American Healthcare – A brief and uninterested overview

As we all know – probably – the US is currently working itself into a tizzy because the Obama administration is aiming to put through a set of reforms to the American healthcare system.

The basic issue, for those who haven’t bothered with this too much so far, is that currently the American system operates on a basis of health insurance, which works fine provided you can afford it.  The issue comes if you can’t.  Uninsured Americans are reliant on a network of free clinics and the medicare system, which will pay for the hospitalisation of patients who will die without treatment.

Whilst this initially sounds like a good system, or at least a perfectly reasonable system – you get health insurance, without this you only get treatment for life-threatening illness – but it has in built issues in that non-life threatening symptoms will sometimes elevate to become life-threatening if untreated.  An illness like cancer is essentially life-threatening, but only becomes an immediate threat when it’s just about to kill you. See?

The Obama adminstration is compiling ideas and devices that will at present amount to a combination of health insurance and the UK National Health Service system, offering a government sanctioned alternative to those who aren’t able to obtain insurance.  This is obviously expensive, and the American right wing is obviously opposed to this (I guess they all have health insurance and limited ability to give a shit about anyone else.) but I have one thing to point out to the opponents of the new proposals, stuck as they are in development stages at the moment.

The common objection to the new system is that it will raise taxes, and logically it may well, and people don’t want to be paying for someone-else’s healthcare.  Ok, if you like.  To these people who don’t want to pay for anyone else, if you already have insurance, you already are.

I don’t know if this point has escaped these opposers or if they simply never thought about how insurance works, but insurance 101 goes something like this:

A wishes to make provisions to provide for an occurance, so does B, C, D and so on.  Insurance company charges them all a small amount, in return for which, should the occurance occur, they will pay the victim party to cover any costs.  Over the course of the insured period, the amount paid in in fees exceeds the amount paid out to the few for whom the occurance does occur.

So the majority end up paying, and not claiming.  They pay out for a risk that at the end of the year, they just as well have not bothered paying for.

How is this different from paying extra tax in order for the government to insure your health?  Well, obviously the taxes are paid by the insured as well as the uninsured, but this is a menial difference at best, and a public healthcare system is an enviable idea overall.

Another idea being bounded around by the opponents to the proposals is that the UK system, heralded as the best example of a state run system (and it is, the NHS is the only system in the world that works quite like this, all healthcare is free, and health insurance is available but far into the minority) is being presented by the far right as if it were some kind of third-world style system, with huge waits and people dying on gurneys.

The NHS has had many issues, and has some still, mostly to do with the meeting of managers and doctors and the interesting way in which some of it’s funding is distributed (and if you want a good example of an NHS issue, Google ‘Post-code lottery’), but overall, the NHS is actually a pretty good system providing all life-saving treatment as standard, as well as preventative medicine for all potentially developing conditions and, well, you can get pretty much everything except cosmetic surgery pretty easily, and sometimes cosmetic stuff is also available.  All in all, for a pretty average tax rate, the NHS provides healthcare for 60 million people pretty well, and yes, we pay for each other and the rich pay more, but I don’t mind that I sometimes pay tax and don’t get ill.

In fact I prefer it if I’m honest.

Related posts:

1. American Child Beauty Pageants Arrive to the UK
2. Just a mo, you’re gonna treat sick IMMIGRANTS too?!