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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7828555" data-attributes="member: 16814">This is a wonderfully pithy statement that doesn't actually do anything.  I think everyone should be rich.  How is that a statement of actual utility?Equal access is absolutely a right -- no one should be denied access to healthcare because of who they are.  But access is not the same as outcome -- I strongly disagree that everyone deserves equal outcome on the basis that this is impossible to achieve.  Healthcare is not infinite, it must be rationed.  You disagree with ability to pay as the rationing factor, fine, that's your prerogative.  But don't pretend you have a higher horse than others that say that things should be determines by market forces.  Market forces have done the most for elevating people out of abject poverty and providing levels of healthcare undreamed of 100 years ago.   "High" is a relative term with little meaning.  The reality is that it's very hard to disentangle medical costs from bankruptcies.  The leading cited studies all hail from the Great Recession, so that certainly skews data, but, interestingly, how you count medical bankruptcy depends on how much medical debt load is part of the bankruptcy.  For instance, the leading cite on social media is from a study that considered ANY medical debt as part of a bankruptcy filing to be a medical bankruptcy.  The average amount of medical debt counted was about 10% of total debt load.  Hardly the main driver, although any stress is unwelcome.  A similar study done at the same time only counted medical debt loads of 50% of total load or over 50% of yearly income.  That study found about a third of the total medical bankruptcy rate as the other study.So, yeah, "high" depends on what you make of it.  Also interesting, during the same years as the above studies, bankruptcy rates in Canada were the same as in the US, presumably absent almost all medical debt, right?  Don't take the first set of numbers that pleases your assumptions -- it's almost always more complicated than that. Sure they do, it's just not how much money you have.Actually, you cannot be refused service at a hospital with an emergency room in the US for inability to pay.  They have to get you fixed.  So, access is absolutely universal.  You just then get a bill for it.I talk about the distortions of this above, but wanted to say that "bankruptcies" when you're alive is kinda a weird pill.  I mean, aggressive taxation means many will have about as much buying power as the bankruptcy filer in the US, with equivalent health outcomes (better in the US if it's cancer), but "bankruptcies" are treated like the person died or something.  It sucks, and medical bills suck, but you're alive and can try again.  Recall, I've been on the no-job, no-insurance having expensive hospital stays thing -- I'd gladly have taken a medical bankruptcy rather than die, and, luckily for me, that wasn't even a choice in the US system -- they had to fix me.I'm sorry, but page after page of you saying that the US will only be fixed once they've socialized healthcare led me astray.  Where did you discuss another option? I'd like to review your ideas.This is very ignorant of what actually has happened over here, and points directly at you saying more government involvement is the way to go (presumably single payer, but, hey, you say there are other options you'd consider).  The government and health care regulations are the large part of how the system over here works.  It's covered in government regulation, smothered in it.  I actually think some single payer systems have less government involvement than the current US model.  Don't confuse lack of single payer to be lack of government involvement.But, this statement goes right back to the weird idea that more government always the best answer.  It never looks at what's already there and how the system actually works before deciding that more bureaucrats and non-doctors should be involved to solve the healthcare problem.  You're moving medical decisions away from the doctor and patient and onto people that have no stake in your health and saying this is an unabashed good.  It might be, but you've done no work to show that it is true. It isn't, at all.  This is like saying that it's the rules of footy that allowed Carlton to take the wooden spoon last year.  Market based systems are the rules, but you can still have a terrible game, especially with bad umps.  It's not the rules that did it.</blockquote>

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