Smarmy writing and socialist health-care

you correspondent wrote:

"Once Henry Luce was gone, the magazine started a 180 degree turn."

I found this hysterical, considering the fact that Luce has been dead for 40 years.

This ("I find the whole Henry Luce thing amusing, given that the early Time magazine was mocked for its trying too-hard-to-be-clever") is also interesting, in that the Time that I grew up with was known for its prose style that had all the spontanity of Joe Friday (Webb, not Ackroyd).

>B) I was under the impression that one of the biggest problems with the U.S. health-care system is that we spend too much money helping people with serious diseases and not enough on primary and preventative care. Someone Who Knows appears to be saying that socialized medicine would fix that misallocation of resources. Or am I reading that wrong?

Well as for Socialist Healthcare, we do have some case studies in Europe don't we.

Anyway to the guy who gave that comment, it's very hard to enter into a fruitful discussion of any sort with someone who begins with a position of arrogance.

Writing preferences and what people consider understandable are subjective elements and to simply assume that what you find hard to understand would be hard for everyone else is downright snobbish.

On knowing more about healthcare, well, I never knew we can measure knowledge.

cheers

Yes that is how it works in here in Australia. And it does work (pretty much) and even our Bush loving conservative Prime Minister is happy to stick with it.

Hi! Just blundered into your blog by accident, but, being from the wide brown land (Aus) I completely agree with this bit:

"A system that guarantees lowest-common-denominator health-care to all--as long as the denominator is not too low--and then allows the affluent to buy a higher level of care if they so desire (which is how things work in Australia and the U.K., if I understand correctly) would be a dramatic improvement over what we've got in the U.S. right now."

While our health system is suffering a shortage of trained professionals (especially nurses), this is by no means an indication of under-effectiveness. I've just returned from living in New Zealand for a year, where the health system (not to mention the infrastructure) is shocking - for all my complaints about it, I didn't realise how excellent and fair our health-care system actually was.

As someone who is mentioned in the blog, I guess I really ought to chime in here. The problem with our medical system is that it is extraordinarily inefficient. Like Topsy, it just grew. A single payer system (like Medicare) would solve that problem and provide adequate health care to everyone at reasonable cost (and, oh yes, the rich will always find an out.) The other comments above back this up.

The real problem is, "How do we get there from here?" Medical Insurance is a job benefit to many people - one they're not going to want to give up. The Health Insurance Industry, inefficient as it is, is keeping many people occupied and they're not going to want to lose their jobs. And how do we fit Medicare into this new system?

And, oh yes, this "left-wing extremist" has always admired my right-leaning son's writing style and content. I just wish he'd get his book published sooner.

This proposition, consired un-functional by "Someone Who Knows More Than You About Healthcare" is working fine here in Finland, and just the way "Curios capitalist" visions. Take, for example, an heart by-pass surgery. It´s provided free by state in well equipped, high quality hospitals. Since waiting time for free surgery is rather long, well-off people buy their operations from private hospitals. Btw: giving an birth to child costs about 200-300$ here in Finland, i´ve heard it´s a LOT more in states; there are some obvious benefits with our type of medicare..

That person Who Knows More About Healthcare than Justin, doesn't know as much as he thinks... Bees don't bite.

Two questions: one, who qualifies as "affluent" nowadays? Often employed, does it refer only to the "wealthy" or "rich" any more, or, does it refer to anybody who is merely self-sufficient? For example, I am a full-time employee who earns $35,000 and has health insurance; am I "affluent?" Two, while I certainly agree that the American healthcare system should be improved, why would anybody demand a federally-administered system, considering its scandalous deficienciese regarding the Veterans Administration (or executing foreign wars, or improving public schools, or reducing poverty)? Why not simply mandate that everybody purchase catastrophic health insurance like liability automobile insurance? After we separated health insurance from employment, I presume that insurers would occupy the void, offering affordable insurance to even the least "affluent" of us. Mortgage lenders do similar with subprime loans--and despite the recent controversy, these loans have enabled more and more lower-income Americans to own homes. It seems like a solution to me.

Another Australian who just doesn't understand the argument. Your country spends much more per capita for health care and gets a lot worse outcomes for it. Not to mention that making it an employment related cost means that it is seemingly bankrupting some of your largest companies and making them horribly uncompetitive.

How it works here: Everyone pays a levy that guarantees a basic level of service. The basic costs of visits to doctors (Physicians and some specialists), accident and emergency care, and elective surgency etc are all covered as part of that package based on a set fee structure. Pharmeceuticals are bought in bulk through the government and the price to consumers is reduced and subsidised as a result.

The problems with the system are that there are long waiting lists for elective surgery, and at times there is limited choice (some doctors charge over and above the fee structure and therefore there is a "gap"). For those who are concerned enough about that, private health insurance is widely available (about 30% of Australians have it) and is also supported by tax incentives, etc etc.

It is not a perfect system, but i'd take it over yours any day...

I think the real problem in the United States is that "insurance" has turned into "prepayment". Originally insurance was used to protect against unexpected circumstances. Now the system has been warped as a prepayment for expected expenses like regular checkups. The problem here is that the system isn't designed for that, and doesn't do it very well. If we're going to have a prepayment system, we need one that's designed for that purpose. Like, for instance, the one in Australia.