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Socialized Medicine

Of course not. Medicare doesn’t have to deny care, because their underpaying of care can be covered by private insurance.

But what about when there is no private insurance? No one else to pick up a good portion of the tab?
I was denied approval in July for a procedure by Medicare that they’ve previously approved for the last six years.
 
I was denied approval in July for a procedure by Medicare that they’ve previously approved for the last six years.
Do you have a Medicare advantage plan? You usually submit a bill to Medicare after the procedure is performed. There is no "approval" process.
 
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I've been saying Germany is who we should emulate. First because it would be an easier transition than a single payer model. But secondly Germany has more doctors per captia, more hospital beds per capita and more ICU beds per capita than we do.

Doctors in Germany also make about 35% less than doctors in America.

America has a doctor shortage already...give them a pay cut and more patients to see and many American doctors may do something else.
 
Right! And it was $800 for an ER visit with a CT scan. Come on now.
What should it cost for an ER visit with a CT scan? Do you think it should be free? Medical professionals should be compensated well for having to examine the brain of a fat useless woman filled with Marxist ideology.
 
What should it cost for an ER visit with a CT scan? Do you think it should be free? Medical professionals should be compensated well for having to examine the brain of a fat useless woman filled with Marxist ideology.
She's saying a CT scan plus ER visit would cost much more than $800. Without insurance the average cost of a CT scan is $3,275 and the average cost of an ER visit is $2,715. The claim of an $800 ER visit plus CT scan in the TikTok post is BS.
 
Doctors in Germany also make about 35% less than doctors in America.

America has a doctor shortage already...give them a pay cut and more patients to see and many American doctors may do something else.

My guess is that med school is significantly cheaper in Germany if med school cost what it cost in Germany and we reduced physician pay or holding it steady while inflation reduces it's overall cost and it would still be an attractive position.

Biggest thing is though is that physician pay isn't the biggest reason why our healthcare costs are so much higher. Because of billing of insurance plus people who don't have health insurance there is a large bureaucracy involved in simply getting the doctors and hospitals paid. A bureaucracy which is no longer needed once we copy the German healthcare system.
 
The fundamental problem is US citizens are accustomed to getting the health care they get on the timing they get it. These single payer systems have never had immediate access to cutting edge care, essentially on demand, that Americans do. Sure, Europeans laugh at it, until an American needs a procedure and can have it done in three weeks.

You are never going to be able to provide the access to the amount of care that Americans are accustomed to, on a single payer system. It's a fundamental impossibility. And the vast majority of Americans actually rate their insurance very highly.

I'm not saying one is better than the other even...there is a strong case to be made that Americans use way too much health care and prescriptions, get unnecessary tests, go to the doctor too much. All of that is probably true. But good luck being the party to tell people they have to give up what they've always had.

It takes a matter of weeks to get a vasectomy here. In parts of the UK, it can be nine months for the assessment, and seven more months for the procedure. It cost me $2k, I assume it's free for them. It doesn't matter if that's morally right to wait a year plus for a common procedure, if its "no big deal" with some planning, or whether British people seems to be perfectly ok with it. Americans will never accept going from the first scenario to the second scenario. Like 80% of Americans have fast access to virtually all the health care they need or want, and are not going to give that up, even if it is for the greater good, makes more sense in the long run, etc.

You can't take away something people are accustomed to having, even for their own good, on the basis that other groups that never had it don't miss what they never had.

We need to have a better system, but one that doesn't provide the majority of the people with the access to the majority of care that they get now, at high rates of satisfaction, is a non-starter. Which wipes out most of the Canada/UK style schemes.
 
I've been saying Germany is who we should emulate. First because it would be an easier transition than a single payer model. But secondly Germany has more doctors per captia, more hospital beds per capita and more ICU beds per capita than we do.

So how do you get this past the AMA?
 
Doctors in Germany also make about 35% less than doctors in America.

America has a doctor shortage already...give them a pay cut and more patients to see and many American doctors may do something else.

By design.

Cronyism in America: How the AMA Cartelized the Medical Profession​


 
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I can't vouch for this Canadian woman's story and her comparison of US to Canadian hospitals, BUT I can say with 100% confidence that it sounds very similar to things my UK employees said to me about their experiences with the UK health system.

Canadians have a better life expectancy and a better infant mortality rate. They also don't have socialized medicine. Doctors have private practices.

Canadians receive better healthcare than Americans and you don't go broke for getting sick. This is one of the dumber things the right tries passing off as fact.
 
My late husband was the President and CEO of a Canadian subsidiary of his American company and he shared a story with me about a woman in his Toronto office who was diagnosed with Stage II
Breast cancer. She was given the option of an 8 month wait list for treatment in the Ontario Province or she could relocate to Calgary and get an apartment (out of pocket) to get surgery and follow up chemo within the month.
He said her parents were able to help out her husband because they had two school age kids but she was mostly by herself out in Alberta Province.
It was a province budgeting issue - Ontario had used up most of their surgical and chemo budget, it was later in the fiscal year and Alberta Province was able to take her since they still had some budget left.
Imagine you get sick and live in Iowa and the Government says we can help you if you can get yourself to Boise Idaho.

That story sounds pretty fishy and is contrary to the experiences of my Canadian employees. They don't have a budget for chemo. They do cover things differently province by province.
 
Of course not. Medicare doesn’t have to deny care, because their underpaying of care can be covered by private insurance.

But what about when there is no private insurance? No one else to pick up a good portion of the tab?

Canadians also have private insurance which covers anything the province doesn't. It's not socialized medicine.
 

That story sounds pretty fishy and is contrary to the experiences of my Canadian employees. They don't have a budget for chemo. They do cover things differently province by province.
Yeah I went out of my way to make it up.
FYI this was in 2001 IIRC.
 
By design.

Cronyism in America: How the AMA Cartelized the Medical Profession​


This is ridiculousness from an economics professor. This guy has no idea about the history of medicine in the 1860s to 1940s. He states the American Medical Association was set up for cronyism under the guise of bettering the public good. The quality of medical care during the period was terrible.

1. Louis Pasteur discovered germ theory in the 1860s.
2. X-rays were discovered in 1895.
3. Chiropractic Medicine developed in 1895
3. Penicillin in 1928

William Halsted- The "father" of surgery died in 1928. He directed Cushing to study neurosurgery. Hugh Hampton Young to study the urinary tract. His disciples became the "fathers" of their respective disciplines.

Read about the timing of these leaders in medicine.

He says that AMA doctors were trying to push out their competitors- homepathic medicine, herbal medicine, etc. Turns out those people are mostly charlatans.

Turns out any joe blow can't become a doctor and you can't just open any old medical school.
 
This is ridiculousness from an economics professor.

He is explaining why there is a shortage.

Turns out any joe blow can't become a doctor and you can't just open any old medical school.
Certainly not if the government supports a monopoly and thereby forbids it.

The percentage of doctors imported from abroad has skyrocketed from 9 percent in 1981 to 25 percent in 2024. U.S. medical schools have simply failed to keep up with the increased demand for medical services by not expanding the number of doctors they train. It was a policy choice to import significantly more foreign-educated doctors rather than train more in the United States. That policy choice was enforced by monopoly control over the accreditation of U.S. medical schools, which hindered new entrants and forced the U.S. health care system to look abroad for doctors. Given that aging baby boomers are increasing demand for medical care, removing the accreditation cartel blocking the expansion of domestically trained doctors is critical.



You can make the case for a monopoly if you want to, but a monopoly will be more expensive, and less responsive to consumer demand.
 
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