I mean my Ideal healthcare system is the one Singapore has. It insures everyone and allows market forces to work much more efficiently in the healthcare market than any other model. They have a simple, socialized medical plan for everyone. That makes up around 42% of the healthcare market. The blan can provide anything you could ever need, at decent quality and price.
The really ingenious thing is that not only does the socialized medical plan insure that everyone is covered, but it also encourages competition in the private healthcare market. You see, if the government can give you a basic physical exam for 5$ (not actual price, just made up for the simplicity of the example), than private providers are forced to either do it for 4$ or improve the quality of the exam (unless you are an irrational individual and only see private providers 
). Whats great is that the governmnet can subsidize the basic exam, using taxpayer dollars of course, and thus make it cheaper, while the private porivders cannot and are thus forced to improve efficiency (in terms of both price and quality) or cut profit margins in order to survive. Unlike many socialized plans, this actually makes healthcare providers more innovative.
Also, they don't rely on insurance as much as other countries do. A key part of their socialized healthcare plan is that no service is provided free of charge, no matter how poor you are (although the subsides get pretty large so the cost can be very, very small.), this is done to discourage overconsumption of healthcare. Instead of having people pay out of pocket for the public care, since there is no insurnace for that, you are mandated to save a certain percentage of your income in a government sponsered health savings account (it is topped off by the government if you are too poor to meet the minimum requirements). Since you want to keep as much of your own money as possible, you try to control costs where ever possible.
There are also private healthcare insureers to cover private healthcare costs. This is pretty much the only flaw I can see in the system. The private insurance insulates the consumer from costs and drives up healthcare inflation. If I had my way, there would be no insurance and your Medisave account, the government medical savings account I mentioned earlier, would be used to pay for your private healthcare costs. That would make you think a lot mroe before you spend any of your money.
I picked singapore because it has the what looks to be the most efficient helathcare model. Not only was it ranked 6th, out of 191 of all the world's health care systems by the WHO. Here is the list of the top ten, for comparision.
1. France (single payer)
2. Italy (mixed private public. Part of it is socialized and then other private providers. 75% public.)
3. San Marino (no idea, could not find it. Probably the same as Italy as San Marino is a mirco-naiton surronded by Italy.)
4. Malta (socialized, with private insurance and a some private providers [don't need many on a tiny island.])
5. Andorra (single payer)
6. Singapore (you should know by now)
7. Spain (mostly socialized.)
8. Oman (socialized.)
9. Austria (socialized, can purchase private insurance.)
10. Japan (single payer.)
Now, lets break it down. 3 have single payer systems, 3 (counting San Marino) have Mixed private and public, and 4 have socialized systems. Not a single one is fully priavte. Now I for one find it impressive that Singapore can be on that list, given it's low median GDP per capita (median being what most of the people can expect to make instead of just the average. [I can't actually find numbers on median GDP per capita.]). Even though singapore's average GDP per capita is ~59,000$ at PPP, that is not the case for the average Singaporean. 1 in 6 Singaporeans are millionaires, the highest for any country, which vastly distorsts the average GDP per capita numbers. The fact that it can be up there with rich countries (and Oman, which can afford this thnaks only to their oil wealth.) is pretty damn impressive.
No country in the world has a fully private healthcare system (and that would be including the USA), so showing off how highly rated non-private healthcare systems are is a bit like a mid 17th century demographer coming to the conclusion that, because almost all of the richest/most successful countries are presently controlled by emperors or kings, the only way a country can be successful is to be ruled by an emperor or king. Ignoring that,
-Half of those countries listed are undergoing massive sovereign debt problems, which deals with that side of things rather simply (similarly, Greek healthcare was once one of the best in the world because cost was ignored, but it ultimately came crashing down to practically third world standards)
-Of those not undergoing debt or economic problems, four are micronations and thus aren't really comparable in terms of health service due to the different logistics involved (Though it is worth noting that Singapore has a nominally freer market in healthcare compared to the US in many respects, and is certainly far more streamlined)
-The remaining country is Oman, but from what I can find it's healthcare system isn't exceptional by any means with a life expectancy of 74ish and not much notability
Finally, the rating was compiled by WHO, the same people who were stupid enough to treat Swine Flu as a "pandemic" and panicked in a distinctly unauthoritative fashion when given a chance to look into things rationally, and thus should be taken with a mountain of salt.
While you may have a point about the non-sequiturs, I don't think the slope here is particularly well-greased. In addition to being a public service, it's one that is crucial to life for many of the people who require it, is extremely expensive, often unpredictable, and the burdens associated with it are unevenly distributed throughout society.
One could make a similar argument for food under the right conditions, but few would advocate a Food Bureau to ensure everyone is given as much food as they "require".
I know. If we are going to have programs like that, we might as well attempt to optimize the system toward ensuring people get healthcare when they need it - which, I believe, involves making sure that hospitals treat people who show up, end of story. There are practical issues in making that happen, obviously, but that's what I believe to be the morally correct objective.
But what if the hospitals are incapable of treating everyone who shows up due to a lack of resources? Again, this is hardly a problem unique to the US. There are several instances in Canada (and I'm sticking to Canada for the time being since I actually live here) of ambulances being turned away from hospitals due to a lack of space or shortage of doctors.
No, I'm not, but the single payer system is the one I prefer and the present insurance-based system is the one I particularly oppose, so I'm naturally going to spend most of my time talking about them.
But by doing so, you're creating a false dilemma that is hardly likely to have ideal results. Choosing between the present American system and the single payer system is a bit like choosing between Fascism and Communism; you might find the merits of one to outweigh the problems of the other, but there are lots of unexplored options that make far more sense.
Other systems seem even less practical to implement; for instance, what you brought up assumes health care costs go down, which seems unlikely.
Again, I would be greatly appreciative if anyone could find the chart I was referring to, but the absurd increases in healthcare costs didn't really begin until the mid 1960s while LBJ was passing his Great Society programs. The only reason it would seem unlikely is because all the countries of the world have hopped on a bandwagon of government controlled healthcare in some way.
If nothing else, insurance companies don't want that to happen because it gives people an incentive not to have insurance (this is obviously a perversion of all sense and decency, since you'd expect that having to pay out less on each claim would be considered optimal, but since a premium necessarily has to be greater than the expected cost for that contract holder, you wind up with a situation where every person with insurance is a net win for the industry).
Indeed, established insurance companies have a tendency to be quite crooked. But then, Obamacare isn't really a single payer system at all, it's a fascist system that basically functions as single payer for the average American but market based for the insurance companies.
Anyway, the major problem that arose regarding insurance is that the government simultaneously encouraged businesses to give workers insurance benefits (due to price and wage controls restricting the higher wages that could be offered during WW2) AND forced insurance companies to cover things that quite frankly make them function less like insurance companies and more like healthcare brokerage firms. A lot of problems that exist today simply wouldn't if insurance companies functioned the way they were designed for, by providing very large amounts of money in the event of unforeseen disaster (that would be a previously healthy person contracting a deadly disease through no fault of their own, being hit by a car, having unexpected heart problems, etc). The vast majority of expenses relating to healthcare would be long term things that one would have plenty of time to look over and consider (doctors visits, non vital surgery, medication, etc) while those that came up suddenly would be covered by insurance companies (who would have an incentive to gain a reputation for setting up deals with high quality hospitals and would be able to pay out far more/without as much weaseling because they wouldn't be covering small time things anymore).
In principle, I don't really care how somebody wound up with cancer, I'd still prefer it get treated (if the patient actually wants treatment, obviously) than not. "You did something that, in retrospect, was pretty stupid - so you are going to die or have your life ruined" is not really a moral position to me. In practice, you're right, ensuring that the system works is probably going to require some restrictions on how often certain avoidable problems can be treated before the patient has to start paying more, and I'll accept that as a necessary matter of practicality.
In principle, saving life in general is usually agreed to be a good thing. However, again, scarce resources. It would also be a good thing if everyone on Earth had vast tracts of land, customized mansions, and the highest quality of food and entertainment. Do you spend your set budget on saving a single smoker with advanced cancer, knowing that even then the chance of survival is middling, or do you spend that money on equipment for lung surgery? Do you focus on saving the elderly with heart problems, or middle aged workers with injuries on the job? It's never going to be that clear cut, mind, but someone is always going to get thrown under the bus no matter what system you have. In the US, that would primarily be the poor unable to afford insurance at all, and those with preexisting conditions. In Canada, that would mostly be the youth with immediate issues that require hospital treatment, the elderly, especially the elderly requiring complex surgery, and those too poor to afford to go to the States if they find the waiting list in Canada too long. A market system would hardly solve the problem altogether, as you still have a fixed number of resources that can be used. However, in the longer term, the problem is self correcting; the more profitable option would generally be the one given, and thus the provider would have more money to spend on whatever was prioritized for the hospital.
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Topic: WHOOOO HEALTH CARE RULED CONSTITUTIONAL (Read 25620 times)