Why do they call it "health care"? Whom do you know that went to the hospital, spent thousands of dollars, and came out "healthy"?

Me.

Health care doesn’t just involve hospitals. It also involves outpatient care, including primary care. Primary care doctors help with prevention of disease (including promoting screening such as colonoscopies).

My husband. Me. Either of us could have died from what landed us in the hospital to begin with.

Is cynicism getting you far in life?

I am happy for all of you, and that is good news. It’s just that everybody I know who went into the hospital did not come out healthy-they were merely less sick. Not a bad conversion, but what does that have to do with “health care”

@elizabethmae oh no, this ain’t cynicism – it’s something a lot more cliche…and common

Well, you can bill for “health care.” It’s harder to bill for “wellness initiatives.”

You have a good point. If we made healthier food more available and designed more cities around the pedestrian instead of the automobile, we could probably call that health care, too.

Health care is care regarding your health.
The word health doesn’t mean “healthy.”
You’re trying to make synonyms out of words that aren’t synonyms.

@Likeradar logic! sheesh

YAY likeradar!

@josie what do semantics have to do with healthcare? call it whatever you want, but 48 million of us don’t have it.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I’m glad it’s still appreciated. :)

@Likeradar man, srssly

@josie Well, I suppose that when I came out of the hospital I was merely “less dying.” If that’s how you want to view it.

me too !

@SANSCRITKING (I suspect it was just a temporary fix, tho. ;)

So all those years I spent in Med School i was fooling myself and was the target of a great cosmic joke. I was never meant to make people healthy… just less sick. . Obviously a person’s overall health is 100% dependent on the treatment he/she receives within a hospital setting and has nothing to do with the person’s eating/exercise habits, genes or vices It’s the doctor’s job to make all these things work together because the patient can’t be expected to take accountability for his/her lifestyle. And those patients with genetic disorders were probably caused by doctors as well right? I’m glad I found this out now.

exactly what is HEALTHY ??

do you actually know anyone who is 100% HEALTHY ??

Health care is caring for your health, i.e., improving your state of health. For many people it has little to do with becoming ‘healthy’ or being totally free of disease. Sorry but I think the question is lame because it’s strictly semantic.

@Likeradar 3 out of 4 questions he’s trying to make a mountain out of a troll hill.

What would you rather call it? Laundry care? Garden care? Or we could get really absurd and call it Cement Care.

Sheesh!

Routine medical care is part of preventing illness and maintaining health. Where people don’t have to wait for near death experiences to be able to justify accessing medical care, people can stay healthier and don’t fear economic ruin when they see to doctor.

We are all dying, even the littlest baby. The whole medical care system is geared to keep people as healthy as possible. The WIC health care program for mothers and babies is all about health, with food, innoculations, and classes on how to properly care for yourself and your baby. The Kaiser health care program is an entire system of healthy living classes, medications, and hospitalizations that help extend and improve our daily lives.

I’m sorry your hospital stay did not have a better outcome, but that is a very rare event.

In the future the main focus of health care should be prevention.

@SANSCRITKING @wundayatta @Simone_De_Beauvoir et al. Life is an ongoing and dynamic process. It must be continuously sustained. All living things face challenges, which must be unrelentingly, repeatedly, and successfully met if life is to continue. These challenges include, finding food, processing it into nutrients, adapting to changes in temperature, fighting microorganisms, healing and repair, reproducing, avoiding and escaping predators etc. The list is effectively endless. HEALTH is the existential condition that determines one’s ability to successfully meet these challenges. HEALTHY is a non-specific but conventionally accepted level of health. It is not semantics. No one is “made healthy” by technology, no matter how expensive. The “health care” debate completely leaves out personal responsibility, the intractable nature of genetics, the inevitable compromises in health that come with age and injury, and the certainty of eventual death. I think the entire “health care” debate would become more rationale and have a happy outcome if people got their concepts a little better organized. And one way to do it is talk about health on the one hand, and sickness on the other. They are two different topics that get intermingled until people begin to talk past one another. Sort of like war and peace. I personally would like to see every sick person get efficacious treatment. No chance of that with the current debate. The question served a purpose-to start a discussion. Some of you discussed it and I gave you points for it. Not sure what folks gain by being insulting, but it was the same on Answerbag, so I guess it might just be universal. Josie will see you all around I hope. .

@josie I am all for rational debate and people having their concepts better organized. I do not agree with you that the present-day healthcare debate leaves out perspectives on personal responsibility – why do you think there are so many people opposed to everyone getting healthcare?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir The opposition is not to people getting medical treatment. I am always a little confused by the notion that some people oppose other people getting medical treatment. If anybody tries to stop you or anybody else from getting treatment, you call me and I will take care of them-in most case, they themselves will need treatment.

The opposition is due to a very real reluctance to allow the government to have direct involvement in paying for it. As soon as taxpayers have to pay each others medical bills, they will want to have something to say as to who gets what, and an obviously corrupt and inefficient goverment is going to respond in some corrupt and inefficient manner. They always have, they always do, they always will. The concern is very legitimate.
If the government truly wanted to get involved, they would, among other things, make it illegal for ANY third party payer to seek to know anything about the transaction between doctor and patient (and allow insurance actuarial tables to reorganize accordingly), make charitable donations to medical payer charities a tax deduction, make direct insurance payments to providers illegal, allow interstate commerce in insurance, expand and not limit FSAs and HSAs, tax as income (assuming we accept income tax as morally proper-I do not) employer provided medical insurance, regardless of value, and other reforms too numerous to mention. Thanks for you comment.

@josie Your opposition is not about medical treatment, fine – other people’s opposition is. I don’t get why people can’t put in money for everyone to get treatment. Given the very many social and economical discretpancies in this country, many can not simply pay for it with their own money. And they’re not going to call you, trust me. Perhaps the government isn’t the best solution but it is the only one that’s offering Universal healthcare. Insurance companies are running the show, making it worse for doctors and for patients. Pay for service system doesn’t work – doctors should be salaried and salaries shouldn’t be in the $400, 000Ks as they are. Big Pharma is another private industry ruining healthcare in this country. As if the focus on treatment and not on prevention. I don’t think FSAs and HSAs are the way to do it, either.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Anybody who wants to can put in as much money as they choose to pay for somebody else’s medical treatment. I would never stop them.

If doctors do not like the current insurance system, all they need do is go on strike for one measely day, and it will stop. Auto workers, garbage men, school teachers, hollywood writers etc. all do this. So can physicians. They probably won’t, and some of the people who support auto worker strikes would, I believe, hypocritically disapprove of a physician’s strike. In my opinion, they should do it. I also hope it is not the day I get hit by car.

Which consumer goods and services do you believe should be collectively paid for? Which ones do you believe should be an individual’s responsibility? Why one, and not the other. What if I don not agree? If you knew that your subsidy was going to provide life saving surgery to a homicidal pedophile, would you object? An illegal worker? Your ex spouse or your mother in law? Who would entertain your objection? If you knew you were paying for medical marijuana that in fact was the entertainment at a local fraternity party, would you object? Some people have religious convictions about abortion. Should their tax dollars be used to pay for it? Since when has the government actually been able to manage such questions. Who are the saints in our midst that would administer a government single payer plan, who would limit doctor’s salaries. Has any president ever made an appointment based on the person’s intelligence or virtue, or was it based on political “pull”. Would you allow the same person to regulate YOUR salary. Why not? If we bring down “Big Pharma” who will research and sell, for example, the drug that eventually cures cancer or AIDS? Do you really believe that the bright people who become physicians would put up with college, med school, internship, residency, fellowship, massive school debt and years of sacrifice in order to become a government employee, and have as a boss a politically connected bureaucrat, who may have gotten the job because he or she slept with a Senator? A personal example: the son of a friend, brilliant kid, world class, medical student dropped out of med school because he believed he saw the writing on the wall. He will go be successful someplace else. A second rate doctor will take his place.
Seriously, where are these sweethearts that will step up and run your life just the way would like it to be? Thanks for your comment.

Doctors cannot ethically go completely out on strike. That would constitute patient abandonment. They can opt out of doing elective procedures, but I don’t think that would have the desired effect of changing the way things are run.

My point exactly. Because they are among the best and brightest, they have become more precious as slaves. They are not allowed the same priviledges as the more disposable and less special elements of commerce are. What sort of strange reverse valuation is that?

What Josie and all the personal responsibility-niks miss out on is you can’t save enough money if you are struck by cancer or a failing heart or other serious condition. A cancer diagnosis, surgery, follow up treatment and 5 years of tests can be $250,000. A 20% deductable is $50,000-who can write a check for that? For those who want to blame lifestyle for cancer, it is more likely to be environmental factors where we ALL contribute to the problem so we should ALL contribute to alleviating the consequences.

@josie have you ever had an illness that drained all your savings no matter how many decades you’ve saved up for? have you ever had to be on treatment for 6 months where your job doesn’t provide you with short-term disability benefits or a salary and you can’t work and you no longer have insurance? have you ever had to deal with an insurance company for 3 months just to have them re-code some of your previous issues on an unrelated diagnosis so that you can receive chemotherapy again? have you ever spent your life piling up hospital bills because they’re just too ridiculous to pay – the system as we have it now DOES NOT WORK…everyone should have healthcare – we’re not discussing anything else with this question…I believe everyone’s tax dollars should go towards everyone’s healthcare – I don’t care if you believe in abortion or not, I don’t care if you and I hate each other on every issue one can imagine, you and I both deserve access to an understandable system.

@galileogirl Well said.
Also, a bunch of you may not know this, but prior to about 1994 low income adults WERE able to receive “government funded health care.” It was the best “insurance” plan I’ve ever had. Remember when I said I was dying? Medicare paid for it 100%. I guess I just don’t know what I would have done if hadn’t had that insurance.
Does anyone recall any drastic issues prior to 1994 with taxes or what ever else people are concerned about?

@Josie
Here in Canada, doctors get paid much less but still live very well and have some of the highest incomes.
Here in Canada, hospitals are not run for profit, they are there to provide a service.
Here in Canada, drug research is actively done but drug companies don’t get to gouge the public as in the USA. The very same drugs, from the very same country sell for 50 – 60% less than in the USA.

Health insurance here is government run or government regulated and everybody is eligible for care, regardless of income. Insurance premiums are much lower. The drug companies and the hospitals and the insurance plans can’t conspire to gouge the public and there are no deductibles for health care and reasonable deductibles for prescription drugs (based on income).

These things can work much better than they do in the USA.

@Dr_Lawrence Thank you! It makes me crazy, all of this talk about how “bad” health care is in other countries because it’s government run, yet the stories of how well it really DOES work are completely ignored.

Maybe bad healthcare is better than no healthcare at all?

@josie We made a true deal with the devil when we protected big pharm’s obscene profits. Other countries are able to use the capitalistic economies of scale to negotiate prices. After taking ;arge campaign donations our Congress basically said “Write your own ticket” We are also trying to criminalize day trips to Canada to buy prescription drugs at a reasonable cost.

Also Canadian Drs don’t pay the ridiculous malpractice insurance premiums American Dr’s and hospitals do. Malpractice claims are based on the reality that a bad outcome is usually nobody’s fault and experts judge based on facts not jurors moved by emotion.