using for "uneven" health care), and probably some other big fatty fallacies - those two are just the really obvious ones my faded memory can pull out. Even with the heated and colorful language from CV Rick, you're still behind. Like, a LOT.