Ask Experts Questions for FREE Help !
Ask
    ETWolverine's Avatar
    ETWolverine Posts: 934, Reputation: 275
    Senior Member
     
    #1

    Aug 14, 2007, 08:06 AM
    No Healthcare?
    What percentage of Americans are without healthcare?
    nicespringgirl's Avatar
    nicespringgirl Posts: 1,237, Reputation: 187
    Ultra Member
     
    #2

    Aug 14, 2007, 09:40 AM
    Most places say 40-50 million Americans have no health care. But the actual truth is, every American has no health care. We do not have a health care system in the US. What we have is a Symptoms and Disease Care System. There is absolutely no system of helping people become healthy.
    jillianleab's Avatar
    jillianleab Posts: 1,194, Reputation: 279
    Ultra Member
     
    #3

    Aug 14, 2007, 10:02 AM
    The 40-50 million is the figure most often thrown out there, but it includes people who are waiting for insurance to kick in as well as those who choose not to have it. That might sound nutty to some people, but I know several people who don't have health insurace because they don't want it, not because they can't afford it.
    ETWolverine's Avatar
    ETWolverine Posts: 934, Reputation: 275
    Senior Member
     
    #4

    Aug 14, 2007, 10:35 AM
    Here is the answer to my question.

    The percentage of Americans without healthare in the USA is 0%.

    Nada.

    Zilch.

    NOT ONE.

    The 40-50 million number that people always refer to is the number of people without HEALTH INSURANCE.

    The number of people without actual healthcare is ZERO. By law, hospitals MUST take any emergency patient who needs care, regardless of ability to pay. This includes citizens and non-citizens, rich or poor, balck or white. There is nobody who does not qualify for emergency healthcare in the USA.

    Now... are there people without health insurance? Absolutely. But that is a completely different prospect from not having health care.

    Furthemore, the 40-50 million figure most often quoted is correct, but doesn't tell the whole story.

    Approximately 12 million of those are not legal residents of this country... and they still get quality health care in hospitals all around the country, much bette care than in their countries of origin.

    Others are young men and women between the ages of 18-29 who have no health care issues, and have CHOSEN not to pay for health care they don't think they need right now. That is a personal choice, and should not be included in the statistics of people who are "stuck" without health insurance.

    There are also a number of people who are able to afford out-of-pocket healthcare, and therefore choose not to buy health insurance. These too should be excluded from the number of people "stuck" without health insurance, but for some reason are not excluded.

    And finally, the majority of the remainder have been off healthcare for less than 12 months, and can expect to get back on healthcare as soon as they get their next job.

    So in actuallity, we are talking about a very small number of Americans who are "permanently" without health insurance and NONE who are without health care.

    Nicespringirl brought up a very good point. She said that in the U.S.A. NOBODY has health care because everyone has "symptom care" and "disease care". Everyone goes to the doctor when they are sick, and nobody uses preventive care to keep from getting sick in the first place. And I agree with that point, at least in concept. This is a question of quality of care.

    But I would argue that the quality of care in the USA is much better than that of other countries, especially those with "universal health care", where rationing of healthcare is the norm. In those countries, it truly is symptom and disease care rather than health care. Barring the ability to go outside the universal healthare system, the universal healthcare systems are set up to treat symptoms long enough for the patient to wait on the next health care line and get the next treatment. A cure for the disease in question isn't even taken into consideration.

    In the USA, quality of care is higher, access to care is better, and innovation is the norm. Methods of treating disease and get at the root cause of disease are being developed daily. For instance, we are thisclose to finding cures for numeous cancers. No other country is as advanced in cancer research as we are. And the same is true of othe diseases as well.

    That said, if you agree that our system is set up for symptom control rather than health care (that is, we only get healthcare when something is bothering us rather than preventive medicine to prevent it from becoming a problem in the first place), imagine how bad it would be if we went to a system of government-controlled universal health care, where lines get long, quality of care becomes poor, access to care is limited, and innovation is rare. How much health care do you think we would get under that system?

    Elliot
    BABRAM's Avatar
    BABRAM Posts: 561, Reputation: 145
    Senior Member
     
    #5

    Aug 14, 2007, 10:49 AM
    ETW-

    Good post. Eventually someone picks up the financial slack. I suggest in the end it comes out of yours and my pockets. Then by comparison, for sake of discussion, is it that much different of a financial burden from socialized healthcare (or universal)?



    Bobby
    excon's Avatar
    excon Posts: 21,482, Reputation: 2992
    Uber Member
     
    #6

    Aug 14, 2007, 10:54 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by ETWolverine
    By law, hospitals MUST take any emergency patient who needs care, regardless of ability to pay. This includes citizens and non-citizens, rich or poor, balck or white. There is nobody who does not qualify for emergency healthcare in the USA.
    Hello Elliot:

    Very good right wing spin. It's true, if you are the working poor and happen to have lung cancer and no insurance – if YOU go to an emergency room, they'll give you an aspirin and send you home. You will NOT get treatment for your disease, and you will die.

    Healthcare, REAL healthcare, is a lot more than emergency room healthcare.

    excon

    PS> Of course, if you aren’t a member of that class, we have the best health care money can buy.
    BABRAM's Avatar
    BABRAM Posts: 561, Reputation: 145
    Senior Member
     
    #7

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:11 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by excon
    Hello Elliot:

    Very good right wing spin. It's true, if you are the working poor and happen to have lung cancer and no insurance – if YOU go to an emergency room, they'll give you an aspirin and send you home. You will NOT get treatment for your disease, and you will die.

    Healthcare, REAL healthcare, is a lot more than emergency room healthcare.

    excon

    PS> Of course, if you aren't a member of that class, we have the best health care money can buy.
    Excellent points for the discussion. I agree. My wife is pregnant and the doctors know that I have insurance. They use it to maximize every visit as a potential money maker even more so now-in-days. The doctor's clinic, because it is a business, reminds me very much of how car salesmen treat a person when they first come onto the lot.


    Bobby
    nicespringgirl's Avatar
    nicespringgirl Posts: 1,237, Reputation: 187
    Ultra Member
     
    #8

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:23 AM
    And I guess if I start introducing other foreign health care policies to americans, I will be attacked again? :D
    Dark_crow's Avatar
    Dark_crow Posts: 1,405, Reputation: 196
    Ultra Member
     
    #9

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:24 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by excon
    Hello Elliot:

    Very good right wing spin. It's true, if you are the working poor and happen to have lung cancer and no insurance – if YOU go to an emergency room, they'll give you an aspirin and send you home. You will NOT get treatment for your disease, and you will die.

    Healthcare, REAL healthcare, is a lot more than emergency room healthcare.

    Excon

    PS> Of course, if you aren’t a member of that class, we have the best health care money can buy.
    Hello Elliot:

    Very good right wing spin
    I see you can recognize the obvious. :D
    Dark_crow's Avatar
    Dark_crow Posts: 1,405, Reputation: 196
    Ultra Member
     
    #10

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:27 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by nicespringgirl
    and I guess if I start introducing other foreign health care policies to americans, I will be attacked again?!:D
    Not necessarily…but you will be questioned and you may win some of us over.

    :)
    ETWolverine's Avatar
    ETWolverine Posts: 934, Reputation: 275
    Senior Member
     
    #11

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:28 AM
    Excon,

    As an EMT who has spent quite a bit of time taking poor people to hospitals, I can tell you definitively that your statement is incorrect. Even poor people who go to a hospital for cancer get ongoing cancer care, including chemo/radio therapy, surgery, etc. Your statement is just false. I don't believe that you are trying to put forth a false statement, I just think you don't have your facts in order.

    Bobby, you asked a great question. If the cost is coming out of our pockets anyway, what is the difference whether we are talking about universal/socialized healthcare or a privatized system?

    The difference is in several areas.

    1) Cost. The cost of socialized healthcare is ALWAYS higher than private healthcare. Even though you and I are covering the cost of millions of people without health insurance, it still costs less than if you and I were covering EVERYONE'S healthcare.

    2) Quality of care. We are talking about a government-run program here. This is the same government that can't keep the roads paves, the bridges from collapsing, or the names of illegal aliens that they actually have caught straight. What do you think will be the effect of government run health care will be on the quality of care. If you really want to know, just look at cancer mortality rates in countries with universal healthcare vs. our mortality rates. In the USA, the mortality rate of prostate cancer patients is about 25%. In the Canada, it is over 40% and in the UK, it's a whopping 57%.

    3) Accessibility. Currently, even if we have to wait a "long time" for health care, we can generally see the doctor of our choice within a few days or at the worst, a couple of weeks. In Canada, the minimum wait for a procedure is several months. I once had a hair transplant, a voluntary procedure... I made the appointment and saw the doctor within a week. My Canadian friend can't get a hair transplant in Canada. When I was sick with a stomach virus, I saw the doctor the same day. My friend fom Canada waited two weeks.

    4) Compensation. The almighty buck talks, bull$h!t walks, as they say. A government system in which the government is the sole arbiter of what doctors will receive as compensation (usually UNDERCOMPENSATION) is not conducive to good practitioners becoming doctors. In the USA, if a doctor doesn't like the compensation being paid by a particular insurance company, he can choose not to accept that insurance anymore. In a government-run system like Canada's, individuals are not allowed to pay doctors, only the government is, and only the government determines the payment structure. So instead of a guy working his a$$ off for 10 years or more to become a doctor (4 years of med school, 2 internship, 3 residency, and multiple years in a fellowship studying a specialty) and incurring debt that he won't be able to cover because of the poor compensation levels paid to him by the government, he'll instead become a lawyer... like we need more of those.

    5) Efficiency. The government is a bureaucracy... which is to say that it is wastefull. The government doesn't care if their program is wasting money, because they can always raise taxes (or so they think) to cover the waste. But a private company's sole interest is in the bottom line. They eschew waste in order to maximize profits. They are efficient, and thus lower-cost. Which brings us back to #1. They also manage their coverage to cover as many people as possible, because they want as many customers as possible in order to maximize profits. Thus they are efficient in covering everyone they can. The government doesn't care whether you really get coverage or not... you're just a cog in the system and you really don't have a choice to go elsewhere, so why would they care whether you really get the efficient coverage you need or not.

    There are other areas where the systems differ hugely. But this is enough to think about for now.

    Great question, Bobby, thanks for asking.

    Elliot
    jillianleab's Avatar
    jillianleab Posts: 1,194, Reputation: 279
    Ultra Member
     
    #12

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:31 AM
    ETWolverine agrees: Sorry, but this answer is incorrect. I know that it is the answer most often given, but it is incorrect.
    And:

    The 40-50 million number that people always refer to is the number of people without HEALTH INSURANCE.
    My post didn't say "health care" it said "health insurance". I mean, thanks for the greenie and all, but I made no mention of "care". :)

    Good points in your post, by the way.
    BABRAM's Avatar
    BABRAM Posts: 561, Reputation: 145
    Senior Member
     
    #13

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:47 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by ETWolverine
    Excon,

    As an EMT who has spent quite a bit of time taking poor people to hospitals, I can tell you definitively that your statement is incorrect. Even poor people who go to a hospital for cancer get ongoing cancer care, including chemo/radio therapy, surgery, etc. Your statement is just false. I don't believe that you are trying to put forth a false statement, I just think you don't have your facts in order.



    Elliot, I think Excon has made a valid point, although your correct in that it doesn't apply to all cases. Certainly there are hospitals (my father was president of a hospital board) that make good and don't discriminate based on an financial situation or ability to pay. But none-the-less it is a business.




    Quote Originally Posted by ETWolverine
    Bobby, you asked a great question. If the cost is coming out of our pockets anyway, what is the difference whether we are talking about universal/socialized healthcare or a privatized system?

    2) Quality of care. We are talking about a government-run program here. This is the same govenment that can't keep the roads paves, the bridges from collapsing, or the names of illegal aliens that they actually have caught straight. What do you think will be the effect of government run health care will be on the quality of care. If you really want to know, just look at cancer mortality rates in countries with universal healthcare vs. our mortality rates. In the USA, the mortality rate of prostate cancer patients is about 25%. In the Canada, it is over 40% and in the UK, it's a whopping 57%.

    3) Accessibility. Currently, even if we have to wait a "long time" for health care, we can generally see the doctor of our choice within a few days or at the worst, a couple of weeks. In Canada, the minimum wait for a proceedure is several months. I once had a hair transplant, a voluntary procedure... I made the appointment and saw the doctor within a week. My Canadian friend can't get a hair transplant in Canada. When I was sick with a stomache virus, I saw the doctor the same day. My friend fom Canada waited two weeks.


    There are other areas where the systems differ hugely. But this is enough to think about for now.

    Great question, Bobby, thanks for asking.

    Elliot


    I think the raw numbers would confirm, but since we don't actually use a socialized system it's difficult to have anything concrete. I suppose we could use Canada by comparison by scaling up from their population to get an idea. Then again we might improve on that system, by tweaking it. As you have noted it's numbers two and three that are exactly the reasons I'm skeptical of a universal healthcare system.




    Bobby
    Big10's Avatar
    Big10 Posts: 37, Reputation: 6
    Junior Member
     
    #14

    Aug 14, 2007, 11:57 AM
    I'm not sure if I can be very helpful here, because I don't know about the details or facts surrounding our healthcare system. I will research the facts though and get back to you.

    But I can give my two cents in the form of theory: in order for a nation to improve itself, in, for example, the area of healthcare, it should compare its system to ones that are “better” , and not compare it to ones that are worse.

    Elliot, it's interesting that you have mentioned that “By law, hospitals MUST take any emergency patient who needs care, regardless of ability to pay. This includes citizens and non-citizens, rich or poor, black or white. There is nobody who does not qualify for emergency healthcare in the USA”.

    I wonder then, what the commotion is about in regards to the American healthcare system? excon (his comment) seems to have filled in a missing gap that answers this question.

    This is not to question whether, as Elliot has shown us, that there is a law that requires any emergency patient who needs care, regardless of ability to pay, to be taken in. But I am questioning how this is all following through.

    And I am questioning what the hell is going on if this “law” is actually following through properly as Elliot has 'implied'. Have we been wasting time discussing this all these years if the system has been actually helping almost every American (as Elliot implies)? This only implies that there are fifty million idiots here.

    Thanks to both of you (excon and Elliot) for the information you've provided.
    Dark_crow's Avatar
    Dark_crow Posts: 1,405, Reputation: 196
    Ultra Member
     
    #15

    Aug 14, 2007, 12:00 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by jillianleab
    And:



    My post didn't say "health care" it said "health insurance". I mean, thanks for the greenie and all, but I made no mention of "care". :)

    Good points in your post, btw.
    No but the OP does and that makes you off topic.:cool:
    BABRAM's Avatar
    BABRAM Posts: 561, Reputation: 145
    Senior Member
     
    #16

    Aug 14, 2007, 12:09 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by nicespringgirl
    and I guess if I start introducing other foreign health care policies to americans, I will be attacked again?!:D

    Nobody should ever attack you for sharing your views. You are a very pleasant person to have conversation with and I always like hearing from you. You often provide a very good international perspective.



    Bobby:)
    jillianleab's Avatar
    jillianleab Posts: 1,194, Reputation: 279
    Ultra Member
     
    #17

    Aug 14, 2007, 12:10 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by Dark_crow
    No but the OP does and that makes you off topic.:cool:
    And OP went on to mention both care and insurance, and in fact, point out the exact thing I referenced. Which puts me on topic. :p

    This is getting silly.
    Dark_crow's Avatar
    Dark_crow Posts: 1,405, Reputation: 196
    Ultra Member
     
    #18

    Aug 14, 2007, 12:13 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by jillianleab
    And OP went on to mention both care and insurance, and in fact, point out the exact thing I referenced. Which puts me on topic. :p

    This is getting silly.
    OK :o
    excon's Avatar
    excon Posts: 21,482, Reputation: 2992
    Uber Member
     
    #19

    Aug 14, 2007, 12:22 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by ETWolverine
    As an EMT who has spent quite a bit of time taking poor people to hospitals, I can tell you definitively that your statement is incorrect. Even poor people who go to a hospital for cancer get ongoing cancer care, including chemo/radio therapy, surgery, etc. Your statement is just false. I don't believe that you are trying to put forth a false statement, I just think you don't have your facts in order.
    Hello again, El:

    Frankly, it's you who don't have your facts straight.

    I don't disagree with you when you talk about the poor. They're not who I'm talking about. The poor are covered by Medicaid - a damn good plan, I might add. Nope, it's the WORKING poor, who are the subject of my post, and they don't have ANY plan.

    IF they happen to have a savings account, or a house, or make more than it takes to support your dog, they aren't eligible for Medicaid. They have to divest themselves of ALL their property and become paupers in order to qualify for the healthcare YOU'RE talking about.

    The working poor are estimated to be 40 to 50 million people. I'm one of them. I make a GOOD living and I HAVE assets, yet health insurance for me would cost more than my rent, and I live in a nice house in an expensive city. Fortunately, I'm healthy.

    I maintain that if I come down with cancer, I'll have to go broke in order to be taken care of. Frankly, I'd rather leave an estate. Hell of a choice your wonderful system requires of me.

    excon
    Emland's Avatar
    Emland Posts: 2,468, Reputation: 496
    Ultra Member
     
    #20

    Aug 14, 2007, 12:36 PM
    excon, I work for a company that hires the "working poor." They are mostly college students in their early twenties. Anyone working more than 30 hours a week and is here more than 6 months is eligible for the insurance. The company pays 60 %. For young single people, it is cheap.

    95% of them don't take advantage of the option (nor the retirement plan.) Their excuse is that they can't afford it. More than half of the group smokes. Most of them have either cable or Direct TV or internet service. Almost every one of them eats lunch out every day. They can afford all that, but not $10 a week to protect their health.

    Also, many people with insurance plans have run into instances where congenital defects are considered "pre-existing" and therefore not covered.

    It really comes down to your priorities. If my child needed surgery, but I didn't have the insurance, I would work 3 jobs, mortgage my house and beg from family and friends to see to it that he got the proper medical care.

Not your question? Ask your question View similar questions

 

Question Tools Search this Question
Search this Question:

Advanced Search

Add your answer here.


Check out some similar questions!

Business Major in Healthcare [ 4 Answers ]

I am a BBA student and am interested in getting a career in the admin side of a healthcare, pharmeceutical, or biotech company. What I would like to know, is, what should I major in if I want to do this? Should I just get a business degree in any field of business, but take some chem and bio...

Universal Healthcare? [ 1 Answers ]

I posted this here because it effects us all and is a big election issue. While the current US healthcare system is far from perfect, is Universal Healthcare the answer? BBC NEWS | Health | UK 'has worst cancer record' Pacific Research Institute • Publications • Michael Moore...

Healthcare management [ 1 Answers ]

Hi, I want to do a distance learning course in Healthcare & Hospital Management, from an US, UK or Australian University; please let me know who provides such courses, what are the admission terms and fee structure?

Healthcare in custody,who pays [ 2 Answers ]

While being in custody after being arrested,I needed medical care,so I was transported to the hospital.the hospital gave me two tylenol and sent me back into custody .the hospital bill was $500.who pays? Is my question,the police dept.or me.


View more questions Search