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cornopean
Forum Elder
Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 3576
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 Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 7:13 pm Post subject: Do we want New Zealand's health care system? |
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Here is an interesting article from the Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc.....trel-drugs
The basic gist of the article is, "If I lived in New Zealand, I'd be dead."
A couple of quotes,
The American health-care system may be a crazy mess, but it is the prime mover in the global ecology of medical treatment, creating the world’s biggest market for new drugs and devices. Even as we argue about whether or how our health-care system should change, most Americans take for granted our access to the best available cancer treatments—including the one that arguably saved my life.
A more centralized U.S. health-care system might reap some one-time administrative savings, but over the long term, cutting costs requires the kinds of controls that make Americans hate managed care. You have to deny patients some of the things they want, including cancer drugs that are promising but expensive. Policy wonks dream of objective technocrats (perhaps at the “independent institute to guide reviews and research on comparative effectiveness” proposed by Barack Obama) who will rationally “scrutinize new treatments for effectiveness,” as The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn puts it. But neither science nor liberal democracy works quite so neatly.
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Timetheos
Known Associate
Joined: 10 Apr 2008
Posts: 469
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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Everyone can pull out anectdotes, whether here or elsewhere.
Statistically, these other countries have better outcomes for lower costs.
Personally, I think any system that the US had would have to allow individuals to purchase above the system. My friends in the UK and AUS did and never had any problems. |
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cornopean
Forum Elder
Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 3576
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| Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Timetheos wrote: | Everyone can pull out anectdotes, whether here or elsewhere.
Statistically, these other countries have better outcomes for lower costs.
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Is that why the article said the US is the prime mover in ....
you sure got a way of just dismissing things that don't fit your ideology. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:49 am Post subject: |
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| No we don't want a government-run health care system. I want to be able to see a doctor when I need to, now when some faceless bueaurocrat says I need to. I don't want to have to wait months and months for treatment and I also don't want to have to pay for other people's health care. |
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shankarsingam
Forum Elder
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
Posts: 1145
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| Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 3:56 am Post subject: |
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| Anonymous wrote: | | No we don't want a government-run health care system. I want to be able to see a doctor when I need to, now when some faceless bueaurocrat says I need to. I don't want to have to wait months and months for treatment and I also don't want to have to pay for other people's health care. |
OMG listen to Hannity O Limbaugh alot? |
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Two Paper
Newbie
Joined: 22 May 2010
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, that's a weird and sad tale. When it said, "you can err on the side of patient safety or on the side of cost. New Zealand chose the latter," is it a stretch to say that HMOs are encouraged to follow New Zealand model? I don't understand why "you have to deny patients some of the things they want, including cancer drugs that are promising but expensive," with centralized healthcare. What about the higher life expectancy among our peer countries, and what about the corruption and anecdotal horror stories about our own system? My favorite doctor has to choose all the time between treating an uninsured patron for no pay or leaving them to suffer.
This is a good story of how to improve a universal healthcare system. I don't see why socialism has to be a bad word. The old US system has hospitals that choose between prices and people all the time. Usually, the decision is to regrettably refuse treatment to the worst along so that many more can survive. We already have that, but is that why socialized medicine is bad?
@cornopean: strife is a wonderful motivator. It is debatable, I guess, wether the US should lead the world in medical technology, or have healthier, longer-living citizens that pay less. |
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