that was just one example. there are many others out there if you care to look.
for example…some 65% of French citizens express satisfaction with their system, compared with 40% of U.S. residents
right, we spend an inordinate amount of money on healthcare in this country. and a whole bunch of it goes to these pharma companies. i would hope they would at least be innovating. hopefully something other than more toxic drugs for things like “restless leg syndrome” and longer eye lashes. :rolleyes:
NPR isn’t the only source. There are plenty of sources of fact on France’s healthcare model and statistics. You conveniently ignored the Businessweek article.
nice cheap shot. i guess i was wrong to hope for meaningful discussion on this subject with someone who’s mind is clearly made up. no amount of fact or anything else will sway your opinion so apparently we’re done here.
I don’t really see your point at all. Nor what bearing it has on this discussion.
I don’t believe so. I believe plenty of people will choose to keep their private health care and insurance because the quality of care will probably be better.
Government has no responsibility to provide health care for anyone, and has long term consequences no one who supports it likes to talk about.
Mixing the two systems means the gov gets to be cheap skates, and make the private sector pay a much larger burden than they otherwise would. Ask just about any doctor what a person with private insurance pays for an office visit, and then ask them how much medicaid pays them. One doctor I know of gets paid only 1/5th for an office visit from someone on medicaid than from someone with private insurance.
Going fully government (Tricare, VA) means reduced quality of care.
I would bet the same is true in Europe – they underreport it as well is my guess.
I would like to see what percentage of the population works for the government in Europe. According to the US Labor and Statistics people about 7.8-7.9% (2008) worked for the government in the US, including Federal, State, and Local governments.
I’d like to see the numbers for Europe. I was not able to come up with the right Google-Fu tonight to find it.
not necessarily. it depends on what type of unemployment we’re talking about.
As defined by the International Labour Organization, “unemployed workers” are those who are currently not working but are willing and able to work for pay, currently available to work, and have actively searched for work.
It is possible to be neither employed nor unemployed by ILO definitions, i.e., to be outside of the “labor force.” These are people who have no job and are not looking for one. Many of these are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force. Still others have a physical or mental disability which prevents them from participating in labor force activities. And of course some people simply elect not to work, preferring to be dependent on others for sustenance.
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, defines unemployed as those persons age 15 to 74 who are not working, have looked for work in the last four weeks, and ready to start work within two weeks, which conform to ILO standards.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures employment and unemployment (of those over 15 years of age) using two different labor force surveys conducted by the United States Census Bureau (within the United States Department of Commerce) and/or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (within the United States Department of Labor) that gather employment statistics monthly. The Current Population Survey (CPS), or “Household Survey”, conducts a survey based on a sample of 60,000 households. This Survey measures the unemployment rate based on the ILO definition. The data are also used to calculate 5 alternate measures of unemployment as a percentage of the labor force based on different definitions noted as U1 through U6:
* U1: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
* U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
* U3: Official unemployment rate per ILO definition.
* U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
* U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers", or "loosely attached workers", or those who "would like" and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
* U6: U5 + Part time workers who want to work full time, but cannot due to economic reasons.
Note: “Marginally attached workers” are added to the total labor force for unemployment rate calculation for U4, U5, and U6. The BLS revised the CPS in 1994 and among the changes the measure representing the official unemployment rate was renamed U3 instead of U5
It should also be noted that studies have found that the U.S. unemployment rate would be at least 2% higher if prisoners and jail inmates were counted.
The unemployment rate may be different from the impact of the economy on people. The unemployment figures indicate how many are not working for pay but seeking employment for pay. It is only indirectly connected with the number of people who are actually not working at all or working without pay. Therefore, critics believe that current methods of measuring unemployment are inaccurate in terms of the impact of unemployment on people as these methods do not take into account the 1.5% of the available working population incarcerated in U.S. prisons (who may or may not be working while incarcerated), those who have lost their jobs and have become discouraged over time from actively looking for work, those who are self-employed or wish to become self-employed, such as tradesmen or building contractors or IT consultants, those who have retired before the official retirement age but would still like to work (involuntary early retirees), those on disability pensions who, while not possessing full health, still wish to work in occupations suitable for their medical conditions, those who work for payment for as little as one hour per week but would like to work full-time. These people are “involuntary part-time” workers, those who are underemployed, e.g., a computer programmer who is working in a retail store until he can find a permanent job, involuntary stay-at-home mothers who would prefer to work, and graduate and Professional school students who were unable to find worthwhile jobs after they graduated with their Bachelor’s degrees.
For the fourth quarter of 2004, according to OECD, (source Employment Outlook 2005 ISBN 92-64-01045-9), normalized unemployment for men aged 25 to 54 was 4.6% in the U.S. and 7.4% in France. At the same time and for the same population the employment rate (number of workers divided by population) was 86.3% in the U.S. and 86.7% in France.
This example shows that the unemployment rate is 60% higher in France than in the U.S., yet more people in this demographic are working in France than in the U.S., which is counterintuitive if it is expected that the unemployment rate reflects the health of the labor market.
It already is happening. One major reason for the huge increases in the costs of private healthcare is cost shifting by the govt due to underpayment for services. (And cost shifting for medicines by other countries to the US).
And if you had a choice of free care or pay yourself care, you would probably eventually end up in the free care boat.
they also have no responsibility to provide any of the other services we utilize. but they do.
again, i would have to say take a look at France’s system.
for example…
To make all this affordable, France reimburses its doctors at a far lower rate than U.S. physicians would accept. However, French doctors don’t have to pay back their crushing student loans because medical school is paid for by the state, and malpractice insurance premiums are a tiny fraction of the $55,000 a year and up that many U.S. doctors pay. That $55,000 equals the average yearly net income for French doctors, a third of what their American counterparts earn. Then again, the French government pays two-thirds of the social security tax for most French physicians—a tax that’s typically 40% of income.
Specialists who have spent at least four years practicing in a hospital are free to charge what they want, and some charge upwards of $675 for a single consultation. But American-style compensation is rare. “There is an unspoken and undefined limit to what you can charge,” says Dr. Paul Benfredj, a gastroenterologist in Paris.
i didn’t say the best option is fully government. i said the best option is a combination of the two.
yes, the best care will be private. but for those who cannot afford it, they would have a government option. would it be as good as private care? of course not. which is why private care could and would still exist and do just fine.
From the stats I could find France has 5.2 million public workers with a population of 63 million equals public sector work force is 12.X% of the population. Almost double ours, and our population is around 5X as much.
there are solutions to this problem, although they’re complicated and would take some time to address.
not necessarily. because as has been stated, the best healthcare will be the private healthcare. there are plenty of people in this country that could and would readily choose to pay for the private system to receive the top quality care.
ok. when your house catches on fire and burns to the ground, will you still be saying that? or perhaps when your loved ones have a heart attack or get in a car accident and die instead of being transported to the hospital, will you still feel the same way?
A similar study was conducted in the UK with regards to dental care. A poll was taken of people who had undergone some antiquated and not very successful procedure(read: cheaper,)something like 85% were happy with the system. Upon being informed that the procedure had been almost entirely replaced with in the US with something much less invasive and more effective, the number dropped to about 15%.
My mind IS made up. But it’s because I’m right. Facts, theory, history, and just about everything else is on my side.
For the umpteenth time…remove tax benefits for employers to “give” health benefits. It’s money that you would have received in wages anyway. People will begin to buy actual insurance rather than prepaid health care. People will begin to actually care what things cost. Costs will plummet. Allowing physicians assistants and nurses to practice more medicine without doctors would be a huge help as well.
I don’t expect State Farm to pay for my oil change or fill my gas tank, why do we expect health insurance to cover a trip to the doctor for the flu? More people with only catastrophic insurance is the best answer, and I’ve already explained how to achieve that.
So because the government has strayed from its mandate we should go “all in” with a European style system?
No the best option is not a combination of the two because the government has the rule of law on its side, and which means its never going to play fairly. A big reason why private insurance is so high is because we are forced to take up the slack government health care creates by underpaying doctors. I think we are close if not more than half the people are currently on government health care, and at the most it pays about half of what private insurance does. If everyone’s care cost the same no matter their method of payment private insurance would go down drastically and the government would be paying far more than they already are. But then we’d have 3 trillion a year deficits instead of the 1.X we currently have…so we gotta keep sticking it to those with private insurance…:rolleyes:
Paying for their medical school means higher taxes so we pay them anyways. Either the gov pays it, and their costs are lower but its made up in taxes or we let them pay it, and doctors charge more.
Big pharma is a problem but guess who has created regulations and laws enabling the problems there? Return to the free market, and drug costs would go down drastically.
Enable us to buy insurance across state lines, and costs go down.
But hey its just a system designed to force private insurance out the door at some point, and everyone will be on gov health care. The percentage goes up a little every year…just a matter of time.
I am all ears. “natural economic law” basically dictates the outcome.
not necessarily. because as has been stated, the best healthcare will be the private healthcare. there are plenty of people in this country that could and would readily choose to pay for the private system to receive the top quality care.
Yes necessarily. On average, people will opt for the least expensive method. They have no way of judging the quality of future care.
This is why Wal-Mart does so well. Often inferior products and definitely inferior service but price reigns supreme.
your crystal ball told you so?
function of normal economic law. Most people most of the time will act in their own best interest (as they perceive it). No matter what govt does, that simple fact trumps all effort by the govt to make the economy work the way they want it to.
That is one the problems with government health care. People lose all sense of the cost of their care, and no longer treat it as something of value. My wife’s aunt is a classic case of because its “free” she has no compunction about going to the doctor for every little thing and popping out 3 kids on the tax payer dollar, and that family will have their medical care paid by the state and federal governments their entire lives to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It has to take at least 5 productive members of society just to support their medical costs.
thats a new one