What does "Best Health Care in the World" have to do with health insurance?

[heppcatt]

Insurance companies are not the ones providing the direct care.
They just provide a payment to the actual health care providers.
This is a really bizarre talking point claiming that we have the best health care.
When insurance has really nothing to do with it.

It would be like car insurance companies taking credit for the USA having the greatest paint and body shops in the world.

[Saturday]

1. Good point. nt

[endarkenment]

2. A) it ain't here. B) we have the most expensive, not the best. nt.

'Best in the world' is just a plain old lie.

[Wapsie B]

3. The thing is though, we don't have the best health care in the world. France does.

By almost every standard of measure, life expectancy, infant mortality, for example we are far down the list. This first in the world line is nothing more than boosterism. It has no basis in fact.

[ejpoeta]

6. it's our automatic, nationalistic ego.... and the opponents of reform are counting on it.

the 'we're number one!' meme.... we have all been conditioned to think it and say it I think.... think back to grade school and the history books. I remember everything that happened had some kind of slant to it that as a kid you don't realize.... but once I went to college, and started actually looking outside of the manicured version of our history, I saw that we weren't always the good guys.... but we are raised with this idea that we are the best and that trumps everything else. No matter what may exist to prove otherwise... we are always right and we are number one. this is not exactly the best strategy to BE number one though. because even if we may have been at one point, saying we are the best is kind of like a middle aged guy who is still talking about his glory days as the high school quarterback as if somehow that has anything to do with his present.....

[Wapsie B]

10. Another reason why Howard Zinn's books should be in history classrooms across the country.

That's great analogy. Aging high school jock.

[OwnedByFerrets]

11. Ding Ding Ding....I get so farking tired of that crap

Only things we are best at are going into debt and building things that kill.

[ejpoeta]

12. but it sounds good to say we're number one without actually doing anything to

BE number one. we probably WERE number one at one point. don't know when that was, but resting on your laurels will get you nowhere fast, i have learned in my life. the world is passing us by as we live in nostalgia land.... romanticizing our history instead of making a better future.

[FormerDittoHead]

15. Yes. It's even deeper than you write.

As to the OP, it's this egotism which literally FORBIDS any attempt to look to other countries as any kind of models which we could learn from and improve our system.

It seems to be FORBIDDEN to think that another country MIGHT be doing something better than we do.

But as to your point about teaching history. Yes. It's insidious. I don't know if I was on the end of the wave or the crest of this thinking, but basically after all these years, I can see the 'narrative' which was taught to us.

This is basically what we were taught:

All history, all civilization, all technology, all cultural advancement, CULMINATES *HERE* in the United States. HERE is where people have come to ESCAPE the tyranny of Western and Eastern Europe (let's not talk about Asia or Africa, 'k?).

HERE is where those who escaped those other countries with their histories and traditions of religious persecution, senseless brutality, outdated royalty and traditions and came to create and build the greatest nation in history, leading in every possible dimension.

[rucky]

4. It's a trap.

They want you to challenge that point, when we don't even have to.

A response to that is that all Americans deserve access to the best care in the world. Insurance companies make money by placing barriers to care.

[TheWebHead]

5. The payout percentage

if a public option were to lower payouts to doctors and hospitals as compared to private insurers, then the consequences would be to degrade the quality of care. Price controls would make it more difficult for biotech to raise capital, it would make it more expensive for hospitals to borrow money since their cash flow would be damaged, and there'd be less medical innovation. Since health insurers pre-tax margins were 5-6% in 2008, in order to achieve a significant savings, there'd have to be some sort of pricing control.

[Cresent City Kid]

9. In order to achieve a significant savings

there needs to be salary control. No none in the health industry who's not a doctor or nurse has any business making more than $50K.

[donco6]

7. It's completely wrong from the get-go.

No country with 40 million without care at all can claim to have the "best" health care in the world.

[LuvNewcastle]

8. What it all comes down to is this.

The health insurance companies, which make an obscene amount of money, are afraid of becoming obsolete. They are buying our politicians. Many of the people fortunate enough to have good coverage are afraid that the quality of their health care will be brought down as we include the uninsured. A lot of people used that argument against integrating the schools. They were afraid the quality of the schools would be brought down by including minorities. We have to convince them that universal coverage will not only be more cost effective, but will be better for the general good and will not affect the coverage they already have.

[HopeHoops]

13. It means you've been watching FOX

Where else would you hear something so obviously false.

[Enthusiast]

14. This point needs more emphasis.

This is an excellent point. The American people are actually under the misunderstanding that somehow insurance companies are giving us heath care. Hey, they don't even stick a thermometer up our butt!

All the insurance companies do is collect free money. And this is another point that needs emphasis. They get "free money"!