The Dish: Andrew Sullivan- 'Healthcare Socialism 1, Healthcare Capitalism 0'

Source:The Dish- Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, with a look at American health care.

Source:The New Democrat 

"The Commonwealth Fund quietly eviscerates America’s medical system with some basic facts. Two of the more remarkable ones:

In 2013, more than one-third (37%) of U.S. adults went without recommended care, did not see a doctor when they were sick, or failed to fill prescriptions because of costs, compared with as few as 4 percent to 6 percent in the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Roughly 40 percent of both insured and uninsured U.S. respondents spent $1,000 or more out-of-pocket during the year on medical care, not counting premiums. High deductibles and cost-sharing, along with no limits on out-of-pocket costs, may explain why even insured people in the U.S. struggled to afford needed health care, the researchers said." 

From The Dish

This idea that capitalism is better when it comes to producing things that people want, but socialism is better for things that people need to live well, in other words capitalism is better for producing luxury cars, cell phones, computers (to use as examples) but a state-owned socialist system for producing things that people need to live well, take health care and health insurance (to use as examples) well, you don’t see at least in America a lot of people calling for nationalizing the food industry. 

Agriculture, grocery stores, restaurants, we all need food, right. You don’t see a lot of people in America calling for nationalizing the energy industry, only the Far-Left wants to nationalize energy. And we all need and use energy to get around and keep our homes warm and cool. 

You don’t see a lot of people calling for nationalizing banking in this country, again, only the Far-Left. We all use and need to use banks, because it is still the safest place to keep our money and we’ve all borrowed money before because we needed to that as well.

Where government comes in is to do the things that we need it to do that it is best qualified to do. And in some cases the only ones qualified to do. Like foreign policy, law enforcement, prisons, homeland security, central intelligence, regulating the markets and collecting the taxes to pay for the government that we need. 

Germany the largest country in Europe (unless you include Russia) and the largest economy in Europe and fourth largest economy in the world. This is a perfect example of a country that has shown you don’t need government-run health care and health insurance to have an affordable and quality health care system.

Germany has private health insurance from cradle to grave. Their hospitals and clinics are private as well, but what they do well unlike America at least yet is properly regulate their private health care system. So their people aren’t abused by their health care providers. And every German is required to cover their own health care costs and not able to pass those costs on to others. Things that America has just started doing and their health costs are half that of the United States.

I’m tired of hearing these bogus (Happy Holidays) arguments that the rest of the developed world has government-run health care which is why America should do the same thing. Or government is automatically better at delivering health care and health insurance than the private sector. 

Germany, France and Japan are perfect examples of countries that do not try to do everything for their people through government. Including health care and they all have better health care systems than the United States. At least when it comes to paying for their health care.

Rand Corporation: Karl Lorenz- 'Palliative Care: Improving Quality of Life for the Seriously Ill'

Source:RAND Corporation- American health care for one of our senior citizens.

"When we think of “the seriously ill,” many of us conjure up images of individuals who are older, or in hospitals, or near the end of their lives. In fact, people of all ages suffer from chronic and life-threatening illnesses, and health care professionals are always looking for more effective ways to relieve and prevent suffering among their patients and to enhance the quality of care.

How do we improve palliative care training for health practitioners, and how do we better engage patients in the health care decision-making process?

In this event, Karl Lorenz discusses the delivery of palliative care services, training in palliative care, and how research can improve—and philanthropy can support—this vital aspect of health care."

From Rand Corporation

I believe before we talk about how do we improve the quality of healthcare for the seriously ill in America, we should first talk about how do we improve the funding of our over bloated and ineffective health care system. 

As well as talk about preventive care which would also help us not only bring down our healthcare costs, but improve the quality of our healthcare, because we wouldn't have as many Americans with chronic health conditions that are very expensive to treat, like diabetes (to use as a perfect example) because we would have more Americans in this country who would be taking care of themselves and not getting as sick as they do today, because more Americans would be eating better and exercise, because they would have the financial incentive to do so. And not has the serious diseases that way too many Americans suffer from in this developed country. 

As well as talk about how we can encourage more seniors to be treated at home rather than living in hospitals and nursing homes. And finding ways to fund this.

The Fiscal Times: Sarah Kliff- 'Six Things You Don't Know about Mental Healthcare Costs'

Source:The Fiscal Times- with a look at mental health care in America.

"In the wake of the Newtown school massacre, many have called for a stronger mental health safety net as one way to reduce violent shootings. Shooters in previous massacres had unmet mental health needs. By widening access to services, the thinking goes, professionals could intervene before a tragedy occurs." 

From The Fiscal Times

If something is worth doing and you have the money to do it, then it's worth paying for. And mental healthcare in America is not only something that's worth doing, but something we simply have to do to prevent future tragedies like Aurora and Newtown and unfortunately many others from happening in America. 

It's really that simple, we either pay for mental healthcare up front up, or we pay for it down the road with mentally challenged and irresponsible people making horrible decisions that results in the deaths of many people who otherwise didn't have to die. 

It gets to do we either want to pay for mental health care with our money up front, or do we want to pay for not by funding mental health care with our money up front and paying for it in high health care costs down the road with people getting free health care at the rest of us expense. And we losing more innocent lives down the road. 

It's that simple, we can fund mental health care in America, because we have the resources to do, or we choose not to and pay for it in higher health care costs down the road as well as costs in innocent human life.

Funding mental health care in America is fairly simple and will mean higher health care costs up front. Especially if we don't do anything further to reform our unaffordable health care system, because what we need to do is pass a law that would require all health insurers private and public to cover mental health care for their customers. Which means premiums would rise in the short run, because more health care would be covered. And the costs for Medicare and Medicaid would go up in the short run as well, but we need to seriously reform both Medicare and Medicaid anyway and get those costs under control. 

We also need to add mental health care to what they cover as well for reasons I've already laid out, but what I just laid out for mental health care just goes to cover patients and the mental health care that they receive. 

And for patients who need to be institutionalized, we need to adequately fund our mental hospitals especially the public ones and that means making mental patients eligible for public assistance while they are institutionalized for the ones who can't afford the stay on their own.

It really gets down to priorities and what we need to be paying for as a nation and health care is clearly one of those things including mental health care and is one of the failures of the 2010 Affordable Care Act that they didn't cover mental health care in that legislation and is something we are still paying for as a nation almost three years later after that legislation became law. And something we need to finally do to prevent future tragedies from happening in the future.