General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSocialized Health Care in a Red State
Most people in the United States dont really know what the Canadian health care system is all about. And they certainly dont know that the Canadian national health care systemcalled Medicare in that countrybegan not as a national system, but as a provincial experiment...
Now, 50 years later, Montana has implemented a remarkable program to provide socialized health care to state employees. They dont call it socialized health care, but just put two and two together as you consider the following remarks from a story on National Public Radio from last July:
Montana opened the first government-run medical clinic for state employees last fall. A year later, the state says the clinic is already saving money.
Note that Montanas experiment is not a single-payer insurance plan. Its actually socialized medicine, as the NPR report makes clear without stooping so low as to use the S word:
The state contracts with a private company to run the facility and pays for everythingwages of the staff, total costs of all the visits. Those are all new expenses, and they all come from the budget for state employee healthcare. Even so, division manager Russ Hill says its actually costing the state $1,500,000 less for healthcare than before the clinic opened.
Physicians are paid by the hour, not by the number of procedures they prescribe like many in the private sector. The state is able to buy supplies at lower prices. Because theres no markup, our cost per visit is lower than in a private fee-for-service environment, Hill says.
Bottom line: a patients visit to the employee health clinic costs the state about half what it would cost if that patient went to a private doctor. And because its free to patients, hundreds of people have come in who had not seen a doctor for at least two years.
And, in a telling comment about what can happen when life experience contrasts with the free market ideology with which we are constantly propagandized, we have this comment:
Pamela Weitz, a 61-year-old state library technician, was skeptical about the place at first. I thought it was just the goofiest idea, but you know, its really good, she says. In the last year, shes been there for checkups, blood tests and flu shots. She doesnt have to go; she still has her normal health insurance provided by the state. But at the clinic, she has no co-pays, no deductibles. Its free.
Had Obamacare included a public option that looked anything like Montana, we might be hearing comments like those of Ms. Weitz from every corner of the USA. Could Montana be our health-care Saskatchewan?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/08/socialized-health-care-in-a-red-state/
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Under the UK's NHS it's more closely related to the latter - per patient plus other odds and sods....annual checkups, vacs etc. Our doctors / general practitioners here don't work for the NHS : they do work on behalf of the NHS.
The system in Montana sounds closer to the Dutch system whereby all medical work is carried out privately but on a non profit basis.
Wounded Bear
(58,649 posts)We'll never truly get costs down until the profit motive is totally removed from the system, at least for non-elective procedures.
painesghost
(91 posts)Is it close to that of Vermont or Australia's except that the hospitals are non-profits?
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)then our public hospitals in the UK are owned by the NHS.
The exceptions are those owned by private insurance companies which the NHS on occasions pays for the use of too.
painesghost
(91 posts)A single payer universal healthcare in which hospitals and health services would remain private, but where basic healthcare accesses would be free. I have no problem with private health insurance for elective and experimental healthcare. This being said, basic healthcare should be "free" (paid by tax dollars). This would include normal preventive healthcare. The problem becomes with experimental healthcare initiatives that might be prohibitive based on costs. I.E. cancer treatment that costs $3 million dollars. It would be nice if everyone could have accesses, but in reality only the super rich will. Hopefully if the rich fund it based on need it will advance and get cheaper. However, I am against the auctioning of organs and such. This should be based on a first come first serve rational based on immediate need. Just my 2 cents.
pnwmom
(108,977 posts)Connecticut, was the Independent caucusing with the Dems who prevented us from having the 60 votes for closure for the public option. We had 59 votes including the other Independent, Bernie Sanders. And then Kennedy died, and was replaced by a Rethug, and it was all over.
Otherwise, there would have been a public option.