Except... it isn't free.
It's free at the point of delivery.
Of course it is paid for through tax, yet due to thresholds the vast majority of people who use the NHS get much more value out of it over the course of their life than what they put in.
If I remember correctly, don't Canadians also have a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates?
Because they have UHC I would assume this is the case. The US not having UHC is undeniably a factor in their standard of health being so low compared to developed countries.
If you have a serious problem, then you have waiting lines to trudge through.
It's actually the opposite. For serious illness the NHS works very well, since these people get priority. For low level illness due to economies of scale and because this is what about 85% of NHS visits are about they are very quick. It's really mid level non essential treatment where waiting lines are a problem.
I remember reading a letter to a British centre right newspaper, The Times written by an American doctor who practiced in both countries. His idea was that because the NHS is ranked among the best in the world for low and high level illness, the alleviate the waiting times, people should have the option to pay extra fees in order to skip the queue by a certain number of places. In this way, healthcare remains very affordable and accessible, and the revenue intake could be reinvested to help alleviate the waiting lines.
Either way, my point is that waiting lines really aren't that bad. Instead of linking to videos about Canada try and experience living in a country with UHC and using a national health service for yourself. There's a reason they are so popular in most of the developed world. Because they work.
Life expectancy is effected by many different variables outside of medical care.
To deny the causal link between availability of healthcare and the life expectancy of a given country is infantile. Of course there are differing circumstances in the countries, but we are comparing like with like here. Indeed, Britain's circumstance lends itself to having worse healthcare than America since more of its population (%) live in urban areas. As for diet and lifestyle, Britain although not as bad as the US, is pretty unhealthy, much less so than most of Europe. We drink and smoke much more than the US and do a fairly similar amount of exercise.
people who are killed instantly and don't make it to the hospital, car accidents,
Makes up a tiny proportion of the population. It certainly is not enough to disprove the obvious causal link between availability healthcare and life expectancy. The
immediate increase in life expectancy after the NHS was adopted supports this.
climate
Oh, and we have terrible weather too.
you need to look at specific effects such as how efficient the costs are, how efficient the hospitals and other medical centers are, how reliable hospitals and medical centers are, and we need to look ONLY at the people who come and go from the hospital.
On all counts, UHC trumps private systems for efficiency. 1)Preventative early treatment costs vastly less than later treatment.
2) Insurance companies aren't involved to make a profit either, doctors have no incentive to recommend expensive treatments as they do in the US.
3) Quality of care is higher because a hospital which has to turn a profit does so by limiting services as much as possible to save money.
4) Economies of scale dictates that public hospitals are more efficient simply because they are larger and are supplied with medicinal things in much greater bulk.
A country can be at war, have the best health care, and have the lowest life expectancy.
You are providing many more hypothetical situations where using life expectancy could be a flawed measure rather than any real life examples to prove your point, or rather disprove the causal link.
Yet, the US still is able to maintain a high standard of living.
High compared to who? The developing world? Definitely. The developed world? Definitely not. It's not a question of whether or not America has a high standard of living across the globe, but rather whether this could be improved upon by the introduction of UHC.
Maybe Americans are so rich they can afford to pay more for medical care?
46 million people cannot gain access to healthcare in America. This is by no means a majority, but it is undoubtedly a significant minority.
And by ''most expensive'' that's compared to average costs of treating someone. So for someone in the UK going to the NHS for a particular procedure, the average cost of that exact same procedure in the US is higher.
Who says most Americans can't afford it?
No one said most, apart from you. But a significant minority cannot.
Also, who says most Americans need medical care in the first place?!
The Americans who get sick and don't have insurance need it of course.
People who don't want to pay for insurance and don't have medical problems get the very best value of anyone... they lose no money at all!
Of course they do, but this is not the case for a lot of people. It also depends how much people value healthcare, or at least value knowing they would have access to it if they developed a health problem.
You make it sound as if people pick and choose illness in the same way people pick and choose private health firms. You never know if/when you're going to get ill.
The chances of me paying for health care I will not use are VERY VERY high.
But you will get the value back when you are older. The chances of you putting in your whole life and never needing medical treatment are extremely low. The more you put in, the more can be invested for the benefit of all. If everyone pays, the cost goes down on average and the quality of care goes up since hospitals become more efficient.
