Pztrick44

Detroit's Hail Mary: Saving the Automakers

ButWhy said...
"Sure, the health care system in the USA is in need of an overhaul. The reality is, when people pay for things, they tend to take care of them. Making health care a right will result in substandard health care services. We (the taxpayers) simply do not have the money. There is no Santa Clause, life sometimes sucks, and actions have consequences."

Re: "making health care a right will result in substandard health care services"

Not true. Universal health care can give us something today's system does not; preventative treatment.

When the uninsured feel sick, they don't go to the doctor. They wait... wait.. wait... Sometimes they win out and they get better. Other times they get so sick they need very expensive operations(often where early treatment could have prevented this).

But let's say Joe has a cough. Were he insured, he could visit his doc and possibly get treated with a single round of antibiotics(not too expensive for buddy tax payer)--but no, he is not insured. He does not visit his doctor, and after a motnh, unlike previous colds, this one develops into life-threatening pneumonia.... He goes to the hospital, is hospitalized for a month. When all is said and done, Joe cannot afford the bill, and it's kicked to the tax payer.

Would it not have been cheaper for the tax payer to have simply treated a cold rather than critical pneumonia??

This is a very simple explanation... but the practice of preventative treatment runs much deeper. Insured individuals get physicals all the time when they are not sick--they may be lucky and their physician identifies conditions early(know a friend who was able to nip cancer right in the bud when his doc suspected it from a physical?) Do uninsured individuals ever get physicals? No. But they will show up at an Emergency Room when their entire body system has already metastasized full of cancer.

I don't have a strong opinion on private health care or universal health care, but what NEEDS to happen is this change to preventative health treatment rather than only-go-to-the-doctor-... Whether this is full universal health care coverage, a basic Medicare for each citizen such that wealthier individuals can afford extra plans for their wishes, or just vouchers every year for a physical and one urgent-care visit(I would probably start here)... I don't know. But people need to start visiting docs before theyre sick, to bring the burden of health care costs down.