Obamacare: Health Coverage In Name But Not In Practice
Sweden, with its universal healthcare coveage, has excellent quality medical care. The problem is getting access to it. Per Bylund writes at the WSJ:
According to the Euro Health Consumer Index 2013, Swedish patients suffer from inordinately long wait times to get an appointment with a doctor, specialist treatment or even emergency care. Wait times are Europe's longest, and Swedes dependent on the public-health system have to wait months or even years for certain procedures, or are denied treatment.For example, Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare reports that as of 2013, the average wait time (from referral to start of treatment) for "intermediary and high risk" prostate cancer is 220 days. In the case of lung cancer, the wait between an appointment with a specialist and a treatment decision is 37 days.
This waiting is what economists call rationing--the delay or even failure to provide care due to government budgetary decisions. So the number of people seeking care far outweighs the capabilities of providers, translating into insurance in name but not in practice. This is likely to be a result of ObamaCare as well.
...This is why Swedes over the past two decades have been rushing to purchase medical coverage through private insurance, which guarantees and delivers timely and qualitative care. Insurance Sweden, the country's national insurance company trade organization, reports that in 2013 12% of working adults had private insurance even though they are already "guaranteed" public health care. The number of private policyholders has increased by 67% over the last five years, despite the fact that an average Swedish family already pays nearly $20,000 annually in taxes toward health care and elderly care, including what Americans call Medicare.
The bottom line is we pay a vastly higher percentage of our GDP for healthcare than any of those socialist Europeans, for worse measurable health outcomes. Prostate cancer is cherry-picked for long wait times because it's generally a slow-growing disease with less need for urgent care.
The ACA doesn't come anywhere close to solving our healthcare issues in the long term, but it does get some folks help when they had none before. What's the US average wait time for an uninsured person with prostate cancer?
miker at April 18, 2014 3:00 PM
The bottom line is we pay a vastly higher percentage of our GDP for healthcare than any of those socialist Europeans, for worse measurable health outcomes.
First part is correct. Last part is a myth. First of all why should it be the government's business what I personally spend on my own health care? You only get to make the GDP argument if you concede that health care should be government run, and single payer.
We do not have worse outcomes. For big expensive medical problems, we have much better outcomes than those socialist models.
Hence, the large number of Canadians coming down here for heart surgery, and other life saving procedures.
Quality of life has a value, and a lot of those socialized medicine countries have quite a few blind elderly people, waiting in line for months and years for simple cataract surgery.
We don't have this problem in the US ..... yet.
Isab at April 18, 2014 3:56 PM
On the topic of cataract surgery, a friend of mine has relatives in Sweden. They came here to get the cataracts removed after being told the wait time would be about a year and his vision had already deteriorated significantly in the few months he waited for the appointment in the first place. He flew here on vacation, made an appointment for a consult, had surgery set for the same week.
My ex was from Canada and his parents routinely came to the US for medical care because it was much quicker/easier to get care.
On support forums for women with my clotting disorder most are unable to successfully carry children because they can't access the necessary care and treatments, and if they can, it's not soon enough to help them. I'll take our health system any day over that of some other country.
BunnyGirl at April 18, 2014 6:26 PM
Then another thing about socialized medicine most people ignore is population.
The population of Sweden is about 9.517 million and the wait time is months? That is the less than the population of NYC on a normal business day.
The Canadian population is 34.88 million. That's less than the state of California. They also have ridiculous wait times on the basic plans.
So somehow these great central planners, in Mordor on the Potomac, can come up with gold, silver, and bronze insurance plans for the rest of the 310 million serfs that are good for everyone?
This is the same great government that came up with NCLB, the TSA and the rest of the bureaucracies and social programs that have us $17T in debt and growing and still have millions living in poverty.
Jim P. at April 18, 2014 6:49 PM
You can have good medical care. You can have fast medical care. You can have cheap medical care.
Pick two.
marion at April 18, 2014 8:51 PM
I have no idea why anyone points to Obamacare as a success, even for those who previously had no "insurance".
Just how many of those touted as having care now, as a result of this government program, have actually received treatment?
At Savannah River Site: Five reactors, two materials processing canyons, a raw materials processing area, the generating plant to provide steam and electrical power, a pump house capable of over 1,000,000 gallons a minute and a heavy water plant were all placed in operation faster than the current federal government could install a single website while lying about what it provided.
Radwaste at April 18, 2014 11:03 PM
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596 Ok miker, here you go... if those other health systems were better, we'd expect the cancer survival rates to be higher there, but they aren't. Here's an explanation WITH linked annotation, in case you wanna see the sources...
SwissArmyD at April 19, 2014 11:28 AM
> I have no idea why anyone points to Obamacare
> as a success, even for those who previously
> had no "insurance".
Because —as your conditional implies— this was never about insuring anyone from anything. Universal insurance is a contradiction in terms.
The point of Obamacare was to take impulsive, executive-branch command of one-sixth of the economy.
For the man on the street who supported Obamacare, this command is a gratifying sense of control over the lives of others, no matter how illusory or corrupt that control may be.
For the men and women in government who supported Obamacare, huge fractions of industry and finance are now more readily exploited and manipulated.
Millions or hundreds of millions of people will literally suffer and be made impotent in the conduct of their own lives; but this is irrelevant to Obamacare enthusiasts. They got what they wanted.
For supporters, the website and enrollment and payments and all the rest are irrelevant: Obamacare is a smashing success, a game-changer for the flow of human history,
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at April 20, 2014 1:54 PM
And I hate having fucked that last period into a comma.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at April 20, 2014 1:55 PM
Although as a rule, I have no problem fucking a sentence in the heaviest part of its period.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at April 20, 2014 1:56 PM
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