lejend wrote:Now you keep saying how people's subjective ratings of the health care system are unimportant, because, supposedly, it results in poorer health outcomes than other countries' systems do.
Lol wait what, have I said they are unimportant or even alluded to that even once let alone repeatedly?
To clarify my previous post was highlighting how you were using people's positive subjective ratings of social health care programs in America (relative to other options) to argue against social health programs by disingenuously lumping their opinions in with insured/uninsured people to manipulate your statistic. Yes I absolutely value their opinion, it seems you are the one who doesn't?
Not supposedly, America does have poorer health outcomes than every other high-income country. A cursory google search would reveal that. Here's just one link from the commonwealth fund demonstrating just that:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives/2017/july/mirror-mirror/lejend wrote:But studies show that, in America, people on government health insurance programs show no improved health outcomes compared to uninsured people. By your logic, then, aren't these government health insurance programs a waste of money?
What studies show that insured people have no improved health outcomes over uninsured?
Again I just did a cursory google search of uninsured vs insured and almost every single study/article/link paints a rather different picture. These are studies cited hundreds of times.
Just to humour you here are a couple of the very first results:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2881446/"Based on the evidence to date, the health consequences of uninsurance are real, vary in magnitude in a clinically consistent manner, strengthen the argument for universal coverage in the United States, and underscore the importance of evidence-based determinations in providing health care to a diverse population of adults."https://www.kff.org/uninsured/fact-sheet/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/"People without insurance coverage have worse access to care than people who are insured. One in five uninsured adults in 2016 went without needed medical care due to cost."I don't like to include anecdotal evidence usually but just to add in I was reading about a type 1 diabetic a few weeks ago (
https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/insulin-access-deaths) who because he couldn't afford his medical supplies started a crowd funding campaign on gofundme to raise money. He didn't raise enough money and died. But you're telling me there's no difference between insured and uninsured health outcomes?
Actually to be fair to you I did just find one study coming out of Oregon that people are debating over on Medicaid that seems to be the lynch-pin for every counter argument on this topic. Factcheck
https://www.factcheck.org/2015/07/is-medicaid-bad-for-your-health/ seems to suggest it's bullshit. Is it just this one study or are there others, I'd be interested to see?
lejend wrote:Now I don't want to have another long and drawn-out discussion about health care. I just encourage you to dedicate a little time to haring the other side's argument. Like I said before, a lot of the popular beliefs about the US health system are false or exaggerated. There is a difference between what politicians, advocacy researchers and laymen say, and what neutral researchers who study the topic say.
Well that is not very reassuring when an issue of life and death is involved. Most people abhor change. Most people feel that the current system works well for them. People are not going to give up a system that works for their families, in exchange for a vaguely-described, unprecedented, and major overhaul of the system. "I'm sure we'll manage", and, "we'll figure something out", aren't really serious plans. "You'll have to pay more now, but it'll be cheaper in the long run. Honest!", isn't credible coming from politicians. People would rather have one bird in the hand than two in the bush. Everyone understands this. That is why Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike are united against socialized medicine. If it can't pass in California, Vermont and Colorado, then it won't pass nationally.
The preferred system for most people right now is private for those who can afford it, and government subsidies for those who can't afford it. There is also widespread support for measures to reduce the cost of health care and insurance.
But pretty much nobody other than fringe progressive activists, shunned by their own party, supports government insurance for the general population. The government control and the taxes needed to support it are just too unpopular.
You keep saying the current system works? You are paying 3x more than me for worse health care, 20k-40k people die each year purely because they can't afford to get access to healthcare, your public satisfaction rates are lower than every other high-income country. How is that working?
Now I'm not going to argue for the specifics of the plan but I imagine if the entire plan was "I'm sure we'll manage" and "We'll figure something out" I probably wouldn't be in favour of it either. My point is that social healthcare has been shown to work in other countries providing better health outcomes at cheaper costs. I fail to see why this wouldn't be possible in America also.
The American health care system is plagued by corruption, possibly more-so in any other country. Anytime you have significant market forces involved you'll get politicians and industry workers with financial interests dominating hence why you pay insanely more than I do. Socialised health care drastically reduces market forces and in theory costs should go down. Of course the industry and corrupted politicians do a good job convincing Americans that transitioning away would involve your taxes going up.
In response to you saying "I just need to hear the other side of the argument", well what is it?
-That some people don't like change? Sure that's always been true.
-That there's one study coming out of Oregon saying that Medicaid doesn't show an improvement over uninsured? Sure I'll probably side with the vast mountains of evidence on the other side over that, maybe Medicaid could use significant changes too I don't really know a lot about it.
-That it will cost more? It's hard for me to take this seriously when I pay so much less than you do for better results.
What's the convincing argument here? Help me to see it!