Kathleen Sibelius has been appointed HHS Secretary

[Jae Onasi]

She will have a great amount of influence in the health care policy that Obama is developing. What would you like to see in health care in the US? It appears that Obama wants to move towards universal health care. What does that mean to you? How should we pay for this? How should it be administered? How does coverage get determined? How will we decide if someone should receive x procedure? Will there be rationing?

[jrrtoken]

Universal, actually. I believe people would be much more open to the idea now than back in the 90's when it was proposed. As for other details, I simply believe that it should somewhat emulate either Canada's or the UK's systems.

 

And yes, I am a socialist bastard who wishes destroy free enterprise and rid America of any sort moral standard by allowing anyone to receive proper and immediate treatment rather than making a homeless man pay $10,000 upfront to sew his thumb back on. Damn.

[Jae Onasi]

I think the easiest way to go about it is to just expand Medicare benefits to everyone, and increase the Medicare insurance payments we all get taken out of our checks. Doctors, other practitioners, and hospitals all are familiar with how it works, and it would allow different options that older folks have now (like different programs run by insurance companies on the Medicare model).

 

I'm not sure how workable that solution is, but it seems to be the easiest way to expand to universal health care.

[TSR]

  PastramiX said:

I simply believe that it should somewhat emulate either Canada's or the UK's systems.

 

Oh, god, no.

 

You have no idea.

 

If you have an operation in a National Health Service ( A.K.A NHS) Hospital you can consider yourself lucky if you can count on one hand how many infections you get.

 

The problem with the health service system we have here is that because it is government funded, the budget cuts it receives is criminal. Hell, last year we were rationing paracetamol the NHS was that low on funding.

 

Funnily enough, the Private healthcare industry seemed to be fine, even in these apparently turbulent economic times.

[Jae Onasi]

I had a friend who had to wait for 7 months for gall bladder surgery through the Canadian system because despite the fact that she was in near-constant pain if she ate anything, it was not considered an emergency. I had the same exact symptoms and had my gall bladder out about 3 weeks after I saw the surgeon--mainly to accommodate a co-worker's vacation since I wasn't in the constant pain my friend was.

 

This kind of wait does concern me, because if she'd had cancer, it would have had months to spread everywhere. It was frankly inappropriate to make her wait that long for the surgery. I'm not sure how that kind of problem can be prevented in a universal system--it seems to be an issue whether I talk to someone from Canada, UK, or other countries with universal systems. I understand there's good and bad in every system, but I'd like to keep as much of the good we can in the US system without taking on the problems that may come with the universal system.

[SW01]

  Jae Onasi said:

I had a friend who had to wait for 7 months for gall bladder surgery through the Canadian system because despite the fact that she was in near-constant pain if she ate anything, it was not considered an emergency.

 

You are of course spot on Jae - waiting lists are among the traditional criticisms of the NHS, too.

 

  Jae Onasi said:

I'm not sure how that kind of problem can be prevented in a universal system

 

The better experiences I have had with hospitals and doctors have, by and large, been because my family was registered for a long time with BUPA - a species of private insurance organisation, however not with the (seemingly) overwhelming expense of the American model - to my knowledge, the payments required were a fraction of those being bandied about on American insurance. Perhaps an option such as that would help, within a universal framework?

[Q]

  TSR said:

Oh, god, no.

 

You have no idea.

 

If you have an operation in a National Health Service ( A.K.A NHS) Hospital you can consider yourself lucky if you can count on one hand how many infections you get.

 

The problem with the health service system we have here is that because it is government funded, the budget cuts it receives is criminal. Hell, last year we were rationing paracetamol the NHS was that low on funding.

 

Funnily enough, the Private healthcare industry seemed to be fine, even in these apparently turbulent economic times.

*shudders*

 

Take a number and get in line. The doctor will see you sometime this month if you're lucky.