Cormac wrote:
Please present facts, not opinion.
I'll present whatever it pleases and amuses me to present.
And, noone has asked you to pay for healthcare in Ireland.
Indeed. Problem is, Irish-style socialized medicine is part of the Obamacare plan, so I feel justified in commenting on the subject.
You're still way off on how medical healthcare works in Ireland. Let me recap for you:
1. Private healthcare runs alongside public healthcare in Ireland. I have private insurance, and had an operation through my private healthcare last week.
Lucky you, you can afford it...oh, wait, that sounds like what everyone was bitching about in re the US. Hm.
2. You do have a choice of doctors here, even in the public health - although you might have to wait longer for treatment.
Unless you present with an emergency of course, then you get what they give you or you die.
3. In fact, the public hospitals usually have a higher standard of care for advanced treatment in Ireland - and certainly in relation to obstetric care - this is because the public hospitals are the training hospitals - and our standard of obstetric care is amongst the highest in the world. In point of fact, attending a private hospital in that lady's circumstances would have been a higher risk precisely because they are not as advanced as public obstetric hospitals.
Or so you'd like to think.
And as regards medical outcomes - the research does not support your thesis about the relative efficacy of private to public healthcare. The USA is not the leader in overall public health. Medical technology itself, perhaps - but that technology is put to better use elsewhere.
Nice red herring argument. By using the term "public health" you mendaciously limit the scope of your claim. Sorry, not buying any today.
The US is the leader in providing health care and technology of the world, period. People from all over the world, including socialized medicine countries, come to the US to get care they simply cannot obtain in their home countries because of socialized medicine, which deems certain procedures to be too expensive for the system to provide.
The reason that our health care is the best in the world is precisely because of the free-market profit motive that drives technological and medical innovation which makes our standards of care and availability of service second to none.
Can everyone afford the absolute highest and best level of care in the US? No, of course not, but then again, TANSTAAFL.
People still get better care here than they get anywhere else because we DO have a form of socialized medicine which says that no federally-funded hospital may turn away a patient for their inability to pay. Will they always get the very best, top of the line, most expensive cutting edge treatments? No, probably not, but they will receive adequate and competent care, and the fact is that no one living under socialized medicine is going to get that topnotch expensive care either, because the socialized medical system cannot afford to provide it.
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