universal health coverage doesn't equate to wait times to see a doctor

when folks talk about quality of care, they usually mean wait times are worse in the rest of the world. (every other developed country covers everyone at half the cost that we do) the thing is, we know this isn't true just by lookin at the supply of doctors. we have a doctor shortage.... which means we suffer when it comes to wait times compared to other countries. doctors like to specialize to make more money... so we do slightly better with specialized care. if you dont believe this basic supply and demand statistic, just look at the study done by 'the commonwealth', a healthcare think tank, that measured wait times, and concluded exactly what i just said. 

we have ten percent of people uninsured. we know that they still receive care, just not as much. so adding ten percent more people to coverage isn't going to change much, even if they weren't already using care. 

no matter how you look at it, this universal healthcare equals wait times thing, is a myth. 

the solution to this is to let nurse practitioners replace general practitioners. However doctors are unethically fighting this. Fortunately though they are starting to lose in more and more states. 

Nurse practitioners are the future of medicine and are much more personable anyway

Plus anyone that reads the following article and still thinks we should move closer to socialized medicine, is evil https://fee.org/articles/if-american-healthcare-kills-european-healthcare-kills-more/

It means more dead and worse off. Every problem with our healthcare system, I can link to government interventionism.  Meaning they would all be solved by removing the interventionist policy

Plus anyone that reads the following article and still thinks we should move closer to socialized medicine, is evil https://fee.org/articles/if-american-healthcare-kills-european-healthcare-kills-more/

It means more dead and worse off. Every problem with our healthcare system, I can link to government interventionism.  Meaning they would all be solved by removing the interventionist policy

Sorry that your thread got ruined by a misleading propagandist.

I think, however, there is one small nugget of truth in what the right-wing of the US say when they argue that it won't work in America to fully socialise healthcare.

Not only is it a cultural thing, the sheer size and independent state-rights of America mean it can only be truly socialised within certain states. Instead, I think a system like what Germany has is superior for America to aim for; the insurance is subsidised, the hospitals themselves privatised and neither is fully publically available for free to those who can afford it.

This is also what Coal has been saying so I will tag him to explain more.

i questions the accuracy of the numbers in that article that you cited.

but even if they are accurate, i think he's cherry picking some fatality statistics to make the usa look bad. by some measures, the usa is worse, by some it's better, as far as fatality. we can't get an accurate picture just looking at some random examples. 

also, a lot that that article cited is specialized care does worse in the usa. i dont contest that, and i dont think anyone knowledgeable would contest it. but that doesn't mean socialized medicine is bad, it just means other countries shouldn't disincentivize doctors becoming specialists. we can have socialized medicine in the usa, without changing our doctor pay, and all those incentives. in a smartly run system, usa doctors would make close to the second highest paid country for doctors, but specialists would be incentived to speciaiize. i agree that it's hard to expect the government to do things competently, but all it would take to fix other countries, is to tweek specialist pay. dont throw the baby out with the bath water. 

even if there's a few tens of thousand of deaths per year more deaths elsewhere, that doesn't justify all the bankruptcies and people paying up the gills for their healthcare, and the fact that healthcare costs twice as much here. if it's the either/or propoisition you're offering, every other country is still better. i know it hurts your sensitive ears to hear it (joking), but a few lives are negligible when it comes to costing so astronomically much. i doubt you think one life is worth a trillion dollars extra that we pay per year, so i'm sure you have your limit to in what you'd accept. 

insurance should be minimized. i realize that most countries aren't single payer.... that is, they dont outlaw health insurance. but they do make it non-profit. they also put people into medicare type plans, that removes a lot of the insurance, and only have insurance for supplemental care, copays and such. remember, insurance pays 30% on the dollar for profit and administrative costs, whereas medicare only pays three percent on admininstration and has no profit motive. point being, insurance is middleman that should be minimized to increase efficiency. 

also, i am skeptical of single states running healthcare systems. the main way other countries make healthcare cheaper, other than minimizing insurance, is through regulating healthcare costs. negotiating and regulating.  if a single state tries doing that, it would cause medical providers to switch states, and the state that is trying to do it, would suffer consequences like that. it needs to be national to work  right. 

maybe the simplest thing we can do, given how hard it is to achieve universal care, is to just keep things as it is, except we regulate healthcare costs, and find a sensible way to ensure no one is uninsured, the remaining ten percent who aren't currently insured.