Health care in the USA

[Rusty Edge]

My understanding is that the Congress and President continue to be paid. My opinion is that they should be locked in together until they reach a resolution.

 This should have resolved last year before summer adjournment. But I can't say I blame those Senators refusing to approve the proposal which was on the table.  This is the 4th or 5th continuing resolution. There has been too much bait and switch. For some senators, they agreed to raise the debt ceiling in previous years only because spending caps were put in place, but those caps would be overridden with current proposals. For another, it was a vote for tax reform in exchange for getting this DACA Immigration passed this month. For another it was a vote on the tax bill in exchange for a health care provision getting done by the end of last year, which it wasn't.

It's hard to make a deal when you don't honor your recent ones.

[Bearu]

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2020/supreme-court-aca-case.html

This new attempt from the American president continued the earlier attempts of the president for the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act. The American president in Summer 2019 started a motion in the Judicial system for the Supreme Court's review of the legality of the Affordable Health Care Act. This process recently accelerated with the establishment of a review of the case. In addition, the American president has also been packing the Supreme Court with sycophants over the last three years similar to Franklin Roosevelt's skewing of the Supreme Court in 1937.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937

This court packing process means the American Supreme Court possesses a favorable percentage of people working for the president's agenda, 5 Republican leaning to 4 Democratic leaning, and the court might rule in favor of the flimsy argument from Donald [Sleezebag]. If the Supreme Court rules the law unconstitutional, then many American members of this forum might suffer from the possible discrimination from insurance companies' denials in health coverage for preexisting conditions. Do you have health problems from cancer or cancer treatments? The private insurance companies can deny medical coverage of necessary treatments for health issues from cancer treatment. Do you suffer from arthritis? The private insurance company can refuse enrollment of a person despite the person's ability to pay the monthly fees, deductibles, and copay. Does the insurance company want to discriminate against overweight or underweight people with higher co-pays, deductibles, or outright refusal of renewed insurance for the next year? The insurance company possess the legal right to enact those policies.

I refuse the return of the health care policies from the first quarter to the middle of the twentieth century. This bizarre American policy concoctions from the World War II era enabled employers' attachment of health insurance to employment as an enticement for the recruitment of factory workers. Americans need both nationalized health insurance like Canada, Cuba, the United Kingdom, and Russia to name a few and the abolition of private insurance in the United States of America.

P.S. I searched for a better thread. I did not see any mention of the topic. If you have another topic more appropriate for this health care discussion from the previous few years, then please delete my message.

[Lorizael]

[Sleezebag] is terrible and repealing the ACA would be bad, but he is not packing the Supreme Court in the way FDR wanted to or in any way. Court packing is adding additional justices to the court beyond the current number. [Sleezebag] has done nothing of the sort; he's just filled two vacancies. The snaky part was implemented by McConnell, who kept a vacancy during Obama's term open until [Sleezebag] was elected.

[Bearu]

[Sleezebag] is terrible and repealing the ACA would be bad, but he is not packing the Supreme Court in the way FDR wanted to or in any way. Court packing is adding additional justices to the court beyond the current number. [Sleezebag] has done nothing of the sort; he's just filled two vacancies. The snaky part was implemented by McConnell, who kept a vacancy during Obama's term open until [Sleezebag] was elected.

I will not dispute you on the absence of court packing from Donald [Sleezebag]. My comparison between Donald [Sleezebag] and Franklin Roosevelt illustrates both presidents' intention for the accumulation of influence on the Supreme Court through the installment of sympathetic of Supreme Court justices.

[Lorizael]

I don't think [Sleezebag]'s intentions wrt to the Supreme Court have been substantially different from past presidents. They've basically all sought to install ideologically friendly justices, which is why we can talk about "liberal" and "conservative" members of SCOTUS. Where [Sleezebag]'s probably done significant harm judicially speaking is in filling up Federal court vacancies with often egregiously unqualified judges. Again, we mostly have Mitch to thank for that, because getting judges confirmed is what he does instead of legislating. [Sleezebag] doesn't personally care about the judicial system except insofar as it gets in his way, in which case it is "unfair." [Sleezebag]'s only governing ideology is "me me me make it all about me." He doesn't care about abortion, or healthcare, or really anything else, but he knows his rabid base does and he wants them to pay attention to him.

[E_T]

[Sleezebag] is terrible and repealing the ACA would be bad, but he is not packing the Supreme Court in the way FDR wanted to or in any way. Court packing is adding additional justices to the court beyond the current number. [Sleezebag] has done nothing of the sort; he's just filled two vacancies. The snaky part was implemented by McConnell, who kept a vacancy during Obama's term open until [Sleezebag] was elected.

IIRC, it was one of his failures because he tried to get the Congress to amend the Con or pass a law (I really think it was the amendment, but not sure) that would allow him to add more justices.  The Congress refused and he had to wait to try to add more, but the things that were very socialist at the time (you would have liked them Bearu) were not implemented.

Although the overall effect was to increase the overall time of recovery from the Great Depression (and keep in mind, the thing that allowed the country to fully recover and get over it WAS The War...), it kept us from sliding into a more socialist state at the time.  And with some of the Fascist that were also prevalent at the time, it would have likely taken a Socialist/Fascistic slant (although, on a 1D chart, they are opposite, if you use the 2D one that Jerry Pournelle had come up with, they would have had a common ground between them that could have taken elements from both)...
https://images.app.goo.gl/8fTAWf1PTCUAoej17

[Bearu]

IIRC, it was one of his failures because he tried to get the Congress to amend the Con or pass a law (I really think it was the amendment, but not sure) that would allow him to add more justices.  The Congress refused and he had to wait to try to add more, but the things that were very socialist at the time (you would have liked them Bearu) were not implemented.

Although the overall effect was to increase the overall time of recovery from the Great Depression (and keep in mind, the thing that allowed the country to fully recover and get over it WAS The War...), it kept us from sliding into a more socialist state at the time.  And with some of the Fascist that were also prevalent at the time, it would have likely taken a Socialist/Fascistic slant (although, on a 1D chart, they are opposite, if you use the 2D one that Jerry Pournelle had come up with, they would have had a common ground between them that could have taken elements from both)...
https://images.app.goo.gl/8fTAWf1PTCUAoej17

Thank you E_T for the information. I looked at the chart you provided from Jerry Pournelle.
World War II produced strange bedfellows. Hitler and Stalin formed an alliance for almost two years in the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact between 1939 and 1941. Franklin Roosevelt's position in the pre-World War II period remained closer to a welfare liberal and Roosevelt maintained an ambivalent position on socialism until the United States of America's official entrance into World War II in 1941. The United States of America in the 1920s and 1930s suffered from strong isolationist tendencies as seen in the Neutrality Acts, so I think the United States of America would have maintained a free market leaning from the strong corporate interests in the American government without World War II. The Neutrality acts enabled the rise of Japan and Nazi Germany before World War II because of America's refusal for participation in a fight against fascist powers in Mussolini's Italy in the 1920s and Hitler's Nazi Germany in the early 1930s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_the_1930s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

Back to the healthcare topic, my major concern with modern American healthcare remains the foundation of healthcare in the relationship between employers and employees instead of a citizen and the state. In my European history course of the 19th century course, I traced part of the healthcare development in Europe versus the United States of America. The modern healthcare systems in the world originated from the middle of the 1800s and developed along either state controlled benefits like Prussia and Germany or along private enterprise as in the United States of America or the United Kingdom. The majority of countries with significant devastation from World War II either already possessed state controls on healthcare or quickly developed those structures like in the United Kingdom as a repatriation for the workers' suffering in World War II. The United States of America remained one of the countries without significant losses from World War II and never developed an integrated healthcare system.

Without the development of a modern healthcare system, gross abuses like the mid to late 1800s in American private healthcare persisted until the 2010 Affordable Healthcare Act, and the United States of America suffers from lower health outcomes for the majority of the population. The United States of America pays more money per capita than the European nations, suffers from higher rates of deaths from preventable diseases than Europe, and lower life expectancy than Cuba despite the massive disparity in spending on healthcare between Cuba and the United States of America. The United States of America can learn more from Cuba's healthcare system through the removal of archaic laws and sanctions on Cuba from the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis.

[Geo]

The United States of America can learn more from Cuba's healthcare system through the removal of archaic laws and sanctions on Cuba from the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis.

How can a country learn more about another one's healthcare system simply by removing laws and sanctions still in effect?

I think every US resident so inclined can read up to his/her heart's content about the Cuban Healthcare system.
Poor choice of words here, Bearu.

[E_T]

I have only seen clips of "Sicko", by Michael Moore, but it did show that the US is far behind many other countries in health Care

[Bearu]

The United States of America can learn more from Cuba's healthcare system through the removal of archaic laws and sanctions on Cuba from the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis.

How can a country learn more about another one's healthcare system simply by removing laws and sanctions still in effect?

I think every US resident so inclined can read up to his/her heart's content about the Cuban Healthcare system.
Poor choice of words here, Bearu.

I agree with your analysis on my poor word choice. The archaic American sanctions from 1961 actually enacted a complete embargo on all non-specifically excluded economic transactions between the United States of America and Cuba. This means research teams require special permission from the United States of America's government for travel inside Cuba. This inhibition of travel limits research into the methods of the Cuban government and restricts transfers of personnel and research between the governments based on administrative whims.

The majority of research on Cuban and other foreign healthcare methods exist behind pay barriers of university level research, so the average American citizen possesses limited access to the research materials. The majority of my information on the actual functions of the Cuban healthcare system originated from subscriber only databases of research.

One example from a speech I made includes this article from 2012. This article describes the specific efficacy of the Cuban healthcare system despite the American embargo for the last 50 years:
Keck, William and Gail Reed. “The Curious Case of Cuba.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 102, no 8, 2012, 13-22. Online, 10.2105/AJPH.2012.300822.

Another aspect of the limitations on the transfer of research, regardless of the legal limitations, between the countries includes the historical and current persecution of any socialist methods for healthcare or other social programs.

The American government possesses a long history of anti-socialist and anti-communist sentiments. The rise of modern socialism in the middle of the 1800s, the persecution in the first Red Scare, the persecution of the second Red Scare, the persecution of socialism in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Ronald Reagan's persecution of socialism and communism, Bush Junior's advocacy against socialism, and the current administration's persecution of Cuba and China under anti-communist hysteria all contain numerous examples of persecution against socialists and communists. You can even see fragments of anti-communist hysteria here on the forum from the management. The management labelled me with the derogatory label of "Commie" without any input from me.

[Bearu]

I have only seen clips of "Sicko", by Michael Moore, but it did show that the US is far behind many other countries in health Care

The case of American healthcare in 2020 remains worse than many people realize. Since 1998, the life expectancy of the United States of America's citizens decreased in relation to other nations and actually declined since 2014. The healthcare in the United States of America ignores the prevention of diseases in the name of profit. Cuban and other medical systems provide additional emphasis on the prevention of diseases instead of costly healthcare treatments. In short, socialist systems emphasize subsidized national healthcare for preventive and prophylactic care instead of reactive care for the treatment of diseases in the United States of America.

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/12/02/middle-age-death

[E_T]

I do know, that for a very long time (and may still be somewhat the case) that younger people in Cuba, so as to get some aspects of better overall care (food, housing, etc), intentionally had themselves infected with HIV.  To me, that does not speak well towards the overall system, if their only hope is to contract a potentially fatal illness.  I know these things as I've been POZ for over 25 years now... and that is one of the many things that I learned about this thing that I am forced to live with.

[Bearu]

I do know, that for a very long time (and may still be somewhat the case) that younger people in Cuba, so as to get some aspects of better overall care (food, housing, etc), intentionally had themselves infected with HIV.  To me, that does not speak well towards the overall system, if their only hope is to contract a potentially fatal illness.  I know these things as I've been POZ for over 25 years now... and that is one of the many things that I learned about this thing that I am forced to live with.

I cannot comment on the alleged cases of children and youth infecting themselves with HIV in Cuba. Do you have sources on this claim? I have heard similar cases in the United States of America of intentional self-injury for benefits, but I need facts on a topic before I form an opinion.
I can comment on the fact Cuba's healthcare system eliminated Mother to Child transmission of HIV and Syphilis according to the UN and World Health Organization in 2015.
https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/mtct-hiv-cuba/en/

Cuba's healthcare system produces more doctors and dentists per capita than the United States of America as of 2012. Gail Reed and William Keck reported Cuba's healthcare system generated approximately 1 team of doctors and assistants per 100 to 120 families and possessed an average life expectancy of around 79 years compared to the USA's life expectancy of around 78.[1] This information remained consistent with data from the World Bank despite Cuba's spending less on healthcare expenses and possessing far less GDP than the USA.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=CU
[1] William Keck and Gail Reed, “The Curious Case of Cuba,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 102, no 8, (2012): 15, 10.2105/AJPH.2012.300822.

E_T, that sucks on your status as person with an HIV positive status. I recognize the United States of America contained and contains a lot of stigma around the topic of HIV from fear and ignorance.
We could prevent major outbreaks of HIV and other similar diseases with universal preventive healthcare, but the solutions, even with government social programs under private insurance, suffered from the ubiquitous discrimination seen before 2010. We have seen the major problems with the inflated healthcare compromise agreements after 2010. The only logical solution I perceive remains the adoption of a nationalized healthcare system and abolition of private insurance and government regulation of other critical industries under the transformation into a socialist economy. This process should follow the best science and data based on the leaders of the healthcare successes of Northern Europe, Cuba, the older Soviet Model, and the Maoist China models.

[Rusty Edge]

I repeatedly see the similarity between US healthcare and US pandemic results. There are so many potential effective approaches that are more cost-effective regarding healthcare. There are so many countries that had better pandemic results with equal or less lead time- South Korea with it's testing and contact tracing, New Zealand with it's strict quarantine, Japan with it's compliance with face masks and hand washing. A few smaller countries which attempted to test everybody.

It seems like we have several advantages, but we haven't been able to realize them. So people die.