Genesis Health Systems

Will an American Universal Health care system result in rationing like the German and English systems ?

Can the quality be sustained , or will it compromised like most European government health care systems ?

Public Comments

1. Who cares about health care when you can't pay for it. Notice the rhetorical question.
2. We will hv to see.water in the desert is like health care,you know you hv to drink it.so you take your chances.and if you get the shits you deal with it later.I'd like to think we as Americans can come up with a good system.What do we have now.
3. If people would get off their bums and actually work, (yes there ARE jobs available even for those with little to no education and experience) gain experience, work their way up and quit taking the welfare hand out we could all AFFORD to pay for our own insurance. Working in an emergency department gets very frustrating when the majority of your patients are uninsured drug-seeking homeless addicts or alcoholics or chronic smokers or people who have otherwised abused their bodies and fell on their faces as a result of their poor choices and now those of us who busted our buns and sacrificed our families to make a decent living are paying for their choices. If you never start smoking, you won't become addicted. If you never take a drink you won't become an alcoholic. If you never try heroin won't have collapsed veins, ugly syndrome and chronic heart problems from the addiction. If you stop eating you won't become obese. Turn off the TV and take a walk. To answer the question, universal health care is unsustainable. Period. Do the math. (Oh wait, you don't have to the CBO has done it already). A better solution would be educating the masses and rewarding personal responsibility for healthy and smart choices and to get Hollywood to stop glorifying sex (leads to STDs & HIVS) smoking (lung and other cancers) and drinking (can lead to a lifetime of addictions) or better yet, get the masses to STOP WATCHING... Sigh...sorry, I guess I went off on a tangent....
4. There is no rationing in Germany. You walk into your GP or hospital and you get first class treatment for free!! For every resident who is domiciled in Germany. No compromise whatsoever. Can't speak of the English system.
5. I don't think of it as rationing. I think of it more like not being wasteful with the resources. I hear stories in the US of getting an X-ray every time you see your GP, MRIs every time you sneeze, and unnecessary operations. I also hear of insurance companies refusing to provide coverage because you have a preexisting condition like heart conditions, or a stroke. Only the rich, as usual, benefits in the US.
6. The US health care system already rations. Some of it is at the employer level when they decide which plan to go with or how much cost to pick up. Some is at the state level, where they decide which procedures to mandate (such as fertility treatments) or to exclude. Some is at the health plan level, where they decide which procedures are experimental and which drugs get the biggest discount (tier pricing and formularies). Some is at the family level, where we decide if it makes sense to figure out what the cough really means if the copay at the emergency room is $100. Or the 23-year old figuring she can put off buying insurance as she's low-risk, and use the money for other things. It's economic, marketplace rationing within health systems. Does a $50,000 bone marrow transplant with 50/50 odds for a 7-year old make sense if 100 women could get mammograms, uncovering 5 cancers at curable stages? These decisions are already being made in the US.