*…After the heartless socialists running Ontario’s health care system forced epileptics to take generic versions of the antiepileptic drug Lamictal…
*
I’m sure the ‘heartless socialists’ bit is a tongue-in-cheek reference to current politics & the right wing’s silly attacks on President Obama. I’d just like to remind Cecil that his wisdom will surely stand throughout the ages & that future generations may not ‘get it’.
Plus if Rush Limbaugh & his ilk should stumble upon this collumn, they will be able to cite it as proof that socialized medicine is evil! After all, who would question Cecil’s veracity…?
Regardless if they were tongue-and-cheek or not, how else would one describe the actions of those he was referring to?
I think interjecting any sort of politics in places it doesn’t really belong often makes people think the person who is doing it is a bit of a political zealot.
Not evil, but certainly inferior. So why not point that out when there’s a national discussion going on about the merits/drawbacks of governement health care? The other side is certainly doing it’s share to publicize problems with private care.
ETA: Plus, I’m emailing that column to Limbaugh as we speak.
I personally know two people who have had coverage of their name-brand anti-seizure drugs denied by their insurance companies. Both have suffered seizures because of it. This has rather dramatic consequences, like not being legal to drive for a year, which can be extremely debilitating (depending on your field of work, for example).
Further, rather than just requiring a directive from a doctor, the insurance companies require that the patient navigate a nearly impenetrable bureaucracy, involving endless forms and hearings before the drugs will be approved. One of the patients eventually gave up, and has eaten the cost of the name brand drug.
So, in a word, you are wrong. The Canadian system is superior in this case.
So a system in which one or more insurance companies deny coverage on brand name anti-seizure drugs is inferior to a system in which everyone is denied them?
Number one, I’m not following the logic; and number two, why not simply legislate proper behavior and coverage on the part of insurance companies?
I saw a thread earlier today where a poster described how he used to be a bigtime leftie until he went to work for the government and got first hand exposure to the rampant inefficiency, corruption and waste he discovered there. He still thinks society ought to help people but that there ought to be a better way. And yet people like you just can’t wait to consign our fate to that very same inefficient, corrupt and wasteful government. The very reason it’s taken decades and decades to get even this far in terms of UHC in this country is because so many people know how crappily our government here runs things.
As a person who lived in Ontario for 30 years I gotta say that OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) buying medication for someone is news to me… Most medication is paid for by the person’s private health care that they earn through their employment… If you are unemployed and can’t afford your prescription there are programs that will reimburse for prescriptions that you have already bought and can set up a plan for refillable scripts, but there is no magic pharmacy that is handing out meds for free… if you are employed without health care you are out of luck you will pay full price for your meds… I have had scripts for pain meds and antibiotics that have been considerably expensive…
A self-employed head of a family would certainly have to pay for private health insurance to protect his or her family…
But to compare the two systems… the people that were made to switch were probably unemployed and completely dependent upon the system… If they had private insurance through theirs or their family’s work the government would have had no say… However in the current US system those people might not have gotten their meds at all…
I for one am a Canadian that is very proud of our system and have no problem waiting for world class health care… if that wait means that none of my neighbours will be turned away then it is fine with me… I have never known of anyone being told to wait for emergency life saving procedures, never…
Yes, because you conveniently left out the large portion of people that are not covered in “your” system at all… and to say that “everyone is denied” the brand name drugs in the Canadian system is just wrong… millions of Canadians receive brand name drugs of all kinds daily… as I mentioned in the above post, the only people that have the government decide what medication that they will be taking are the people who are completely dependent upon the system (and probably living on some type of social assistance) … If you are employed with heath care, it will be your doctor making the choice…
You really advocate that? You want the government to stick its nose into the insurance business, telling insurance companies and consumers what terms they can agree to? Why not let the free market decide?
I’m not advocating that, but you seem like somebody who might.
People love to say stuff like that. I work for the federal government, in biomedical research, and I haven’t encountered rampant inefficiency, corruption, or waste.
Do you advocate the elimination of Medicare?
There aren’t any proposals on the table that would “consign our fate” to the government. That’s just propaganda and misinformation.
How did we wind up in a debate about healthcare reform in this forum?
Not at all. Laws are needed even in a free-market society. I have no problem with laws against insider trading, fraud, cons, etc. If what insurance agencies are doing is tantamount to defrauding their customers, I have no problem at all with Congress coming up with legislation to remove their ability to do so.
Just FYI, I also think there are a lot of things that banks and credit card companies do to rip off their customers as well, particularly in the area of debit and credit cards. I think legislation in this area is way overdue as well.
People love to say it because they’ve encountered so much of it. I’d say you just happen to work in an area of government that isn’t as suseptible to inefficiency, corruption and waste…provided that you are in a position to see it in the first place, that is.
Not at present. People are too heavily invested in it and dependent upon it now. But like with Social Security, I see the need to make sure people have what they need when they’re older, but I would have gone about it differently. I would have limited the government’s role to collecting the necessary funds via payroll withholding and investing the proceeds in mutual funds or bonds or what have you, with the invested monies to be parcelled out upon retirement with any remainder passing to the spouse or estate upon death.
Sure there are, in the back of some politicans’ minds and in the forefront of others. Obama is on record as saying he favors a single-payer system. The current plan is merely a foot in the door.
More of an aside than a debate, I’d say, with much of it centering on things other people say to me…like you, for instance.
