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Near-universal Mexican Healthcare Coverage Results From Science-informed Changes
ananyo writes about improvement to Mexico's healthcare system. From the article: "A revamp of Mexico's beleaguered health-care system is proving to be a runaway success and offers a model for other nations seeking to reform their own systems, according to a review published this week in The Lancet (abstract). The key to the scheme's success is the way in which it has modified its reforms in response to scientific assessments of their effectiveness, the authors say. Launched in a law in 2003, the Mexican scheme was designed to sort out widespread inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the country's health-care system. Some 50 million Mexicans — nearly half the country's population — who previously were not covered by health insurance are now enrolled, leading the scheme's architects to claim that the country has near-universal health-care coverage. As well as the increased coverage, the scheme has seen the number of conditions treated under Mexican public health insurance nearly quintuple. Admittedly, the former health minister Julio Frenk, now dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, is a co-author on the paper."
So will I have to go to Mexico for my low price drugs now? Sorry Canada
What is this "it" you're referring to here? There are plenty of non-tanking countries with very good healthcare coverage.
Translation: "We did some things we thought would work, and then later we stopped doing the things that weren't working and did more of the things that were."
In an ideal world, governments behaving sensibly wouldn't make headlines.
. . . about a year and a half ago, and while it's not all bad, it's not quite as glowing as TFA.
“You have people signed up on paper, but there are no doctors, no medicine, no hospital beds,” said Miguel Pulido, the executive director of Fundar, a Mexican watchdog group that has studied the poor southern states of Guerrero and Chiapas.
The result is that how Mexicans are treated is very much a function of where they live. Lucila Rivera Díaz, 36, comes from one of the poorest regions in Guerrero. She said doctors there told her to take her mother, who they suspected had liver cancer, for tests in the neighboring state of Morelos.
Sounds like the problems the opponents to universal health care in the States are always worried about.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Would people really feel "forced" if there was a tax financed single payer system financed by taxes? Does someone feel "forced" to pay for police and other services with taxes? Would anyone rather have a private company to call in case of fire, than pay tax money for that service? Am I making a weird extrapolation between police and healthcare?
I don't know why people don't get it. The "free market" people out there love to say "government shouldn't mess with it" and usually, I agree except when government has no choice.
Any time there is an unlimited supply, the government needs to help. Such cases include matters like "copyright" and "patent protection." The supply is unlimited and therefore must be enforced by government to use other means to get people to pay for something with an unlimited supply.
Any time there is an unlimited demandm the government needs to help. Such cases include matters like healthcare, water and electrical service. People need what they need and it has little to do with market conditions. Often is is "use or die." Government needs to ensure that needs of the people are met before suppliers are allowed to exploit the need to gain unlimited profits.
It's interesting and amusing to me that many such free market proponents are great with government enforced or assisted items like copyright but not with health and power regulation. "Only when it serves their interests." So it's selfish humanity as usual... and in the end, that's why we have law in the first place -- to help us to act against our own nature.
It's the same in any country with socialised healthcare though - if there are private facilities available, there's nothing to stop you paying to use them.
Here in the UK, you can use the NHS, or if you'd prefer to have dirty hospitals, bad food, the bare minimum of treatment and staff who cannot speak English and a view over the executive staff car park full of new Jaguars and Mercs, you could go private.
Making a profit is fundamentally incompatible with good healthcare. Something has to give.
Actually, you are making a weird extrapolation between police and healthcare. And yes, a lot of people think they are being forced to pay for police they do not call or schools they have no children in. And yes, some areas do call a private company for fire and emergency medical services.
The difference is that most people can agree that the police and fire are necessary but requiring a 22 year old in good health to spend money in case his health goes bad is not automagicly seen as a necessity. I have gone 15 years without seeing a doctor outside of a DOT physical and a couple of blood test required after a hazmat cleanup.
Here is the problem, when in good health, all people need is catastrophic insurance with a high deductible and a health savings account that can cover the deductible. Most of what they do that can be considered dangerous is already covered by workers comp when working or by car insurance when traveling somewhere and sometimes even by homeowners or renters insurance depending what policy you have and almost always when at another person's residence. That leaves a very narrow window where someone isn't already covered by some already existing entity if you are in good health. So most people do not see paying for the police in the same light as being forced to pay for something that is mostly redundant and probably not needed.
Does someone feel "forced" to pay for police and other services with taxes?
Yes, many libertarians.
Would anyone rather have a private company to call in case of fire, than pay tax money for that service?
Yes, many libertarians.
Am I making a weird extrapolation between police and healthcare?
Yes, many people don't see the connection between public safety and public health. And most of them are libertarians.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A healthcare system coudln't tank an economy unless people were forced to pay into it.
Single payer universal health care means healthcare is a figure in the budget, just like infrastructure, defense etc. If there is a budget deficit you have to cut down on something (infrastructure, defence, healthcare, whatever). People are "forced to pay into it" no more or less they are forced to pay into defense or infrastructure. Having too large expenses for healthcare is entirely possible, reasons can be for example if you have a shift in demographics where fewer young people pays for the healthcare of a large aging population (Japan has this problem whereas the US does not). This can cause economic issues, but the same can be true if you have an aging airforce.
>> Making a profit is fundamentally incompatible with good healthcare.
Why? It might cost more, but the USA is mostly profit driven, and it has some of the best healthcare available in the world. There's no universal coverage (hospitals can't refuse you, though), but as an individual "good healthcare" means that I get good services, not my neighbor.
If the government promised to people they better pay it. That will come out of someones paycheck.
Still the same as defense. Also comes out of someones paycheck. And what the government promises, they better deliver if they want to be reelected. You are still not making a point I feel.
... nothing. President Lawnchair signed the massive bailout for the health insurance companies (which was conveniently disguised as "health care reform") which ultimately left us with the same broken system, but with people now forced to buy into it. We still have no standard of care, and nothing that actually resembled universal coverage.
And now to further accentuate how ridiculous that is, the Mexican government just beat us to health care reform as well. A significant portion of their country is embattled in violent conflict in the drug war, yet they can pass health care reform. Up here, we can't pass it because of a collection of idiots who are afraid of (their own lack of understanding of) "socialism".
Yeah, go ahead. Mod me down. I can take it. At least I said my piece.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Seriously? You're seriously asking that question?
In the civilised world, we view people who refuse to help the sick and injured as evil scum. In your country you may be happy with people dying, untreated, on the streets. YMMV.
Only an American could ask that with a straight face.
"It's just that today... where do you honestly want to be treated?"
Any country that won't bankrupt me to do so. Because there's no point in being treated if you then have nowhere to live, recuperate, no life to enjoy after and have to work (while in ill health) for the next 20 years to pay it off. I would love to be treated in a perfect hospital with every medicine and treatment available and have it all done while people bring me cocktails and rub my feet. Of course. But the truth is that it's a choice being PAYING LOTS OF MONEY and being treated okay, or PAYING NOTHING and being treated when necessary.
If I cut my finger, I'll do it myself.
If I sprain my leg, I'll do it myself or walk into a hospital if it really develops complications.
If I break my leg, I have to go to hospital.
If I break my spine, I have to go to hospital.
If I get cancer, I have to go to hospital.
At no point would I ever *PAY* for those services. Think about that. I get cancer, I probably have 10-20 years at most if it's serious and will never truly rid myself of it, and I get ALL my treatment paid for me. How much would that cost on insurance, and how much would that cost if you had no insurance and had to pay cash? Now what if I'm diagnosed with, say, cerebral palsy at birth? How much is my insurance going to be then? Have you even SEEN the cost of quite basic medical treatment?
My country, the UK, is shit and wonderful at the same time but wouldn't expect a dying man to pay for his own care (maybe his car parking at the hospital, but that's a minor issue in comparison). The hospital might be crap. It might have worse care rates than private wards. The staff might be belligerent. But I'm not running up debts that I will never be able to pay while I'm laying there unconscious and can't do anything about it.
In the UK, the healthy pay for the sick.
In the US, the healthy pay (next to) nothing and the sick are left to fend for themselves.
Nice attitude to humanity, there.
I never to sit there, adding to the stress of my illness, with what might happen to my insurance payments, or my house, or my family, or anything else.
Sorry, given the choice, I'd go to a hospital where the treatment is "free" and the only cost is the queue and the waiting time. Because the simple, economic fact is that *I* cannot afford to pay for anything serious (and wouldn't go to hospital for anything that wasn't) and I already pay as-much, if-not-more tax than the US and we do just fine on "free" healthcare.
Literally - if I went on holiday to the US I have to buy a travel medical insurance that I *NEVER* have to purchase in the EU. Because if I break my leg in Spain, the treatment will be paid for by the UK. If I break my leg in the US, they won't pay (because of your ridiculous healthcare arrangements) and I have to BUDGET THAT INTO MY HOLIDAY. If I fall into a coma in the US, whether my fault or not, that's me bankrupt back in my own country trying to pay off the US medical bills. Or I can pay a fortune for insurance that NOBODY in the EU requires me to have. (And, yes, US residents are charged for the cost of their healthcare in the EU but they are used to it!). I actually have to take it into account just holidaying in the US.
Either pay for everyone's healthcare out of my taxes, or ask me to pay towards everyone's healthcare as a separate payment. Don't pay for some of it out of my taxes, then make me pay for anything above a slight cold, and then make insurances compulsory, and then let insurers set the prices how they like (the point of insurance should be to cover EVERYONE for an equal price - i.e. if you all pay $100 a month, then the guy who needs a $10 operation gets it as does the guy who needs 100 $10,000 operations - otherwise you are just paying for your own healthcare).
And, in the UK, I have the option. I have complete, free, blanket NHS protection on anything I ever do. I can also pay fo
There are other reasons that health care is so much more expensive in the US, though... because they never instituted proper tort laws (in part because of the privatized medical system), doctors' malpractice and other insurance is a lot higher. This, in turn, gets passed on to the users of the system, and it becomes a vicious circle... people sue for larger and larger amounts of money because they won't be able to get insurance in the private system, and need to be able to pay the increased medical fees, but the stupidly large amounts of money they sue for (and their propensity to sue for things that they'd never get away with in the UK or Canada) are the reason that the medical fees are going up.
You are absolutely right that things are much cheaper per capita in the UK. They are in Canada and Australia, too, and pretty much everywhere else where universal health care exists, not to mention the other economic benefits of having a population with access to preventative health care. But in the absence of sane tort laws, introducing public health care in the US won't fix the problem, either.
I suppose you consider fertility treatments to be frivolous.
I hate to say this, but they ARE frivolous, at least when compared to other things such as cancer treatment.
Not to mention, you COULD just adopt... or do as you did, and pay for private care.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
I think we do have a right to healthcare, as well as food and housing, at least as long as the country can afford it. The wealthy already get to have luxuries because they're rich, why do they also get to have the necessities, like shelter, healthcare and food as well?
I also think we should cut our military budget by at least 90% before we start saying we can't afford to provide everyone with healthcare.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Homework: Discuss how this contradicts your belief that the free market is always the best solution.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
There are death panels in both socialized medicine and private medicine with health insurance, the question is whether they're manned by government-employed medical professionals on a salary, or corporate-employed statisticians with a vested interest in your death.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Medicare and SS spend more money than they take in, so to finance these pyramid schemes the gov't sells bonds.
SS takes in more than they make, you fucking moron. Which is where as these IOUs come from...the rest of the government borrows from them.
Jesus Christ on pogo stick, it's completely astonishing how many people are complete and total idiots.
Here, let me explain to you: You know how you don't have a job because you're too goddamn stupid to work a cash register? (And I also think it's unfair they fired you! Does it really matter if customers pay you or you pay them? Isn't it enough that money moves?) You know how you have to keep borrowing from your parents to pay off your credit cards? You know how they don't charge you interest?
They are, this analogy, social security, and you are the rest of the budget. And you are standing there arguing that they are borrowing too much and spending too much and will collapse, because look at all those IOUs they have from you! (IOUs are bad, right? So having IOUs must be bad, right?)
Hey, dumbass, it's you who have the problem, they're the people fucking bailing you out. The government has borrowed 2.7 trillion dollars from social security.
You get rid of social security, (even if we _don't_ pay it back, aka, we steal the 2.7 trillion dollars we've already borrowed, aka we default on US government securities), and in the future the rest of the budget is in a lot more trouble and has to borrow more, resulting in more interest. We borrowed $805 billion in 2011, so basically you're saying 'I wish we had to pay interest on an extra $805 billion each year!'.
And having stole 2.7 trillion dollars from our security holders (Even if said holders were ourselves), I can only imagine at what interest rate we'd have to offer on those added bonds. And our existing ones.
TL;DR: Conservatives think a place the government can, and has, borrowed money without interest (Instead of issuing bonds which do cost interest), is somehow causing the budget issues, and the fact that it has so much money is obvious proof that it is bankrupt.
(Medicare, OTOH, hovers on the line of taking in too much and too little, but is not separated out like social security and doesn't have a trust fund, so extra money just disappears into the general budget, and comes out another year, so it's harder to see that it's revenue neutral in general. People gasp and point out that it costs X billion dollars one year, and don't notice it made X billion dollars another. Right now, in a recession, yes, it's costing us.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I thought the Mexican healthcare system, was to come to the US illegally across the border, and get onto our welfare system...help drain Medicare, and clog up our Hospitals' Emergency Rooms....?
No, that's just a side result of the Mexican Jobs Program. The health care in Mexico is all covered, but they'd have to go home to use it.