How would Universal Health Care help the economy?

Edit: This is a thread on how it would affect the economy..and not about any moral issues.

For the Obama and Clinton supporters. Since the economy is in a shit storm how would implementing UHC actually do anything other then harm the economy? Could ending the war be the answer? South Korea isnt at war (well..technically I guess they are..), neither is Japan and the UK's economy shouldnt be taking too much of a strain from what they are doing over there..so I doubt thats the answer.

Any suggestions or ideas?

The UK healthcare system:
1. http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/03/08/UKCrisis/
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...uk.topstories3
"Labour's flagship health service reforms were in disarray last night, as the head of the NHS, Sir Nigel Crisp, quit in the face of increasing deficits which the government admitted would breach its forecast of ?200m... Estimates of the final deficit suggest it could rise to as high as ?800m."

"The current crisis...predicting that the year-end deficit for the NHS could run as high as $1.6 billion dollars."

South Korea
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...?artid=1447690
"After 1996, Korean NHI began to develop significant deficits. From 1996 to the present, total health expenditures have exceeded total income... Although government continually raised the mandatory insurance premiums to make up for the deficit, many health policy experts predicted that increased governmental funding would not solve the problem."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=89626309
"The Japanese Health Ministry tightly controls the price of health care down to the smallest detail." "But 50 percent of hospitals are in financial deficit now."

if everyone had access to health care, there would be fewer sick people.. and fewer people therefore off work through illness.. it would also be easier to find out who is pretending to be sick so they can claim any sickness benefits which you may get over there... if the system was run properly! fewer sick people means more workers, which means greater production which means greater profitability which means less reliance on government money.. etc etc...

Originally posted by KidRock
Edit: This is a thread on how it would affect the economy..and not about any moral issues.

For the Obama and Clinton supporters. Since the economy is in a shit storm how would implementing UHC actually do anything other then harm the economy? Could ending the war be the answer? South Korea isnt at war (well..technically I guess they are..), neither is Japan and the UK's economy shouldnt be taking too much of a strain from what they are doing over there..so I doubt thats the answer.

Any suggestions or ideas?

Good try, though.

Originally posted by big gay kirk
if everyone had access to health care, there would be fewer sick people.. and fewer people therefore off work through illness.. it would also be easier to find out who is pretending to be sick so they can claim any sickness benefits which you may get over there... if the system was run properly! fewer sick people means more workers, which means greater production which means greater profitability which means less reliance on government money.. etc etc...

Cute theory though.

I am sure we all agree that the US is ****ed beyond believe though. National Health Care would actually be an improvement there. Kinda how trading AIDS for Brain Cancer might be an improvement

US expenditure per capita on healthcare is actually ironically the highest in the world.

Originally posted by xmarksthespot
US expenditure per capita on healthcare is actually ironically the highest in the world.

Exactly. It makes no sense whatsoever.

as i said.. if the system is run properly it should work... never seen one run properly though....

Originally posted by big gay kirk
as i said.. if the system is run properly it should work... never seen one run properly though....

I am confused as to why you would ask the question like this. As Floo said, the idea is to help the people.

Economies are means to an end, you understand. They give countries the ability to thrive as civilisations. Health Care is one of those end results.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
I am confused as to why you would ask the question like this. As Floo said, the idea is to help the people.

Economies are means to ann endm, you understand. They give countries the ability to thrive as civilisations. Health Care is one of those end results.

Well that might have been your point, but that wasn't actually what kidrock was asking about. He's asking how it would help the economy, the simple answer is that it isn't meant to.

Originally posted by Bardock42
The point though is that in a free economy most people might very well get better coverage than in a Universal Health Care system.

And concurring with the above comments, the premise of the thread is pretty dumb.

if it's run properly then it's not a problem...the problem with the UK NHS is that there is a huge amount of money spent on bureaucracy rather than so called "front line" care....there was at one point, in one hospital in England...4 admin staff for every one medical staff...

alot of this is because when things go wrong...the every increasing demand for compensation drains the resources...so hospitals hire legal teams and administrators in order to limit the damage...and then there is less money available for front line services...and thus more mistakes are made...etc etc

the argument, from a UK perspective, that ending the involment in the iraq and afganistan would increase money available for the NHS is spurios because the NHS is the single biggest budget in the UK economy...

roughly they are 102 billion for the NHS and 36 Billion for the M.O.D

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Well that might have been your point, but that wasn't actually what kidrock was asking about. He's asking how it would help the economy, the simple answer is that it isn't meant to.

Originally posted by xmarksthespot
The WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies disagree however, in comparing the implementation of the systems currently in place.

And concurring with the above comments, the premise of the thread is pretty dumb.

What free market systems did they compare? Any first world countries?

Originally posted by Bardock42
What free market systems did they compare? Any first world countries?

The WHO study is far more comprehensive comparing something around 190 countries, but is also more dated I think it was the WHO annual report from 2000.

stupidest thread ever.

I look forward to the involvment of our Canadian members. I'm interested to hear their perspective.

Originally posted by xmarksthespot
I don't know how free you need the market to be for healthcare to be completely free market; I don't know if one exists at all. But the most highly privatised healthcare system in the world (as far as I'm aware) the US, was compared to other nations:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=482678
And their not particularly getting their value for money.

The WHO study is far more comprehensive comparing something around 190 countries, but is also more dated I think it was the WHO annual report from 2000.

One of the things about National Health Care, in England at least, according to that **** Michael Moore at least, is that if doctors get only paid like 30 000 (random number, whatever it is), what really stops the good ones from going to the US or maybe even Germany to make 5 times that? Just strikes me as odd. Also, the waiting times for not absolutely urgent issues is just mind boggling to me.

Point is how does Obama plan to get out Economy back on track and stabalized with programs like UHC..which shown by the links obviously hurts the economy even more.

Sure it may be something "for the people", thats all great and jolly, but at what cost? Should we go into a great depression with people living in hoovervilles on the streets but chanting "At least we have healthcare!"?

Originally posted by Ya Krunk'd Floo
Despite your desperate edit, I think the deal with universal health care is that it helps the people, not the economy. A more pressing issue for the economy would be something like...ooo, I don't know...maybe a never-ending war with spiraling costs creating huge deficits.

Good try, though.

Desperate edit? The edit was done before anyone even posted in the thread..thanks though.

Originally posted by KidRock
Point is how does Obama plan to get out Economy back on track and stabalized with programs like UHC..which shown by the links obviously hurts the economy even more.

Sure it may be something "for the people", thats all great and jolly, but at what cost? Should we go into a great depression with people living in hoovervilles on the streets but chanting "At least we have healthcare!"?

Desperate edit? The edit was done before anyone even posted in the thread..thanks though.