From Cato:
I'll just adress the single payer part, as the entire document is terribly long and would take hours to go through.
Single-Payer Systems
One of the most dangerous health care reform proposals currently being considered is the call for a single-payer, government-operated, tax-funded system--the type of system, generally referred to as national health care, currently operated in Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere.
The word "dangerous" instantly alerts any reader that what follows is biased oppinion.
The legislation generally cited as the classic example of a single-payer health care plan is sponsored by Rep. Marty Russo (D-Ill.) and Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.). That legislation specifically establishes health care as an entitlement for every American citizen. Every person would be issued a national health card. Payment for all medically necessary services would be provided through a government- operated program, which would be funded by taxes. Benefits would include a plethora of medical services, including long-term care. The federal government would establish a national budget and individual state budgets for operating expenses, capital outlays, and medical training. Individual hospitals would operate on preset yearly budgets. Physicians would be reimbursed on the basis of fees determined by the government. The national plan would replace all current government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.(1)
A good summary of one particular bill adressing national health care. Not terribly relevant to the argument as a whole, as it's a single flawed example that even proponets of National Health Care had many issues with, but let's go on.
A single-payer national health care system would come at enormous cost to American taxpayers. For example, Russo- Wellstone would require employers and the self-employed to pay a tax equal to 7.5 percent of wages.
Disregards the lack of medicare/medicaid taxes currently paid by workers at present. The 7.5 percent number is intentionally misleading if not expressed as the diffrence between current medicare/medicaid taxes allready being paid. The number when considered as the diffrence is closer to 1.5 percent.
The top individual tax rate would rise from 31 to 38 percent. Corporate income taxes would increase from 34 to 38 percent.
I'd be in favor of this regardless.
Social Security benefits would be taxed at 85 percent rather than the current 50 percent. And the elderly would be assessed a $55 per month fee for long-term care.(2) Even those levies may not be enough to pay for national health care. Some economists put the cost as high as $339 billion per year in additional taxes.(3)
The tax structures bandied about in this arcitle, are let me say again, completely arbitrary and based on a failed bill.
The number from "some economists" comes from the Robbins, who currently work for the Heritage Foundadtion, a thinktank with an even more clearly articulated right wing bias than Cato. They're not close to impartial and not close to accurate. It's a worst case scenario number and may as will read "manny bajillions"
For all that tax money, we would buy surprisingly little health care. The one common characteristic of all national health care systems is a shortage of services.
Conjecture. Also inacurate. By all measurable statistics, many countries with national health care have signifigantly better services than HMO members in the US. Norway is a good example.
For example, in Great Britain, a country with a population of only 55 million, more than 800,000 patients are waiting for surgery.(4) In New Zealand, a country with a population of just 3 million, the surgery waiting list now exceeds 50,000.(5) In Sweden the wait for heart x-rays is more than 11 months. Heart surgery can take an additional 8 months.(6) In Canada the wait for hip replacement surgery is nearly 10 months; for a mammogram, 2.5 months; for a pap smear, 5 months.(7) Surgeons in Canada report that, for heart patients, the danger of dying on the waiting list now exceeds the danger of dying on the operating table.(8) According to Alice Baumgart, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, emergency rooms are so overcrowded that patients awaiting treatment frequently line the corridors.(9) Table 1 gives the average wait for various types of physicians' services in five Canadian provinces.
All footnotes are from sources typically tainted and anecdotal. It's a good example of what's called "echo chamber research". That is, only citing research from sources that have the same bias as the presenter of the article.
Not one is peer reviewed.
(ignoreing the table because it's a pain in the *** to work around typing-wise.)
Sometimes the rationing of care is even more explicit: care is denied the elderly or patients whose prognosis is poor. In Britain kidney dialysis is generally denied patients over the age of 55. At least 1,500 Britons die each year because of lack of dialysis.(10)
Sourve (10) is, unsuprisingly from a WSJ post written when Britian was in a bit of a health care crisis. It's over fifteen years old and not accurate at present, topical, or relevant. It would be like citing a source stating that US inflation was out of control from 1978.
Countries with national health care systems also lag far behind the United States in the availability of modern medical technology. It is well documented that in Canada, high-technology medicine is so rare as to be virtually unavailable.(11)
Vauge beyond belief. "High Technology medicine" could mean cloning for all the information the author offers to substantiate.
That comparison holds for other countries as well. Advanced medical technology is far more available in the United States than in any other nation.(12)
That's probably true, but there's nothing that ties that fact to anything but the enormus wealth of the United States. Certainly it's not an argument for or against any method of health care administration.
In addition to being biased against new medical technologies, national health care systems generally discriminate against nontraditional practitioners, such as naturopaths and chiropractors.
Conjecture, again. There's nothing to indicate that national health care systems are "biased" against new technology. The other argument is qualified with "generally" making it virtually meaningless. Were both arguments accurate, which they're not without massive qualifications, they still wouldn't have much to do with national health care in the US.
(13) Figure 1 shows the availability of some high-tech medical technologies in the United States, Canada, and Germany.
Furthermore, national health care systems do not control the rising cost of health care.
This is ture, allthough the article fails to mention that the main reason is that the US drives nearly all of the rising costs of health care.
Proponents of national health care make much of reported differences in the proportion of gross domestic product spent on health care by Canada and the United States. It is true that Canada spends only about 9 percent of its GDP on health care, while U.S. costs have skyrocketed to more than 14 percent of GDP.(14) However, such comparisons are seriously misleading.
I find it particularly ironic for the author to cite a misleading comparison here, but let's see where it goes.
Between 1967 and 1987 the Canadian GDP grew at nearly twice the rate of the U.S. GDP. Therefore, any comparison of health spending should be adjusted to compensate for the different rates of economic growth.
That's a ludicrous proposition. It makes as much sense as arguing that the REASON Canada's GDP grew so much faster was because of national health care.
Additional adjustments should be made for such factors as population growth; general inflation; currency exchange rates; the larger U.S. elderly population (the elderly require more, more expensive, health care); higher U.S. rates of violent crime, poverty, AIDS, and teen pregnancy; and greater U.S. investment in research and development. When all such factors are taken into account, Canadian health spending is virtually identical to that of the United States and has actually been rising faster over the last several years.(15) Indeed, Canadian public policy experts warn that health care costs are rising so rapidly that "they are crowding out every other public spending priority--social services, the environment, education. All are being shortchanged to feed an inefficiently organized health care system."(16)
An arbitrary qualification of hard numbers by creating the one single stucture where Canada's spending outpaces the US by manipulation of multiple factors without cause.
All in all the article tells me absolutely nothing on a factual basis, except that the position of Cato is that national health care would be a disaster.
I knew that, as I said previously, before reading it.
Happy now?
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