Government-run Health Care

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

However, I'm not happy with the car insurance analogy. I only need car insurance if I am going to drive. Health insurance, it can be argued, is needed if I intent to live... Next the reason car insurance is mandatory, at least in the UK, is the direct impact (pun unintended) that a driver can have on others.

Excellent point. However, I can choose not to drive.

Now, I won't be able to choose not to have health insurance. At whatever 'affordable' rates mean. That still hasn't been decided.

[Krystian Galaj]

Here in Poland we have mandatory health insurance, usually paid in one bill with the VAT tax, paid by employer for employees, so they don't even know about that money and don't think about it, and that money just goes into the government budget, and doesn't have much to do with the money they actually pay the hospitals etc to run. As a result, every doctor that knows anything is in UK right now, working for 5 times the pay (and doctors here are only paid if government has enough money, which doesn't always happen). I have to pay that mandatory health insurance money, but I'm not crazy enough to go to public health service. I prefer to pay in cash and choose my private health care. No insurances either - I keep money reserve on my bank account for that purpose.

[Musicman]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I live in the U.S. and do not have national health care, but I do have insurance (through my small business). To see the orthopedist for my back, I had to wait 6 weeks and to see the neurologist, I had to wait 7.5 weeks. To see my primary care, I only need to wait 1 to 1.5 weeks.

Also worth noting: One of the arguments in U.S. against national health care is that patients will lack choice. But for those of us who do have health insurance, what choice do we really have? To afford the insurance for my wife and I, I had to choose HMO or EPO care. In both cases, we can only go to doctors preapproved by the insurance carrier, which means doctors who have agreed to accept the amount of money the insurer is willing to pay for a service. It is true that we could abandon insurance altogether and simply pay everything out of pocket, but that's not realistic. So although we don't have national health care limitations, we have the same limitations, just ones imposed by an insurance company and we don't get immediate access to doctors.

I have always looked for a plan that allows you to go out of network. Granted that there will be some cost to you by doing so, but you still have that option and it is partially covered.

The wait to see doctors can vary and it might have nothing to do with your health insurance, but on the number of patients' going to that particular doctor. I know doctors that are excellent, do not take insurance, and have so many patients that they will not take on new ones.

A government run plan will have fewer GOOD doctors, higher numbers of patients per doctor (meaning longer waits to get an appointment), with the typical waste that goes along with anything run by the government.

If a government health plan is to be passed, then I think Congress and the Senate and ALL government employees elected or otherwise should be required to be in that plan. If an amendment to the bill is made requiring this, then it would not pass because THEY KNOW it is an inferior health plan.