"socialized" medicine: not as bad as cons would have you believe.

[feuervogel]

In fact, it's a hundred, a thousand, times better than the system that killed Melissa Mia Hall, who had no insurance, as a freelance writer, and began suffering chest pains due to a heart attack and died in her home because she couldn't afford to go to the doctor, let alone the hospital.

To those of you who believe the free market can and should sort everything out, this is what you're advocating. If taxation is theft, free market health cover is murder.

Do you wonder why I, as a tenuously employed person with no health benefits of my own who aspires to be a freelance writer (as all novelists are) -- a job that almost never has health benefits -- would rather move 4400 miles, a 9-hour flight, and a 6 time-zone difference to a country that mandates health coverage and provides it for those who can't afford it themselves through taxation?

Germans aren't afraid of the social contract or of helping out those in need through vile governmental muggings in dark alleys taxation. Fucking American selfishness needs to die in a fire.

Comments

[thady]

As a German I have to say that while it certainly isn't perfect it's pretty good most of the time. To be frank, I wouldn't want to live somewhere without basic health coverage.

[feuervogel]

I don't mean to imply that the German system is perfect. There are problems, of course; no system is 100% perfect. But the US system is non-existent. It's a patchwork quilt, where half the patches are wearing thin and the other half are half-rotten, so it resembles a spiderweb more than anything.

When I was a student in Marburg, in 1996/97, I paid DM81/month to Barmer for medical cover. When I got bromine on my arm in chem lab and went to the clinic? Free. When I had a wart on the bottom of my foot and went to a podiatrist to get it taken care of? Free, except I had to pay for the bit of tape to hold the salicylic acid square to my foot. When I got new glasses? The lenses were free, and DM20 of the frames were covered. (I ended up paying about DM60 for them.) I remember my conversation at the Optiker's, where I kept asking him how much the lenses would cost, and he kept saying "the insurance will cover the basic price." I couldn't comprehend insurance paying for eyeglasses. It doesn't here.

Compare that to this summer/fall, when I was sick as hell, and I went to my doctor's office a dozen times, at $20 each, to multiple specialists, at $30 each, got a dozen different medications ranging from $10-$35 for a month's supply, was admitted to the hospital ($250), had a sinus CT ($250), and went to the ER ($150). And we're paying probably $1000/month (I don't know; it's included in my husband's benefit package) for it.

Appalling.

[yvi]

Lenses aren't free anymore, unfortunately :(

(Hearing aids, though are still covered for 500€ per ear - I have a hearing aid and no glasses)

[feuervogel]

Boo. Are the lenses covered in part? Because eyeglasses are pretty darn important.

I had LASIK a few years ago, and this is largely academic for me, until I get to the age when I need reading glasses.

[yvi]

They only pay if you are under 18 or are wrong-sighted to the point of it counting as a disability, if I recall correctly.

[feuervogel]

Right, because adults don't need glasses. That's quite wrong-headed.

What are they using to define disability, I wonder? Because I was worse than 20/400 without my glasses (-5.5 in both eyes, I couldn't see the big E), and that's pretty limiting! I wouldn't be able to drive without correction, let alone work.

[thady]

I didn't think you thought our system were perfect. I think my reaction just comes from watching the health debate and worry about whether we might slither into US-American waters.

And I truly can't imagine to pay $1000/month for health insurance. It boggles my mind.

[feuervogel]

That would be the worst idea ever. If stories of the horrors of the US system are required, I'm sure you could get plenty of them.

Are the free marketeers winning? *scary*

That Bismarck guy...he was such a leftist icon, amirite?

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

When people talk about "newfangled socialist ideas" of universal health care and maintaining old/disability pensions and all that, I like to point out that Bismarck managed to accomplish a lion's share of it a hundred thirty years ago. When we say America is behind the curve, we're not kidding.

[feuervogel]

Oh, Bismarck, that wacky leftist...

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

I believe the correct term is "pinko commie lib'rul."

[pharna.livejournal.com]

I like socialized medicine. Fuck if you'll get me to leave Japan til the USA gets it.

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

Where do you draw the line between a failure to act and the malice required to call something "murder"? Obviously saying "It's manslaughter!" or "It's an unfortunate death!" doesn't have the same punch to it, but ...

I have two working kidneys, and could probably save some stranger's life by donating one. Is it murder that I have not chosen to do so?

At less personal cost, I could still probably be employed developing medical devices, which would probably save lives. Is it wrong for me to be trying to help educate people instead (occasionally volunteering).

Or, alternately, you're credentialed to work as a pharmacist, which could easily save someone's life. It'd even pay better.

If it's not a matter of personal responsibility, is it the state's fault for not forcing us to work in these roles?

[kirin]

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but I think a main point of the phrasing is a parallelism to the common libertarian meme of "taxation is theft", which is seen as similarly hyperbolic.

(Er, reading again, that's already in the post, in passing. Ah well.)

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Perhaps she didn't mean any of it as a starting point for discussion, but I don't think it all that useful to trivialize either murder or theft.

But hiding behind it, there is a real discussion about the proper role and techniques of government. Yeah, there are nutty libertarians who equate taxation with theft, but those really aren't the people who are potentially persuadable; better to make a novel argument, rather than try to sound as nutty as the libertarian fringe. As a side matter, it isn't typically a conservative position (assuming that's what's meant by "con") to view taxation as theft. Complain that taxes are too high, sure, but that's not the same thing as saying they should be zero: In much the same way that I can say that teachers in the local district are probably overpaid (at least if you count the value of the benefits package) without saying that all teachers should be volunteers.

I am genuinely curious as to where Akiko draws the line between a genuine moral obligation to provide medical help and something that would merely be admirable.

[feuervogel]

When I was in pharmacy school, I took bioethics as an elective. I was spectacularly unimpressed with the argument that withdrawing life support and letting the patient die (slowly over hours or days as they suffocate) was morally ambivalent and couldn't be called euthanasia because it's "letting nature take its course."

I view the GOP's position of continuing this free market experiment, refusing to consider taxation to cover universal health care, and overturning the ACA without any real alternative somewhat analogous to withdrawing life support and allowing the patient to die.

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting distinction between removing life support and not supplying it in the first case, and a number of grey areas involving the desires of the patient; but taking that at face value:

Is the party not-in-power really the responsible actor?

But to summarize what I understand of your position: There's no individual mandate to action, as that's covered in state action. Also, raising taxes has either trivial social costs, or costs small enough to be outweighed by the (assumed) benefits of universal health care.

Is that pretty close to what you mean? Obviously I disagree on a lot of it, but that's different from not understanding your position in the first place.

[feuervogel]

Is the party not-in-power really the responsible actor?

I don't understand the question.

I'd say that as human beings, we're obligated to help those who have less, so in that sense, we /are/ individually mandated to action, but that action can be carried out simply by paying taxes. I admire HCPs who volunteer at indigent clinics, but making free clinics unnecessary would be better. But the second half of your sentence works.

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

You blame the GOP for repealing ACA. As they don't control either the Senate or the Presidency, they can't repeal anything. So either political discussion is comparable to murder, or "repeal" means something other than it usually does. ("Attempt to repeal", "Suggestion to repeal", "Political grandstanding", maybe?)

I think I understand your position on a mandate to action: I don't view paying taxes as an action per-se, since it's sort of involuntary. But that's probably just a minor matter of wording.

Fundamentally I think I view the cost/benefit tradeoffs differently, and to a certain extent the mandate; I'd tend to argue from a utilitarian perspective, and I don't think things like the ACA actually improve things. But ... so it goes.

[feuervogel]

I would argue that the GOP has forced the ACA further rightward, despite being based on the GOP's own plan (alternative to "Hillarycare") from the mid-90s. Or quite similar to Romney's plan in Massachusetts. I think the ACA doesn't go nearly far enough, because of GOP resistance and GOP grandstanding and GOP lies like "death panels." So, yes, I can, in fact, consider the party that's out of power the responsible actor, because the Democrats are spineless wimps who triangulate and move rightward in the name of compromise when the GOP isn't acting in good faith in the slightest. The GOP holds all the power, whether they're in the majority or not.

IMO, the ACA improves things, but not nearly enough, and that's because the GOP forced it rightward (by holding the Senate to a mandatory 60-vote majority through threats of filibuster, as well as the lies of mouthpieces like Palin and Beck). There's not enough provisions for cost control; there are massive gimmes to the drug companies; there are so many sops to the insurance companies; it doesn't create Medicare for All.

But then, what do I know about health care? I'm just a health care provider and a socialist. And we're /never/ correct in this political climate, even though social health systems work fairly well throughout Europe.