I blame the gays.
Like far too many comments concerning México on these boards, an assumption formed on complete ignorance.
Having lived in El Paso, I could tell you some stories. But perhaps you’d care to fight my ignorance.
Why are you posting lies?
The illegals ARE included in that number. Got it?
Who am I to tell you how to spend your time. Rage against ghosts if you like. 
You are a fucking liar though. You said that you were upset that nothing is being proposed but a government takeover. So what’s up with that, shitsack?
Since you can tell me stories, tell me then exactly what is the procedure in México if you seek treatment at a health care facility here. You are the one making assinine claims you know nothing about.
- sigh *
For the approximately 4,000th time around here, it’s because that is surely what it will become – for the reasons I took considerable time to outline above.
You can continue to stubbornly pretend that you believe the current proposal is all that government health care will ever become, but that only exposes your own dishonesty, not mine.
So it’s not the actual current proposal you’re against, just the future legislation that you feel will inevitably happen?
The Baucus plan doesn’t include a public option. Are you against that?
I’d like to take a step back, and ask you a series of questions so that I can better understand your opposition to UHC. If you will so indulge me, here is the first question:
Insurance, in general (i.e., not specifically health insurance), is a good thing because it spreads risk and allows people to not have to keep the entire amount of potential losses in cash, or use loans or other assets to pay the entire cost of losses. Do you agree, or disagree; and why?
In other words you’re a liar?
Again, think for a second. Run this through your furrowed brow.
Scenario 1: We institute the public option. Things get better. Ten or twenty years from now, the public is so fucking happy they institute single payer, because it has been proven that public run insurance is more efficient, more just and all around better than private insurance.
Scenario 2. We institute the public option. Things get worse. It has constant cost overruns, needs to get bailed out by congress providing special funding. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Ten or twenty years from now the public is so sick of this they repeal the public option and there is no way you can convince them to go single payer.
Scenario 3. It works well. It does what it is supposed to, people like it, but it isn’t for everyone. Ten or twenty years from now, things stay the same. No need to shift to single payer.
Care to add a scenario you fucking moron?
Also, you’re a liar.
Yet you are unable to see that the present health care is being looted by insurance companies. They are taking 30 percent of the cost for running it. it is horribly inefficient and it has forced doctors , hospitals and clinics to pay a staff to wage payment wars with the insurance companies. There is waste wherever you look. It is because it is a for profit system. They fight payments and want to deny coverage that is paid for. Anything to increase profits is destructive policy towards the country’s health.
No problem there–you are free to take whatever position you like.
I would suggest, however, that if you continue to use Canada as an example, you take the time to educate yourself about the systems we have. Today, for example, you’ve learned that there is not a single, monolithic health care system at work in Canada. Now, you need to look further, so you can knowledgeably answer questions such as, “Does Alberta face the same problems with wait times for hip replacements as Ontario?” and “Can the Saskatchewan resident who is covered by the Saskatchewan health insurance plan use that plan at a Nova Scotia walk-in clinic?” Doing the research necessary to answer these and other similar questions should bring you to the level of knowledge necessary to speak authoritatively on how Canada’s health care problems illustrate your position.
No, and as a long-time “insider,” she can provide a view that few others can. Certainly, she is entitled to make whatever observations that she likes.
It should be said, though, that since it is a private special-interest group made up of private entrepreneurs, the CMA could possibly be looking at variations to the existing system in order to allow its members to increase their billings; and therefore, their income. In other words, there may be something more to the CMA’s position than just altruism and patient welfare; I don’t know. But I’d suggest that the possibility exists.
I agree that this step should be at the least mandatory, regardless of what sort of public option comes out of Congress (or lack thereof). However, there is a large contingent of vocal conservatives who absolutely blow up, I mean literally shit a brick, at the thought of more regulations on private enterprise. The necessary regulations on private health insurance companies are many and exacting. I’m not convinced Congress has the wherewithal to pass them.
It is for this reason that I think a government-run option is necessary. It will circumvent this issue entirely. Anyone who is satisfied with their private health insurance, or whose conscience isn’t troubled by their actions, can stick with them. They can continue to run unchecked. A non-profit government plan will be able to operate with these necessary rules in place.
Again, I agree that this could be part of a viable solution.
I find your assertion both offensive and unwelcome. As stated above, I (a self-proclaimed lefty) support a government-run health insurance option because I have no faith in the private insurance companies or in Congress’s ability to pass regulation over the right-wing screed. I won’t presume to speak for all on the left, but many here on the board support a public option for similar reasons. We’ve examined the facts, we’ve examined the statistics, and we’ve come to a rational, reasoned decision that a public option is the best solution for curtailing costs and insuring the entire population.
Perhaps we (you and I [along with other liberals]) are simply starting from different positions. Please correct me if any of this is wrong, but you seem to be satisfied with the current system. You seem to be satisfied with the needless deaths of tens of thousands due to inadequate medical coverage. You seem to be satisfied with the damper placed on the national economy in the form of a health insurance specter looming over the heads of would-be entrepreneurs. As I stated in my OP, I have a fundamental problem with a system wherein corporations cross people off a list only to pad their bottom lines.
Well, here’s the problem: its the same one, over and over. If this is such a dreadful, terrible, horrible, no-good problem, how come you only have the one?
There are many people, as you know, who would profit handsomely by trumpeting your case. Why, then, do you imagine, they leave all these marvelous and substantive facts just lying about without flinging them in our faces? For that matter, why don’t you? Shirley, this can’t be the only story on such an important topic, one that so many would dearly love to publicize? And yet, there it isn’t.
And almost every time you trot out this tired old whore-horse, it gets hammered down into goo. Which seems not to affect you in the slightest, you simply blink, blather on about something or other, and then the next time the subject comes up, you trot it out again! As though it were a brand new, improved cite, sure to send your rhetorical opponents into spasms of dismay.
To paraphrase Edna Ferber about life, your argument isn’t one damned thing after another, its the same damned thing over and over. Which you present to us, again and again, with the calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces.
You’ve never read the national edition of Readers Digest, with their story of a farmer who had an accident where his tractor fell on him? He was severly injured, in hospital, close touch for a while, and then months and months of rehab so he could talk and walk and do basic stuff - and all the while on top of the emotional stress and worry, he and his family had to face half a million dollars in medical bills (I don#t remember if he was insured or couldn’t afford the rates because he was a small farmer). His family did cake sales and similar, and the whole countryside pitched in to help, but I remember how fucked up I thought the system of worrying not about dealing with the medical trouble, but with money, was.
There was a story like this every three months or so…
I would really, really like to hear from other Canadian Dopers if they are living in the same reality as Starving Artist? It’ like hearing everybody lament how in the UK, healthcare stops for people over 65, because they are no longer productive, but when I ask real Brits, they look at me as if I’m from the moon and say “of course not, where did you get a ridiculous idea like this?”
Given that a prominent US newspaper article recently claimed that in the UK , Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have survived the death panels of National Healthcare with his severe illness (because he wouldn’t have been considered productive enough), I wonder how fact-based these reports are…
Well, we know how all-encompassing German government healthcare has become, because it was introduced by Bismark at the end of the 19th century. And it endured through several financial crises since.
I get a bit tired repeating it all the time, but apparently nobody listens to the facts…
The claim that paying privately for care covered by a provincial insurer has already been proven false. And his citation regarding the state of our health care system does not say it’s beyond repair as The Poster claimed, nor is the person being quoted the president of the Canadian health care system.
In short, this guy’s a total bullshit artist. Ignore him. It’s not perfect, but we’re not slaved to our employers or the vile games insurers play to improve their profits. Personally I’ll go in for a bleeding to balance my bodily humours before I sign up for that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/opinion/03kristof.html?_r=2 Here is an article showing Medicare and VA satisfaction rates are far over insurance providers. A recent survey showed Medicare has a 92 percent satisfaction rating. I know that is not equivalent to S.A. relatives but these have been duplicated many times. They actually have a bigger data base than his neocon family.
They breed like rabbits, you know.
A very different reality. In his reality, people go to court to fight for the right to go to a doctor. Yes, there was a court case in Quebec for just that, and the court told the government that if it would not provide heath care on a timely basis, then doctors could opt out of the health care regime.
I live in a different reality, for I believe that SA is cherry picking, and that instead when looking at the relative success or failure of the Canadian system compared to the American system, we should look at what happens overall, rather than just pick individual cases. In my reality, Canadians live longer than Americans, Canadians enjoy better health than Americans, Canadian individuals pay less per capita for health care than do Americans, and Canadian government pays less per capita for health care than does American government. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5456070&postcount=10
Do I think that the Canadian system could be improved? Yes. I would like to see more med schools opened up, particularly at regional rather than national centers, so that wait lines for doctors are shortened (especially as our population ages). I would like to see coverage extended to medications taken outside of the hospital. Although through the government we negotiate lower drug prices, they still cost a lot, and the use of medications has tremendously grown over the decades since universal health care was instituted in Canada. I would like to see dental covered as well, for I find the teeth/non-teeth division in health care to be arbitrary.
Note that what I think would help can be summed up as working to improve the present system, not throwing it out. I am concerned that SA has pointed out some instances of need for improvement, and is using them to propose abandoning the system. That, in my opinion, is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Ultimately, would I trade the Canadian health care system for the American health care system? No. Hell no, in the very strongest terms.