Ooops! All you people lauding...

[Yonivore]

...Canada's health care:

Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada's doctors (http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jbjzPEY0Y3bvRD335rGu_Z3KXoQw)


By Jennifer Graham (CP) – 1 day ago

SASKATOON — The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Guess what, America's health care system isn't imploding. It doesn't need to be fixed with Canadian-styled socialism.

[Rodriguez]

no one is satisfied with what he has at hand, until he loses it.

[Bartleby]

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

Sounds like what they're considering is pretty close to what Obama was talking about doing.


Doig, who has had a full-time family practice in Saskatoon for 30 years, acknowledges that when physicians have talked about changing the health-care system in the past, they've been accused of wanting an American-style structure. She insists that's not the case.

"It's not about choosing between an American system or a Canadian system," said Doig. "The whole thing is about looking at what other people do."

I wouldn't say they're totally enamored with they the system we have here.

[Yonivore]

Sounds like what they're considering is pretty close to what Obama was talking about doing.
Difference being they're walking back from socialism and Obama is walking towards it.


I wouldn't say they're totally enamored with they the system we have here.
Well, they're stupid Canadians, what can I say?

[hope4dopes]

Sounds like what they're considering is pretty close to what Obama was talking about doing.



I wouldn't say they're totally enamored with they the system we have here.
Pathetic ...try again.

[SonOfAGun]

A look into the future my friends.

[boutons_deux]

Ask Canadians or any other industrial country if they want to swap their health care system for America's social Darwinism health care (aka, the poorer you are, the sicker you are, and the earlier you die).

Everybody in every country gripes about schools, taxes, govt, health care. They get the systems they build and the systems they deserve.

It's only in America where an illness catastrophe is a financial catastrophe.

[Yonivore]

Ask Canadians or any other industrial country if they want to swap their health care system for America's social Darwinism health care (aka, the poorer you are, the sicker you are, and the earlier you die).

Everybody in every country gripes about schools, taxes, govt, health care. They get the systems they build and the systems they deserve.

It's only in America where an illness catastrophe is a financial catastrophe.
Then why do Canadians continue to come here for treatment?

I'd rather be in debt and alive than a dead Canadian waiting for an MRI.

[Yonivore]

rich/poor disparity that's the problem with the current system in the US
Rich and poor receiving medical care in the United States.

[Yonivore]

perhaps i should have said the disparity between the haves and have-nots

people who have insurance (rich people, people with jobs that offer affordable insurance, and people with medicare/medicaid) have primary care physicians

people who don't have insurance (people with jobs that don't offer affordable insurance, people who don't qualify for medicare/medicaid, etc., undocumented/illegal immigrants) use the emergency room.

ERs cost balls loads more money than primary care physicians for several reasons. (ppl don't go to the ER unless they're already sick; ERs cost more $$ because they're geared toward emergencies, etc.)

plus, oftentimes, people w/out insurance who go to the ER for treatment, once the initial treatment is through, get their asses dumped out on the street, regardless of whatever chronic conditions they may have

the apparent solution seems to be to get more people into primary care and out of the expensive, overwhelmed ERs. it's cheaper for everyone and better for the patients. that's why some people favor a public option for insurance

but some people with insurance favor the status quo, for the simple reason that they're afraid that change will affect their own quality of health care

and then to complicate things, you throw in the necessity of immigration reform to lower health care burdens, the prescription drug companies' and HMOs' purpose to make as much profits as possible, and the wrongheaded pay-for-services concept medicare/medicaid are built on

the current healthcare system is a clusterfuck, with too many hands (not belonging to healthcare professionals) in the cookie jar successfully getting a piece of the action
The uninsured. Who are they?


EDITORIAL: Who are the uninsured? (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/25/who-are-the-uninsured/)


A closer look at the 46 million reasons for ObamaCare

By now, you have probably heard a lot about the sad army of the "uninsured" from President Obama and every other elected Democratic Party official in these United States. This is simply political fear-mongering designed to pass a national government-run health-care plan, which has been a union and liberal agenda item since the late 1940s. So the "solution" isn't new and neither is the "crisis."

Let's look at the facts. First of all, the uninsured do receive high-quality medical care. Virtually every state requires that hospitals treat people regardless of their ability to pay. Talk to any hospital executive, and he will tell you that treating people who either cannot or will not pay is actually quite costly -- forcing up medical bills for the rest of us. So the uninsured are treated, and the rest of us are treated to the bill.

This leads us to ask: Who are the uninsured? In 2006, the Census Bureau used a Department of Labor survey to estimate that there were 46.6 million uninsured people -- about 15.5 percent of the population.

Fourteen million of the 47 million are already eligible for government insurance, Medicaid, but have not signed up. (Pre-existing conditions do not exclude someone from joining Medicaid.) Those 14 million have not signed up because they do not want to pay the small monthly premium that Medicare charges. As a result, many who are eligible for Medicaid wait until they need care before they register. They are effectively insured at all times even when they are not formally enrolled in the program.

What about the uninsured who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid? Most are not in dire financial straits. After all, 27 million of the uninsured have personal incomes of more than $50,000.

True, there is a group of people who are borderline poor but not eligible for Medicaid, but the group is relatively small and many (if not most) of those people are illegal immigrants. Unfortunately, government surveys never ask respondents if they are legally in the United States.

If you exclude those who are essentially covered by Medicaid, nearly 70 percent of the remaining uninsured lack insurance for less than four months. Many of those temporarily uninsured are simply switching jobs and waiting for human resources departments to process their paperwork. In addition, two-thirds of the uninsured are between 18 and 34; these folks, on average, have few health problems and are uninsured by choice.

The truly uninsured are, thus, largely young people who can afford insurance but who make the decision to temporarily go without it as they move between jobs. This tends to be for very short periods of time.

As the late, great senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, used to say: "You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts." The sensationalized plight of the uninsured is not a valid reason for enacting national health care.
Then, let's talk about the very nature of health insurance...or, better yet, insurance in general.

I think Ace, over at Ace of Spades HQ, makes the point as eloquently as anyone. Here is an extract (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/290967.php) from a longer post on the matter:


Insurance is a contract by which someone agrees to pay if you suffer a rare expense. That's how real insurance manages to be fairly inexpensive -- the risk insured against may be costly as hell (e.g., your house burns down) doesn't happen very often.

In the US, "insurance" moved away from real insurance to disguised payments in lieu of wages during the Depression and WWII, where the socialist Roosevelt Administration controlled wages. So firms began offering more and more generous "insurance" to evade/break/semi-legally flout these restrictions, which stopped being insurance against a rare risk, and began becoming simply disguised wages as they paid for things which weren't "risks" at all but inevitabilities, such as your needing to pay for eyeglasses and flu shots and routine check-ups and everything else.

The normal maintenance of your body, in other words, the same as buying food.

No one could "insure" your need to eat food, as it is not a risk at all but an inevitability. Or, in theory, I could "insure" you against the "risk" you will need to eat at least $100 of food per week, but as it is guaranteed that you will eat that much, the "insurance policy" would have to cost... $100 per week plus administrative and other expenses, meaning you'd pay a company $125 or $135 a week in order to get a $100 check from the company every week.

This is exactly what "insurance" has become in the minds of most -- "someone else pays for stuff that in a sane world I'd pay for myself."

The reason that employees at companies that pay for insurance get most of this paid for is that their employer is merely paying them wages in a different form; i.e., rather than pay you an extra $10 a week or $500 per year, they'll pay $500 of medical expenses you would otherwise have to pay yourself.

They're not "insuring" you. You cannot be "insured" against a "risk" 100% guaranteed to occur.

They're just delivering wages in a roundabout fashion.
Then, there's the cost of health care...driven up by onerous government regulation on medical practices, pharmaceutical development, and delivery of therapies, combined with exorbitant liabilities born by doctors and hospitals -- of which they have to insure against -- and, finally the waste, fraud, and incompetence of the government wing of health care that drives up the cost across the board.