What would you think of a two tier health care system?
Question:
Who gets to be on top?
yeah, I've been saying basically the same thing...
do it just like education...
you can go to public school or private school...
make it where you can go to public doctors or private doctors...
personally I think health is just as important as education is...
I think that no system will work until health care costs are brought back to reality. If you allow the out-of-control costs to remain, then any system you institute whereby the taxpayers pay for health care for those who can't afford it will be catastrophic because of the huge costs the taxpayers will have to cover - either directly or indirectly.
We have this in the UK, the NHS (National Health Service) and a variety of private healthcare providers to - eg: BUPA.
The problem in the UK, is that management of the NHS has become MASSIVELY bloated - with people managing managers who are managing people who used to be quite effective when they just reported to a Matron.
In the UK, there is ALWAYS money to find another pen pusher in a management position, NEVER decent funding to pay for EFFECTIVE cleaning, adequate payments for nurses or doctors.
A case in point, MRSA (superbug) was purged from the the Stoke Mandeville hospital at a cost of a few million - it worked, the hospital is MRSA free - HOWEVER because of the high cost, the other hospitals will NOT get this treatment.
On the other hand, they are happy to waste £20 BILLION in making a thorough balls-up of automating patient records.
For some reason, some nitwits think that Twenty Thousand MILLION is a reasonable cost of writing some software and bunging in some computers.
The last computers supplied to the NHS under a scheme like this worked out at just over £18,000 each ( $35,000 ) for a PC worth around 1/20th of that.
So, before you dream of a two tier system, you need to make sure that your management teams are not quite as corrupt, incompetent and self-serving as they are in the UK.
Mark
Hell No!
Any Two Tier system is unfair.
The Rich would get the best healthcare and the care for the working poor would be underfunded as usual!
We need a Healthcare System like every Western Democracy- Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Venezuela, etc. has:
SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE
which spends 2% on administrative costs compared to 20% in our Private/For- Profit for Insurance Co., HMO & Pharmacuetical Corporations morally bankrupt system.
Get insurance companies and the government out of healthcare. These are the worst contributors to the outrageous costs. A close third being sue-happy people and malpractice insurance. Additionally the Pharmaceutical Industry needs to go. The FDA only works hand in hand with them to push drugs and they both make money hand over fist. Very little of these drugs actually provide any benefits at all or actually treat any underlying cause of anything. The vast majority of drugs they push treat symptoms while causing side effects that need other drugs to treat those symptoms, ad infinitum.
I think the only medical insurance plan that makes any sense would be basic major medical. Make it simple and general kind of like an umbrella policy on homeowners insurance. But private medical savings accounts are even better. You pay out of pocket unless something major needs to tap the savings account which is similar to an IRA.
See also:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul339.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul345.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/diges...
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0692c.asp...
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0404h.asp...
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34816.ht...
http://www.heritage.org/research/healthc...
sounds like a plan.
We have to steer clear of saying the government finances all health insurance. The quality will go down signifigantly, and we don't need socialism.
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