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Here too -- especially in rural areas.there are increasingly serious shortages of family doctors and nurses.
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By David LjunggrenFri Dec 2, 2:19 PM ET
The main opposition Conservative Party, regularly accused of planning to scrap Canada's creaking publicly funded health care system, promised on Friday to cut wait times for treatment if elected, but stressed it would not create a parallel private network.
The Conservatives -- bidding to end 12 years of Liberal rule in the January 23 election -- have had great trouble persuading Canadians that they want to improve rather than kill off the national medicare system.
Medicare gives Canadians the right to free medical treatment. Although it swallows close to C$90 billion a year in public funds, waiting times are growing and there are increasingly serious shortages of family doctors and nurses.
The concept of changing medicare is one of the most radioactive topics in Canadian politics, although most parties agree the system needs some kind of a major overhaul.
Conservative leader Stephen Harper said he would work with the provinces to guarantee that people get care within a reasonable time or be en led to go outside the province if necessary. Spokeswoman Carolyn Stewart-Olsen said this would even mean treatment in the United States if necessary.
Harper also praised the practice whereby some private clinics provide services paid for by public money. But he stressed there would not be a separate private health system guaranteeing faster treatment for those who can afford it.
"There will be no private, parallel system," he said at a campaign stop in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Private medical facilities have already been set up in various provinces. The Liberals have on occasion threatened to cut off funds to the provinces unless the clinics cease operations but Prime Minister Paul Martin refused at a Toronto news conference on Friday to say he would shut them down.
Martin scoffed at Harper and said he could not be trusted.
He said that in the 1950s his father Paul Martin Sr. had brought in the beginnings of the public health system. He himself made wait times a centerpiece of the 2004 election and then arranged for C$41 billion in new funding.
"Stephen Harper's never been there. And now all of a sudden he's going to tell us that a conversion on the road to Damascus has taken place? Give me a break!" Martin said.
Complicating Martin's position is that since the 2004 election the Supreme Court ruled that the status quo was violating basic rights, in a Quebec case in which it decided that private health insurance should be allowed.
The left-leaning New Democrats, who kept Martin in power for over a year until last month, said the Liberals have failed to protect medicare.
"We want our health care system to be one where it's your health care card that gets you the health care -- not your credit card," said New Democrat leader Jack Layton.
"Mr. Martin and the Liberals ... are letting private for-profit medicare grow. Stephen Harper now proposes to encourage it even further. It's not acceptable."
Layton is an important figure because opinion polls show that after the election, his party might once again be in a position to keep the Liberals in power.
A Strategic Counsel survey for the Globe and Mail newspaper on Friday showed 35 percent of voters backed the Liberals while 30 percent favor the Conservatives. The New Democrats were supported by 17 percent.
Under Canada's first-past-the-post system, a party needs to gather at least 40 percent of the votes to have a realistic chance of winning a majority of the 308 seats in Parliament.
When Martin's government fell on Monday over a corruption scandal, the Liberals had 133 seats. (Additional reporting by Randall Palmer with Martin campaign)
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
Last edited by ChumpDumper; 12-02-2005 at 06:50 PM. Reason: margins killed by hyperlink
Here too -- especially in rural areas.there are increasingly serious shortages of family doctors and nurses.
i haven't heard that much about it. not that much of a stink about it here like it is up there, but I'm sure your right it's probably just as bad here (yeah right).
That's because the system there is run directly by the government and therefore open to more specific debate. All you have to do to see the shortages here is open the classifieds or see the signing incentives at monster.com.i haven't heard that much about it. not that much of a stink about it here like it is up there
If it comes up on the Yahoo headline radar I guess we'll hear about it.
An intersting thing in that article is that I didn't see any private alternatives being floated by the opposition.
are you in favor of socialized health care and eliminating private health care like in Canada?
If not, what would you like seen done. I don't want to argue with you if at the core we don't have any real disagreements.
Last edited by 2centsworth; 12-02-2005 at 08:40 PM.
I haven't really come to a conclusion on that, but it's apparent that that the rising cost of health care and drugs will probably precipatate a big change down the line. I'm not at all in favor of leaving it totally up to the government, but there has to be some way of moving closer to universal coverage while maintaining a market.
it sounds like you don't like the private care and that the government would make things better.but there has to be some way of moving closer to universal coverage while maintaining a market.
"precipatate a big change down the line"
Don't bet on it. The big winners today (doctors/AMA, insurance, HMOs, hospitals) have $Bs to spend to protect their winings and own enough state and national legislators that they'll never let go of their winnings nor the legislators. The US system is badly broken, and the winners want to keep it broken. Once again, unregulated capitalism and free enterprise fails human needs. Winners win big, then game the system so they keep winning, and the losers might as well not even show up.
I don't like that a lot of folks are left out of the system altogether, but I won't pretend that any old government intervention is going to fix things.
And, no boutons, I'm not betting on anything, but health care will be back on the politcal radar soon enough.
government doesn't make anything better. They just make it available to everyone. At what point do the EN LEMENTS end? Because EN LEMENTS are bankrupting our country. Anyways, I've never heard of anyone in this country being denied health care. They might not have Health Insurance but everyone receives care, University Hospital is an example of that.
Lets isolate the people who don't have access to care and lets just make sure they have access to something. Why throw in the fantastic care that I get and pay for and turn it to crap?
You're kidding, right?Anyways, I've never heard of anyone in this country being denied health care.
Thanks for repeating what I said.Lets isolate the people who don't have access to care and lets just make sure they have access to something. Why throw in the fantastic care that I get and pay for and turn it to crap?
There are programs out there for the underpriveledged (Medicare) and the children of the poor (CHIP's), what we are talking about here is a preventive medicine and catastrophic/accident health care system for those who can't afford to pay for traditional health insurance, and/or it is not offered at their work, or about 25-30 million people. It's certainly do-able as a major group policy at a affordable price, but however you slice up the costs, it's always inflationary.
"rising cost of health care and drugs will probably precipatate a big change down the line"
Very probably, even certainly, NOT.
Because the people pocketing all those "skyrocketing costs" are making 100s of $Bs that they will use to continue to buy legislatures to maintain and enhance the system in their favor, and to Swift-Boat any candidates who campaign for changes in the health care system.
Does anyone believe all those people providing health care and increasing their charges are losing money? Does anybody believe that the 1980s' S&L catastrophe was really "lost" money? That money went into somebody's pockets.
If you have any doubts that the current system is amenable to change, go back to the Clinton health care reform project to see how vehemenlty, no matter what its (de)merits were, to see how vehemently it was defeated by the entire health care industry, which now, 10+ years later, is 100s of $Bs more powerful.
Your optimism is like a ray of sunshine.
Clinton ed up because his program was too ambitious and confusing at the same time. It was easy to pick apart.
boutons, on one hand you condemn government and on the other you
hold it up as the epitome to end all things wrong in the world. The only
difference is that all things Republican is bad and all things Democratic is
right with the world. Big oil, big medicine is bad, bad. They corrupt you
say. They buy government. You are so blinded by your feelings that you
you have lost all sense of reason. Doesn't the fact that so called "big" is
just that. Look at history. the "big" airlines that went under. The "big"
auto manufactures that have gone and almost gone under. I wonder, do
you condemn "big" unions for costing workers jobs? Do you condemn "your"
big government for taking away your rights and telling you how you must
live your life? Does it bother you that "you must wear seat belts", must
have insurance from "big" insurance companies to drive a car? Cannot
smoke in public places, even if they are outdoors? And the one biggie that
bugs most people like you. The 'big" Democratic Party lost their hold on
government after some 40 years of power. They lost the complete state
of Texas after having control for most of my life. Do you remember why they lost control or are you even old enough to know. Try the House
bank scandal. Jim Wright of Texas and his little book deal. Tip O'Neal
who was fond of saying: dead on arrival on anything a Republican President
may send to the Congress. Yes we have bad Republicans, Bush isn't one
of them. You say he lies, which is a lie within itself. He has never lied to
the American People. The Dimm-o-craps who are in Washington now say
he lied to them about the facts about Iraq, which again is a lie. He went
to Congress TWICE about the war and got their approval, that is a fact.
Yellow cake, I wont go into that, but that has been so maligned by the
press that it no longer makes any sense. Anyhow, get your head on
straight and don't be so blinded by your sense of hate for a political party.
Anyhow I really don't consider you a Dimm-o-crap, you are just a dumbass
socialist.
So you really think the commercial health care system will spontaneously provide universal coverage?
Have you heard ANY murmurs that the executives or national health care associations/SIGs are agitating to provide universal coverage, or somehow cover the 10s of millions who are uninsured now?
Clinton's was complicated? Have you followed the coverage of the super-complicated new Medicare plan? The new Medicare plan was conceived strictly as low-cost REpub "vote getter" (you'll hear about next campaign), to widen coverage only for initial costs, then when a person's health costs get $serious, Medicare coverage disappears and one falls into the famous "donut hole" of no Medicare coverage.
If you think I'm pessimistic, then post your own sunshine illuminating how the current system will spontanesously increase its efficiency and provide universal coverage.
One of huge costs of the current system is its inefficiency (vs nationalized plans in other countries), as 10s of 1000s of $$$paper-pushers figure out how to disqualify new clients, how not to pay insured clients, how to cancel insurance, how to re-insure their risks, how to make qtrly profits goals, how payout profits as dividends to sharedholders etc, etc.
If everybody were automatically covered, all this qualification/disqualification/cancelling/profit-making $$$make-work disappears and the system becomes more concentrated on delivering health care, rather than on NOT delivering health care. Right now, actually delivering health care is seen as a necessary evil to be reduced to a minimum so as to maximize profits. What kind of system is that?
Last edited by boutons; 12-03-2005 at 11:53 AM.
Did I say it would?If you think I'm pessimistic, then post your own sunshine illuminating how the current system will spontanesously increase its efficiency and provide universal coverage.
I have seen statistics where about 50% of US health is already paid by the government, Medicare, Medicaid, gov't workers, military, and states, counties, and cities keeping public hospitals and clinics afloat.
Exactly, the people who aren't uninsured and really need medical care get from various govt agencies and fundings. Medical care orgs get re-imbursed for charity cases. So, in effect, the US taxpayer is funding uninsured patients, just like TX drivers fund uninsured motorists.
The problem is, such backdoor approach is still patchy, hit-and-miss, giving the USA a high infant mortality compared to other industrial counties. The conservatives are all against abortion because being against it doesn't cost them anything. In fact it wins them campaign contributions. But the (rich) conservatives don't give a if poor babies die from lack of neo-natal care at rates the put the USA infant mortality rate out of the first tier of countries, because those poor, dead babies don't come out of the conservatives pockets.
Medical bills still destroy a familiies finances, savings, retirement funds, college funds, and often push them into bankruptcy and poverty for years. Dubya just made bankruptcy more difficult to declare, paying back the cc/finance/bank companies for their campaign contributions. "compassionate convservatism", what a ing joke.
Furthermore, uninsured people, and even poorlly insured people, put off seeking (preventative, early detection) medical care due to the inevitable costs, giving their illnesses a chanceto advance to severe levels, where the cost of treatment is amplified many times.
Dealing with serious sickness is stressful and nightmarish enough, but when compounded by fear of $1000's or 10's of $1000s in medical bills, the situation is inhumane, esp in the richest country that considers itself to be some kind of morally superior beacon for the rest of the world.
I bet if you polled Americans, a vast majority have the humanity to say that universal health care should be elevated to a "right" for every American. No questions asked.
If you're sick, cannot be dis-qualified, you get medical care.
No more "If you're poor, you, you deserve to be sick and uncared for."
No more "If you have a medical catastrohpe, you, your family finances are destoyed".
The market, ie, "for-profit medical care", is extremely inefficient, for the reasons I noted above. And it's peverse, because the objective is to make a profit, not to deliver health care. The more vulnerable people (neediest) an insurer can disaqualify/cancel (aka cherry picking low-risk healthy people), the more profit the insurer makes.
This doesn't mean that a universal health system is run as a charity by volunteers (other national health systems aren't run by volunteers). It means just that the people and orgs delivering health would have no need to make a profit, no need to pay dividends, no need to waste their resources dis/qualifying people.
===========================================
The New York Times
December 4, 2005
Health Coverage of Young Widens With States' Aid
By JOHN M. BRODER
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 3 - The number of American children without health care coverage has been slowly but steadily declining over the past several years even as health care costs continue to rise and fewer employers provide insurance, creating a breach that states have stepped in to fill with new programs and fresh money.
The overall ranks of the uninsured continue to swell, to nearly 46 million Americans at the beginning of this year. But a landmark federal program begun in 1997 to provide health coverage to poor and working-class children and additional measures taken by states have provided health insurance to millions of children who might otherwise go without.
In the past year, 20 states have taken steps to increase access to health coverage for children and their parents and nine states have reversed actions they took during the 2001-03 economic downturn to limit benefits, according the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, part of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health care trends. Among them are Illinois, which just signed a child health bill, and Vermont, with its "Dr. Dynasaur" health program, both of which broadened coverage for children.
As a result of these and other steps, there are 350,000 fewer uninsured children in the United States than there were in 2000, the foundation reported. Over the same period the overall number of uninsured rose by six million.
While elected officials cannot agree on how to provide or pay for health coverage for uninsured adults, there seems to be a consensus in many states that covering children is medically wise and politically smart.
However, even the situation for children is not uniformly favorable. Eleven states facing political and financial pressure, including Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, made it more difficult for eligible children to retain coverage.
The movement to expand coverage for children dates to the mid-1990's, after the Clinton administration devised a complex plan to provide all Americans with health care coverage. That plan failed, and advocates of wider coverage began pursuing more incremental changes at the federal level and lobbying state legislatures to expand coverage.
Alan R. Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan research group, said children's health was one area of state spending that had consistently risen. Mr. Weil said it was much easier for officials to approve spending "for the kids" than to expand welfare programs for adults, even in times of hardship.
"It goes back to the Elizabethan poor laws that drew a conceptual distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor," he said. "It's very hard to call kids undeserving, even if you don't like the parents' behavior. It's not the kids' fault they are without health care."
Illinois took the most far-reaching step this fall, enacting a law intended to provide coverage to all children in the state, extending low-cost or free coverage to the 250,000 Illinois youngsters who are now uninsured.
But even states unwilling to go as far as Illinois are moving to provide insurance for children.
New Jersey, which imposed sharp restrictions on publicly financed health care for families during the economic slowdown, this year restored eligibility to some 75,000 low-income families.
In Washington State, where 39,000 children were dropped from state-financed health care programs in 2003 and 2004, officials reversed course this year. The state eased health care eligibility requirements for families with children and delayed a plan to charge premiums.
And Texas, which has one of the nation's highest rates of uninsured children, took steps this year to stop a decline in the number of children with health coverage. The state eliminated premiums for the poorest families enrolled in state health care programs and stopped cutting off families with higher incomes that failed to keep up with premiums.
As of the beginning of this year, 16 percent of all Americans lacked health insurance, but only 12 percent of children under 18 went uncovered, although that still amounts to 9 million children, according to the Kaiser commission. The gap between the two groups has been widening over the years as fewer employers offer health care coverage, federal spending fails to keep pace with rising costs, and states are forced to limit eligibility to balance their budgets.
The picture is brighter for children than for adults in large part because of enactment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or Schip, in 1997. The program provides federal money for child health care to states, which determine eligibility, income limits and covered benefits within federal guidelines. The number of children covered under the federal-state program grew rapidly, from 897,000 children nationwide in 1998 to 3.95 million in the middle of 2003 before leveling off.
The percentage of uninsured children ranges from less than 5 percent in Vermont to almost 20 percent in Texas. The differences reflect state policies, the poverty rate, the number of immigrants, and the percentage of children covered by employers and other programs.
The chief factor determining how many children are covered is the income eligibility level set by the states under Schip. The federal government requires coverage for families at or below the federal poverty level, about $20,000 for a family of four. Only a few states set the limit that low. In some states, including Minnesota, Rhode Island and Vermont, families with incomes at 250 percent or even 300 percent of the federal poverty line qualify.
California is currently witnessing a battle that is also playing out in Washington and other state capitals. State officials here and private groups are trying to bring health coverage to more than a million children who now go without it. A bill that passed the Legislature this year would have eased eligibility requirements for the poorest families, bringing coverage to hundreds of thousands of children. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, vetoed the bill, saying he agreed with its aims but that the sponsors had not come up with a way to pay for it.
Partly in reaction, a coalition of health groups including the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association are proposing a ballot initiative to raise the cigarette tax by $1.50 a pack, pushing the state tax to $2.37 per pack, to finance universal health care for children. Sponsors say that the estimated $1.4 billion raised by the new tax would pay for health coverage for more than 800,000 California children.
Vermont leads the nation in the percentage of its children who are insured through state and federal programs and private insurance, with almost 95 percent coverage.
In 1989, Madeleine M. Kunin, who was the governor at the time, created a state-financed program for pregnant women and for children up to age 6 who did not have private insurance and did not qualify for Medicaid. The program, which came to be known as Dr. Dynasaur, was expanded in 1992 under Gov. Howard Dean to cover children through age 17. Families with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or nearly $60,000 a year, qualify, and the program covers doctor visits, dental care, immunizations, vision care, medicines and mental health.
Financing comes from the federal government, tobacco taxes and general state revenues.
Despite the fading fortunes of the auto industry, 93 percent of Michigan children are covered, several percentage points higher than the national average. But that still leaves 200,000 Michigan youngsters uninsured, and Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm said she considered that a tragedy and a national disgrace.
Even though Ms. Granholm intends to ask for significant cuts in some state programs in her budget next month, she said she would propose increasing spending to address the problem of uninsured children.
She said states were cobbling together solutions from shrinking federal budgets and strained state finances to try cover children and their parents while remaining compe ive in a global marketplace.
"Let's get real about it," she said. "Let's design a public system that truly reflects where we want to be, so states are not twisted into pretzels to try to insure their most vulnerable citizens. I don't think we want to be a nation where you go to Dunkin' Donuts to put a quarter in a jar for Aunt Linda's mastectomy. We need a national solution for compe iveness and moral reasons. And Washington is utterly silent."
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
=========================
"Washington is utterly silent"
.... because Washington is owned by the health care system and paid NOT to touch the extremely profitable system now in place.
boutons said: "I bet if you polled Americans, a vast majority have the humanity to say that universal health care should be elevated to a "right" for every American. No questions asked.
If you're sick, cannot be dis-qualified, you get medical care.
No more "If you're poor, you, you deserve to be sick and uncared for."
No more "If you have a medical catastrohpe, you, your family finances are destoyed".
The market, ie, "for-profit medical care", is extremely inefficient, for the reasons I noted above. And it's peverse, because the objective is to make a profit, not to deliver health care. The more vulnerable people (neediest) an insurer can disaqualify/cancel (aka cherry picking low-risk healthy people), the more profit the insurer makes.
This doesn't mean that a universal health system is run as a charity by volunteers (other national health systems aren't run by volunteers). It means just that the people and orgs delivering health would have no need to make a profit, no need to pay dividends, no need to waste their resources dis/qualifying people.
================================================== =============
Have you really looked at your "universal health care" countries? It simply doesn't
work. The UK citizens now carry private health insurance, because it is almost
impossible to obtain needed health care. You have doctors who are telling patients
if you smoke, drink or anything else that they, the doctors, don't condone, I will
not treat you unless you give it up. Canada's citizens are coming to the U.S. to obtain health care, because their system is failing. France, sheesh, look at
Princess Diana. Kept her in the car working on her for hours when she should have
been transported to hospital for care. Those that need care can get it in the U.S.
The medicare group, of which I am one, car carry medigap to cover what isn't
covered by medicare. The new prescription program sux. It should have never
been passed. It will collapse from it's own weight (cost). Politicians never solve
much of anything, only make a mess of simple problems. Want a good example
look at the toll road mess coming to San Antonio in a few years. Can you say
more money to buy more votes. Can you say trains running from nowhere to
nowhere with no passengers, errraaah.....VIA. Oh, yes give me more government
they know best how to spend my money.
So you want to end that, right?The medicare group, of which I am one
I would have no problem if they ended it. You would find a lot of the
cost of medical care would come down. Cost rise with demand and demand
would fall. People use things that they see as not costing them directly.
I go to the doctor when I have to, not on a whim. I also have other insurance so that a doctor's visit cost me zero, but it does cost someone.
But see a doctor about twice a year, unless you consider a flu shot a doctors vist, then guess it would be three times.
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