"Lasix surgery, plastic surgery, and lap band surgery are perfect examples."

I addressed this bs. See above.

With all this discussion on health care - what about primary school education. Should we have a publicly funded education system? Or should we abolish public education and make everyone go to private education that is legally mandated (like Obama care in education).

Tettleton's Chew you are one of the most wildly misinformed people I've ever encountered.
Aside from the points Putin raised, are you aware that Americans spend several times as much for health care, per capita than any other western industrialized country (all of which have public health care systems, not just the UK and Canada)?
And yeah, I don't know where you're getting your information, but it is absolutely true that without a public option large groups of people refrain from seeking medical attention because they can't afford it.

@Tettleton, Yeah... recently I paid for my daughter's broken arm... including ambulance and anesthesiologist (both bones in the lower arm were broken and she had to be under while they set them) the cost was slightly under $5,000. This was paid for out of my pocket... why? Because my wonderful insurance had a $5,000 deductible. Gee, I'm sure glad that I had a high deductible because it motivated me to avoid breaking my daughter's arm.

Yes, I understand your examples of Lasik and cosmetic surgery... the advantage there and why the market responds so well - is because demand is changeable... the price goes up, and people stop getting those procedures... also: recession. The disadvantage of putting full market pressure on necessary procedures by forcing out-of-pocket only - is that, yes, again, people stop getting those procedures... such as the preventative care statistics that Putin noted. Problems with that include: 1) people don't get the care they need and they suffer, 2) the eventual cost to the system and to the individual is higher because preventative care is far less costly than emergency and ICU care (and loss of income to a family due to early death) later on down the line.

TC, let's hope that you have a nice steady salary and your biggest problem is needing a physical at the hospital.

If say, you had a small family business and got cancer, you'd be in deep shit. The cost of prescription medicine combined with the loss of income can be crippling financially. In fact, many people elect to forgo proper treatment because they can't afford it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/health-news/cancer-care-too-much-for-us-patients/article2049310/

This is certainly one of the largest flaws of the Canadian health care system - the lack of prescription drug coverage.

Unfortunately, people don't choose if they get cancer, a stroke, blind sided in an intersection. I'd like to live in a society that, if these things happened to me or anyone else, there would be support. I think it comes down more to moral values than pure finances...

Yonni, Anytime you get cancer you are in deep shit. It cripples anyone financially.
If you have insurance through your job then your co-workers and the stockholders of the company are paying for your cancer.
If you are on Medicaid or Medicare then people you've never met are paying for your cancer with their taxes.
Offer me a fiscally sustainable model that pays for anyone who has cancer?
In fact the current medical system in the United States has one of the highest cancer survival rates in the world.
I would suggest that if Americans had a health care account for 20 years, and put $2500 in it every year, and that compounded at a reasonable rate (not the ridiculous 8% that state union pension funds plug into their insane projections) that when that person finally developed cancer they would be in a lot better shape that the path of fiscal bankruptcy we are on now.

I think there is nothing more immoral than individuals who advocate plans in the name of mistaken morality that get individuals dependent on those services and then cut them off.
You see this in government run plans all over the United States.
People who previously receive care getting cut off.
Why?
Because of money.
I would suggest that the money you say you are morally spending in your country is deficit spending that represents you are spending money your children haven't earned yet or that your unborn grandchildren will earn in the future.
Now how moral is is to set up a fiscally exploitive system like that.
So much for the moral argument.

It's back to what all adults know and what intelligent adults don't ignore.
Life isn't fair
Medical services aren't free (someone pays for them- you/me/children/grandchildren)
Money doesn't grow on trees.
No one looks out for you better than yourself.

So you can check the hollow and false moral argument at the door.

@joey1, you said: "With all this discussion on health care - what about primary school education. Should we have a publicly funded education system? Or should we abolish public education and make everyone go to private education that is legally mandated (like Obama care in education)." For the second time in this thread I can't tell if someone is being serious or sarcastic. I call Poe.

The TC healthcare plan is - Don't Get Sick & Die Quickly.

Private employers can rip off workers by decreasing their wages while taking in more profits but taxation is "coercion". Brilliant.

I know life isn't fair but the point of living in a society is to make it more fair, no?

Not everyone is fortunate to have steady guaranteed income. Sometimes you can work hard to run your business, build up your savings, only to have it disappear fairly quickly.

Also, your idea of a savings plan would work for a lot of people but, similarly to the current system, fails to address the needs of a large proportion of the population. You can't possibly be naive enough to think that everyone can afford what your propose?

"You see this in government run plans all over the United States."
No, you see the shortcomings of the American healthcare system. You can't use a clearly broken system to paint a blanket description of government controlled medicine.

"I think there is nothing more immoral than individuals who advocate plans in the name of mistaken morality that get individuals dependent on those services and then cut them off."
Suggesting that those who are more fortunate can contribute monetarily to make healthcare more affordable for the less fortunate seems like a fairly basic moral argument. I hate to sound preachy, but I think that's where a lot of our difference in opinion comes from.

Mafgator.

You post as if Americans pay more for exactly identical treatment.
I'm hoping you are not under such a false impression, but after rereading your post I'm sure that you are.
Americans pay more and receive much speedier and high quality medical care than any found in Europe's state controlled health care systems.

The United States has the highest cancer survival rates in the world.
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596/

Americans pay more for immediate access to the best medical service in the world.
Europe pays less for per captia because the European system lets people die of cancers that they would live longer with in the American system.
That's an unequivocal fact.

You should judge the source of the nonsense you read in these threads.

When you look at death rates from medically treatable diseases the United States is at the top.

American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared to 56 percent for European women.

American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent — compared to only 47 percent for European men.

Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.

For women, only three European countries (Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland) have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.

Those are the facts.
They are easily obtainable to anyone intelligent enough and independent enough to find the truth for themselves.

I would recommend laying of the .com sites for facts.
Try .gov, reputable .org, and .edu for reputable facts.

I look at my bank balance, the debt of my mortgage which is current, the lack of overdue amounts on my credit cards, the fact that I own my business with no loan balance whatsoever, my degrees, the quarter century of marriage I celebrated, the health and common sense of the kids, the pedigree and happiness of the animals and all I can say is that if I'm uniformed please give me a double or triple dose.

Yonni, what do you mean by such an ambiguous term as "fair" as an organizing principle of society?
I can understand equal. Everyone is equal before the law.
Everyone has equal opportunity to vote.
Everyone has equal opportunity to improve their lives as their talents and ambitions allow.

Fair is too ambiguous to be a foundational idea.
Maybe that is why it isn't in the Constitution, but the idea of equality is.

There is an even more important concept, freedom.
You cannot have equality before freedom, but if you have freedom you can have more equality than is possible in any other way.

"Try .gov, reputable .org, and .edu for reputable facts. "

Wait, Betsy McCaughey is reputable? The woman who coined "death panels"? She was on the Board of Directors for Genta. I'm beginning to think you don't even read your sources.

^Did not know those facts. Just one of the many reasons why I enjoy this forum.

Remember folks, his "stats" come from Death Panel woman, who has been widely discredited by *everyone*.

@TC - You were the one that first said fair. I was trying to use your terms. Not everyone is born or goes through life with equal privilege. I'm very happy for your successful career and marriage but I'm sure you can imagine circumstances where it wouldn't have been as easy for you to get to where you are now. Maybe fairness isn't the word. Compassion and caring seem a little to wishy-washy too but is protecting the weak in our society really that absurd of a concept?

@ Putin - I was more referring to this article that she referenced in her article. Unfortunately, I cannot access it in full.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13429

BTW Canada and Cuba have very high cancer survival rates. The rate differential has to do with early diagnosis. The reason why the US is different than Europe doesn't have anything to do with "rationed care" or "socialized medicine", but early diagnosis and testing.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/MedExpress/20080716/cancer_statistics_080716/

For those against the government providing health care, no one has answered me why health care should not be the responsibility of government and primary education should.

"Everyone has equal opportunity to improve their lives as their talents and ambitions allow." - Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha *gasp* hahahahaha *wheeze* hahahahahahaha...ha...ha..ha. That was a good one.
Wait, Mr. Chew, you were joking when you said that right? Wait...you weren't? Oh...oh dear.

Yeah, I'm very suspicious of your numbers, Tettleton's Chew. I'm trying to find my notes and all the handouts from a class I took a few years ago called "Sociology of the Welfare State", as I recall almost everything you've said in this thread was contradicted by the data from that class. Most of our data came from the statistical arm of the OECD. If I do manage to find it I'll get back to you.

"The disparity in survival rates crossed racial lines in the U.S., as well, with white patients having a five-year survival rate of 84.7 per cent and black patients having a survival rate of 70.9 per cent." - Wow. That is acceptable to you? Really?

Damn. I can't sign into the website where the notes for that class were kept, now that I've graduated, and my notes were all on my old computer.

I'm gonna have to get creative.

Or perhaps not. I found this on the OECD homepage:
http://www.oecd.org/document/38/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_48289894_1_1_1_1,00.html

A bit more digging found me this: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/total-expenditure-on-health-per-capita_20758480-table2
Americans spend double what other people spend on health care.

Also this:
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/deaths-from-cancer-total-population_20758480-table13
And bear in mind, not all the discrepancies are explained by healthcare. Smoking is still much more widespread across Europe. I'd also call attention to Norway, Sweden, and Finland, which are among the most "socialist" of the countries in the OECD, what do you find? Death rates from cancer that beat US rates. Sorry TC.

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/practising-physicians-doctors_20758480-table4 Number of doctors per 1,000? I'm not saying it's a perfect indicator of the speed at which you get to actually see a doctor, but it is still something. The US remains at 2.4 throughout. Even the UK overtakes them, and most of Europe has higher rates of doctors if one can use such an odd phrase, "rates of doctors".

Infant mortality is higher in the US than in most of Western Europe, Canada, and the UK. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/infant-mortality_20758480-table9

Hospital beds also indicate (though not perfectly) the availability of care.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/hospital-beds_20758480-table5
And once again you find the US has some of the lowest numbers, lower than much of Europe.

You might not like it, but average life expectancy at birth is used as an indicator of health, the US is slightly lower, although you're right. That might be because of the high rate of violence in the US.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/life-expectancy-at-birth-total-population_20758480-table8

Here's an interesting one. Tobacco consumption. I figured, since the US does better in terms of deaths from cancer, but worse by almost every other metric of public health, I wondered if perhaps there wasn't something else at play. And look, you'll find the US has among the lowest tobacco consumption. The correlation between tobacco consumption and cancer deaths is almost perfect. So people in other countries are probably getting cancer more often. And as for the higher survival rates in the US, that's at least partly because it's less likely to be lung cancer, and therefore more likely to be breast cancer or one of the more common cancers like that. And don't get me wrong, I've suffered my share of losses due to breast cancer, I'm not trivializing the disease, but it is more survivable than lung cancer.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/tobacco-consumption_20758480-table14

Tettleton's Chew, you managed to frame this entire debate around the one and only metric of health care by which the US does well, relative to other countries. And you happened to choose a disease which is known to have incredibly high rates of outside factors, and I've already been able to uncover one of the non healthcare related things which is skewing that information.

At any rate Mr. Chew j'accuse. Either you knew full well that you were picking and choosing data that would support your point and ignoring the rest, in which case you're a liar. Or you didn't know and you were mislead into going with the cancer argument by someone else, and didn't think critically about it, in which case, you're an idiot.

Americans are paying more for healthcare, about double the average among western countries, and really, the data doesn't bear out that US healthcare is world class, and so much better than everywhere else. It really doesn't. They don't even do the best in cancer survival rates, which you've chosen as your Waterloo. You still get beaten by Sweden, Norway and Finland. Social democracies. So answer me again Mr. Chew, what are Americans paying for? Because the answer isn't better care, the numbers bear me out.

Other fun facts for data from the OECD website that I can't link, because it downloads to your computer instead of actually displaying it. The US has one of the worst survival rates for Ischemic heart disease among OECD countries. Only Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Slovak Republic were worse. But it also had one of the best survival rates for strokes, quizzically. Only Switzerland and France do better.

Yonni, what do you mean by such an ambiguous term as "fair" as an organizing principle of society?
I can understand equal. Everyone is equal before the law.
Everyone has equal opportunity to vote.
Everyone has equal opportunity to improve their lives as their talents and ambitions allow.

Fair is too ambiguous to be a foundational idea.
Maybe that is why it isn't in the Constitution, but the idea of equality is.

There is an even more important concept, freedom.
You cannot have equality before freedom, but if you have freedom you can have more equality than is possible in any other way.

So Yonni if I use the word blue not in the context of forming society you will say blue is a principal to form society?

Yonni, Start another thread for the scope of government instead of hijacking this one.

Repeat much?

Anywho, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at so, to avoid running in circles about semantic, I'll rephrase what I said.

Not everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve the same things in life. Sometimes it's because of the neighborhood they grew up, sometimes it's because of illness, sometimes it's just shitty luck.

In my concept of how a good society should function, those that are more fortunate help those that are less fortunate. In this case, those that can afford health care and more contribute to supporting those that can't afford health care.

Mafgator, I guess you completely surrender on the point that the United States has a better health care system than Europe because your next post was comparing white and African American death rates from specific diseases in the United States.

When someone changes the subject it indicates that have no effective rebuttal for the previous point.
Also since I haven't posted on thing about comparative death rates between ethnic groups in the United States I wonder why you would assume what my position is.
You lack of intellectual confidence is showing.

The data you posted seems rather useless.
"white patients having a five-year survival rate of 84.7 per cent and black patients having a survival rate of 70.9 per cent."
You act as if ethnic background is the determining factor.
I would suspect that socio-economic status and educational attainment are much more important factors than ethnicity when comparing death rates from specific diseases.
It has been shown in study after study that men with a college education of the same ethnicity live longer than men without a college education.
Similar studies also show that men with in a higher quintile live longer than men in a lower economic quintile.

If you have numbers independent of college education and economic status that show statistically disparate death rates between whites and African Americans I would consider that an issue for concerned medical professionals to address.

As far as the obtuse question "is that are right with me" I will assume you want a genuine response.
I wish no one was hungry, unemployed, mistreated, etc.
Unfortunately such is not life.

Mafgator, you throw out numbers as if they mean something.
What the number of hospital beds per capita is worth is a meaningless statistic.
Survival rates from cancer is a meaningful statistic.
The study I linked to at the NCPA established that the United States is number one in cancer survivability.
The NCPA survey showed it's sources at the bottom of the page.
Your OECD cancer survey showed only one link as a source and the link was dead.

You keep saying that the US pays "more" for health care.
Please give me a specific example of what you are talking about.
Does someone with breast cancer pay twice as much as someone without.
Aggregate numbers mean nothing in light of the fact that Americans receive much better health care given their survivability rates I linked to, their propensity to receive better drugs and the newest drugs, their prompt referral to specialists and for surgeries in comparison.
Also elective surgery is included in aggregate numbers.

Here is the final quote from the study that succinctly demonstrates the superiority of the American system.

International comparisons establish that the most important factors in cancer survival are early diagnosis, time to treatment and access to the most effective drugs. Some uninsured cancer patients in the United States encounter problems with timely treatment and access, but a far larger proportion of cancer patients in Europe face these troubles. No country on the globe does as good a job overall as the United States."

With European governments paying for drugs Erlotinib, a new lung cancer therapy, was 10 times more likely to be prescribed for a patient in the United States than in Europe.

Of course in the United States you don't have to hope that some bureaucrat will allow the prescribing of a life saving drug unless of course Obamacare is not repealed.

Mafgator, I guess you completely surrender on the point that the United States has a better health care system than Europe because your next post was comparing white and African American death rates from specific diseases in the United States. - No, there is such a thing as granting a point for the sake of argument. Once you get around to reading my much more detailed later post, you'll see I do not even remotely concede that point. And yes, I do think race is a determining factor. Race is a determining factor in absolutely everything else in American society? Why not health outcomes too?

"I wish no one was hungry, unemployed, mistreated, etc.
Unfortunately such is not life." - Oh, such is life. Racism exists, such is life! Let's not endeavour to change that, or address that. Such is life!