About 10% of health insurance premiums go to administrative costs. This greater than in most other countries, but it not a huge amount compared to, say, Germany with 5.7%,
10% is more than 5.7%. Was that a typo? If so, I'm not exactly a great fan of the German healthcare system either.I meant that it wasn't a huge increase. Sorry if I wasn't clear. And the German system is much better than the UK system, since while not completely market-based, it's a social insurance system that allows for much greater patient choice and more free market elements, with no gatekeepers. I guess that's why you don't like it...
And you continue to completely miss my point.[/quote]
Then what is your point? I've already shown that even if administrative costs were reduced to half, the cost of covering everyone else would still exceed those 2.2-2.8% of GDP. Any further savings would have to be done by cuts in medical care, which are the fate of socialized medicine.
...if you have enough money.
...if you have enough money.
...but only because the rationing is done on the basis of ability to pay, rather than on need.[/quote]
Of those uninsured, about a third are from homes with incomes greater than $50,000. Ten million of the rest are actually eligible for Medicaid but don't apply. I'm not saying the system is trouble free, but the problems lie in the fact that due to a bad tax structure, health insurance is seen as something your employer must provide for you, rather than as something you should buy. This creates less competition among insurance companies and other problems, as is detailed in my post
here.
No, they're working to make a profit for their shareholders.[/quote]
Which they achieve by serving the needs of patients--their costumers.
Only people who make enough money not to be hurt by being screwed financially. Which is, of course, fine by me.[/quote]
People are screwed financially because their money is being siphoned into a socialist failure which will screw them over if they ever get sick, and as a result are less able to buy adequate health care.
I've never thought that simply extending the existing government programmes to the rest of the population would be a good idea; after all, the problem with them isn't that they are government programmes but that they are badly designed government programmes.[/quote]
Well put more generally, what makes you think the government and the general health system will become efficient once socialism sets in, especially given the track record of efficiency for socialist systems.
I somehow doubt that everyone in Canada is made miserable by their healthcare system...[/quote]
Just everyone who gets sick. There you can't even buy your own health care, so short of going to the US to get treatment, if they are rationing what you need you're dead.
Distorting reality to fit in with your view of the world is a very Marxist trait you know.
NICE certainly isn't perfect (and neither is the NHS; or any other healthcare system), but it's problems come more from an obsession with spending as little money as possible (other things as well (including extreme scepticism about the safety of new drugs) but that's the main thing) rather than anything more sinister. And, with a few silly exceptions, it doesn't actually do a bad job.[/quote]
An obsession with rationing, you're basically conceding my point. There is no excuse for people in a developed country not to receive immediate access to medical inovations which could save their lives or increase their quality of life.
How much do you know about the NHS, beyond the usual ultra-free-market-propaganda/tabloid-scare-stories?
I realise that personal anecdotes are far from perfect, but I've spent a great deal of the past decade in hospital (several different hospitals I might add) and I've never experienced anything that could be sanely thought of as "sub-optimal standards of care".
[/quote]
Other than waiting list reports, not much, but I have a greater familiarity with the Portuguese National Health Service, which is based on the British model.