Just been dealing with the pharmacy and our health insurance

[xiphias]

Can anyone give me an example of ANY problem that we'd have with socialized medicine that we don't have right now with our current health care system?

I mean, if I'm going to have to go through byzantine, bizzare, arbitrary bureaucracy and have to bang my head against walls and argue with people to have simple, commonsense health care taken care of, I'd like to at least know that it was available to everyone.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Crappy doctors who follow the letter of the law would stay in business with greater frequency than currently. This is the observation of people who come from countries with socialized health care; care becomes universally crappy. Newer ways of measuring health care performance may ameliorate this.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

This is the observation of people who come from countries with socialized health care; care becomes universally crappy.

It's not the observation of people who've told me about the socialized health care they recieve. Nor has "crappy doctors who follow the letter of the law" been notably absent from the tale fodder from people who've told me about their health care in the U.S. unless they've had serious dollars to drop -- and sometimes even then.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It was the observation of a friend of mine living in Russia in the 80s, and another who lived in the UK in the 90s. I didn't mean to imply it was the observation of *everyone* in that situation; YMMV.

Their point, jointly, was that yes, even *with* money, you couldn't really buy local health care -- there was no incentive to perform functions that weren't authorized by the government, and those wheels turned slowly. So you went abroad (i.e. to the US) for new or unusual conditions.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think your first point may be valid. (I'll even add to it that good but mercenary doctors may leave for other countries where they can make much more money.)

However, the corrollary isn't. There are bad doctors in countries with socialised medicine. This doesn't mean all doctors are bad, and it doesn't mean all care is crap. And I say this with experience of medicine from the patient end in Britain and Canada. (I'll also say that I had a US friend with me once when my son had an accident and we went to Emergency in Britain and she was very impressed at how good and fast the treatment was... and how little admin there was.)

Also, I've heard in the US if you want a "top surgeon" you can get one if you can pay for it -- and that's wonderful, except if you can't pay for it. In Britain or Canada, you get a random surgeon, who might be the best in the country or who might be the worst, according to what's available and how sick you are. It's random chance and need, not whether or not you can pay for it, even if you are paying for it. So if you imagine the life of a British or Canadian "top surgeon" they'd be assigned to the hardest cases, and a US one, to the richest.

It seems so much more fair to me, but I suppose if you're looking at it from the POV of a rich person, that wouldn't seem fair.

Sorry to jump on you for agreeing with me, but...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

British or Canadian "top surgeon" they'd be assigned to the hardest cases

How so? Should socialized medicine have a mechanism for this? (I've never heard of such a thing.) It sounds nifty, but it also sounds pretty much impossible to implement.

It's very true -- capitalist medicine means the rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor. Believe me, I've been both. But socialist medicine needs to be implemented very, very carefully, because it's a system with no strong balancing force toward "right", and (like all socialist approaches I've seen so far) a strong force toward "what we have now, only cheaper and receiving less effort".

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Not in New Zealand it doesn't. Health care here is not "universally crappy" -- it's universally pretty bloody good, actually. The thought of being in the USA with no medical insurance (or the wrong kind) scares me half to death.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Maybe you can share some of your secrets to convincing HMO-funded politicians how to implement some of that -- I'm getting tired of Managed Care (as in, "It's amazing you Managed to get any Care at all!")