Vaccine Passports (domestic).

[D_W]

If you're "of means" then a low tax/low social support model is ideal; you keep most of your (high) income, and can easily afford the best healthcare, education etc. Not so great for the overwhelming majority of course.

Convincing the majority of the voting public that low tax is good is one of the greatest skills of politicians from the economic right.

My point is that most people in the UK love the NHS. This friend of mine is of means and what comes to his mind is hallucinating and passing out for 5 years to wait for something that was deemed not a priority. If he wasn't of means, then maybe he'd just consider it necessary or a mistake in judgement.

I have great health insurance and given an income neutral choice, I"ll take our system. But if I were running a business, I'd take yours. If I had poor insurance, I'd take yours.

Our health insurance system, in my opinion, makes it hard to do commodity type work or some things that are easier to do in canada. Specifically, if you're going to do skilled manufacturing that supports a 50k salary, then all of the sudden adding 20k for a family group policy as benefits vs. 10k makes a huge difference. It prices us out of certain things.

A Canadian president of the firm I used to work for put it flatly - if you have the money, the american system is better, the care is better. If you don't have the money, you're better off in canada. substitute the UK. We're also proof in the UK that you can have the most responsive and most expensive health care around if you want and people will still overeat and do things that completely negate it. Or some who have coverage and just refuse to go to the doctor, anyway. I had a relative like that - she grew to hate going to any doctors because she'd had cancer and then a heart attack later in life. Her memories I guess were how much she hated treatment and struggling through both, so she stopped going to the dr. She later died of cancer - but didn't provide many details. I (as anyone would) wondered if she died of cancer that someone who had cancer previously would've been screened for. In the end, she didn't care. How do you provide care for someone like that at any level?

The idea that health care is a human right at no cost or close to no cost isn't really a universal thing here. The idea that it's provided for the truly poor here (in the same system that provides the very high cost) isn't objected to. I guess there's a lot of inertia...

..

oh. one other thing. It's very difficult to retire pre-Medicare age here unless you're of means, even though the pre-65 coverage for older people is subsidized by a limitation (it's not allowed to be more expensive than average coverage by more than a formula amount - but an individual may still be looking at an annual cost of $15-20k each year for a few years, and then magically at 65, medicare kicks in and an extremely rich policy (supplemental on top of the basic governmental benefits) will be $300 a month. a "good" policy with access to the same system (but more cost sharing) will be about a third or half of that.

 

[John Brown]

The care may be better, in terms of hotel style accommodation, but the outcome is worse. While the cost is around double. Your friend, who is "of means", maybe hasn't noticed that you can get to the front of the line in the UK by paying for private treatment. Maybe you could mention this to him.

 

[Jonm]

Surely the people that would mostly be affected by a vaccine passport, have made their choice not to have the vaccine....and if the majority of the people had chosen that route too....then lockdown measures would not be ending.

So it could be argued the anti vaxxers don't want the pubs and restaurants to open....as they don't want to do the one thing that enables that to happen

On that basis, I don't see how it can be discriminatory.

Very clever argument, I like it.

 

[D_W]

The care may be better, in terms of hotel style accommodation, but the outcome is worse. While the cost is around double. Your friend, who is "of means", maybe hasn't noticed that you can get to the front of the line in the UK by paying for private treatment. Maybe you could mention this to him.

Not sure how you figure the outcome on an individual basis is better, but if you go by some survey scores where they add arbitrary points to outcome just because the service was provided publicly, then you can get whatever score you want.

Chiropractors here often try to use those who type studies as proof that scientific medicine is flawed, but they haven't adjusted the covid out of anyone.

 

[RobinBHM]

Not sure how you figure the outcome on an individual basis is better, but if you go by some survey scores where they add arbitrary points to outcome just because the service was provided publicly, then you can get whatever score you want.

Chiropractors here often try to use those who type studies as proof that scientific medicine is flawed, but they haven't adjusted the covid out of anyone.

The UK and USA have health care models that are at opposite ends of the spectrum and I would say both are quite flawed.

The NHS is underfunded and overstretched.

The USA system is a for profit business model. It is motivated by shareholder profit not patient care.....once you get greed driving a healthcare system it only means one thing: the system only works for the rich.

Sadly UK politics is driven by self interest and healthcare decisions are being influenced by personal gain. The UK is now being targeted by USA healthcare businesses and US libertarian groups who are funding so called think tanks and lobby groups in exchange for political influence.

 

[Jonm]

The UK and USA have health care models that are at opposite ends of the spectrum and I would say both are quite flawed.

The NHS is underfunded and overstretched.

The USA system is a for profit business model. It is motivated by shareholder profit not patient care.....once you get greed driving a healthcare system it only means one thing: the system only works for the rich.

Sadly UK politics is driven by self interest and healthcare decisions are being influenced by personal gain. The UK is now being targeted by USA healthcare businesses and US libertarian groups who are funding so called think tanks and lobby groups in exchange for political influence.

Trump talked about a trade deal with UK and “opening up the NHS to competition“. Some may think that Trump had the interests of UK residents at heart and wanted to reduce costs of the NHS for us. My interpretation of this is that the NHS buys medicines centrally and has huge purchasing power and uses this to drive down prices. We often pay less for US made drugs than the Americans. Trump wanted to break this monopoly. We need to be very careful with any trade deal with USA.

 

[Lons]

The care may be better, in terms of hotel style accommodation, but the outcome is worse. While the cost is around double. Your friend, who is "of means", maybe hasn't noticed that you can get to the front of the line in the UK by paying for private treatment. Maybe you could mention this to him.

Exactly!

In 2018 my wife needed an urgent operation on her heel and the NHS / GP practice wouldn't refer her to a consultant, they spent months pushing her through various physio treatments which even the physios said was a waste of time until she was so bad I needed to buy a mobility scooter so I lost patience, paid for a private consultation and we got the operation pushed through quickly on the NHS but the result was a much more complicated and invasive procedure than would have been required if done earlier.
Now she has a similar issue with her other heel, same result as the GP practice refuses to refer her ( they get paid to defer these ), no way we're going down that path again so we're having to pay privately or spend many months / years jumping through hoops, we're lucky we can find the money, many can't.

 

[D_W]

The UK and USA have health care models that are at opposite ends of the spectrum and I would say both are quite flawed.

The NHS is underfunded and overstretched.

The USA system is a for profit business model. It is motivated by shareholder profit not patient care.....once you get greed driving a healthcare system it only means one thing: the system only works for the rich.

Sadly UK politics is driven by self interest and healthcare decisions are being influenced by personal gain. The UK is now being targeted by USA healthcare businesses and US libertarian groups who are funding so called think tanks and lobby groups in exchange for political influence.

This is sort of a flawed argument. It's more accurate to say that the US system has nothing to manage utilization. It doesn't work only for the rich as the socialized part of our system is far larger than the entire nhs.

As I mentioned above, if I could have the difference in cost stashed in my paycheck, I'd take the UK system, but we don't have that choice over here.

Much of the healthcare delivery here is by not for profit systems. Where I live, both large systems are not for profit, which means they can't distribute earnings and generally aren't subject to property taxes. Instead they roll their retained reserves around and buy up territory. The utilization and cost of care is more expensive through them than for profit groups because they get to retain their monies for expansion. The more their customers utilize the system, the higher they can legally set rates.

 

[Dave Moore]

We have manditory seatbelts for those traveling in cars which saves 100's of lives.

No one says I'm not wearing one to a PC....

I cannot see why a vaccine passport cannot be introduced to save 1000's lives.

If you don't want one then don't fly / go to pubs etc.

Essential shops would be a another kettle of fish tbh.

Cheers James

What about those that are exempt? Are you keeping them out of the pub or into the gas chambers?

 

[Droogs]

like smokers they can wait in the beer garden or in the bike shed