New Health Care system in USA

Nomad wrote:@ Ian

just wanted to say that if you privatize healthcare, the cost goes UP substatially. As you said they want to make money. CEO will be making mills in bonuses, maybe even billions.

Now if they can be more efficient they may can keep the same price as government did by cutting pay for workers to increase the bonuses to CEO's butr the price will definitely NOT go down.

To be honest i d find the price not going down hard to believe. People i think underestimate just how large the NHS is - or just what its budget is. We aren't talking a couple of dozen billion £, or a couple of 100,000 employee's - we are talking £119billion on the health budget in 2009, and 1.6million workers in the NHS within the UK. To put that into perspective - there are 62million people in the UK. That means for every 1 NHS worker there is 38.75 people. Do we really need so many NHS workers? More importantly.... the number of NHS workers involved in adminstration i.e. paper work & target setting and monitoring - has grown massively over the last 14 years.

The governments already identified these workers as being excessive and thus is going to cut them. Governments are compromised by political concerns - if they make a bunch of NHS workers redundant its pretty much garanteed those people won't vote for them in the next election - the same applies to political parties (so future governments) - the result? Often things which should and can be done to improve government provided service and the value of work provided for the tax payers £ isn't done due to political compromise. Privatisation wouldn't have these issues.

I m not saying that privitisation *IS* better than the continued nationally owned NHS - i m saying it should be considered and looked at indepth and properly by any responsible government/ party committed to cutting the UK's debt. Saying that privitisation IS bad/ has a negative impact however is precisely the sort of thing we should be trying to avoid - as it means the prospect of privitisation may never be taken seriously (which it isn't in the UK - any political party suggesting privitising the NHS without a strong argument to back up their stance will get massacred by the public), and thus never looked at - even if potentially it could be. We simply should not rule out anything based on "face value".

To put things into perspective of just how politically compromised the running of the UK is by the government i m going to give everyone a couple of examples regarding defence procurement - which as anyone in the UK knows our armed forces are under exstreme financial pressure right now, and thus potentially going to suffer extensive capability losses due to projects spiralling out of control. What few people however ask is why this is the case - considering the UK defence budget is eithier the 2nd or 3rd highest in the world (it varies between 2nd and 3rd highest depending on value of £ to $).

First off - the Type 45 anti-air destroyer. In order to basically maintain a British Military Ship-building capability we decided to have our own industries develop and build our next generation of destroyer. We were suppossed to have 12 of them - they were went to be top of the range stealth vessels armed with brilliant anti-air capability, anti-submarine capacity and anti-surface capacity. They should have cost about £800million each.

What we actually got? The type 45's were about 4 years late - consequently when the whole "war on terror" commenced the government decided to axe 6 of those warships... thus the Royal Navy is only going to get 6 of them. Due to cost overruns, the destroyers are now only being armed with the anti-air weaponry. They are "built for but not with" the capacity to have anti-submarine and anti-surface capability. They literally only have an anti-air weaponry and a couple of machineguns and a small shore-bombardment gun at the front. They cost about £1billion and £50million each (£250million more than they should).

For that price we could probably have gone to the USA and brought the Arleigh Burke class destroyer. Each of those costs about $400 - $500million. For the £6billion+ we spent on getting 6 type 45 anti-air destroyers, we could realistically have got about 12 - 14 Arleigh Burke class destroyers... which are probably the world's most powerful class of destroyers out there (armed with the whole range of weapon systems). On top of that - given the US Navy operates a ton of the things... it means the maintainance and upgrade costs would have been far lower than it will be for the type 45's - simply because of the economy of scale we are talking about (plus if the RN had purchased a bunch of the destroyers i m sure the US Navy would have loved the chance to share research and development costs for future upgrades to them - reducing the financial burden on *both* navy's).

Then there's the euro-fighter. Designed to fight the soviet Union... thought up and designed in the 1980's - and so delayed and late it completely missed the cold war... got renamed to be the "Euro typhoon 2000" - hoping the 2000 name would help hide how delayed it really is..... and then missed that deadline now, and is only now just starting to arrive in active service with the RAF. This was an entire political project - designed to collaborate with our european neighbours in the name of maintaining a "european" defence capability/ industry... its a complete disaster. The projects cost the Ministry of defence about £20billion and given us a bunch of aircraft which are useful only in the air to air role - they have very limited ground attack capacity (so aren't much use in Afghanistan) and can't be navalised (so can't operate off an aircraft carrier). It ll cost another £5billion+ to develop the RAF's fighters to have a decent ground-attack capability. For that £20billion we could have brought a ton of other generally far more useful/ versatile aircraft with both a decent air and ground attack capability.

Then there's the astute nucleur attack sub capacity. Its probably the best attack sub out there now... but it was hopelessly delayed and over-budget. The first of the class (HMS Astute) is only now entering service... 2 years late. It costs £1billion+ for each sub... and the RN may only get 7 instead of the planned 8 due to the cost overruns. We also had to have US help in the initial construction of the first submarine (HMS Astute) due to our own domestic nucleur-attack sub capacity was all but destroyed due to lack of work. The Astute programme has basically rebuilt the UK's nucleur attack submarine industry again. We could have got much cheaper sub's by ordering from the USA - and while these would have been *marginally* less advanced (simply because the Astute class is a more recent design), the savings in funds would have more than compensated for this... as it would have meant we could have operated more than just 7 or 8 attack subs. Again - the defence budget was a political tool.

Then there is the new "super" carriers being built in the UK - 2 of them. The Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers. These should only have cost £1.9billion each - but due to the MOD budget being so overstretched (pretty much due to all the above projects and a ton of other's i ve mentioned going over budget, coupled with the Iraq & Afghanistan wars) - the decision was taken to delay the Carriers by a year in order to ease the pressure of the budget in the short term. The result? Both carriers are now going to cost £2.5billion... all because of the 1 year delay, they ll cost £1.2billion more between them. The carriers will normally operate 40 Joint Strike Fighters and 5 other aircraft off them. They can probably surge maybe up to 70 Joint Strike fighters (provided they are the short take off and vertical-landing variant, as oppossed to conventionally launched one's) in the event of a emergency (I.e. another Falklands War). For the cost of £5billion we could almost certainly have made a arrangement with the US to have 2 or 3 Nimitz Class Carriers built for us - since building 3 new carriers would help keep the US Carrier Ship-building industry alive, which in turn would help reduce costs for the US's own carrier project (the ford class carriers i think?). The Nimitz class are nucleur powered (the QE2's aren't) and can carry up to 100 aircraft.... with the £ to $ exchange rate, we could have probably got 3 BETTER carriers with the same funds - but instead are going to only get 2 much worse carriers... all for political reasons of keeping jobs within the UK.

The result of all the above political decisions is that the UK armed forces are now consistently under-equipped in MAJOR equipment. In terms of the basic infantry/ soldier our troops are now really well equipped generally (7 years of war in Afghanistan/ Iraq and emergency government spending to get our troops well equipped has finally yielded the results) - but the Royal Navy's escort force is down from 35 major surface vessels down to 24. Our carriers are down from 3 to 2. Our attack subs are down from 12 to 8 (potentially to drop to 7). Many of these are still old vessels which are having to last much longer than anticipated due to their replacements eithier being delayed... or outright cancelled. Its possible in 2020 the RN will have just 20 major escorts left. All pretty much due government decisions to use the DEFENCE budget to fund British Jobs to maintain British Industry - at the costs of actual defence capability. The end result is inevitably the loss in capability will cost British Lives at some point in the future i.e. such as another Falklands war happening and due to the lack of carrier-borne AWACS available (our current carriers can't operate conventional awacs, and the future QE2's will have to operate a special type of vertical take of AWAC) Argentinean aircraft managing to get through the fleet defences and bomb a landing ship - killing a lot of soldiers.... and sadly this actually happened in 1982 with the Sir Galahad. (Uk defence spending being used to prop up UK industry has been happening for a long long time unfortunately).

These are just examples. If the UK government is willing to massively compromise the efficiency and capabilities of a service so vital to the country's well being as the armed forces, for the sake of political gains - then don't think for a moment other government departments - i.e. the NHS - are going to be any different. The entire UK government/ adminstration system is woefully incapable and inefficient - in large part due to political meddling and political concerns taking priority

just wanted to point out i wasnt disagreeing with anything you said, other then the price might drop, because it wont.

FarleShadow wrote:

skyfighter wrote:"I'd rather pay insurance and have less tax than pay more tax and help Ms. McBabyFarm have her 13th kid."

That shows how many people are so selfish that they rather have a few more bills in their pocket than helping someone who is dying. No wonder with people like you it's gonna be hard to make humanity advance for the well-being of their citizens instead of having the bigger house/best car in town.

The pace of humanity's development is inconsequential to the question of 'Do we support the lowest common denominator?', in fact, by supporting the LCD you are infact draining away resources that could be otherwise used to advance science or support educational programs. The assumption that I 'want a bigger house/etc' is incorrect, I would be more than happy to contribute some of my tax towards any portion of society that can't work but makes an effort to be even alittle productive or assisting to the society that supports them.*

But what I can't fucking stand is the idea that I should pay my money towards people who are clearly able yet completely unwilling to do anything other than hoover up any handouts they get.

If that makes me a cunt, so be it.

*Extremely disabled/incapable of work excluded, they can 'live' for free.

Advanced technology is useless, if common people cannot benefit from it.
What does it help you that a country has the most modern medical equipment and can treat almost any health problem, if you have a sickness that they will not treat, only because some greedy pig from your insurance company made a policy to reject everyone they can, or the hospitals ask for a price which no insurance company covers and your government doesnt guarantee you the best health care they have!

An ordinary citizen should not get worse medical treatment than the president of the same country.

You measure a countries progress by its poorest.

You are trying to make a picture that people who are unemployed are lazy and unwilling to work.
Even though it is true for some unemployed, the majority are unvoluntarily unemployed.

kingkongfan1 wrote:And I do enjoy the rather communism-esqe idea you have about 'hard working people'.

I thought it was common knowledge that Kenzu is communist...

I think it's common knowledge that assumptions arent facts.

Supporting free health care and free education doesn't make one a communist.

May I know how you came to such a conclusion?

¤ Angel Slayer wrote:I think it's good that all americans will have health insurance, "But only if they want it".
I don't think they should be forced to have any health insurance if they don't wish too.
Pretty sure Obama won't be serving a second term lol, Republicians will probally be rulling the House in Nov. Elections, This "World" is so F'd up it's insane, Not just america, but every where on this whole planet, I say we get rid of all goverments, all police and laws, all cars/trucks,companys/planes and ships, and we go back living the way things used to be, Have no wars for we arn't devided, We are as one people, the human people,
No bombs, No guns, Just bow n arrows and a knife to hunt with, No taxes to buy or sell or to live, Live in tents, get rid of all the buildings and factorys, Live simple lives and the world will be cleaner and restore her beauty that we all destroyed, We'll be much healthier too. Ok I'm done lol
Have fun

I'm sorry, but I think there are too many short-sighted people, in terms of not planning ahead into the future, that a government should allow people to decide. Not sure if you know, but there are a lot people, in every country, who spend money as they earn it, and don't put anything aside, even if they could, and if they are not forced to have a health insurance, some people will not have and these people are much more likely not to have not enough savings to pay if anything happens to them.

Unfortunately the masses are not intelligent enough to foresee such obvious events as accidents, loss of job or long term sickness. That's why we have a government, so that it can provide basic welfare for everyone and make sure people don't kill each other and stirr chaos.

Here in Austria everyone has a social insurance, and it covers everything. There are laws which makes sure that everyone has a social insurance, even the poorest, long term unemployed. This makes things easier, because hospitals don't need to waste time on checking if someone has health insurance or not. Everyone gets treated. It costs the government on average 950 Euros per day to keep a patient in a hospital. All you have to pay is 5-10 Euros for the meals after you have been treated. Medicine costs you a maximum of 5 Euros, and it doesn't matter if it has been bought for 10 Euros, or 500 Euros.

kingkongfan1 wrote:And I do enjoy the rather communism-esqe idea you have about 'hard working people'.

I thought it was common knowledge that Kenzu is communist...

I think it's common knowledge that assumptions arent facts.

Supporting free health care and free education doesn't make one a communist.

May I know how you came to such a conclusion?

@Kenzu- you ask how I come to the conclusion that you are a communist? It has nothing at all to do with free health care & free education; as a matter of fact it has little to do with this topic at all. so at the risk of spamming this thread I state the following...
I as you well know am an EX- World Republic(o) alliance member; that gave me access to the "World Republic(o) forums" which in fact turned out to be a platform for your real life political beliefs that had nothing to do with this game. I read endless forums where you & others would discuss how great communism/ socialism is. There is even a thread trying to recruit members into the komsomol; a real life communist youth organisation. Now to be honest, I don't have any "hard" evidence as I didn't make copies of anything I looked at, but there are other players in this game who had the same access as I & read the same things as I, so I don't feel the need to prove anything. I personally think that you lean more towards socialism, but in my opinion they are the same. BTW- I really like the new look of the World Republic(o) forums...

kingkongfan1 wrote:

kingkongfan1 wrote:And I do enjoy the rather communism-esqe idea you have about 'hard working people'.

I thought it was common knowledge that Kenzu is communist...

I think it's common knowledge that assumptions arent facts.

Supporting free health care and free education doesn't make one a communist.

May I know how you came to such a conclusion?

@Kenzu- you ask how I come to the conclusion that you are a communist? It has nothing at all to do with free health care & free education; as a matter of fact it has little to do with this topic at all. so at the risk of spamming this thread I state the following...
I as you well know am an EX- World Republic(o) alliance member; that gave me access to the "World Republic(o) forums" which in fact turned out to be a platform for your real life political beliefs that had nothing to do with this game. I read endless forums where you & others would discuss how great communism/ socialism is. There is even a thread trying to recruit members into the komsomol; a real life communist youth organisation. Now to be honest, I don't have any "hard" evidence as I didn't make copies of anything I looked at, but there are other players in this game who had the same access as I & read the same things as I, so I don't feel the need to prove anything. I personally think that you lean more towards socialism, but in my opinion they are the same. BTW- I really like the new look of the World Republic(o) forums...

I didn´t expect such a long explanation. Nice to see it nevertheless. As you know that was a political forum, and all political views were admitted (with the exception of fascist ones of course). Most forum members have been admitted to komosomol after reaching a certain post count and certain level of experience. About the Komsomol thing: It refered to a group for veteran members and is unrelated to real komsomol.

PS: There is a huge difference between communism and socialism, but it is unrelated to health care system in USA, so let us please remain on topic.

Kenzu wrote:

FarleShadow wrote:

skyfighter wrote:"I'd rather pay insurance and have less tax than pay more tax and help Ms. McBabyFarm have her 13th kid."

That shows how many people are so selfish that they rather have a few more bills in their pocket than helping someone who is dying. No wonder with people like you it's gonna be hard to make humanity advance for the well-being of their citizens instead of having the bigger house/best car in town.

The pace of humanity's development is inconsequential to the question of 'Do we support the lowest common denominator?', in fact, by supporting the LCD you are infact draining away resources that could be otherwise used to advance science or support educational programs. The assumption that I 'want a bigger house/etc' is incorrect, I would be more than happy to contribute some of my tax towards any portion of society that can't work but makes an effort to be even alittle productive or assisting to the society that supports them.*

But what I can't fucking stand is the idea that I should pay my money towards people who are clearly able yet completely unwilling to do anything other than hoover up any handouts they get.

If that makes me a cunt, so be it.

*Extremely disabled/incapable of work excluded, they can 'live' for free.

Advanced technology is useless, if common people cannot benefit from it.
What does it help you that a country has the most modern medical equipment and can treat almost any health problem, if you have a sickness that they will not treat, only because some greedy pig from your insurance company made a policy to reject everyone they can, or the hospitals ask for a price which no insurance company covers and your government doesnt guarantee you the best health care they have!

An ordinary citizen should not get worse medical treatment than the president of the same country.

You measure a countries progress by its poorest.

You are trying to make a picture that people who are unemployed are lazy and unwilling to work.
Even though it is true for some unemployed, the majority are unvoluntarily unemployed.
.

So any scientific equipment that the 'common people' cannot directly benefit from is considered useless huh?

The idea of scientific progress is to advance our knowledge, which has the useful side effect of generating ideas or items that ARE useful to 'the common man'. The idea that it is somehow unacceptable to advance science because that money could go towards benefitting all is downright dark-age stupid.

So we're on to those 'greedy pigs' now? Well, lets pretend the government runs the show, that government has only a limited budget, that budget is spent on healthcare, HOWEVER, that same 'common man' requires a highly expensive colon cancer treatment (for example), the government's limited budget means they cannot afford to give one particular man preference over everyone else with colon cancer.

Result? Nobody gets the highly expensive treatment. The UK Government has the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) doing just that, looking at drugs that treat disease and making clinical decisions on which drugs should be approved for utilisation on the NHS in a cost/benefit, which also means several drugs (Several notable stories) have not been approved because they are inefficient or utilised for extremely rare cases of rare diseases. The only difference between either system is that Insurance companies are for-profit organisations so it is far more newsworthy to report about them than the government.

And, with any system there will always be a group of people who are capable of work, but don't want to, yet recieve benefits for it. You can't stop some people from refusing to work, I just believe we shouldn't be supporting no-point drains on the economy.

And yes, there are people out there who want jobs, but especially in the UK, they only want certain jobs. A prime example of this is the influx of Polish workers, of which I have no problem with, who can easily find employment because most UK'ers find jobs like dishwashing, cleaning, low level jobs unacceptable and the system allows them to ignore perfectly good employment and still sustain a reasonable lifestyle. Its even come up in the news for God's sake about how people are refusing jobs they believe are 'below them' even though they lack any decent qualification to get better ones.

Kenzu wrote:

kingkongfan1 wrote:

kingkongfan1 wrote:And I do enjoy the rather communism-esqe idea you have about 'hard working people'.

I thought it was common knowledge that Kenzu is communist...

I think it's common knowledge that assumptions arent facts.

Supporting free health care and free education doesn't make one a communist.

May I know how you came to such a conclusion?

@Kenzu- you ask how I come to the conclusion that you are a communist? It has nothing at all to do with free health care & free education; as a matter of fact it has little to do with this topic at all. so at the risk of spamming this thread I state the following...
I as you well know am an EX- World Republic(o) alliance member; that gave me access to the "World Republic(o) forums" which in fact turned out to be a platform for your real life political beliefs that had nothing to do with this game. I read endless forums where you & others would discuss how great communism/ socialism is. There is even a thread trying to recruit members into the komsomol; a real life communist youth organisation. Now to be honest, I don't have any "hard" evidence as I didn't make copies of anything I looked at, but there are other players in this game who had the same access as I & read the same things as I, so I don't feel the need to prove anything. I personally think that you lean more towards socialism, but in my opinion they are the same. BTW- I really like the new look of the World Republic(o) forums...

I didn´t expect such a long explanation. Nice to see it nevertheless. As you know that was a political forum, and all political views were admitted (with the exception of fascist ones of course). Most forum members have been admitted to komosomol after reaching a certain post count and certain level of experience. About the Komsomol thing: It refered to a group for veteran members and is unrelated to real komsomol.

PS: There is a huge difference between communism and socialism, but it is unrelated to health care system in USA, so let us please remain on topic.

@Kenzu- oh thats good, ask me a question off topic, then when I answer you; you proceed to scold me for getting off topic... score one for you buddy... & no when I started playing this game; I THOUGHT the WR(o) forums were related to the GAME that I was playing...
@everyone- did anyone notice that Kenzu has not said "I am not a communist" or "I am not a socialist"? or am I the only one that noticed that. I think my point has been proven. NUFF SAID...
@Admin- I apologize for the spam, I am done with this subject, & this conversation...

My apologies to all you players because I had said that I was done with this topic; but then again I told you guys, that I would update you on what was going on... so here goes...

Due to some new rule; my dr can no longer prescribe my meds, I have been told that I have to go see a pain management dr. at this time there are none who are taking new patients... guess who just got F.U.B.A.R.'d... so considering how F.U.B.A.R.'d our system is here in the good old U.S.A. mass murdering child rapists get better health care that a Redneck like myself can get... for those of you who don't know this; if you are incarcerated for any reason they have to give you the best medical, dental, & eyecare that the taxpayers money can buy & the criminals don't have to pay it back...

Now the way I see it I got three choices in this situation; 1) lay down & die... that ain't gonna happen... 2) find some deserving individual; rip his F.U.B.A.R'd head from his shoulders, & spend the rest of my natural life in prison getting the proper medical care that I need... 3) Attempt to change the system as it is now... been trying that for 20 years now & it ain't worked yet... now for ALL of you who voted that this was gonna make things better... I love you too... nuff said