Yes, they can leave Canada to bypass the queue. It is illegal to do so within Canada.
Doctors have been unable to “opt out” for about the last five years. To do so now is illegal.
With the caveat noted in my first sentence, I stand by my statements.
IMHO, that pretty well explains the theory of how the system works. However, my main concern is addressing the misinformation perpetrated by American insurance companies.
Just to repeat: ‘Socialised’ universal health care is no more a political statement than is the American public school system, it is far, far cheaper for the public than the American system and it** is** wholly inclusive.
It also isn’t perfect but there isn’t a single voice here who, when experiencing the system, advocates changing the fundamental principle.
In short: Hillary blew it.
Let’s not hijack to the education system please. Can o’ worms.
Actually, the problem was Hillary never would, enter Monica Lewinsky.
I appreciate all the information about the socialized health systems, but please keep in mind that the issue Americans fuss about is health insurance, not health care. We have free clinics in every poor neighborhood, free emergency service available to everyone. That figure you quoted includes the coverage for those free services, Medicare, Medicaid, free needle exchange programs, free condoms in colleges, free flu shots for all, child vaccination programs, and much much more.
The probable reason for the significant difference in costs more is because we probably have a much higher doctor to patient ratio and nurse to patient ratio, thus much shorter waits for services. Little Johnny Welfare can still get health care, probably still at a faster rate than the Socialized medical programs. The reason Little Johnny’s parents are upset is because Little Johnny can’t get as good of health care as quickly as Little Jane Warbucks who has health insurance.
Further, keep in mind that a large portion of that 18% of uninsured, is in the 18-25 age males who would rather keep their $3,000 a year because they are invincible than waste the money on health insurance.
Anyway, just thought I should clear up the mistaken definition that insurance = care; two completely different animals. The push by Hillary was not for universal health care it was for universal health insurance. We believe everyone should get health care, and they do, it simply isn’t the best health care that money can buy because they are not paying for it.
I better clarify further.
It is illegal to opt out and charge fees in excess of the government-determined rate.
However, to opt out and not charge extra is tantamount to remaining opted in (IMHO).
So, I apologize Major Feelgud. You are right. A doctor can “opt out” but there is certainly no gain in her doing so. No extra fees can be billed.
It is rather interesting that America, the world super power and beacon of “power to the people,” has the health care system it does. Basically, it boils down to capitalism, which is why we view ourselves as world powers, anyway. We make money. The main point here has already been made in the SUV statement.
Let’s break down some of the arguments:
Socialism is evil, Capitalism is the American Way and has made us great
Given that America has opted for the Capitalist version of healthcare (since we decided to make it a political issue in this country), one would expect that our system would streamline itself, eliminating waste and increasing quality of care, due to competition and the urgings of the market. Thus, we have a better system than the wasteful government spendings of Socialism. This, however, we know to be far from the case (picmr has already illustrated the true economic/market factors at play). U.S. healthcare has become a simple money tree for the insurance, pharmaceutical and specialized health industries.
Socialized care means long waits
We’ve already heard testimony from others on this. In America, even the insured have to wait for non-life threatening procedures. We must determine if we have the correct insurance to cover treatment (which most often, we do not). We must file all proper paperwork commensurate with assuring we have the correct insurance. If any detail in the paperwork is incorrect (even mistakenly), we are at risk of being dropped from coverage. In such a case we must find different insurance and wait until all paperwork and basic physicals have been completed before continuing with desired procedures. We must wait for all tests to be done and redone (to help reduce the doctors’ liability and concern for malpractice suits).
Socialized care means lack of choice
Under our Capitalist system, individual insurance companies determine what doctors we can and cannot see. We get to choose individual doctors, as long as they appear on the insurance list.
U.S. healthcare is the world’s best because the Capitalist system provides for more investment in advances/latest equipment
Very little money is put towards research and advances in comparison to pharmaceutical investments. And all of the latest technology won’t do a bit of good if most people do not have access. It’s not of value to people who can afford it, either, if there isn’t a sufficient workforce to operate it.
Because of the competitive Capitalist model, U.S. healthcare exceeds Socialised health in quality
U.S. healthcare is, in a great many ways, in a state of crisis right now. I have a very good friend who is a nurse in our region’s only trauma pediatric intensive care unit (where kids go who have been in serious accidents, eg.) at a private hospital. The unit is so understaffed that she often runs it with only one other nurse. That’s two nurses for a 20-bed intensive care unit. A resident surgeon in the same hospital will work for three days with the same number of hours’ sleep.
This is the case at many hospitals in America. Healthcare is far and away the list topper for workforce shortages in almost all categories. End result: care received by patients, overall, is so poor that most nurses and young doctors I know refuse to go to hospitals themselves.
I believe Chris Rock has summarized U.S. healthcare best: There’s no money in the cure.
I would also like to say that over the past five years, the Liberals have cut some $25 billion from transfers to the provinces for health care. Their recent reinvestments don’t come near making up for what they cut. And our health care system has suffered accordingly. The long lineups in hospital waiting rooms are no more universal medicare’s own fault than is your computer’s failure to work if you don’t plug it in. Now that the government has a huge enough surplus that it can give out $100 billion in cuts to corporate and capital-gains taxes, we in the NDP (who brought in socialized medicine in the first place, in Saskatchewan) are calling for immediate restoration of all the monies that have been removed for the system, and indeed for added investment in the health care system.
Health care is not an expense. It’s an investment. A healthy workforce is a productive workforce.
(BTW, the idea that you can’t choose what doctor to see in Canada is a crock of shit. I chose my current doctor myself, as well as my former pediatrician, my former psychiatrist, etc.)
Ah, part two of the question: Is the quality of care under socialised medicine better than under the US system or is the reverse? I really don’t care if the US spends more because it has twice as many doctors and nurses and test equipment, etc., if in the end the quality of care doesn’t improve its money thrown away.
Now, I know that the US has one of the worst infant mortality rates of any industrialized nation. The US also has a lower life expectancy than many industrialized nations. These two facts seem to indicate that health care quality in the US is worse than in other countries.
In terms of quality of care here are some statistics comparing cancer care between the US and the UK:
5 year survival rates for lung cancer US-13%, UK-6%, for colon cancer US-64%, UK-41% , for breast cancer US-84%, UK-67%. The WHO estimates that 25,000 Britons die every year because of substandard cancer care. Per capita there are 12 times as many oncologists in the US as the UK.
*Originally posted by jumblemind *
Let’s pick apart your ill-informed views.
There is no simple money tree for insurance, pharmaceutical and specialized health industries. If people did not perceive that they were getting a value for their investment in health insurance which is more expensive than preventive care, but is often taken so that if you do have an emergency need for major health care some day, you can go to a doctor for Hopkins instead of Backwoods University.
[quote]
Socialized care means long waits
We’ve already heard testimony from others on this. In America, even the insured have to wait for non-life threatening procedures. [\quote]
But not as long.
A complete LIE. Almost every procedure imaginable is covered under most insurance policies. Now, you won’t get that ugly mole removed if there is no threat of cancer, but if you require any medical treatment for other than cosmetic reasons, you can receive that treatment from any decent insurance plan. The WORST rates of refusal are under 10% of requested procedures. And those companies often loose business soon after those reports go out.
The doctors do most of that paperwork for you, except tough questions like name, address, social security number. Yeah, a whole lot of paperwork. Have you ever even had health insurance because it sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about.
Now you are talking about individual health insurance policies rather than group plans. Individual policies typically cost alot less because they are based upon the individual’s health conditions. Most companies offer group policies, which cannot discriminate and are only rate grouped by average employee age. I have rarely heard of anyone re-doing a health insurance test except when the tentative insured is unhappy with their condition/premium.
There are some programs that pay no matter where you go. However, in most HMOs, PPOs, POSs you have a choice of most doctors in your State, certainly a very wide selection because most insurance companies and health care providers have come to a comfortable medium.
Have you ever heard of the National Institute of Health?
The Bio-technology field that popped up in the last few years through hundreds of new venture companies?
Lasers?
General Electric?
Non-invasive surgery through little tiny cameras?
Puh-leeze, can you say many BILLIONS of dollars a year?
Apparently the ones who do have access pay enough to encourarge the further R&D investments. Yesterday’s technology is cheap in the medical field as in any technological field. All the newest stuff will be half price in five to ten years and available at a Free Clinic near you.
Do you really think they would make the product if there wasn’t a market? The United States is a capitalist society after all.
A scare tactic used by politicians. Come back to the light!
I know of facilities where they are significantly overstaffed but continue to pay the salaries, just in case they get slammed. Supply and demand will coordinate which health care providers get the most and the most qualified employees.
That pretty much gives your view, that hospitals = health care? Hospitals are emergency care, they are the U.S. socialized medicine. The insured rarely go to the hospital, they get preventive care and handle problems before they become emergencies. The only problem in U.S. health care is bridging the gap to provide preventive care for the uninsured. It would be cheaper than the current emergency care offered. However, they are not entitled, by being an American, to the same health care as I get because I can afford a higher level of insurance, just as I am not entitled to the same care as someone who flies to the best specialist in the World and pays cash.
Yes, comedians always are the best at simplifying real problems to a sound byte joke. There is a whole lot of money in the cure actually. Wait and see how rich the person becomes who invents a cure for cancer. Ask Doctor Gallo, right here in Maryland, how much money he made by finding… err stealing… the discovery of the AIDS virus. Ask the pharmaceutical companies how much money they are making for HIV cocktails. Ask any physician how much they make a year. And they all SHOULD make alot of money for what they do.
You are either suffering from a very bad localized problem or you are lying for effect, or you are just completely misinformed. I can’t sit by and let you misinform the rest of the world without a correction.
U.S. life expectancy is staggeringly high now, so high that life insurance premiums have doubled in the last ten years. So high that our federal pension plan (social security) is scheduled to self destruct as the baby boomers reach their mid 80s. (Twenty years past retirement) I don’t know how we compare world wide, but indications are certainly that life expectancy here is on a steady rise. [joke, don’t get pissy about your 80 year old grandmother] Not necessarily a good thing to have all those non-contributing elderly around running up health care costs by plugging them full of drugs and operations to keep them breathing up perfectly good oxygen. (Remind me that I said that when I hit 70 someone and I’ll have rethought my position by then I’m sure.)
I’m not sure what is up with the infant mortality rates. Stupid single parents who do drugs, cigarettes and alcohol during their pregnancy is probably one of the biggest factors. Maybe an extension of the preventive care concerns, these single, uninsured mothers can get to the hospital to have their babies but are not properly informed or equipped to provide proper nutrition to their fetuses. Not an indication of health care, perhaps an indication of availability of maintenance care.
For a summary of health care waits in Canada by province go to this site: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/critical_issues/2000/waitingyourturn/section_04.html
That might not be true though. Despite repeated warnings from various medical associations Americans are fatter then ever. I don’t think it is a failing of the medical profession I think it is a failing of the American people to care for themselves.
Marc
By money tree, I mean a lot of room for entrepreneuring capitalists to take advantage of consumers. You see this as a good thing, I see it as bad. Agree to disagree. I’m not completely clear on the second sentence. Are you further trying to make the point that insurance does not equate healthcare? Or the opposite?
Fantastic. It is still relevant to the points of comparison and argument being made.
Such exuberance. Yet only partially true. It has been my experience that while most procedures are covered, they are not completely covered. My former PPO only allowed coverage up to a certain level. In some cases they did negotiate with my doctor to bring bills within coverage, but not in all cases. I will give you this: I have switched insurance.
I saw insurance on TV once. I don’t know where you live or what you do for a living, but I want your insurance. I’ve had to fill out very much paperwork and have, indeed, been denied covered treatment because of paperwork error. The ailment was not life-threatening, to be certainly noted, but painful enough.
Individual plans aren’t part of U.S. healthcare? Good observation, though, in that I was, indeed, unhappy with my condition/premium.
I did not mean to come across so. Yes, I do have a very large selection, but it is still limited to an extent. Remember, most of the points I made were to offset specific criticisms of socialised medicine.
Hmmm…indeed my generalization was absurdly broad.
I thought you said the wait was shorter here than in other countries?
So, you do agree, then, that health is a commodity and not a right for anyone.
Oops! Sorry, crisis is a bit extreme.
So, that pretty much gives your view, healthcare = privelege, much like education? I understand your point of view, but it sucks. Hospitals are healthcare for many people. They were for myself and my parents for some years. But I guess it’s just because they were lazy.
Oh, is that all? You might as well say, “The only problem in the Isreal-PLO mess is religion.”
The examples you give aren’t cures, but ways of living with the diseases (please note that I am not overlooking these as steps toward cure). The point that I decreased to a soundbyte was that there is more money in having people live with illness than actually curing it. Is it more advantageous to kill soldiers on the battlefield or simply wound them?
I am flattered by your thorough exegesis; but please remember that I was merely offering points of information to offset common criticisms of socialized medicine, not claiming that my observations illustrated the entire and complicated system that is U.S. healthcare. (While I realize the tone seemed such, the post should be taken in the thread’s context.)
I don’t see why you have to come back all civil and what not 
Actually, I agree with you that there should not be a whole lot of profit in the insurance racket. Our company agent came to me bragging about their profit/dividends last year and I flat out told him I want to see a loss next year, lower our damn premiums NOW! Of course he didn’t, in fact they increased the premiums by 20% this year. OUCH!
However, I disagree that it is entreprenuerial capitalists making the money. At least in my parts, all the little companies are being eaten up.
It is. A doctor can still do an appendectomy without laser or mini-camera technology. The old fashioned scalpel still works.
To a degree, the quality of health care should be dependent upon affordability. I agree, it sucks that somehow a rich asshole’s life is more valuable than a poor, nice guy’s, but if the rich guy didn’t pay for the better doctors to exist, they wouldn’t.
Let’s assume for a moment that we had socialized medicine, and those of you in countries with socialized medicine, since this is really about your program, please correct me where I am wrong. A doctor can make a maximum wage for becoming a doctor. Some brilliant people, who could be doctors, weigh their options at college time… eight years of college and I can make this fixed salary, or four years of college and I can make this unlimited salary. Some will still become physicians, but with no motivation to be the best in their field, you will loose alot of specialization and the best doctors in the business. Think about it, whether I operate on hearts or bang a hammer on a kid’s knee, I make the same amount.
For example, how many brain surgeons; heart surgeons are there in Socialized medicine countries per capita as compared to the U.S., I don’t know, but would be interesting information. Now, assumably, in socialized medicine, all doctors are the same. Here, you can know which doctors are at the top of their field and you can go to them if you have the appropriate funding. Not an option in socialized medicine, you go to the nearest available surgeon for your heart/brain. No choices.
Probably moreso because there wasn’t a prevalance of health care available in your parents time and they quite possibly could not afford it. Noone said it was cheap. In fact, in most cases it is cheaper to pay out of pocket. I just left my overpriced PPO for catastrophe insurance (over $500) I can now go see any doctor I want.
Actually, the Israel-PLO mess is much deeper than religion, but going with that sentiment, it isn’t as big a gap to bridge as everyone seems to think. I am assuming for a moment, since varying hospitals are funded in different ways, that hospitals are funded by a combination of local, State and charitable funds in addition to the payments of clients and their insurance. In the budgets for the hospitals is a significant allowance for free health care.
If a portion of that allocation were permitted to finance preventive care in free-clinics, many of which already exist, there would (according to my theory) be an even larger offset to the requirements for emergency care. Perhaps federal funds are needed to kick-start these clinics, perhaps not.
Aye, but how many soldiers are taught to aim for the leg?
We seem to have a large discrepancy in our experience with insurance. I live in Maryland, and we do have some of the strictest of all health insurance laws. So, I offer that I am biased on my views of the health care issue. Health insurance is regulated on a State level moreso than any other so I should have been less quick to judge your personal experience based upon my own.
That, however, points to the big difference between the two programs, inconsistencies in treatment vs. consistencies that are less than what the priveledged here are used to receiving.
Oh goody, finally I have something vaguely intelligent to add to the thread I started…
Originally posted by puddleglum:
It strikes me that this may have a lot more to do with environmental and (especially) cultural factors than standards of medical care. Middle- and upper-class Americans, by and large, are the sort of people who actually eat their oat bran and have regular breast exams. I don’t know about Britain, but there are certainly many European cultures where most people cheerfully ignore these guidelines.
As for the rest of the thread, it’s pretty much confirmed my conviction that I want to emigrate ASAP.
Another point to bear in mind about five-year cancer survival rates is that they are based on five years from the time of diagnosis. It might be that US patients are being diagnosed earlier but not living any longer as a result.
It would seem to me that if people are being diagnosed earlier in the US than in the UK that would be indicative of the US having more effective screening which is a part of health care. Also the US did not always have such a willingness to have mammograms and high fiber diets, I would say that the change in the US attitudes are due to the US citizenry being better educated in preventive care. The failure of the UK system to likewise educate its populace would seem to be an indictment of the system.
And please note that Canada is unique in terms of citizens being obsessed with their health care system. They have socialized systems in Britain, Australia, and NZ, but those have been allowed to partially degrade due to political apathy.
So, am I to take this to mean that you blatantly ignored the numerous assertions by residents of Canada/UK/etc that they do have a choice, and in fact have excercised that ability?
Very good point, Myrr21. JustAnotherGuy, I think you are still missing some of the debate here. Come back to the light! You argue that unfettered capitalists will provide the best health care system due to the Trickle-Down Effect, yet admit yourself that Maryland has an excellent system because of heavy government intervention (ie, strict laws). I live in Tennessee, where profit-seekers have bled the system dry and left us with no viable health care, contributing to a serious state debt that has had terrible outside ramifications, including serious cuts in education.
Further, you seem to claim that advanced medicine and health care technology in America is due in part to the field attracting the best people (due in part to limitless salaries). However, most advances in medicine come from research universities, and their money is derived from grants provided by the government and private sector companies, not rich doctors, where your logic seems to point.
The city I live in offers affordable health care (sliding scale fees) for uninsured individuals through the volunteer efforts of over a hundred local doctors and dentists. Are these people who would instead be day traders or media moguls if limitless profit as a doctor wasn’t available, as under a socialised system? I seriously doubt it.
Money is not the motivator you think it is. Sure, the payoff in riches is incentive for people to stick out medical school, but the disappearance of the Porsche promise isn’t going to drive away the truly talented people. (Besides, the promise would still be there, as it has already been illuminated that socialised medicine doctors can still practice privately in many countries). The truly talented individuals are in the field because that’s where their talents lie. All acquaintances I can think of who are in the medical field have dreamed of that career since they were children. I know plenty of people who have dropped various career pursuits because the money was not a signifcant enough offset to the work involved.
But I think that whole argument is moot, anyway. Once again, I believe the education metaphor is a very good one. In the States, education is socialised, yet we also have a flourishing private sector. The quality of education people receive here differs greatly according to income, yet every American is still guaranteed at least a minimum.