American Helathcare reform bill vote - finally!

Healthcare in this country is abysmal. You only have to walk into a doctor's office or hospital to see how crap it is.

However there does need to be more options for people in the US.
 
People saying America cant afford it are forgetting one thing. The insurance companies have a monopoly over there and all the middle men have pushed up prices so much. If the health care is passed america will save money.

Comprehensive health care reform will cost the federal government $940 billion over a ten-year period, but will increase revenue and cut other costs by a greater amount, leading to a reduction of $138 billion in the federal deficit over the same period, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, a Democratic source tells HuffPost. It will cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the second ten year period.
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Dolph said:
While the american system is pretty terrible, the proposed reforms have also become pretty terrible, and what is really funny is UK citizens sitting there gloating despite the fact that our setup is pretty terrible too...
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Ermmm yeah it is???


I have a problem with my teeth I go to the dentist and get them sorted on the NHS paying a small NSH fee, all sorted teeth fixed, same if I break an arm/leg etc etc it gets fixed on the NHS with no worry of cost. Likewise in America but when you come out of the place you are given a huge bill which a lot of folk get into debt and cannot afford.

I looked on a dentist forum and was shocked at the amount of Americans suffering with bad teeth couldn’t visit the dentist as they didn’t have health insurance, totally and utterly baffled me.

We are lucky and would hardly call it rubbish.
 
I don't think anyone here is gloating. What they are doing is pointing out that people in America can get into serious debt quickly if they are ill, and be denied insurance for a massive list of pre-exisiting conditions.

While here in the uk, while the system isn't perfect, it does its job well enough and you arent landed with a massive bill at the end of the day or face increased premiums :)
 
UncleBensSauce said:
Something here does not compute for me;

Maybe this won't just get voted in because a lot of Americans don't want a welfare state?

Do the yanks provide healthcare to the 5% of the population they have in prison?

I would say that this forum generally dislikes the UK's dole seeking scroungers, there are often discussions on the forum about how because of the benefit systems for some people there is no motivation to work. I wonder if not having free healthcare here would be enough of an incentive to get more people out the house? (though child health care, care for the disabled and the elderly should remain free)
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The US bill is not about free healthcare, but forced socialisation and equalisations of premiums without capping, it's actually a pretty terrible bill as it doesn't actually do much to address the rising costs of healthcare in the US, and it punishes a great number of people because when you force someone to provide coverage to high risks and prevent them from charging according to risk, the price settles in the high risk, rather than the low risk, pricing zone, in the absence of some form of market cap or balancing mechanism.

The problem is Obama and the democrats are stuck between a rock and a hard place, they know the bill has already been damaged sufficiently that it won't really help, but they can't back out otherwise Obama will be the president who promised to reform healthcare and failed. The only option really to open to them is to pass the reforms and then start trying to pass further reforms to remove the issues.

None of this really addresses the problems the US healthcare system faces, any more than throwing huge amounts of money at the NHS has fixed our issues.

Both us and the USA should go for a dutch style model.
 
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gurusan said:
Healthcare in this country is abysmal. You only have to walk into a doctor's office or hospital to see how crap it is.
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:confused:


I regularly go to hospital and the doctors and it's fine.

The care I receive outside of hospital is also excellent.
 
Settleddown said:
Ermmm yeah it is???


I have a problem with my teeth I go to the dentist and get them sorted on the NHS paying a small NSH fee, all sorted teeth fixed, same if I break an arm/leg etc etc it gets fixed on the NHS with no worry of cost. Likewise in America but when you come out of the place you are given a huge bill which a lot of folk get into debt and cannot afford.

I looked on a dentist forum and was shocked at the amount of Americans suffering with bad teeth couldn’t visit the dentist as they didn’t have health insurance, totally and utterly baffled me.

We are lucky and would hardly call it rubbish.
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Compared to many other countries, our healthcare setup is terrible.

The US healthcare setup is exceptional for those with good insurance cover, and appalling for everyone else. Ours is mediocre for everyone. Other countries (without an NHS setup but with some form of UHC) have much better results than both of us.
 
Dolph said:
Compared to many other countries, our healthcare setup is terrible.

The US healthcare setup is exceptional for those with good insurance cover, and appalling for everyone else. Ours is mediocre for everyone. Other countries (without an NHS setup but with some form of UHC) have much better results than both of us.
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Can you please say how it is rubbish and mediocre? I would like to see why you feel it is.
 
Tefal said:
:confused:


I regularly go to hospital and the doctors and it's fine.

The care I receive outside of hospital is also excellent.
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Look at the state of the buildings, the waiting rooms, the amenities, the amount of education required to practice.

In the States when I'd go to the dentist I would have headphones and a plasma screen on the ceiling. You'd never get anything even remotely close to that kind of service here as it still resembles a 3rd world healthcare system.
 
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gurusan said:
Look at the state of the buildings, the waiting rooms, the amenities, the amount of education required to practice.

In the States when I'd go to the dentist I would have headphones and a plasma screen on the ceiling. You'd never get anything even remotely close to that kind of service here as it still resembles a 3rd world healthcare system.
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So the level of treatment for you is biased on having a set of headphones and watching a movie on a plasma screen? Right ok :confused:
 
Settleddown said:
Can you please say how it is rubbish and mediocre? I would like to see why you feel it is.
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I'll preface by saying that emergency treatment is generally pretty good (apart from when you're given MRSA or similar in hospital), the problems come for anything that isn't an absolute emergency, the NHS drags its heels, doesn't adapt to clinical need, delays treatments to massage figures, fails to provide the best treatments and so on. As a result, the NHS frequently makes problems worse and worse before it treats them, resulting in additional pain and loss of life quality and a worse result from the eventual treatment than would have been possible. This is demonstrated through the various metrics employed when comparing international healthcare, where we are usually found around 18-20th in the world.

The real problem with the NHS is that it is too political and too centralised, as labour's treatment of the organisation shows (massive target increases leading to specific headline improvements while general waiting times have actually increased, for example). There is no competition, no incentive to improve and no meaningful structural incentive to provide the best care possible.

Very few other countries run their healthcare setups like ours for good reason, but any attempt to reform the NHS is met with massive resistence and endless FUD.
 
How does it?????? I am confused.

You think because a dentist you visited in the states had a plasma shiny new building and a set of headphones really = better service? Really I’m baffled.
 
Settleddown said:
How does it?????? I am confused.

You think because a dentist you visited in the states had a plasma shiny new building and a set of headphones really = better service? Really I’m baffled.
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No one likes going to the dentist, so they spare no expense to make your visit to the dentist as pleasant as they can. They spend as much as they can on equipment, the best doctors, and good amenities. The waiting room was even better than most hotels.

In contrast this country does everything with the LEAST amount of effort and expense.
 
Settleddown said:
How does it?????? I am confused.

You think because a dentist you visited in the states had a plasma shiny new building and a set of headphones really = better service? Really I’m baffled.
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While purely anecdotal, the NHS dentists in Plymouth are all pretty grotty, and seem like butchers whose solution to any issue is to rip the tooth from your mouth.

By contrast, the private dentist I use is a much nicer place to be and will do everything they can to maintain your smile, while not costing much more than NHS prices anyway...
 
gurusan said:
No one likes going to the dentist, so they spare no expense to make your visit to the dentist as pleasant as they can. They spend as much as they can on equipment, the best doctors, and good amenities. The waiting room was even better than most hotels.

In contrast this country does everything with the LEAST amount of effort and expense.
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And how much do you pay for this service? You know those shiny new plasmas TVs and the Dentist Lamborghini parked outside don’t come free. The Healthcare system in the US is wrong and your point proved this, how many average people could afford this service?

How much did you pay and why did you visit a dentist in the US?
 
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