National Public Health Week on April, 2024: universal health care essay?

National Public Health Week 2024. College of Public Health News National Public Health Week ... National Public Health Week

Hard to know where to start because nothing good to say about it, but you could point out that it always results in

RATIONED care (which means some folks are told they're not worth treating)

and

BANKRUPTCY.

A few facts you might want to incorporate--look at the larger work and it might give you ideas as well:

Canadian doc on UHC:

"...Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the health-care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,” he fumed to the New York Times, “and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. Day’s clinic, for instance, handles workers’-compensation cases for employees of both public and private corporations. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80 percent of government-funded diagnostic testing. In Ontario, where fealty to socialized medicine has always been strong, the government recently hired a private firm to staff a rural hospital’s emergency room.

This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain’s government-run health care dates back to the 1940s. Yet the Labour Party—which originally created the National Health Service and used to bristle at the suggestion of private medicine, dismissing it as “Americanization”—now openly favors privatization. Sir William Wells, a senior British health official, recently said: “The big trouble with a state monopoly is that it builds in massive inefficiencies and inward-looking culture.” Last year, the private sector provided about 5 percent of Britain’s nonemergency procedures; Labour aims to triple that percentage by 2008. The Labour government also works to voucherize certain surgeries, offering patients a choice of four providers, at least one private. And in a recent move, the government will contract out some primary care services, perhaps to American firms such as UnitedHealth Group and Kaiser Permanente.

Sweden’s government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80 percent of Stockholm’s primary care and 40 percent of its total health services, including one of the city’s largest hospitals. Since the fall of Communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany: increasing co-pays, enhancing insurance competition, and turning state enterprises over to the private sector (within a decade, only a minority of German hospitals will remain under state control). It’s important to note that change in these countries is slow and gradual—market reforms remain controversial. But if the United States was once the exception for viewing a vibrant private sector in health care as essential, it is so no longer."

"Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives"

The much lauded French system raises some questions as well. From their Embassy site (ambafrance-us.org) they state that 96 percent of the population receives free or 100 percent reimbursed health care. They state the system is part of their Social Security and is funded from worker’s salaries (60 percent), “indirect taxes on alcohol and tobacco and by direct contribution paid by all revenue proportional to income, including retirement pensions and capital revenues.” They state that it appears that health insurance pays less to its doctors in France than in other European countries, but that 80 percent of the public have supplemental health insurance, typically from their employers. If they’re providing so well for the needs of the public, why is there a need for “supplemental” health insurance for the majority of the public and what about the additional cost that imposes? The site states that the poorest have free universal health care, funded by taxes. Long-term illness sufferers are to be reimbursed for their treatments. They do have private clinics, as well as public hospitals, and not-for-profit healthcare. In fact, “private medical care in France is particularly active in treating more than 50% of surgeries and more than 60% of cancer cases.”

Private insurance, which the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) site said in a 2004 report, was held by 92 percent of the French, helps to cover both vision and dental care which are not well covered under the government system. “The public system is facing chronic deficits and recent cost containment policies have not proved very successful.” The government is interested in having more of the tab picked up by private insurance (Buchmueller & Couffinhall, “Private Health Insurance in France,” 2004, oecd.org).

So you can see, often, the "free" health care shoves off responsibilities onto the PRIVATE health sector as well. In fact, some info re: Canada:

"Comparing Canada with other industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that provide universal access to health care, a study released by The Fraser Institute in May revealed that Canada spends more on its system than other nations while ranking among the lowest in several key indicators, such as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes.

...

In 1999, Richard F. Davies, MD, described how delays affected Ontario heart patients scheduled for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. In a single year, for this one operation, 71 patients died before surgery and another "121 were removed from the list permanently because they had become medically unfit for surgery;" 44 left Ontario and had their CABG elsewhere, such as in the USA. In other words, 192 people either died or were too sick to have surgery before they worked their way to the front of the waiting line.

One of the reasons Canadians are slow to acknowledge the problems with their system is that general practitioners have been relatively easy to access and reasonably efficient at providing everyday services for common complaints, such as colds, sprains, aches and pains.

As time passes, however, more and more Canadians are confronted by the halting quality of their system when they face complex and expensive medical problems. They often cannot get timely or appropriate care for bone fractures, prompt treatment for cancer, or non-emergency surgery such as hip replacements. Their doctors complain that they are unable to help them and the government pleads shortage of funds.

...

Canadian physician frustration with their inability to provide quality and timely care is resulting in a brain drain. According to one poll, one in three Canadian doctors is considering leaving the country. A doctor shortage looms, as the nation falls 500 doctors a year short of the 2,500 new physicians it needs to add each year to meet national health needs, according to Sally Pipes, a policy expert formerly with the Canadian Fraser Institute.

Another casualty of the lengthy waiting periods is Canada's much-vaunted equal access to medical treatment. Even though medical emergencies allow some people to jump ahead in the waiting line — making others wait longer — a survey published in the Annals of Internal Medicine medical journal found that more than 90 percent of heart specialists had "been involved in the care of a patient who received preferential access" to cardiac care based on non-medical reasons including the patient's social standing or personal connections with the treating physician."

Jewish World Review June 11, 2004 written by Dr. Cihak

AND

"The biggest Canadian fiscal drain comes from the single-payer medical system. "Current model of health-care delivery leading us down the path to financial ruin," states the lead editorial in the Calgary Sun. Health-care costs would consume 50% of Alberta's budget by 2016 (according to the Fraser Institute) or 2017 (according to Aon Consulting, a firm hired by the Alberta government). Health care would devour 100% of the provincial budget by 2030, if present trends continue.

...

An estimated 90,000 Canadians sought medical care outside their country in 2005. The cry "no two-tiered system" could be replaced by "set our patients free," stated a lead editorial (National Post 9/18/06)."

Jewish World Review Dec. 1, 2006 by Dr. Glueck

So why no total collapse yet? Because “illegal, for-profit health-service centers” have “proliferated” in Canada and are so accepted that the head of one became the president of the Canadian Medical Association (“Individual Freedom vs. Government Control,” 1 August 2007, nationalreview.com).

Is it true the US Govt has issused a national public health emergency effective at 12:30 PM today?

Yes, but I don't know why. No one in the United States has died of it yet. In fact, some school children in New York have been confirmed of having swine flu, but the symptoms are mild and the children are recovering.

"Federal health officials said Sunday that 20 cases of swine flu have been reported so far in New York, Ohio, Kansas, Texas and California. Patients have ranged in age from 9 to over 50. At least two were hospitalized. All recovered or are recovering."

The students from New York attend St. Francis Preparatory School, with some of the school's students having visited Mexico on a spring break trip two weeks ago. Only 8 of the children actually contracted the flu.

I think everyone's overreacting.

Are you sure you want a national health system like Europe?

Naturally the dummycrats want a national health system to create more patronage jobs and hide the payoffs that national health will create. Look at the Canadian mess not to mention events in Europe and You can see why their systems do not work. The dummycrats want to force insurance on everyone but illegals and those in the underground economy will not pay anything. The young who do not usually get insurance will be given a hidden tax in the form of mandatory health insurance. More waste of money for less service. I am already getting ripped off for Medicare that I do not use and the Part D also rips people off because of the deductables and co pays.