A similar outreach to poor rural and inner city folks by subsidizing Migrant clinics and other clinics has been less successful, and many inner city blacks distrust the medical system because of the Tuskeegee experiment (not to mention the snobbish superiority of a lot of docs, both domestic yuppies and foreigners).

Want to help people get healthy? Import IHS type people with cross cultural sensitivity to work in problem neighborhoods.

As for rural people, I quit rural private practice when my malpractice became higher than my take home pay. Again, subsidizing salaries and “respite” coverage would help docs settle in isolated towns…

As for obesity etc… there is an obesity epidemic here in Asia. Other countries are merely behind the curve…

Would the high homicide rate be due to the accessibility of guns in the USA? Oh, it can’t be. Americans just like to murder each other. Guns aren’t to blame.

Also, goy, in your link, especially on the shift from medical insurance as catastrophic to medical insurance as comprehensive. And the AMA’s encouragement of same.

Which has impacted the plethora of tests, see esp. scans, and how medical facilities pay for all the new high tech equipment.

Naturally, your average patient wouldn’t be able to effectively handle those kinds of costs out of (personal) pocket. But the deep pockets of government and insurance quickly “shell out” for tests that doctors have managed to get onto “approved” lists.

So, then, you should countersue for the EMTALA violation, yes?

(2) The system in Japan may work because it only treats Japanese people, who tend to take pretty good care of themselves and who are smart enough to read and understand the directions on the medications that they are given. Recent studies have shown that a significant portion of America’s underclass is UNABLE to read, understand, and follow the directions for their medications.

(3) German doctors often fly to England for the weekend to make extra money by working shifts in English hospitals because they are underpaid in Germany. Which means that they are exhausted whichever country they are working in.

(4) Today’s Telegraph or BBC online (can’t remember) had an article stating that most of this year’s crop of graduating doctors in Britain do NOT have jobs lined up even though the country desperately needs additional doctors. Apparently, the older doctors who have their own practices are afraid to hire any additional help because the government is opening new “polyclinics” and it is not known how much “business” the polyclinics will take away from the established medical practices. In Britain, the government is always setting “targets” for the health service to meet that lead to adverse outcomes. Example: The government told the hospitals that they had to treat everyone coming into the emergency room within a certain amount of time. Result: The hospitals ONLY unload ambulances when they are certain that they will be able to provide treatment immediately. In some cases, the ambulances are lined up outside the hospital for hours, unable to leave and provide ambulance service for others because they can’t unload the patient they already have. If you need an ambulance, there aren’t any available, they are all parked in front of an emergency room somewhere.

(5) Canada’s system only works because they have the hospitals of the Northern USA to provide neurosurgery and high-risk obstetrical care when their own overburdened system blows a gasket, and because wealthier Canadians often purchase U.S. medical services out of their own pockets. If the USA adopts socialized medicine, what country will handle OUR shortages of care? Mexico?

(6) I have had retired relatives on Medicare who had oodles of leisure time, and made all sorts of medical appointments for VERY minor medical problems. If you have “high” co-pays, people are going to complain that the poor are shut out of the system. If you have “low” co-pays, or no co-pay at all, I guarantee you that many of the elderly people in my neighborhood will visit at least one or two doctors each and every week. Lonely people LOVE to go to the doctor, and if it is free, they will abuse the system. Offer them free ambulance rides, and emergency room visits, and they will take lots of free ambulance rides and go to the emergency room on a regular basis. Showing up in the emergency room is often a way for them to get a visit from their children and grandchildren and to be the center of attention.

(7) I have no medical insurance myself, and I have had some serious problems. I think that the government should do something about the fact that the pharmaceutical companies seem to sell affordable drugs everywhere in the world except the USA, but having the government provide “free” medical benefits in our country, with its open borders, will be nothing short of a disaster.

Same here. Same with everyone I know who’s even close to my age.

But then catastrophic coverage morphed into comprehensive coverage. And our skyrocketing health costs woes began as a direct result.

$80 sound low to me. Most people have no idea how much a visit to their doctor actually costs. The only thing that registers is the “co-pay”.

Always interesting to compare, for example, Castro’s “healthcare” (an entire wing of a hospital just to treat the old boy and a special treating physician imported from Spain during his gastrointestinal crisis)with that “healthcare” the average Cuban might receive.

I’d be hard pressed to believe that politics doesn’t play a role in treatment/medical options in any country, regardless of universality of healthcare.

I’d be hard pressed to believe that in the US Ted Kennedy (for his own condition and the medical trials of 2 of his children) doesn’t have access to options largely unavailable to most citizens.

I don’t think the “universality” of healthcare would affect these sorts of imbalances in any country.

Anyway, Canada and Great Britain are currently wheeling under the weight of the bureaucracy and costs of their longstanding systems.

When I was young, we (not a wealthy family) could pay for routine healthcare. Insurance was for catastrophic illness and was rarely used.

Now, even a routine 5 min. with a doctor costs an insurer something like $80, up from the $40 basic office visit of just a few decades ago.

So out of whack, everything is.