Tax cuts bolster US economy to 7.2% growth rate.
- Thread starter Sabastian
- Start date
pax said:
I read my figures from a Canadian salary survey in CAD, and I converted to USD.
The incentives go where the market wants them, and for better or for worse, Americans, when they go to the doctor, like to go to specialists. Someone got a sore throat? Why worry, go to an Ear/Nose/Throat specialist.
If Americans stopped requiring so many specialists, the demand would fall.
Willmeister
Newcomer
It's also why some provinces, and I'd bet it's also a problem everywhere, have GP and nursing vacancies. Everyone wants to live in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal and not Bathurst or Moose Jaw. Pax's brother was all but forced to practice somewhere in Gaspesie. Forced is perhaps too inaccurate a term. Pax can fill in the details better than I could.
DemoCoder said:
55g us clear after taxes maybe and only for those like my bro whose a gp in montreal clininc at a fixed salary which is the lowest pay any doctor can get in canada but the advantage is no real obligations... he has a 9-5 monday to friday job with modest quotas to fulfill... This leaves quality time with patients instead of those paid by the act who run them thru like gerbles...
He gets 115 g can a year but doesnt have the advantages of being in business with the various incentives that brings. Thing is very few docs are paid salary (almost all are in Quebec)... So im curious about your 55g number... Its certainly not average but more like base clear pay.
My sis has about 20g in taxes to pay on 150 g after her biz deductions... She usually keeps about 50 hrs a week at the office\emergency room.
Willmeister said:
Im curious about the shortage of docs in the US as the shortage up is artificially engineered. I can understand why that is tho as HMO's do same and try to save not just money for profits but abuses by hypochondriacs. In Canada the average person last year got 10.1 RX a year... thats way too much...
But this is a prob throughout the western world...
Rationing of health care is universal. Its done for diff reasons everwhere. Only the very rich have highly guaranteed access but even they would have it tough in tough times...
Rationing of health care in canada was pure politics and not economics. Canada should spend the same gpd as the US does on health care and not 2\3rds...
Rationing of health care in canada was pure politics and not economics. Canada should spend the same gpd as the US does on health care and not 2\3rds...
L233 said:
Assuming it's legal. Some countries with socialized medicine are playing with the idea of banning it. Britain is one, because they will cry that if people are allowed to go "outside the system", it drives up the price of doctors and equipment by drawing them out of the public market.
Almost every physical good and service in the world is "rationed" according to this usage, because they are non-infinite scarce goods. Communism rations the goods by assuming each person "needs" and "wants" a certain slice of them, think of this as TDMA, time-division multiple-access. The finite resource is "time shared" by allocating goods in timeslots to people awaiting access, since the number of concurrenct users is limited by the bandwidth of the resource. (e.g. number of concurrent MRIs possible)
Capitalism is more like packet-switching. Each person has differing desires and time preferences for goods. Some don't mind waiting, and thus will get the good/service when a slot becomes available, and they pay a low price. Others have very strict time preferences, and thus will pay premium to have access to goods before other people.
I'll pay premium for a Radeon 9800 XT, others will wait 6-12 months and get it for 1/3 the price. I'll pay to have instant gratification in my healthcare, others don't mind waiting 2 weeks for an appointment at less cost.
The issue isn't rationing, since all non-infinite resources are "rationed", the issue, as Neo would say is "choice" Who gets to decide the rationing? With socialised medicine, the decision is taken from me, and decided by bureacrats designing a one-size-fits-all health care policy. With non-socialized medicine, the decision is up to me and my own means. Moreover, what plan coverage is different for each individual. I might not want dental insurance, or psychiatrics. Some people won't care about seeing in-network doctors vs non-network doctors, I do, so I pay more.
But the biggest issue is that "wait list" algorithm for allocation of finite resources is inefficient, and that's effectively what you get with socialized rationing vs market based rationing. If socialized style rationing were applied to any other kind of resource: getting phone service, ordering a plane ticket, people would be complaining loudly.
Imagine two weeks from now, you need to take a plane, but price controls have effectively priced every plane seat at $100, and therefore, everything is booked for the next 5 months. Everyone can fly cheap, but no one can chose flights in a short term manner. Some charter planes are still available, but the cost is now outrageously expensive.
Is your health care rationed? Well, mine isn't, and I don't need to wait anywhere near as long for procedures as you. My employer pays for mine, and I have the choice of 5 different plans (none (take cash$$ as salary), HMO, HMO+, PPO, and PPO+) at differing price levels. About 40,000 other employees at this company have the same plan.
If we spent in gdp terms what the US spends demo there wouldnt be any waiting lists for non essential care. And there wouldnt be any for everyone. There certainly are waiting lists for the bottom third of the us population...
People like universal care because when bad things happen to well off people they dont run the risk of losing coverage... Thats even after the sabotage attempts by politicians people rose up and demanded restoration of the HC system. Politicians relented and reinvested about 30 billion. Putting us up at 12% of gdp from 11% vs the us 17%...
Yes a nation which spends more on gpd on HC will have fewer waiting lists... its amazing there are so many americans without coverage (I suppose you could call that eternal waiting lists) with that much spent on health care in the US.
If there is one thing that showcases the success of 'socialized' management of one aspect of product or service delivery its HC hands down. Friggin embargoed and impoverished Cubans make you look bad...
People like universal care because when bad things happen to well off people they dont run the risk of losing coverage... Thats even after the sabotage attempts by politicians people rose up and demanded restoration of the HC system. Politicians relented and reinvested about 30 billion. Putting us up at 12% of gdp from 11% vs the us 17%...
Yes a nation which spends more on gpd on HC will have fewer waiting lists... its amazing there are so many americans without coverage (I suppose you could call that eternal waiting lists) with that much spent on health care in the US.
If there is one thing that showcases the success of 'socialized' management of one aspect of product or service delivery its HC hands down. Friggin embargoed and impoverished Cubans make you look bad...
RM. Andersson
Newcomer
pax said:
http://www.who.int/country/can/en/
http://www.who.int/country/swe/en/
http://www.who.int/country/usa/en/
You can find the important facts here.
Canada: Total health expenditure per capita (Intl $): 2,534
Sweden: Total health expenditure per capita (Intl $): 2,097
USA: Total health expenditure per capita (Intl $): 4,499
This proves that people in the US spend twice as much money on health care compared to Sweden and Canada.
This means that it´s possible to afford much higher quality.
Canada: GDP per capita (Intl $): 27,956
Sweden: GDP per capita (Intl $): 24,819
USA: GDP per capita (Intl $): 34,637
This proves that it´s directly related to the strenght and growth of the economy.
If there is no money there will be no health care. You need a strong economy and a economic/political system that creates growth if you want real welfare. Without that no positive rights will help.
Willmeister
Newcomer
People LEAVE the system in the UK; they have that option. They have both a public and private system, and there are many reasons why they do. Where have you been?
Canada, believe it or not, already has a two-tiered medicare system. We have a mostly-public system, and then we have the United States. We've always had this arrangement.
Well I want somekind of universal health care, but I think they should come up with a way to do it by region, so that the power is decentralized. Then it is less likely to have as much bueracratic waste IMO. Perhaps they should do it like representatives, one district for every 10 representatives or something.
Sxotty said:
I am not arguing with you here just stating what sort of issues that arrangement would have. Without some sort of centralized governing for your Medicare "have" regions (meaning areas with stronger economies) would have considerably better services then "have not" regions, that isn't horribly "universal". Just saying.
Let's take a look at the numbers you gave here to get an indication of Health Care as a percentage of income.
Canada= 2,534/27,956= 9.06% of total income spent on Health Care
Sweden=2,097/24,819=8.45% of total income spent on Health Care
United States=4,499/34,637=12.99% of total income spent on Health Care
Even here, the United States spends close to 40% more than Canada and over 50% more than Sweden as a percentage of total income. This problem is compounded when one takes into account the fact that in the United States between 40 and 50 million people, around 20% of the population, do not have any Health Coverage whatsoever, and you have plenty of other people in the lower to middle income classes whose health care coverage is inadequate and inferior in scope and coverage to what is offered in nearly every other developed country in the world.
Just thought I'd throw that out there for you.
Canada= 2,534/27,956= 9.06% of total income spent on Health Care
Sweden=2,097/24,819=8.45% of total income spent on Health Care
United States=4,499/34,637=12.99% of total income spent on Health Care
Even here, the United States spends close to 40% more than Canada and over 50% more than Sweden as a percentage of total income. This problem is compounded when one takes into account the fact that in the United States between 40 and 50 million people, around 20% of the population, do not have any Health Coverage whatsoever, and you have plenty of other people in the lower to middle income classes whose health care coverage is inadequate and inferior in scope and coverage to what is offered in nearly every other developed country in the world.
Just thought I'd throw that out there for you.
You are right sebastian.
I think that as a country we need everyone to have good healthcare, (especially for reasons such as stamping out communicable diseases), I am just trying to think of a way to do it w/o the usual incredible amount of waste that the federal government accomplishes everything. It is possible that it would work with minimal waste, but not probable.
I think perhaps it would lower the amount of medicare fraud too, but I do not have real evidence and others could look at the issue and disagree.
Universal HC is something that I have thought we should have for quite a long time though. This will sound bad to some perhaps, but I think we should require one to be a US citizen to get it or some other close facimile, I mean there is a certain amount of unfairness in that as many non-citiznes pay taxes... I don't know.
I think that as a country we need everyone to have good healthcare, (especially for reasons such as stamping out communicable diseases), I am just trying to think of a way to do it w/o the usual incredible amount of waste that the federal government accomplishes everything. It is possible that it would work with minimal waste, but not probable.
I think perhaps it would lower the amount of medicare fraud too, but I do not have real evidence and others could look at the issue and disagree.
Universal HC is something that I have thought we should have for quite a long time though. This will sound bad to some perhaps, but I think we should require one to be a US citizen to get it or some other close facimile, I mean there is a certain amount of unfairness in that as many non-citiznes pay taxes... I don't know.
Willmeister
Newcomer
That's a big reason why there are next to no lineups in the USA. So many people who would go for treatment, cannot.