re: Single-payer would be a nightmare for Americans

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Are you under the impression that Aetna is a not-for-profit corporation?

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No.

Are you under the impression that Noridian Healthcare Solutions, CGS Administrators, Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance, Novitas Solutions, Palmetto GBA, First Coast Service Options are not-for-profit corporations?

Tell you what hotshot, read a bit about Medicare Administrative Contractors and CMS. Learn something. Then we'll talk further.

They are. It may be crap. I don't have it. They say they like it.

Are people really in here pretending CMS is a competent entity?

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Not when you consider that we ration before we grant access to care at all, and they don't.

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This is facile fallacy. None of those systems grant every patient any procedure, as much as they want. The idea that those systems deliver to an unlimited pateient demands is silly.

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And you think literally everyone else has the same financial ability as your friend?

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You're presuming he's rich? He's not. Damn near bankrupted him. We helped around the office.

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This might be the most tone deaf out of touch reply I've ever seen on this board.

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Your post was 100% projection based on the presumption they we're wealthy. They weren't. They were, however, willing to spend almost everything they had to avoid "free" care that was "available" to them.

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Your post was 100% projection based on the presumption they we're wealthy. They weren't. They were, however, willing to spend almost everything they had to avoid "free" care that was "available" to them.

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I am assuming they "had" money. No way it would have been possible otherwise.

Single payer is not perfect. You hear these stories a lot. Europeans coming to the US to receive more immediate access to healthcare is nothing new, but I guarantee you, few have a means of doing that. You're talking about flying to a another country, seeking treatment at one of the best cancer centers in the world, and paying for treatment out of one's own pocket. That is flat out not an option at all for many people.

It's a folly to use Canada and the UK as comparisons to a US system. Those nations have total populations of 36 million and 65 million respectfully. The US has 324 million. A better comparison would be Brazil.

I tell you what, if you people who are in favor of single payer can point to one thing the federal government hasn't ran or running into the ground then I may take notice. But at this point there is no way in hell that any sane person would risk turning the healthcare of their children over to a bunch of fricking morons that infest the federal government. They couldn't even run the Obama phone program with massive fraud. Plus they still paying workers millions a year to make sure their computers are Y2K complaint. Man the problem with America, sorry to say is that we have to many fricking idiots that are welling to just hand the government our freedoms. Man MLK would be rolling over in his grave if he knew he died for nothing

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I tell you what, if you people who are in favor of single payer can point to one thing the federal government hasn't ran or running into the ground then I may take notice.

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I think you misunderstood my stance.

From the Atlantic:

Brazil Healthcare

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But take a closer look, and the system seems more like “a safety net with holes,” as one Brazilian doctor put it to me. There are only about two hospital beds for every 1,000 people. It can take months to get an X-ray in Sao Paulo. A quarter of Brazilians are able to afford private doctors, paying with American-style insurance they get through work. But a sizable chunk of the population is still poor, living in remote jungles and farms or in ghettoized favelas, and relies on the publicly funded SUS. The health outcomes of the two groups are just as strikingly different as their life circumstances. In a 2013 poll, 48 percent of respondents said they thought healthcare was Brazil’s biggest problem, ranking the issue well above education, corruption, violence, and unemployment.

In other words, universal healthcare looks very different in Brazil than it does in, say, Scandinavia. Finland, for example, provides free healthcare to all its citizens, but the country is smaller and more homogeneous than the state of Minnesota. Brazil, meanwhile, has 200 million people. And it has roughly the same landmass of the continental U.S., if you shaved off the entire West Coast and some of Florida. Brazil was also one of the last countries in the Western world to abolish slavery, and it has the lasting racial issues to show for it.

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“In addition to a lack of adequate laboratories, blood circulation support networks, and intensive care units, there is an ongoing shortage of essential healthcare infrastructure, such as beds and X-ray machines,” wrote Eduardo Gomez, a senior lecturer in international development at King’s College London, in a recent working paper. “Again, the more affluent southern region fares better … when compared to the north.”

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There are roughly 40,000 of these bare-bones health centers throughout the country. The doctors there work in teams with the community health workers and nurses. The Spartan ethic results in conveniences: Each family’s medical records are held in one folder; medication is dispensed right at the clinic. And annoyances: The medication sometimes runs out; electronic records are a distant dream. Noranei explained how her neighborhood had been divvied up into “zones” of different colors to better allocate doctors’ appointments. "They said, ‘You’re from the ‘green area,’ so you have to go in the morning. But I work, so I can’t get there at that time."

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Even in urban areas, entire clinics lack pediatricians or other key providers for years at a time. “You have to take four busses to get to the ER,” said Gyuricza, the Boa Vista physician. “Your stomach could explode before you get there.” One woman told me about making a specialist appointment and arriving after a long, expensive bus journey to learn that it had been cancelled.

The shortages are part of what sparked last summer’s protests in Brazil’s major cities. The country is hosting the World Cup this June—a huge source of pride for a soccer-worshipping country. (Imagine an American city hosting the Super Bowl, the World Series, and an international hot-dog eating championship all at once.)

But some aren’t thrilled at the expense of it all. “We have beautiful and monumental stadiums,” goes one line in a viral protest song called “Desculpa Neymar” (Neymar is a popular Brazilian soccer star). “In the meantime schools and hospitals are about to fail. I saw an abyss between the two Brazils.”

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff responded to the complaints by swearing to bolster healthcare. Over the past year, her government imported 13,000 doctors from abroad, primarily Cuba.

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