So 40 million suddenly becomes 50 million? Stop lying and misleading, Benji. In fact, both figures are wrong. http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-20-04.html
Nice: Generally, you aren't one of the people around here who have to have things spelled out in monosyllables. When I say our health-care system is a joke I'm not talking of the quality, I'm talking about the way the system is managed how costs are apportioned. Sure, the average peniless beggar can stagger into U of C Clinics bleeding from the ears and receive nonpariel care. But who pays? I do. And my company does. My "silver" health care plan for my family of five costs ME $3500 in annual withholdings, my employer another $7000. Throw in a total family deductable of $2000. That's over $10,000 annually whether anyone in my family is sick a day or not just for coverage. By not insuring everyone fully we make sure that the uninsured (50M) and the underisnured (another 50M or more) do not receive good preventative care and are sicker when they do see a doctor which increases costs across the board. And on and on. I think you know the drill and the true nature of the problem. And stop pulling out the "socialism" bogeyman! It doesn't have to be a state-run affair. I'm not saying lift the German or Canadian model. Hell, do block grants from federal payroll witholding to the states and counties if you like. Just find a way to do universal coverage and take the insurance company middlemen (with all the loss of efficiency and added costs due to same plus need to show profit to the shareholders) out of the loop. My overall point is that we should be trying to have the same quality of life as the Europeans, not that we should try to have the same lives they do.
I've never bought that argument, but fine. My point is, if you want to say our country doesn't provide health care to enough people, fine. But please don't say that its the "system". We don't have a system of health care. We just have companies that provide it to various parties. Is our "car system" broken? No. Its not like I'm pretending everyone's covered under the current system. I wasn't aware I had. I'm not a "socialism-phobe", although there are many aspects of it I don't like. Some are good, some are bad. I suggested France and Germany because that's what this discussion is about. Isn't that the same thing?
This is only said half in jest. When Europe learns: - how to wait in line with out being cordoned off, i.e. not cutting in front of strangers when it's clear they were there before you - that parking in traffic lanes during rush hour is illegal - that their police need to do something about people who do the above - to wear fvcking deodorant - about customer service Then I will be really worried.
(a)Where'd you get this number? (b) How many of them are willfully uninsured? I didn't buy health insurance from 21-28 years old and I knew tons of people who also didn't have it in that time period. I don't know how much that makes up of the uninsured population, but I imagine it is significant. I am for state sponsored health care - I live in France and just seeing the differences in drug prices is shocking. Sometimes it is 7-10 times more expensive in the US. Not sure if it will ever happen, but to me it is more sickening how much it costs in the US to get care as opposed to whether it is available.
This number of 50 million people without health care is totally bogus. Kerry claimed the number was 45 million during the debate. But even that is way off. The Cato Institute, amount others, has done research into the actual number and found that about 23 million are people who were reported without insurance because they moved from one job to another. When the company they left reported them off their policy, they counted as being out of insurance for the year. Behind that was another large group of young people who felt they didn't need insurance because they were young and healthy. Additionally there was another group that qualified for FREE insurance but didn't claim it. Also an estimated 6-8 million people who are in this country illegally that are reported here and as such they qualify as being here but uninsured. By the time it is all done, that actual number is less than 5 million. Yes, it is expensive but US drug companies do much of the world's R & D work while other countries simply import drugs without having to pay the high cost of development. So before the anti-American sentiment gets too carried away, look at the facts behind some of the wild claims being put forth here.
Another example how right-wingers are no different than Nazi propagandists. Perhaps worse since they pretend to be human.
ROFLAYSPBA! Do you practice being this funny? (1) How much pharmacorp. R & D is subsidized by me and mine, the taxpayer, and to the tune of how much? (2) How, exactly, do you come up with the notion that foreign countries do not develop their own drugs? (3) You claim to look at "facts," yet you make the above statements; classic humour. Thanks! Instead of reading cato, start by reading this, then we can trade the documents behind the claims, and see which ones spring from further corp. spin and propaganda (uh, yours) and which ones spring from a combo of gov't sources and those corp. sources where it is more difficult to lie (like company filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act). Less funny than you is this, summarized here: -The drug industry’s claim that R&D costs total $500 million for each new drug (including failures) is highly misleading. Extrapolated from an often-misunderstood 1991 study by economist Joseph DiMasi, the $500 million figure includes significant expenses that are tax deductible and unrealistic scenarios of risks. -The actual after-tax cash outlay – or what drug companies really spend on R&D – for each new drug (including failures) according to the DiMasi study is approximately $110 million. (That’s in year 2000 dollars, based on data provided by drug companies.) (See Section I) -A simpler measure – also derived from data provided by the industry – suggests that after-tax R&D costs ranged from $57 million to $71 million for the average new drug brought to market in the 1990s, including failures. (See Section II) -Industry R&D risks and costs are often significantly reduced by taxpayer-funded research, which has helped launch the most medically important drugs in recent years and many of the best-selling drugs, including all of the top five sellers in one recent year surveyed (1995). -An internal National Institutes of Health (NIH) document, obtained by Public Citizen through the Freedom of Information Act, shows how crucial taxpayer-funded research is to top-selling drugs. According to the NIH, taxpayer-funded scientists conducted 55 percent of the research projects that led to the discovery and development of the top five selling drugs in 1995. (See Section III) -The industry fought, and won, a nine-year legal battle to keep congressional investigators from the General Accounting Office from seeing the industry’s complete R&D records (WHY? WHY? WHY dj43? WHY?). (See Section IV) Congress can subpoena the records but has failed to do so. That might owe to the fact that in 1999-2000 the drug industry spent $262 million on federal lobbying, campaign contributions and ads for candidates thinly disguised as "issue" ads. (See accompanying report, "The Other Drug War: Big Pharma’s 625 Washington Lobbyists") -Drug industry R&D does not appear to be as risky as companies claim. In every year since 1982, the drug industry has been the most profitable in the United States, according to Fortune magazine’s rankings. During this time, the drug industry’s returns on revenue (profit as a percent of sales) have averaged about three times the average for all other industries represented in the Fortune 500. It defies logic that R&D investments are highly risky if the industry is consistently so profitable and returns on investments are so high. (See Section V) -Drug industry R&D is made less risky by the fact that only about 22 percent of the new drugs brought to market in the last two decades were innovative drugs that represented important therapeutic gains over existing drugs. Most were "me-too" drugs, which often replicate existing successful drugs. (See Section VI) -In addition to receiving research subsidies, the drug industry is lightly taxed, thanks to tax credits. The drug industry’s effective tax rate is about 40 percent less than the average for all other industries. (See Section VII) -Drug companies also receive a huge financial incentive for testing the effects of drugs on children. This incentive called pediatric exclusivity, which Congress may reauthorize this year, amounts to $600 million in additional profits per year for the drug industry – and that’s just to get companies to test the safety of several hundred drugs for children. It is estimated that the cost of such tests is less than $100 million a year. (See Section VIII) -The drug industry’s top priority increasingly is advertising and marketing, more than R&D. Increases in drug industry advertising budgets have averaged almost 40 percent a year since the government relaxed rules on direct-to-consumer advertising in 1997. Moreover, the Fortune 500 drug companies dedicated 30 percent of their revenues to marketing and administration in the year 2000, and just 12 percent to R&D. (See Section X) The only one who, in the lght of these truths, would claim anything other than that this mother********er is BROKEN are owners, wanna-be owners, and well-paid sycophantic shills of either pharmacorp., or BushCorp. Well, that, or idiots who somehow see getting pissed upon as "trickle-down" economics, and wait, mouths agape, for their "share." Damn, man; here, take an umbrella. I carry one around because, well, I live in Scotland. You should have one because you're getting pissed on, period.
They consider the US better than Europe? That's a bit of a bold statement considering how eager these countries were to become EU members. The US will always be attractive to immigrants as it still has a reputation for making people's dreams come true. In Western Europe we've had Eastern European workers doing seasonal jobs for a while now, the bulb fields in Holland employ almost uniquely Polish labourers in the spring for example. These Polish people are under no illusion that life in the Netherlands is that much better than in Poland. That might at least partly explain why they're looking to America.
Correct me if I'm wrong but figures of the world health organisation on infant mortality and the like show that the US isn't exactly paradise when it comes to healthcare. How can you dismiss those facts? That's always what disturbs me about conservative America the most, this total lack of compassion and solidarity.
Flips-side; with a fracture, bone chip and detached ligament in my thumb, I waited one hour at the ER here in Scotland, saw a doc that night, got a brace, saw a specialist the next morning, got a cast, and am scheduled an appropriate three weeks later for removal and physical therapy. Every single engagement my family has had with the NHS, including house calls by docs for a fever (that turned out to precursor chickenpox for my kids), has been freaking exemplary. And that includes the hiring of my wife last month!!! Speaking of my better half, she'll tell you that her experience was much the same while living in Paris. Now, let us tell you about how our midwife STILL has not been paid by our former American insurance company for the (twice pre-approved!!!!) home birh of our daughter..who just turned TWO... The system is BROKEN. Accept that, and get yourselves a new one. Simple, and is in fact the only course of action that will make a difference.
Europe: Mixed System US: System heavily tilited towards private care Canada: State system with the Government blocking any reform. Nuff said.
Cato Institute 40 million becomes 50 million when a scumbag like George Bush becomes President. Actually, I was rounding up a bit, but the 2004 figures will probably be 47M It was 45M for 2003 (US Census Bureau).
At the time, the "factcheckers" said that this number is the number of people without insurance during a given year. For whatever reason, that's become the standard statistic. It's not how many people are uninsured at a given time.
Actually, I'm pretty sure it IS the number of people uninsured at a given time. The number of people uninsured during some point in the year is higher.
According to DOL reporting; you are shown as out of health insurance once your insurance company/employer reports you as being out of that policy. This then shows up on the annual report. Hence, if all you do is change insurers, you wind up being shown as uninsured. Mel, What other industry is required to show a breakdown of their costs of business? Why do you single out the drug companies? Of course the US companies are not the only ones doing R & D. However, at a time that some are comparing Canadian costs versus US costs, this analysis applies. Comparing those two is the classic apples/oranges deal. The same comment applies to a majority of western European countries that have socialized medical services where the government charges the tax payers for the cost of development and then gives them the drugs at a rate lower than US. Whether the patient pays a higher cost for the medical care itself, or pays higher taxes which are then turned around as medical care, it still costs money to provide care. None of this denies the fact that the US system needs reform. It does. But the reforms needed go far beyond just saying the drugs companies make too much profit on the medicines they produce.
Respectfully, I would suggest that number became the standard statistic because that was the number Kerry used during the debate. The use and interpretation came to reflect the idea that there are that many people out of insurance that need the government, or some other organization to provide it for them. What this really comes down to is how many poor people, who can't otherwise afford insurance, need coverage. That number seems to be in the 3-6 million range from what I have read. Whatever the number, we should be able to fix it.
I would like to see the research that shows this first of all. But the second part of that would be to look at why. One reason is that we have one of the highest rates of obesity among both the adult and youth populations. Blame a good part of that on fast food and terrible dietary and exercise habits. This is especially telling on young people. If you are dramatically overweight by the time you are 13, you are going to have major health problems before long no matter what kind of health care you have.
Yes. That doesn't make it "wasteful". Exurbs don't necessarily have to die when oil becomes too expensive. That's the beauty of the US - it adapts.
When did I claim it was? When did I dismiss this fact? 1. This has nothing to do with "solidarity", which is simply a word you've thrown in. 2. When have I advocated that our current level of uninsured citizens is acceptable? 3. Since when did registered Democrats become "conservative Americans"? Oh yes, since neeskens has started expounding on American politics. You know, that's what bugs me the most about the liberal Dutch culture - this inability to understand your limitations in political discussions.