I am all for providing as many people with coverage as possible. I don't know many people that would say that they are against that, but I am even perhaps pro-universal coverage. It would come at great cost, and perhaps lower quality health care for the top 10% of the U.S. population, but for the other 90%, it would be a great improvement. However, one big problem we would face is the availability of health care.
It's a well-known and well-cited fact that places that have universal health care often have long long lines for care, to the point where people's treatments are suffering. Just as an extreme example, and because this is in the field I am going into, say there is a patient who needs cancer treatment. Cancer isn't something that waits around for you to treat it... if you need to wait 3-6 months before you can begin treatment because all the slots are filled up, it may be too late for you. What was at one point a localized curable cancer may have metastasized by then, making treatment far more difficult and prognosis likely much worse.
A more common scenario is probably one in which people may have to wait even for appointments or spots with primary care physicians - these are the most used and most needed (and arguably the most important) of all physicians for a patient and if health care is extended to a large percentage of the uncovered population, there will not be enough of these doctors. Massachusetts seems to be facing that problem now, as they have mandated that all residents have health care coverage.
Do I think this should stop us from trying to get health care for more U.S. citizens? Of course not... do I think we should take steps to anticipate and prevent this problem? Definitely. What we need to convince more people to go into primary care (whether those are doctors, nurses, etc), but that, ladies and gentlemen, is a whole different post.
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8 years ago
3 comments:
It's a well-known and well-cited fact that places that have universal health care often have long long lines for care, to the point where people's treatments are suffering.
This is actually an area of great contention. This article, which specifically disputes your statement, is the first item returned from a Google search of "healthcare waiting times". To my understanding there is a great deal of research which disagrees with your statement.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-burger/ugly-health-care-waiting-_b_55749.html
Hey Jo are you still checking your blog.. i am a kidney patient thinking of moving to Botswana and was hoping to pick your brains on a couple of treatment issues..do you have an email i can get you on?
I am on anesu_sagonda@yahoo.co.uk
Hope to hear from you soon..
I agree - I probably should not have said "well-known" and "well-cited" or "fact". :) But it -is- a major criticism of health care systems that utilize universal health care. Many of the other articles, including the one on Wikipedia (a completely trusted source, right?) cites the wait times in Canada:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada#Criticisms
However, many of the articles also point out the billions of dollars being spent by canada and other countries to fix the problem, so maybe it is a lot better now than before.
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