How come the US does not have universal health care coverage?
Posted by Dolores
Chedvah asked:
Canada, France, Great Britain and several other countries have universal health care coverage for their citizens. Why don’t we? Whats stopping us from having universal health care coverage in the US?
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Canada, France, Great Britain and several other countries have universal health care coverage for their citizens. Why don’t we? Whats stopping us from having universal health care coverage in the US?
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March 27th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
health care
idk. i think thats what obama is gonna try to do.
March 29th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
health care
People in America are sceptical of ‘big’ government.
April 2nd, 2010 at 12:04 am
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We would have to abolish welfare and medicare first. These other countries you speak of are having financial issues maintaining their coverage. Also, there seems to be a long waiting line for care. Not sure that their method is the answer. We just need affordable health care. Universal or private , we will still pay for it.
April 4th, 2010 at 5:03 am
Kansieo.com
Because it’s dangerous. I have a friend in the UK who’s father died waiting to see a doctor–for 4 months. My sil is from Canada and has acute leukemia. Her doctors are talking cure now, but she’d only be starting treatment if she were back home because of the waiting list. I have a friend in Mexico, another place with universal health care who would use the clinics because, he says, those doctors usually misdiagnose.
April 4th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
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Those countries have much higher taxes to pay for that stuff. Raising taxes is a sure way to make sure you never get elected again.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:52 am
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The government is incapable of doing anything efficiently and within budget. Canadians love their system so much that many flock to the general and special practices in the northern states of the US to get treatment.
April 8th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
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First someone needs to define ‘health care’.
No one has done that. They just want to put forth a program.
Who’s needs will be met and to what extent?
It is also socialism in the making.
Many years ago Sweden had a tax demand of 83% of your wage and I know this because my cousin worked over there for years.. (I don’t know what it is now) Are you ready for that?
April 10th, 2010 at 6:31 am
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Your question is esp prescient in view of the proposed Big Three bailout, as it was the early days of the auto industry when the U.S. came closest to joining the civilized world:
Though he bargained for private benefits, (Walter) Reuther strongly preferred public ones. He had a European notion of labor and inudstry as economic partners (a notion wholly foreign to (Alfred P.) Sloan and (Charles Erwin) Wilson at GM). Within the UAW, the benefits section was known as the social security department, signaling Reuther’s credo that, ultimately, welfare benefits were the responsibility of government. Corporate pensions were a stopgap.
Proof of Reuther’s socialistic attitude was his frequent demand for higher wages and benefits without any increase in car prices. The latter ran counter to his members’ economic interests (since higher wages would mean more dollars available for autoworkers). But Reuther fancifully included the general public, and especially the workingman, in the UAW’s constituency; he did not want the car-buying public to pay the price for union gains. He frequently argued that labor, management, and the public each had a worthy and defensible stake in corporate institutions - notably in GM - an argument that infuriated Wilson. For one thing, Reuther did not represent car buyers per se. For another, prices were none of the UAW’s business.
GM had been forced to put up with government quotas, price controls, and meddling by the Labor Board during the war and its aftermath; now the company was anxious to return to normalcy, which the executives defined as operating its business with a free hand. Sloan, who had retired from day-to-day management but was still presiding as chairman, feared that expanding the federal welfare state would further, and perhaps irretrievably, entangle his company in the maws of government.
Looking across the Atlantic, welfare states were already emerging in Europe. Between the end of the war and 1948, the British government took over the country’s coal mines, railroads, and gas and elecrtric companies, all with rather little ado. The French leader General Charles de Gaulle nationalized Renault, France’s leading automaker. In speeches and interviews, Wilson, an engineer like Sloan but fifteen years younger and less parochial in his worldview, argued that American industry and labor should work through their issues rather than submit to takeovers by the state - what Wilson termed the philosophy of class conflict from Europe. The fear of creeping statism was very real. As Business Week warned, British socialism seems a closer threat than Russian communism.
Strangely, Big Business, which led the attack against expanded government benefits, seemed not to notice that it was the only alternative provider. As Harry Becker, who headed the UAW social security department, wrote, either Congress would deliver on social insurance or it would be sought from employers across the collective bargaining table. Business was determining who would carry the burden of benefits several generations hence - and it was choosing itself rather than Washington! (From the chapter entitled, Walter Reuther and the Treaty of Detroit, in Roger Lowenstein’s recent book, While America Aged, pgs. 21-23) More of the book and the car company’s crazy decision to keep benefits a private rather than a govt matter.
This is precisely why no bailout plan should succeed absent a mature, fully universal national health care strategy!
April 11th, 2010 at 8:53 am
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The medical industry is huge and is opposed to any system that will regulate what they can charge or get paid. The doctors and hospitals are currently free to charge whatever they want.
April 11th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
health care
Because health care in the US is profit based while in Canada, France, Great Britain, etc., health care is based on taxes workers pay into the health care system.
Greed is stopping us from having universal health care in the US.
April 14th, 2010 at 6:00 am
Kansieo.com
For all you grass is greener folks wanting the government to control healthcare, it already happens. Just ask anyone in the military what they think of their government controlled healthcare provided on base and if they think it should be used in the civilian world and you will likely hear tons of laughter.
Being a former Marine, I remember two cases that did it in for me:
1) I was stationed in Yuma Arizona and had allergies SO bad I couldn’t sleep, my nose was bleeding from blowing it and my eyes were raw and bloodshot completely ruining my vision and couldn’t drive. After trying over the counter crap I went twice to try and get help from the Doc. Both times I was told to try over the counter stuff, when I said I was, they recommended me another brand to try. I asked for an allergy test to see what it was and what could be done to block it. They said the tests were too expensive and they used their quota for the year and I would have to wait till next year or qualify as an emergency case and sent to SanDiego to be tested and possibly helped there. They said I wouldn’t qualify though because it would have to nearly have to be life or death. Well, I was so miserable and delirious from not sleeping for weeks, I WANTED to die.
It was a running joke then and probably still now how Medical is nothing but a free Motrin center. Seemed like no matter what the problem, you got a bottle of Mortin and shoved out the door.
2) My other horrifying experience was in dental, they only had a few qualified people for oral surgery and a specialist was coming to base for a 3 day window (if I remember right) that removed impacted molars (which I had). So I had to go during this window. They were pushing people through like an assembly line, but when I got in the chair they couldn’t numb one of the sides of my face/mouth. So they did it anyways cause he was on a schedule. I had 4 people holding me down as they drilled, cut, and ripped apart my jaw. It was some of the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life.
My point is, you go with Government controlled, you risk ending up with you get what you get system. No competition between doctor offices and hospitals pushing them to provide better, faster, and cheaper services. If you need a procedure, you go to who is assigned to that department whether you like them or not, whether they’re looking out for your comfort or just completing the minimum requirements and get you out of their office. This is exactly what the other countries are experiencing and it’s causing long lines and appointment wait time to get into the places that provide the services they need. This is why these countries are having private health care facilities pop up for people who want to actually get help and care rather than a case number and insane estimated wait time.
Nobody can be turned down currently for any emergency needed and if you can flip a burger in America, you can qualify for health insurance. People who say they can’t get it and will die without it I just can’t understand. You let the government take over this area and they will mismanage your money by overpaying government officials to sit in a board room throwing around issues related none of them can agree on while being so out of touch with the real world and common folks. It’s not the answer people.