As there are 196 countries and we are at #38, where do you get that we are not the only country in the world not to provide health care for its people?
If you're going to make claims, at least get your facts straight.
Mexico does not have universal medical care. Neither do most of central and south American countries. Africa? How many? Asia? How many?
I said "civilized" A country like Mexico with their corrupt police and bandidos, can't be considered civilized.
I have been on a medical mission to Russia and you should see the state of their hospitals, at least the one in Novasibirsk, Siberia. I found this article at http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_procee...124.chap5.html, it goes on to discuss financing problems. Our politicians might do well to study the problems of other nations before making a commitment to socialized medicine and its problems.
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The Crisis of Russian Health Care and Attempts at Reform
by Boris A. Rozenfeld [1]
Introduction
A search for new forms of development in all spheres of public health care and health promotion is currently being conducted in Russia. Accordingly, the understanding of health as a socially significant aspect of well-being is becoming widely recognized, and the importance of preventive care in individuals' value systems has increased.
Simultaneously, negative trends are developing in this sphere, specifically, in health indices and in the health care system. Uneven development of the health care system has become more apparent, and popular dissatisfaction with medical personnel and the quality of delivered services has grown.
Origins of the Current Crisis
The crisis in Russia's health care system has continued for a number of years. Despite the large number of hospitals and a huge army of medical doctors, they been unable to provide people with an acceptable level of health care services. This is mainly due to a continued lack of funds, medical and technical equipment and supplies, and, finally, to the ineffective organization of health care delivery services. As a result, the quality of services and their accessibility remains quite low.
The recent economic crisis did not create the crisis in the health care system, but it did exacerbate it. The lag in health care in Russia has accumulated over many years. The health care system was distorted by a perception of it as a set of social services that may be provided in greater or smaller amounts in response to certain circumstances, but not linked to the real state of health in the population.
All previous attempts to reform Russia's health care system may be seen as various tactical approaches that did not affect the principal problems or the overall strategy in the field. Many of Russia's health care problems have been rooted in the accepted political model of state-paternalistic social system development. From this approach follows an inattentive government attitude to the problems of health care, a reliance on primitive investment in extensive growth of health care delivery facilities, manpower, and other resources and supplies, and a lack of attention to the quality of care or its effectiveness in improving people's health. One of the characteristics of the Soviet period was the complete absence of incentives for improvement of services in all kinds of medical institutions.
The paternalistic approach manifested itself in the slogan, "The State cares for the health of its citizens," which in many ways defined the very character of medical service organizations across the country, as well as people's attitudes toward this sphere of policy. According to such an approach, every person is under the umbrella of the State and its medical facilities, which undertake entire responsibility for his or her health. In this way, a health care system was created which found itself fully dependent on the state and its governing bodies.
Of course, any state should bear some responsibility for the health of its citizens. But the ideological interpretation of such a principle and the propagandistic character of it in the former USSR led to the development of priorities such that quantitative measures and indices were considered most important. Indices such as volumes of services provided were considered sufficient indicators of growing state activity in public health protection and care.
Paternalism had many different features. This included an irresponsible attitude adopted by many people toward their health combined with consumption regardless of cost. But the consumer was also deprived of his right to complain about services rendered (often touted as "higher than established norms"), and he delegated fully to the state his right to defining consumption limits and needs in individual health care. The state took into its hands all manner of decision-making in the field, together with all methods of evaluating the effectiveness of state actions and their results.
When changes in the health of the population occurred at times, the health care system did not react properly. Excessive reliance on ideology led to goal distortion and emphasis on activities that did not correspond to the medical problems at hand, the level of national socio-economic development, medical capabilities, or public demand.
Current Policy Issues
Policies to resolve the above problems are still being sought. Issues considered extensively in scholarly journals, professional conferences, and the public media include the following:
the search for real goals for further development, de-ideologisation of the entire health care sphere;
democratization and enhancing the rights of health care providers and consumers of health services;
securing freedom from monopolistic dominance of central governing bodies; and
diversification of all kind of activities and development of new approaches to the delivery of services, including services provided on a fee-for-service basis.
A transition to the predominance of noninfectious diseases has not yet been completed and will require changes in health care strategies in Russia. But to reach this goal, such obstacles as general economic instability must be overcome, as that has undoubtedly fertilized the soil for growing morbidity and mortality in the Russian population. The same applies to the growth of operational difficulties in health care servicing.
In Russia, in comparison to other developed countries, the interconnection between the structure of pathology and the health care system's organizational and technological capabilities has increasingly deteriorated. This deterioration has generated long-term problems which are different from those in other countries and which, therefore, should be resolved independently.
The peculiarity of today's situation is characterized by the fact that the normal responses and progressive approaches to addressing problems of public health are not relevant. This impedes efforts to achieve the goals of the first epidemiological transition, i.e., to totally eradicate the occurrence of infectious diseases and epidemics, in order to concentrate manpower and financial resources on problems of life-span elongation and other goals of the second epidemiological transition.
The general basis for the situation described above is the attitude of policy makers who put the goals of health protection behind other "protected state priorities." Therefore, the health care system is, for the moment, financed just at the survival level. At the same time, with the above-mentioned changes in the structure of pathology requiring reorganization of the existing health care system and introduction of new medical technologies, diseases typical of previous periods of lower socio-economic development are still present. In the 1980s, this situation was considered temporary, but during recent years a decrease in life expectancy appeared[2] and may prove that the present situation has become the norm, at least for the near term.
More than in former years, prospects for the development of the health care system in Russia presently depend on whether they are linked to the management of medical enterprises, which are the first to sense all contradictions and problems of the reform period. Formerly, many different experiments were implemented in rather limited circles of medical caregivers and health care facilities, but the general conditions of medical care delivery to the broad population were not affected.
The following basic principles for reforming health care are widely accepted in Russia:
decentralization of management;
creation of a health services market;
multi-channeling of financial support for medical enterprises in order to attract additional reliable resources;
transition to a financing scheme under which payments depend on the quantity and quality of provided services;
introduction of obligatory medical insurance for the entire population; and
development of voluntary insurance schemes and "fee for service" (direct payment) for health care.
What negative effect did it have on you? I know it raised rates for some people. I had no insurance before and none after, so it really doesn't affect me.
Most importantly it takes my country one step closer to socialization, something I am violently opposed too. Forced enrollment into Social Security is too much already.
Second a completely screwed up,totally dysfunctional healthcare system by design hurts everyone not just me. They never intended for this to work. Don't you get it yet? Obummer is working for islam to destroy this country and destroying our healthcare system is just one piece of the plan.
We need affordable healthcare not gigantically expensive subsidized Bull ****.
Stop suing doctors, open the insurance companies up to interstate competition. We need small family doctor practices for the everyday stuff instead of flooding our hospitals with non paying clients coming in for things like a cold. The Government screwed this up and now you trust them to fix it?
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Originally Posted by samfloor
It does say something when we are the only "civilized" nation in the world that doesn't provide health care for it's people. And we rank 38th in quality of health care.
And you can forget the so-called horror stories from Canada and the UK. I have friends who live in both countries and have no complaints about health care. The problem with the ACA is that it doesn't cover everyone. I am not eligible.
We are not a communist socialized nation ...Get over it ...it is never going to be. Guys like me will burn the whole dam thing down before we will let that happen.
Nothing is free. Someone is paying for it. I know several people who live in Canada I use to go fishing there every year and the stories are true. Why do you thing so many Canadians come here to get surgery if it is so great.
There has never been a communist country. Due to the natural greed of humans, it won't work. In true communism, there would be no government. Everyone would contribute everything they make to the common good and take back out only what they need. Russia and China were/are dictatorships.
In socialism, there is a government to run things. Everyone pays into a fund to cover all services, even those people who never use them. We already have socialist programs. The library, the Post Office, the public schools, the police dept, the fire dept etc, are all socialism. Everyone pays to provide them, even the people who never use them. For example, I still pay school tax even though I no longer have anyone in school.
And before anyone calls us a democracy, we are not. We are a republic. In a democracy, everyone votes on everything. In a republic, we elect people to represent us and vote on everything.
Obamacare, whether anyone one of us likes it or not, and many of us don't, is legal. It was passed by our legally elected congress and signed by a legally elected president. Maybe the new republican congress will change it, but I expect them to fight among themselves and be as worthless as the last one.
To lump communism and socialism together, you don't understand either one.
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Socialism and communism are alike in that both are systems of production for use based on public ownership of the means of production and centralized planning. Socialism grows directly out of capitalism; it is the first form of the new society. Communism is a further development or "higher stage" of socialism.
Nobody outside conservative websites seem to be paying attention to this piece. One of the people interviewed says that “stand alone hospitals” are becoming extinct.
This is not a short filler fluff piece but a rather extensive overview of the situation. Do your grandparents live in a small town where they might not be able to get good medical care because the local hospital is closed.
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