44 Comments

1. Mike In WNY says:

   February 2, 2009 at 10:27 am

   If you look at the conclusions from that study, our number 8 ranking is not good.

   The United States of America came in at #8 – surprisingly low, considering that the American government model was driven by classical liberalism and limited government, and it has been the model for other countries pursuing free markets and individual liberties to follow. Unfortunately, recent government crackdowns on free press, increased restrictions on individual freedom, high personal and corporate income taxes, refusal to grant military prisoners a criminal trial and the rapid expansion of government all contributed to the US’s downward spiral away from being the ideal model of freedom.

   Universal Health care, and its myriad shortcomings combined with economic effects, will further erode our freedom ranking.
2. STEEL says:

   February 2, 2009 at 10:36 am

   Our system is crazy. Why are people against Universal health care? We live in fear of losing health care when we lose our jobs. That is not freedom.
3. hank says:

   February 2, 2009 at 11:10 am

   Population of Estonia 1.4 Million
   Ireland 5.9 Million
   Canada 33.5 Million
   Switzerland 7.6 Million
   Iceland 319,756
   Bahamas 330,549
   UK 60.975 Million (Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

   Total rounded off, 110million people in these 7 nations, or about 1/3 of our population.
   None of these 7 countries have the 12-15 million illegals living in it that would have to be covered too. Hell, Iceland is 94% Icelandics—racist bastards trying to keep a ethnically pure society!

   Sure, if your country has 300,000 residents, total social healthcare might work.

   320 million? I don’t see it.

   Do you want to be told which hospital you can be seen in? And you can’t go to any other? What if you don’t like the doctor that is assigned to you–Nope, can’t change it. What if you need a bypass because you’re arteries are clogged from too many chicken wings and greasy pizzas? Well, you did that to yourself, you’ll have to wait until a space comes open. Beds full? Well this is your assigned hospital, you’ll have to wait until someone gets better or dies.

   Sound Stupid? happens at VETERANS ADMINISTRATION HOSPITALS AND CLINICS EVERY DAY.

   Does health insurance need to be reformed? I agree100%. Socialized medicine isn’t the answer.
4. The Humanist says:

   February 2, 2009 at 11:12 am

   Standard conservative response:

   “Speaking of health, that Michael Moore is really fat.”
5. al labruna says:

   February 2, 2009 at 11:14 am

   Actually, the US does have the best health care in the world, as long as you can afford it.

   —-

   Family members of mine in a certain European nation were shocked to hear that if I need an ambulance, Ill end up paying up a $500 copay – or if I visited a hospital, I could sit in a lobby for hours before Im seen. Or if I got cancer, I could loose my savings and end up bankrupt.

   No matter what you think about the free market, you have to admit the system is broken, inefficient, and even a drag on our economy. After all, we pay more per person than any other nation in the world.

   That said, you would be foolish to believe that other healthcare systems are free of faults. But I might trade some of our faults for theirs.

   ___

   Pundit, Im not too informed on the Swiss system – apart from your link. However, Im very much in favor of the highly regarded and highly effective French system. It isnt quite as chock full of socialism as many would surely imply. Its full of innovation (and patents). There is a significant private investment within the sector, and much greater efficiencies bridging to public/private gaps.

   Of course, it is French, so that has scarlet letter seared upon its brow, making it almost a nonstarter for some – sadly (after all, what did those Frenchies do for us? beside being our greatest ally in our revolution – and those 2 world wars, lends us the colors for our flag . . . but now im in violation of rule #1)
6. al labruna says:

   February 2, 2009 at 11:22 am

   Hank, is 300k your ideal for a healthcare system?

   Great! Heathcare for everyone in Buffalo! Great for me, cause my healthcare was going up an additional $500 a month cause my wife and I are having our first kid. Talk about just in time.

   But where do you get these talking points from? Who said anything about rationing? The French dont ration – and are diverse, with large immigrant populations.

   I cant speak to every HC system on that list, but it obviously can be done effectively and more cheaply and cost less than we do here.
7. sbrof says:

   February 2, 2009 at 12:19 pm

   So true. When I studied in Germany I had better health care then I will ever have or be able to afford in the US. What a freeing idea that no matter what happens there is a health care system that will cover you. They also spend less per person on health care than the US but cover just about everyone with better service. It makes economic sense to create a universal healthcare.

   You can’t add up that list and compare populations but most of Europe or other industrialized societies with Unversal Healthcare added together would easily reach our population. So add France, Germany, UK, Swiss, Japan, + and the numbers speak for themselves. If anything our large population would supposedly make it easier and more efficient to provide health care… Ya know economies of scale and all.
8. Joe Blow says:

   February 2, 2009 at 12:49 pm

   So many problems could be solved if we joined the rest of the civilized world and universal health care became a reality.

   Case in point, there was a recent article in The Buffalo News detailing a widespread meltdowns of local governments as a result of providing retiree health care. This could not happen in Canada as municipalities do no incur this expense.. Implement universal health care. Problem solved.
9. Denizen says:

   February 2, 2009 at 1:12 pm

   Hank, I’d rather be assigned a doctor (this doesn’t even usually happen in universal systems) who will treat everything I need rather than have some corporate bureaucrat tell me I can’t get treatment because of an arbitrarily-determined “pre-existing condition.”

   I have a hunch that many Americans have the “I have mine” syndrome when it comes to healthcare, preventing them from seeing how the system as a whole is utterly completely fucked up. The aforementioned syndrome may subside when more and more Americans lose their jobs and suddenly have NO healthcare.
10. STEEL says:

    February 2, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    How can anyone defend a health care system which res6tricts a person’s access to seek live saving care based on his or her ability to pay
11. STEEL says:

    February 2, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    That should be
    How can anyone defend a system which restricts life saving care to only those who can afford it.

    NUTS!
12. STEEL says:

    February 2, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    I wonder what would happen if TV went to pay per view only!
13. Ray says:

    February 2, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    Corporatist medicine like we have now, socialist medicine like some here want (in reality we have some of both already)…same friggin thing in the end. It’s all lobbying for the taxpayer dollar, which drive prices up. The same common denominator is involved…government. Remove the government intervention from the equation and you have free competition for the consumer health care dollar—which drives prices down and creates better access for all.
14. Terry says:

    February 2, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    americans are much too much entranced by and enthralled with the need for medical care. I swear that some would rather see a doctor than have sex. Prune it all down and get people on the same page.

    It all became apparent to me when I strolled thru a cemetery in Boston and saw how many markers from the 1770s had ages of 70 plus….If those people could live into their 70s back then without the need for MRI’s, CT scans and every other damn test known to modern “medicine”, than so can I!

    Socialize it NOW!
15. mike says:

    February 2, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    I would like to know if they would still have two kinds of health care if this ever happens. private hospitals for the rich and then shit ones for the rest of us, sorta what hank said with the VA hospitals. But then maybe we could get the county employee’s into a more realistic realm, instead of the “free boob job” rider they get here at NCCC and other caddy plans.
16. al labruna says:

    February 2, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Lets not forget that the elderly already have socialized medical care (as well as the poor, children, disabled, etc), and they arent rampant bed shortages or rationing for that age group – nor have doctors been foreced to become govt employees.

    So before everyone goes screaming “Bolshevik”, ask your grandmother if she would prefer to go and seek private health insurance for her remaining years.
17. STEEL says:

    February 2, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    That is an interesting point Al. Interesting because the “oh so perfect” free market pretty much will not serve the health care needs of the elderly and has successfully dumped that market onto the taxpayer so that they are free to scoop up the young and profitable sector,
18. Byron says:

    February 2, 2009 at 3:20 pm

    The Freeners would probably prefer that health care be provided only to property owners.
19. Ray says:

    February 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    Byron, there are only two kinds of people, people that are their own property, free men that believe in making free judgments and free transactions, and then there are people that are the property of someone else, wishing for others to make judgments and transactions for them.
    The latter these days is a voluntary slave class, willing to be the property of some mystical all knowing entity called the government, believing it is the responsibility of the masta to protect and maintain them, at all times hoping foolishly that the whip won’t come down too hard.
20. Byron says:

    February 2, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Thanks, I enjoy Ayn Rand parodies.

    Oh – you were serious?
21. Byron says:

    February 2, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    In any case, Obama has promised to push serious health care reform, and I hope that he succeeds; even better would be if he succeeds over the objections of Congressional Republicans. The latter seem to be terrified of the prospect of lower and middle class people getting proper health care. I wonder why that is?
22. al labruna says:

    February 2, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    Ray,

    Dogma has never been good public policy, on the far left, the far right or the far libertarian. I don’t understand how the substitution is so often left unchallenged.

    Freedom is a nebulous and difficult to define thing, so its easy to throw about. Let me give it a try: Freedom to loose your home because you are sick. Freedom to slave for low wages to get enough crumbs to feed your family.

    Freedom is for those who can afford it.
23. STEEL says:

    February 2, 2009 at 6:13 pm

    Freedom to continue to pay your COBRA while unemployed so that you don’t lose coverage or the ability to get new coverage in the future for your pre-existing illness.

    Freedom to pay double for health coverage as an individual because insurers only want to cover groups.

    Freedom to file for bankruptcy because your health care only covers a percentage of the cost (this is common in most current policies

    Freedom to live with your head in the sand because you think you are covered by your employer. Pink slip will take care of that freedom.
24. Ray says:

    February 2, 2009 at 6:26 pm

    “Obama has promised to push serious health care reform, and I hope that he succeeds;”

    Byron, Oh ye of foolish faith, when has coercive political solutions to social and economic problems ever succeeded in anything but creating more harm and turmoil? Be careful what you wish for from your liberal elites, you’re likely to get it good and hard.
25. sbrof says:

    February 2, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    Ray, take a look at those systems in Europe… even the republican in you will see that it makes economic sense for Health Care to be be socialized (at least somehow)

    Just as highways, sewer systems, power grids were all created and run by the government only to eventually be deregulated and are all now crumbling with age because the ‘market’ of do it yourself means that proper maintenance if few and far between with almost NO functional upgrades being possible.
26. WNYPMH says:

    February 2, 2009 at 10:02 pm

    Where does everyone keep forgetting that universal health care only means that everyone has it. It doesn’t mean that the government runs it. We all have car insurance and the government doesn’t run that. You can have a free market approach to universal healthcare……
27. Jim Ostrowski says:

    February 2, 2009 at 11:27 pm

    “Freedom is a nebulous and difficult to define thing”

    Doing what you wish with what you own. That’s easy.

    The European countries you guys like to cite are generally committing demographic suicide (when they are not committing actual suicide out of the sheer boredom of living in a welfare state). Socialism can always last for about 50-100 years while it eats up the surplus wealth built up by the market.

    The health care “system” in the US isn’t remotely free market. If I had to quantify it, I would say on a scale of 10-1, 10 being free, 1 being socialist, it’s a 2.5. So can we all agree the US system sucks?

    The market rations health care with the price system; socialism rations an inferior, bureaucratized form of health care by the line or by simply not supplying various kinds of services at all.
28. Ray says:

    February 3, 2009 at 12:04 am

    sbrof,
    How could this make sense to me? It makes no economic sense. Nothing run by bureaucrats makes ANY economic sense. The feds can’t even run the Post Office except into the bankruptcy. What makes you confident they can run something as immense and complex as a health care system?
    You believe that those European socialist health care systems are solvent and less expensive than it would be in a government-free health care system? Based on what? Statistics that the governments put out? The WHO, Michael Moore?
    How can anyone know what it really costs for socialized healthcare? Does the taxpayer get an itemized invoice for what he’s paying for in so-called insurance or what he actually receives in treatment? Everything is hidden in monstrous unintelligible bureaucracies and budgets.
    What does leak out from time to time is news stories of scandals, budgets spent dry with patients then left to rot or given substandard care. Don’t listen to propaganda, do your own research. Learn to use GOOGLE.

    “highways, sewer systems, power grids were all created and run by the government only to eventually be deregulated and are all now crumbling with age because the ‘market’…” ????????????

    Explain this one. I didn’t know the “market” had anything to do with these things. Did the government sell these things to private entities somewhere along the line that I wasn’t aware of it and they decided the best thing to do with their investment was to let it crumble?
29. Denizen says:

    February 3, 2009 at 12:08 am

    Gee, the Ayn Rand fanboys are sure on the defensive tonight!
30. al labruna says:

    February 3, 2009 at 6:05 am

    Jim -

    “Doing what you wish with what you own”

    Thats great, as long as you own enough so that you are able to do something with it. Anyway why is freedom so tied to property?

    But anyway, we can agree that the healthcare system does have serious issues. Hey, thats something to start from.
31. Buffalopundit says:

    February 3, 2009 at 6:09 am

    The Freeners don’t realize that there are countries (Switzerland, for instance) that have a non-socialized-medicine means to obtain universal coverage. They are much happier parroting anti-socialist screeds mixed in with some nobody-brought-it-up nonsense about Michael Moore.

    Then, to conclude, they praise their notion of “liberty” to the high heavens, and argue that there is no debate to be had about it – their notion of “liberty” is God-given and their position is infallible.

    Universal health care coverage is coming, because we aren’t fucking Liberia. Instead of advocating for a system that has never been and will never be, they could be advocating for a system that is as close as possible to what they want. But that would mean conceding that universal health care is inevitable. Which it is, of course.
32. Jim Ostrowski says:

    February 3, 2009 at 8:56 am

    I was simply responding to the notion that freedom could not be defined. It’s rather easy to define. And I never mentioned God. I don’t base political views on religion. Those arguments extend no further than your co-religionists so they are not very useful.

    I’m not interested in debating the relative merits of our socialist/fascist system of health care (where for example, for-profit hospitals are illegal) and the slightly more socialist system of that dying continent, Europe.

    On our blog, we promote real freedom in health care against its real enemies like doctors such as the right to have a baby at home (which, ironically, even those statists in Europe recognize), or the right to use marijuana as medicine.

    Property and freedom–too big a topic but just ask the Palestinians if you can be free if you don’t own the property you stand on.
33. Janis says:

    February 3, 2009 at 9:21 am

    Freedom? Just another word for “nothing left to loose.”
34. hank says:

    February 3, 2009 at 10:40 am

    Those who scream for socialized medicine HAVE RARELY IF EVER EXPERIENCED it.

    One morning on a Marine Base, the Sick Call had over 90 Marines report, both males and females, in the waiting room. We Corpsmen took their vital signs and recorded their complaint of illness. The Doctor came out of his office:

    “How many Marines in here have colds?” about 40 stood up. Dr Says:
    If I treat your cold, it will be gone in 2 weeks. If I Don’t , it will be gone in 14 days–
    GET THE FUCK BACK TO WORK, and don’t come back unless you have a fever over 101.0 (which requires bedrest)

    Dr Says: How many WM’s have vaginal infections? (Yes, that’s what he said), and about 15 WM’s stood up. Dr told the Corpsmen: Give them all a tube of Monistat cream, and told the WM’s GET THE FUCK BACK TO WORK.

    Then he told the Corpsmen to start with anyone with a fever, bleeding or possible broken bones/sprains, and any one with VD can wait till the end.

    Wait 2-3 hours to get a Rx filled? FUCK YOU—IT’S FREE—NO GUARANTEE IT WILL BE FAST, OR OF GOOD QUALITY

    That’s Socialized Medicine. I’ll keep what I have.
35. Ben McD says:

    February 3, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Who in our society does not have access to health care?
36. Jim Ostrowski says:

    February 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    “Learn to use GOOGLE.”

    The irony is it’s the “ideologue” libertarians who do the actual research; the liberals rely on their heavenly good intentions, hopes and dreams.
37. Ray says:

    February 3, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    BP, I know something about the Switzerland system. Technically not a socialized system because the government doesn’t run the healthcare insurance system.
    Everybody is required to buy their own health insurance by law or face god knows what punishment . Everybody pays the same premium on the same package regardless of age or any preconditions.There are no employer based health insurance plans. From what I understand, If you are poor or the cost of you health insurance comes out to more than 10% of your earning, then the government subsidizes it. with other peoples money.. Almost 1/3 of the people are subsidized.
    The government negotiates with the insurance companies yearly to fix insurance prices, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit above what is agreed upon but the insurance companies are allowed to offer competing packages with various deductibles and incentives which at least gives the coerced customer some choices on cost. That in fact allows the insurance companies to make a profit regardless. At least that is a somewhat good thing because if they truly didn’t make a profit they would not be able stay in business in the long term.
    The Swiss system is second only to the U.S. in in wait times for care even though they have more doctors and advanced medical equipment per 1000 people. The Swiss also are second only to the U.S. in how much they pay per person for health care.
    The problem that the Swiss have as well as every country that has government intervention in health care including the U.S. is constantly rising costs. Special interest creep adds greatly to the problem. Because the government is involved, there always lobbyists looking for a piece of the action.
38. Byron says:

    February 3, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    As usual the Freeners are reduced to writing paeans to themselves, because no one else will.
39. Ray says:

    February 3, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    al labruna: “Thats great, as long as you own enough so that you are able to do something with it. Anyway why is freedom so tied to property?”

    Al, let’s take away all your property including whatever liberties you still have to run your own life as you see fit and we’ll see how much freedom you have. What do you think?

    Janis: “Freedom? Just another word for “nothing left to loose.”

    This is hate speech against freedom and liberty.

    Ben McD: “Who in our society does not have access to health care?”

    Nobody and we have $50 Trillion in long term unfunded liabilities to prove it.
    You don’t amass that kind of debt without living in a fiction that the government can take care of everybody without impending ruin. Like Bastiat said, “Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
40. dave-in-rocha says:

    February 3, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    “Property and freedom–too big a topic but just ask the Palestinians if you can be free if you don’t own the property you stand on.”

    Umm, I rent instead of own…. does that mean I’m not free?

    And I like how Hank describes health care in the MILITARY as if it’s exactly what happens to civilians with socialized medicine. Next he’ll try to tell me that under a socialized system the government tells you what time to get out of bed in the morning!

    All I know is that I never see TV commercials from my local fire department telling me that I should call them next time my house is on fire, because they’ll do a better job of putting it out than some competing fire department. Yet I’m constantly seeing ads from different hospitals telling me to choose them the next time I get cancer. It’s disgusting. It’s human life, not some frivolous expenditure that can be upgraded if I choose to pay for it.
41. mike says:

    February 3, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    Common hank who goes to the doctor for a cold? Oh i forgot marines strong back, weak minds, i dont blame the doctor for throwing them out.
42. Ben McD says:

    February 3, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    “Umm, I rent instead of own…. does that mean I’m not free?”

    It’s not the act of owning property that makes you free. It’s having the right to own private property, and do with it as you wish that makes you free.
43. Ward says:

    February 3, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    Well, there’s one major step toward healthcare exceptionalism — astounding tax cheat Tom Daschle has run away like the Knights in “Holy Grail”, withdrawing as HHS Secretary nominee, followed closely by similar tax cheat Nancy Killefer, briefly nominated as “chief performance officer” in the new administration.

    Not that being a tax cheat disqualifes you for service in the federal government these days, it would seem.
44. Byron says:

    February 3, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    Howard Dean for HHS!