confused, please help

[lisichka]

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[Miami_med]

i have several Qs-->
can someone state a specific example as to why a doctor under the universal healthcare would earn less? and why universal = socialized?

Universal doesn't necessarily equal socialized, but because universal coverage doesn't appear to be perfectly achieved in a free market, government involvement in industry would thus occur, leading to atleast partial socialization. The examples of doctors being paid less are every universal healthcare system on earth.

one could have universal healthcare that is financed by both government and corporate sector(employer). and people can still have different insurance qualities based on their workplace and income. that is not socialized?! right?

Wrong, the government is financing, which comes with government control, which means that it is partially socialized. Healthcare now is partially socialized.

for example if an unisured homeless person gets into an accident, or an uninsured old person breaks a leg, what would be different then from the present system? where does doctors' income come in here?

Huh?
It doesn't inherintly mean anything.

or an uninsured child that needs a bone marrow translplant? now everybody would be looking for a private sponsor (but what if no such sponsor is found?). In the universal system, this child would be certain that he will not die because no one will pay for him. you might ask, who will pay for the procedure then? possible solution: a combined budget from corporate and government resources. i think government needs to mandate corporations to pay a certain health tax that would cover both their employees and partially the uninsured (40%). and 60% of healthcare costs for uninsured, government needs to pay by itself. then doctors' salaries would not be compromised?! am I making sense here? or is there is a flaw in my logic somewhere?
😎

You are assuming that everyone is entitled to care for everything that is wrong with them, and you are classically reverting the example of the helpless child who faultlessly contracts a disease. #1: This is an exception to most medical problems which are directly related to the lifestyle of the patient. #2: You are assuming that money should be taken from people who wouldn't willingly give their money (as you've explained by the lack of donor) by force in order to pay for the child. We don't all agree on that point.

Why do corporations have to pay health tax? A little history lesson. Health insurance was almost never tied to insurance before the 1930s. As part of Roosevelt's New Deal Reforms, wages were fixed in many places in the economy. Companies needed a new way to find good workers, so insurance was often offered as an incentive in lieu of illegal wage raises. The astute observer will not that corporate health insurance was an accidental side effect of socialization elsewhere in the economy. There is no reason why companies should or should not pay by choice, but this definitely doesn't create some inherint obligation on the part of said companies to buy everyone health insurance.

As far as doctor's salaries are concerned, a universal healthcare system makes a leap and states that everyone is always entitled to medical care. This will then become more prohibitively expensive (and the seeds of it are why it is so expensive now). The government will then respond by cutting costs, which happened in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY with a universal health system, regardless of setup. They all spend less money, because they pay less and because people don't have all of the same options that they do here. Healthcare is ~15% of the budget now.

 

[lisichka]

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[Miami_med]

thank you so much Miami_med for your comprehensive answer. although current system seems fine to me in comparison to other countries, i still think that something needs to be done about exceptional cases like a helpless child, or urgent (emergency) healthcare for the uninsured. and someone needs to pay for it?! who is still a big contention though😉

for example: if a homeless person comes into an emergency room with acute pain, and hospital spends a certain amount of money for his care.... who will pay for that care after that person leaves the hospital? of course not this person because he has nothing. then it means that hospital has to pay for him, which cuts into doctors' salary. Now if there was some kind of pre-set budget for such cases that government/corporations would cover, then hospitals would be more profitable, which means ultimately more money left for the hospital staff/docs. am I making sense here? now this kind of acute emergency/pediatric PARTIAL universal care doesn;t sound like a bad plan?! or does it?

I'll preface this with the fact that I am probably the biggest anti-universal care voice on SDN, so realize that I tend to be biased in my opinions of these things.

Again, why do the corporations have to pay anything?

Doctors salaries and hospital income are often significantly disconnected. In fact, hospital pay has been rising in the face of declining physician reimbursement. Hospital pay and doctor pay don't go together evenly. I will agree with you that doctors shouldn't both HAVE to treat the uninsured and not get paid for it. I just tend to take the position that they shouldn't HAVE to treat anyone. EMTALA, which was the first government mandate of treatment in this country, wasn't passed until 1985, and there weren't mass deaths on the street before that. What there was, was perhaps a little more respect for the fact that charity treatment was a privelege. Besides, most EM docs are perfectly willing to treat true emergencies before money is ever talked about. It's the fake emergencies and the malpractice liability for patients that never pay their bills that creates problems.

I don't support universal pediatric care, but the majority of uninsured kids in this country qualify for programs already. It is by and large the laziness of their parents that prevents them from being covered. That and the highly complex beauracracy of government, which would be even further imposed on the medical community in the face of universal coverage.

A pre-set budget would be the fastest way to cut reimbursements. If healthcare is free, more people will use it. This will require more money. If the budget is fixed, each individual will have to be paid less, or there will be shortages.

 

[kid007]

can't get your question buddy ..?? give details...