You guys are gonna have a Cow....WTG! Mass!

[MannyIsGod]

there problem with a perfect universal healthcare system is that part of the population will in the end hold up a higher end up the bargain than others.

social programs like this in the end become nothing more than a crutch that provides no incentive for people to stand on their own 2 feet.

the homeless can get healthcare if they need it, don't patronize them as though they are some helpless sector of society that can't help themselves.

if you want to reform the rising cost of healthcare, we can start in many places that do not involve taking more tax money from the people of this country and redistributing it in an inefficent goverment run system.

as i mentoined before, people want to be 100 percent insured and want it to be done for a low cost. this is not going to be the case, it simply can not be. liability insurance on my vehicle is much cheaper than insuring everything possible that could happen to it.

as i mentoined, there are affordable insurance plans out there with excellent insurance companies that will cover 80 percent of your hospital costs but not doctors visits. lets say one of these polcies costs 100 a month. these figures are simply hypothetical for the purpose of making my point, but aren't too far off.

now, lets say that comprehensive hmo plan such as blue cross and blue shield plan will cost you around 500 dollars a month for a family of 4 and will cover doctors visits with a copay of 20 dollars. now, the average person will make one doctors visit a year, and in order to have that insured people have to pay an extra 4800 dollars a year.

it doesn't make much sense, but you'd be suprised how hard it is to convince people that paying for a 60 dollar doctors visit or 2 a year is the smart move when compared to paying an extra 4 and a half grand a year to have it covered.

there is also insurance abuse. those of you who have coverage through work where it is mostly paid for by the company will abuse it like crazy. you will go to the doctor the moment you sneeze 2 times in a row. well, those unessecary doctors visits add up when it comes time for the insurance companies to balance their books. they in turn have to raise rates.

it is as though insurance companies don't have a right to make money in the eyes of the american public. you see it when companies try to pull out of markets and not sell homewoners insurance because they are losing money. do you remember the mold fiasco a few years ago. a judge tells companies they have to cover mold in their coverage and then they aren't allowed to stop selling the coverage all together. it's ridiculous. if the casinos in vegas worked this way we'd all be rich.

if we would simply let these companies operate under less regulation as far as what coverages they sell, and if people would accept some responsiblity for some of the costs, we would eliminate the so called health care crisis and premiums would come down.

but instead, some would rather start up a sytem that is bound to be inefficent and substandard when it comes to healthcare. that would be the begining of a bad health care crisis.

[DeSPURado]

social programs like this in the end become nothing more than a crutch that provides no incentive for people to stand on their own 2 feet.

The same could be said about education.......

as i mentoined before, people want to be 100 percent insured and want it to be done for a low cost. this is not going to be the case, it simply can not be. liability insurance on my vehicle is much cheaper than insuring everything possible that could happen to it.

How does the rest of the world do it then? If its completely impossible how are they making it possible?

if you want to reform the rising cost of healthcare, we can start in many places that do not involve taking more tax money from the people of this country and redistributing it in an inefficent goverment run system.

Who said anything about doing that? I would take the money from paying off the national debt (no interest payments) And cut into millitary spending.

You really don't adress any of the problems other than say its unworkable...Which to me is a fallacy since we see it working in most of the rest of the world. You go on a few slippery slope arguments but again that would be an argumentative fallacy. I still don't see how that justifies a for profit system that allows people to die and go bankrupt without health insurance.

Executive Summary

The U.S. wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured. Administrative expenses will consume at least $399.4 billion out of total health expenditures of $1,660.5 billion in 2003. Streamlining administrative overhead to Canadian levels would save approximately $286.0 billion in 2003, $6,940 for each of the 41.2 million Americans who were uninsured as of 2001. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage.

link

[MannyIsGod]

the wait times in canda and great britian are insane, it is not working. unless you have a warped sense of what working is.

the people in those countries don't die due to no healthcare, they simply die waiting.

goverment healthcare is certainly possible, it's just a really ty system that hurts more than it benifits.

[DeSPURado]

There were some stories about this back in 2002, care to show me evidence of the same things happening today? And from what I can find that happened when they tried to privatize part of their healthcare.

I m,ean what it looks like to me is that Republicans saw a crisis and hailed it as the end of socialized medicince, back when that was happening....Well guess what they fixed the problems, and its still ticking.

[spurster]

the wait times in canda and great britian are insane, it is not working. unless you have a warped sense of what working is.

the people in those countries don't die due to no healthcare, they simply die waiting.

goverment healthcare is certainly possible, it's just a really ty system that hurts more than it benifits.

I call BS. Both Canada and Great Britain have lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy than the US.

www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html

Now a lot of their health care system might be a lot more inconvenient, but aren't you (Manny) the one that is telling us that we are expecting too much from our health insurance.

I'm still waiting for a link to one of these $400/month plans that I can just sign up for.

No, I don't need health insurance. I get mine through work, but the total cost is well more than $400/month. It's true that it's one of these co-pay plans.

[MannyIsGod]

ER backlog means ambulance delays: CTV report







Interactive
• Web Sites: Paramedic Association of Canada; Calgary EMS; Toronto EMS; Ottawa EMS


ALYSSA SCHWARTZ
CTV News Staff, Oct. 18, 2002


A CTV News investigation has found a critical backlog in Canadian emergency rooms is costing ambulance crews thousands of hours annually. Delays in transferring ill patients to the care of doctors mean fewer crews are on the road, available to handle other critical cases.

Across the country, emergency rooms are filled beyond capacity. Patients crowd the halls waiting for beds, while ambulances are turned away from hospital after hospital in their search for a care centre with room to admit new patients.

Emergency crews are facing the brunt of those delays, sometimes forced to wait hours to offload their patients. The process of explaining a patient's case and filling out paperwork, which comes before a stretcher is cleared to head out to another emergency, is one that should take paramedics only about 35 minutes.

CTV News: Paramedics waiting in ERs instead of working, Avis Favaro reports

But CTV News found some cases in which emergency personnel weren't cleared for more than six hours, leaving a gaping hole in the availability of emergency care.

"There is a consistent increase in the time we are waiting in emergency rooms across the country," says Paul Morneau, president of the Paramedic Association of Canada.

"It's not uncommon to hear of wait times of two hours, and then you hear of three, four, seven, eight, 10-hour waits, where paramedics are stuck with patients on stretchers in Emergency, waiting for care. And, of course, when a paramedic is stuck for that many hours, they are not responding to other calls in the community," Morneau told CTV's Avis Favaro.

Calgary normally has 32 ambulances on the road to handle emergencies. But with 4,500 hours lost in the first seven months of this year, offload waiting times are threatening the city's ability to care for patients. A few weeks ago, the Alberta city felt the strain of the problem when it was left with only a handful of paramedics on the road.

"We had only two (ambulances) available for a population exceeding 900,000. That's quite a concern to us," says Mike Plato of Calgary Emergency Medical Services.

"We want to be on the streets doing our job," says paramedic Drew Nelson. But with emergency rooms backed up, Nelson admits that's not always possible.

"It's not uncommon for us to sit here for an hour and a half or longer. The longest my partner and I have had was six hours."

The problem is not limited to Calgary. "It's bad in Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax, Toronto," says Morneau.

In Ottawa, a record 12,000 hours have been lost so far this year by crews waiting to offload patients, CTV has learned.

"That's the equivalent of having two ambulances, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, taken off the road, lost to the system," says Anthony Di Monte of Ottawa Emergency Services, which transports approximately 45,000 patients every year.

With over 11,000 hours lost in the first nine months of 2002, Toronto is facing a similar strain.

That number is up from the 2,520 hours ambulances spent in offloading time in all of 2000. One recent night, there was not a single ambulance available to treat the city's three million residents -- all of the city's crews were waiting for patients to be admitted to area hospitals.

Comparable data was unavailable for Montreal and Vancouver, but both cities are reportedly suffering similar problems, as are all major Canadian urban centres, the Paramedics Association of Canada says.

"We have identified a crisis that needs to be handled now," Di Monte told CTV. "Not doing so would be irresponsible."

The solution, experts say, isn't putting more ambulances on the road -- it's making more room for patients in Canadian hospitals. With no new beds, a slew of new emergency personnel would only spend their time waiting for patients to be admitted.

"When we get stuffed full of patients in emergency, then the new people coming in by ambulance have no place to go," says Dr. Garth inson of Ottawa Hospital General Campus.

Emergency workers say unless things change, it's a matter of time before the backlog takes its toll on Canadians' health.

"My fear is that if it keeps on that trend it's going to hit a day that someone will call for an ambulance and there won't be one there," says Dallas Pierson of Calgary Emergency Services Dispatch.

"It's about your mother, your father, your child, at home (or) in the community, who is having a heart attack or choking. And the paramedics, because there's so few of us out there able to respond, can't respond to that emergency," Morneau says.

With a report from CTV's Health Reporter Avis Favaro

[MannyIsGod]

Daily Policy Digest

Health Issues

Monday, October 01, 2001


Despite a massive infusion of federal spending on health care, waiting lists in Canada have grown significantly. Total waiting time for patients between referral from a general prac ioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, rose from 13.1 weeks in 1999 to 16.2 weeks in 2000-01 (a 23.7 percent increase), according to a Fraser Ins ute study.

Canada-wide, total waiting time increased significantly in 2000-01 and its level is high, both historically and internationally. Compared to 1993, waiting time in 2000-01 is 69 percent higher. Moreover, academic studies of waiting time have found that Canadians wait longer than Americans and Germans for cardiac care, although not as long as New Zealanders or the British.

Among the significant findings of the study:


The rise in waiting time between 1999 and 2000-01 is principally a result of an increase in the waiting time between GP referral and specialist consultation -- increasing from 4.9 weeks in 1999 to 7.2 weeks in 2000-01, an increase of 46.9 percent.
Waiting time between specialist consultation and treatment increased for Canada as a whole between 1999 and 2000-01, rising from 8.2 to 9.0 weeks, an increase of 9.8 percent.
Throughout Canada, the total number of people estimated to be waiting for treatment was 878,088 in 2000-01, an increase of 3 percent between 1999 and 2000-01.
The highest percentage of patients seeking treatment outside of Canada were those in need of radiation oncology (5.6 percent). For all specialties, 1.7 percent of patients left the country to receive treatment.

Source: Michael Walker and Greg Wilson, "Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada," Critical Issues Bulletin, September 2001, Fraser Ins ute, 4th Floor 1770 Burrard Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 3G7, Canada, (604) 688-0221.

[DeSPURado]

Manny I specifically asked you for something more recently than 2002. Are you conceding the point?

There were some stories about this back in 2002, care to show me evidence of the same things happening today? And from what I can find that happened when they tried to privatize part of their healthcare.

[MannyIsGod]

insurance isn't sold in the value meal format, so you can't simply get a link to a site where you purchase a number 3 at 400 dollars a month.

a reason that those premiums are so high is that with group insurance the costs for the coverage are menat to be distributed throughout the group.

lets say we have a group of 30 people. out of those 30, 28 are healthy as can be and are not a high risk for the company to insure. but the other 2 have had some sort of major surgery and cons ute a very high risk to insure.

well, the premiums of those other 28 people just got hurt big time so that the 2 people that would otherwise be uninsured are now covered.

there are plenty of places you can get your family covered for well under 400 dollars a month. i sold polcies for families of 4 myself at under 200 dollars at times.

[MannyIsGod]

the reason tehre were more storiesback then is thats when a huge study was done.

studies aren't done all the time and the media keeps up on storeis while hot.

however, if you think the problem has been fixed in 2 years, then feel free to take this as a concession. i think even the most optomstic views of goverment work know that it is a slow process to correct.

[MannyIsGod]

ask and you shall recieve, from march of this year...

Budget boosts public health, ignores wait times
Canadian Press

The federal budget provides the provinces with new money to promote public health, but not to cut waiting lists or to deal with the shortage of doctors and nurses.

Core questions about sustaining medicare have effectively been deferred for federal-provincial negotiations scheduled during the summer.

That leaves the government's avowed top priority, health care, as a potential soft spot in the runup to the next election.

The budget delivered Tuesday confirms a $2-billion payment already promised to the provinces and territories. However, it is a one-time injection and will not be incorporated into base funding.

As expected, Ottawa will provide money to create a new Canada Public Health Agency to co-ordinate the national response to emergencies like SARS.

However, most of the agency's resources will come from the transfer of existing Health Canada programs. There will be $165 million for new labs, surveillance systems and research.

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale reiterated the government's recognition that health care is the No. 1 priority of Canadians.

The provinces will get $400 million in new money to improve immunization programs and to relieve stress on local public health systems.

"No other priority speaks so eloquently to the commitments we have made to one another as citizens," Goodale said in his budget speech.

However, there is no long-term boost in federal money as was recommended in the report from Roy Romanow, and as premiers have been demanding.

There was no mention of a national home-care program or coverage of drug costs, to which the previous government committed in the Feb. 2, 2003 first ministers health accord.

The money for public health -- that is, to prevent illness -- could relieve some pressure on hospitals but it is unlikely to bring much relief in a beleaguered health system that cost $121-billion in 2003.

About $100 million in new money will go to support an electronic health information system, a project that has been under way for several years.

The budget promises "improved tax fairness" for people with disabilities, and care-givers, and $30 million to support programs for those with disabilities.

Basically, it will be easier for care-givers to claim the expenses they face to support a loved one, such as ins utional fees.

And it will be easier for people with disabilities to claim extra expenses they face as a result of their disabilities in working or attending school.

There is no promise on action to shorten waiting lists, even though this was explicitly promised in the throne speech.

[DeSPURado]

You know they are talking about wait lists which aren't involved in hospital visits. So how is this that bad of a thing? Again I would accept a three month waiting list for going to the dentist if I it meant that everyone had access to the same care as me...

the most telling statistic is in the mortality rates...We have a higher one than any socialized nation.

Rank &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Country &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Mean Lifespan
1 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Japan 74.5
2 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Australia 73.2
3 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp France &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 73.1
4 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Sweden &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 73.0
5 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Spain &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 72.8
6 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Italy &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 72.7
7 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Greece &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 72.5
8 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Switzerland &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 72.5
9 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Monaco &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 72.4
10 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Andorra &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 72.3
: &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp : &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp :
24 &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp United States &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 70.0

[DeSPURado]

The funny thing is that we already pay for socialized healthcare...Per capita we pay more on healthcare than most socialized nations....This I think has to do with the fact that doing this half way, is actually less cost effective than doing it all the way or not at all.

[MannyIsGod]

well, there are many contributing factors to those type of statistics which are notlimited to one thing like this.

yes, and there are also 8 hour long visits to the emergency room which lowers the quality of care immensly and shows that doctors are overworked.

why/ because free services are overused.

i don't see why people think that the laws of supply and demand don't apply to healthcare as if it's some mysterious service. it's goverment medling which tends to drive the price up.

[MannyIsGod]

i absolutely agree with your last statement. doing it in the half ass way that we do it is moronic.

[DeSPURado]

You know 8 hour hospital waits aren't completely unheard of here in the states.

Well lets wait for a decade and a half and see how it works out in Mass....Thats one good thing about the nation/ state seperation....One state can be a test state for the rest of the country.

[DeSPURado]

btw have a great weekend...Its been nice arguing in a civilized fashion here for once.

[MannyIsGod]

amen to that.

[spurster]

I think it's a little more than $200/month or $400/month

www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

“Today’s average premium for a family insurance policy -- $9,086 a year – already represents 21% of the national median household income of $42, 409.” (Julie Appleby, “Health Insurance premiums crash down on middle class, $9,086 average cost out of reach for many families, USA Today, 17 March 2004).

Health insurance premiums will rise to an average of more than $14,500 for family coverage in 2006 (“Charting the Cost of Inaction,” National Coalition on Health Care, May 2003.)

[MannyIsGod]

i'm telling you. i sold the damn things. you can pull out whatever stats you want, i know for a fact that there are polcies out there at that cost because i sold them. i sold them to people in this forum for crying out loud.

[SpursWoman]

No, I don't need health insurance. I get mine through work, but the total cost is well more than $400/month. It's true that it's one of these co-pay plans.

Group insurance rates per person are also more expensive because there is generally no clause for pre-existing conditions or other physical health criteria (such as age, smoking habits, etc) to cover those 2 out of 30 that are very sick--during open enrollments. So they really have no control over who they are insuring, so their risk is a lot greater.


And spurster...when my company closed at the end of 2003 and I became unemployed, I found an excellent plan w/co-payments with a relatively low deductible through Unicare for less than $400/mo. But typically you won't be able to find those things online because your rates are dependant on basically a health survey.

[SpursWoman]

And as a matter of fact, I did employee benefits where I had worked and the plan I found through Unicare was exactly the plan I had with my company (also Unicare) and the rate I was quoted was less than HALF of the rate the company was billed.



For me plus 2 kids the plan was $165/mo ... the Company I worked with was billed $369 for Employee + Child.

As an example.

[SpursWoman]

The employer billing for family coverages was approximately $900, so I can only assume from the individual quote I got that it would be relatively consistent, and you could find a plan between $400-$500/mo.

And that includes preventative services. Major medical would be significantly less expensive.

[MannyIsGod]

eat it, .

wooo.

thanks sw.

[MannyIsGod]

also, thats one reason those national averages are so skewed. it's because it doesn't take into consideration that the majority of people in this country have their coverage through group plans, which drive up the cost for the reasons that both I and SW mentioned.

If you take into consideration only the people that are self insured, it would be much less.