We tried to warn them – “Obamacare Ends Construction of Doctor-Owned Hospitals”
Hey, that’s just the beginning, suckers!
60 Replies to “Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?”
It proves my point that your anger at Assange is misplaced and has much more appropriate target. There is someone doing more damage to the Western civilization than the aussy hacker.
I live in Arizona 6 months of the year. I have not found one American who likes Obamacare. In fact, most are very worried about it. I think they believe it will be repealed, but that won’t be easy, perhaps next to impossible.
Canada’s medical overflow and emergency handler, the USA, is about to go tits up. Start thinking Bombay ad Singapore.
India, where doctors drug the people coming to the cities from the villages to find work and remove their organs?
Isn’t socialism great ?
Aaron, the poorest of the poor in India don’t have organs. About the best they can manage is a ukelele.
Yes, and then she found two bitten-off fingers in her Doberman’s mouth!
It proves my point that your anger at Assange is misplaced and has much more appropriate target. There is someone doing more damage to the Western civilization than the aussy hacker.
Posted by: Aaron at January 4, 2011 10:38 AM
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There ain’t much difference between what Assange is doing and what the NYT’s did during the Bush years.
Now, as far as someone doing more damage to the US than Assange, I agree. That someone would be Barack Hussien Obama.
,
Never mind Obamacare, the new hospital being opened in Victoria shortly has 450 new beds but no operating rooms. Tell me how that is going to shorten the waiting lists. Also because it is a P3 project(Public Private Partnership) the BC taxpayer will not learn the real cost of the building for at least thirty years. A great scam for the government to pay-off Liberal friends, does anyone remeber Adscam well in BC we now have Medscam and we didn’t even get a new scanner with it.
Gord: tsk-tsk
Waking up with a scar in the lower back after being promised work by a stranger sure deserves you below the belt jokes. What a dork!
Aaron, Hey I saw that scene on “Law and Order” about 20 years ago. A guy wakes up on a park bench, but can’t move as he’s still in too much pain from the kidney harvest… Those were the days. Did you know that the MSM and Hollywood are one and the same?
It may interest one and all to know that in the face of increased wait-times and massive emergency room overcrowding, Hamilton Health Sciences Corp. of Hamilton Ontario is -closing- one of its hospitals. http://www.hamiltonhealthsciences.ca/body.cfm?id=925
If you wade through the bafflegab, you discover that McMaster University Medical Center (MUMC) will be pediatrics -only-, with everything else off-loaded to Henderson and the General.
Isn’t that great?
Take it easy mar, Aaron speaks from experience. Apparently on his last trip to India, he had a major portion of his frontal lobe harvested.
India, where doctors drug the people coming to the cities from the villages to find work and remove their organs?
So… doctors drug people to find work? And then the doctors remove their own organs?
I love alternative parsing!
Alex trying to earn brownie points on SDA, what did this world come to?
The “wait times” published by various interested parties,Fraser Inst.,the CCPA,etc., seem way too low,at least from my personal experience and that of friends.
My son’s wait time for an MRI,for an injury that kept him from working but wasn’t WCB related, 2 years. A friend,same situation, 2 and a half years.
You have to create an emergency to get treatment on a whole raft of conditions by checking into the Emergency ward of the local hospital,and after a 8 to 12 hour wait, you might get treated,or get shot full of painkillers and sent home.
If you have to stay in the hospital,be prepared to live in a hallway or closet for weeks on end.
The situation in hospitals is far worse than just calculating waiting times indicates,shortages of working equipment are commonplace, overcrowding is the norm in every ward.
At any given time,there are a dozen or so seniors who should be in care homes but there’s no space for them so they sit in a hospital ward for months. Same thing with mental patients,nowhere to go so drug ’em up in hospital,then send ’em back out on the streets to sleep in doorways.
The Health Care system is broken,but no government will spend the money to address the problems,and they won’t cut back on the many feather bedded management positions which plague the system in every Province.
The public only sees the proverbial tip of the iceberg in HC,as the conditions on the wards are unknown to them,and when a taxpayer checks into hospital due to an emergency situation,they usually find the care to be first rate,so they tell anyone who will listen that “there’s nothing wrong with health care in this Country”.
Health care,like anything else the government manages,is not being delivered efficiently,in terms of cost or patient care,but like any other government department,they will fight to the death to maintain the status quo, because it works for them.
When you think of government delivered health care,think of Indian Affairs,as the delivery of both is about the same for effectiveness and desired result.
We need private health care in competition with the current North Korean/Cuban/Canadian model, only then will we get an appreciation of how well HC is being delivered in this Country.
Regarding Europe’s economics someone yesterday said “hopefully we’ll learn from Europe’s mistakes” to which I responded “Bwaaaaahahahah”.
Now, hopefully Americans will learn from our health-care mistakes (bwaaahahahah), else where will Canadians go for care?
I’ve got it, I’ll wait in this line and wifie hold a space in the other line for me. Just like the SuperStore.
“The public only sees the proverbial tip of the iceberg in HC,as the conditions on the wards are unknown to them,and when a taxpayer checks into hospital due to an emergency situation,they usually find the care to be first rate,so they tell anyone who will listen that “there’s nothing wrong with health care in this Country”.”
This is exactly what my Liberal friend has been telling me for years. EXACTLY!
I’m praying for an asteroid, Aaron.
dmorris @ 1:12, exactly. Indian Affairs is a bang on analogy.
Kate, that was a beautiful opener. Suckers is right.
I don’t have a link to the news item, but early this morning on FoxNews there was mention of the official launch of what I believe is a congressional effort to overturn Obamacare.
Ken (Kulak) the vote is scheduled for 12 January, most watchers expect the repeal to pass in The House, the Senate will be the one to watch, but it’s all likely to stop on B. Hussien’s desk.
Short of completely de-funding this monster, or having it struck down by a federal judge, I think the USA is stuck with it for the next while. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/04/house-health-care-repeal-vote-pick-dem-votes/
Something to note during these coming 2 years, is that the Senate has about 20 or so Democrats that will be vulnerable in the next election, if B. Hussien faces serious challenge either within his party, or from a Republican candidate who’s polling starts to soar, those Senate seats may find some members, “we” only need 4, turning against the Democrat block.
The 10 or so Republican Senators up for re-election in 2012 have been seen as being on much more solid ground. (from how it was described by Hannity / Mark Levin in the November election period).
You will get one, Phantom. My courtesy.
Marc in cgy:
Repeal might get 50 or more votes in the senate, but not a veto-proof 60. Thus the potus will veto it. And have to fight the obamacare issue – a loser issue if there ever was one – for the rest of his term (and this his presidency).
The house will however, be able to defund Obamacare and throw rocks at it for the next two years whilst the uber-left majority of dem senators led by the ever-popular Harry Reid make fools of themselves defending it and implying that Americans are just ignorant and being led around by the GOP when they say they don’t like it.
….
As for the hc system north of the 49th, Chaoulli is beginning to have an impact:
Alberta has already begun the process of creating a healthcare bill of rights that establishes a reasonable wait time for various procedures. This is in response to the Chaoulli ruling where the QSC determined that beyond a reasonable wait a government preventing a person getting access to private care is violating their charter rights.
That’s part one.
The next stage was contained in a leaked PowerPoint (vehemently denied by the AB PCs as not being accurate) that outlined – post the election – changes where, if an Albertan had to wait longer than the reasonable period (set in part one above) they would be able to purchase the service privately in Alberta and even be allowed to buy insurance for such an event.
While this second stage is a clear violation of the CHA, it is not considered a sufficient roadblock for several reasons:
1. Alberta gets bugger-all in fed transfers for hc relatively-speaking, so a cutting off of these transfers because AB violated the CHA won’t cause much budgetary damage (and possibly the reduction might be offset somewhat by reduced equalization transfer going the other way?).
2. The AB govt will argue that the CHA is nullified by the Chaoulli ruling as it has constitutional supremacy (according to the qsc at any rate) and the it should not be punished for violating the CHA.
3. It allows the AB govt to get of the hc inflation escalator. These max wait times will rapidly become minimums. If you want quicker service – go buy your own privately (or better yet buy insurance to cover it)
This way of “solving” the healthcare crisis, – read: escaping the collapsing of the public system and its runaway costs – is a disaster. It will create a Canadian version of the British NHS/private model where the wealthy get good hc and those with less income do not or they potentially become prisoners of their employers in order to get the healthcare they or their family needs.
This is so typical of a gutless, reactive bureaucracy as that that has developed in the hc system in AB and across Canada.
There is a vastly better way of providing more equal access efficiently using market-driven mechanisms that hold both providers and users accountable and thus drive innovation and efficiencies on both sides and eliminate the slothful and arbitrary interference of government. There are politicians and others in Canada who believe such a system can be implemented. They are not members of the AB PC party.
Full disclosure: as an insurance broker who sell healthcare insurance I stand to make a very good living selling private insurance if the AB PCs implement what was in the PowerPoint document. The market-driven system that I vaguely refer to has potential revenue opportunities as well, but far less so.
Gord Tulk, I think we agree entirely on this issue. “it’s all likely to stop on B. Hussien’s desk” = “Thus the POTUS will veto it”
I have no problem with change being forced on healthcare in Canada, and I’ve never been on a wait list other than waiting for the Christmas holiday crunch to pass here.
Marc: it’s not that we don’t need change, it’s that the change they are looking at is not for better. It could be much worse. It is however the least hazardous politically and that’s what is maddening to me – the political expediency of it all.
GTulk
If the repeal gets to the TOTUS’s desk and he veto’s it, what do you think the political consequences for him be? Such a veto would likely be viewed as TOTUS’s final (i said final) betrayal of the American voters.JMO
Therefore, the way I see it, were I TOTUS is this… pull-out all of the stops and not let it pass through the Senate(ideal), or if it does pass the Senate, delay the Presidential signature until after a 2012 victory (et la 2011 budget).
do you concur with this analysis?
What a surprise – another payoff in the Obamacare bill to one of his supporters, the American Hospital Association. Wonder how many dollars in campaign contributions were pledged to get this little gem tucked into the bill. The corruption continues.
What I’d be curious in seeing is what wait times are for orthopedic surgery for injured workers who bypass queues and get seen in 1-2 weeks. There is an extensive network of private clinics in BC and they provide day surgery only as it’s illegal for them to keep patients overnight.
OR time is so restricted that many of the orthopedic surgeons do most of their arthroscopic procedures in the private clinics. It’s technically illegal for a person to purchase care for themselves at one of the private clinics, but that’s easily circumvented by having someone else purchase the surgery. A couple of years ago a patient of mine showed up in severe pain with his left knee stuck in half-flexion as the result of a meniscal tear. I figured this was an orthopedic emergency and sent him to St. Pauls Hospital. The orthopedic surgeon on call disagreed that this was an emergency and booked an appointment for the patient 2 months down the road. Fortunately the Cambie Surgical Center was quite happy to take the patients wifes money and the next day he had arthroscopic surgery to deal with the offending meniscal flap that had immobilized his knee.
I guess the rationale for not considering the above case emergent was that if I had pumped the patient full of opiates, his pain would have been under control while he hobbled around waiting for the orthopedic appointment 2 months hence. Some people don’t like being zombies and immobile for 2 months but I guess those are the sacrifices we have to make to keep up world renowned Canadian institutions that define us as a people.
The way fixes are attempted to a system that’s been broken for quite a while is to add another group of administrators to the system to study what went wrong with the last group of administrators that didn’t fix things. A huge amount of money is going to maintain this ever increasing number of non-medically productive individuals who are an increasing drag on the system. The common opinion among physicians is to simply fire them all and get on with the practice of medicine free of statist ideology.
Phantom- Sorry but that’s really old news.
Girlhowdy worked there for some 35 years and was aware of that well prior to her retirement some 3 years ago.
Yes, it’s a farking tragedy. The CEO is a public sector whore who thinks he can gain international fame by turning this into an all kids hospital. Us adults can go to hell, I guess.
The US health system is ridiculously horrendous for any industrialized country, let alone for the most powerful and richest of them all. Terribly overpriced, under-insured, and inefficient.
The fact remains, numerous polls have shown that the MAJORITY of Americans support a ‘public option’.
It also remains that the majority of Americans are not satisfied with their health care system, that most are for reform, and that the system as it was before Obama was a sham.
The new proposals do little to change this, but are at least headed in a better direction.
I. H. :
I don’t think Obama thinks he’s betraying anyone if he vetos a repeal vote. If anything, I think he views public opposition to obamacare as a betrayal. I also think he is okay with a few dems voting against OB care if it saves their necks in 2012. And I don’t see how he delays a veto decision beyond the end of 2011.
He either isn’t planning on running in 2012 – preferring being worshipped as a political martyr be the far-left – or that running in 2012 will be a cakewalk as he thinks he’s omnipotent, can play the racecard, can rally the vested interests – the KOS crowd, the Unions and the other usual suspects – to bankroll him and demonize his opponents (hes sure that they will back him because a GOP POTUS – especially a teapartier – would take away all the sweetheart deals he’s arranged for them) and that he will even in 2012 be able to hang all of the country’s difficulties over the past four years on the gwb administration.
Obama’s biggest fear is not the GOP, it is a run for the dem nomination by a candidate who is further to the left than he is – especially one who is anti-war. That kind of opponent takes away his base – his bankroll and splits the dem party two things that he will have trouble repairing.
Wait till Americans find out what triage medicine is. If your old, your left to die. Young & no matter if he’s a coke head they get first dibs. Criminals are more favored than working Citizens.No matter how much money you have unless part of the Political or social elite your doomed. That or go to an underground facility for work by black listed Dr’s. Some go completely Herbal medically.
As you watch Hospitals close that had been open for a century, to save money for Illegals. You can congratulate yourselves on mass madness. As you wait 18 hours for an emergency visit. Welcome to Obamacare or as we call it in Canada Social medicine. Oh yeah expect any new equipment to stop coming. Nurse wages are more important than your health.
Now no one has any place to go where REAL medicine is practiced.
JMO
I won’t try to predict what OBOZO will do…on the simple principle that I cannot think like an idiot…….even inebriated.
“The US health system is ridiculously horrendous for any industrialized country, let alone for the most powerful and richest of them all. Terribly overpriced, under-insured, and inefficient.”
I agree there BJT. I know the American health system sucks. Why just the other night on TV I watched Al Bundy try to get a circular incision for back pain. He had to wear a moo moo for 6 weeks afterward because his dime store doctor couldn’t read his own instructions.
Wait until Obama the narcissist gets old, he’ll be treated with the self same distain by his leftarded comrades.
Btj:
For Americans who have insurance, their healthcare is far better than what we can get under any circumstance.
For those that are healthy and don’t have it, they pay a fraction in taxes towards healthcare compared to a similar healthy Canadian.
For the less than ten million or so who have none and are seriously ill – they get emergency and acute care on a par with canadians, but suffer when it comes to preventative and chronic or long-term issues.
(there is a rarely talked about issue and that is the problem of employees who are healthcare prisoners of their employers because they would lose coverage should they quit work and thus, if they or a family member has a serious health issue they could bs faced with financial ruin and/or worse. Along with that is the suppression of entreprenuerialism (sp) that no universal system causes. It is striking to those in Canada who encounter it when they see or hear of americans who want to start a venture but can’t or won’t leave their employer because of the fear of not having healthcare for themselves and their families. This is a circumstance that costs the US billions every year in lost productivity.)
Americans, like Canadians would like to help the latter group, by public means if necessary, but not if it means losing what they have arranged.
Obamacare “solved” the latter issue but at an enormous cost and with an immense increase in the bureaucracy and it also took away what hundreds of currently insured Americans have – peerless high-quality healthcare.
No wonder two thirds of Americans want nothing to do with it.
Revenat dream:
Read my post at 3:42 to see what’s in store here in canada.
The only solution is to privatize healthcare, unfortunately, the US is headed the opposite direction.
oh, another side note to all this, in regards to the post at 3:42, AB should be leaving Canada as soon as we possibly can.
Government = Inefficient bureaucracy
Monopoly = higher prices
Combining the two we have the worst of both
I read an article about a year ago comparing a doctor-owned hospital in McCallan, Texas with a collegial facility in another state (sorry, can’t recall which, but the article was in the New Yorker). The doctor-owned hospital performed many more procedures per patient than the collegial group, billing Medicare almost twice as much per patient. For example, if a patient complained of severe heartburn and stomach pain, the Texas hospital would routinely perform gastroscopies, while the other group would first put the patient on antibiotics for their ulcer, and adjust diet and medication. The collegial group actually had better outcomes as a whole, at much lower costs.
Doctor-run hospitals are often run with the idea of maximizing profits per patient, and not necessarily maximizing patient outcomes. Since patients have no transparency in terms of information on outcomes, costs, types of treatment, etc., this cannot be considered an example of a “free market” – most of the time, you go to the hospital your GP refers you to. And, as the article points out, many of the GP’s demand kickbacks from the hospitals for referrals.
So, while I’m no fan of Obamacare and hope that it gets scuttled, I’m not necessarily a fan of doctor-run hospitals either.
” their healthcare is far better than what we can get under any circumstance.”
BS…they have some great doctors, but certainly not overwhelmingly superior…and it’s still a crap SYSTEM…it’s ridiculously over-priced, their board exam requirements are significantly easier, the paper trail required for insurance claims is miles long making the whole thing more inefficient than any government run program.
” they pay a fraction in taxes towards healthcare compared to a similar healthy Canadian.”
BS argument…the US pays twice as much per capita annually (and the highest in the world) and 50% more of its GDP goes to healthcare…only a fool would argue that Canadians pay more. The US is the ONLY industrialized country lacking a public option.
Average wait times are not as different as is being claimed here…especially for family doctors.
Canadians have a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates.
Clearly the US system is sub-par.
Aaron – why can’t I be angry at more than one person?
BTJ – those higher Canadian “life expectancy and infant mortality rates” are down to Canada having fewer ghettos/slums/whatever. Not because we’re morally superior, but because we have a far lower population density and – no un-dodgy way to put this, I’m afraid – far fewer members of minorities who have cultural tendencies to get dead young.
As Mark Steyn likes to point out, once you’ve mastered basic germ-theory your mortality rates are going to stabilize around the high seventies unless you’re living in the middle of an actual war. So your point is a complete red herring.
(lower Canadian infant mortality rates…)
BTJ … its must have been really early in the morning, when you smoked that big one…
I’ve used to live in Canada, and am very familiar with both systems. The efficiency of the US system cannot be beat, even if you don’t have insurance. I’ve never waited more then 15 minutes to see a doctor, and if a referral was required, it was within 2 days. In Canada you’d have to wait a month just to see your own Doc, or wait 12 hours in a clinic.
Bottom line, the Capitalist system works perfect, if government gets the hell out of the way.
I don’t know how you can comment on something you know absolutely nothing about, except for what your reading from your LIEberal friends. Of course, that is just what i would expect from a Tommy Douglas worshipper.
The US health system is ridiculously horrendous for any industrialized country, let alone for the most powerful and richest of them all. Terribly overpriced, under-insured, and inefficient.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
BS, wrong, I purchase private insurance at $267 a month for me and the kid. Covers Health, Dental and Vision for us both. I can see a Doctor the next day for anything. When I busted my knee 3 years ago, got a Doctor’s visit the next day, an MRI the day after and surgery the following week. Let me see you beat that in Canada, India or France, or the frigin Phillipines.
————–
The fact remains, numerous polls have shown that the MAJORITY of Americans support a ‘public option’.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
That is a complete lie. The “Public Option” as you cry is nothing more than FREE HEALTH INSURANCE for lazy do-nothing Democrat Voters. Did you not see the top priority of the Tea Party Voters was to REPEAL ObamaCare ? And, was it not the Tea Partiers that carried the day back in November ?
——
It also remains that the majority of Americans are not satisfied with their health care system, that most are for reform, and that the system as it was before Obama was a sham.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
Another BS moment as well. Was it a sham under Clinton and Carter as well ?
———
The new proposals do little to change this, but are at least headed in a better direction.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
WTH are you talking about, the only new proposal on the table right now is REPEAL.
BTJ, if ObamaCare is so great then why are the good CongressCritters exempt ? Why do the Muslims, Amish, American Indians and Tom Cruise get an exemption ? Why do Canadian Politicians come to America to get surgery ? Why are all the top bracketed companies asking for exemptions and Butt-Boy Obama is giving it to them ? Why did the Democrats use Stealth Legislation to pass this bondoggle ? Why did they use bribery, or threats to every Democrat to get their vote. Why didn’t the Democrats give us a chance to read it before they voted in ?
Are you even from America ? You don’t know what the hell you are talking about. And you are out here on the National Stage claiming this crap. Somebody put a fork in BTJ that tator is done.
On another note; I see Nancy “You gota pass it before you see whats in it” Pelosi loses her gavel today.
Been there, done that and have a T-shirt to prove it. Several actually. Had the doctor to specialist to MRI in a week. Kind of nice not hearing the doctor say ” If I had seen this earlier I could have done something but now the scar tissue is too old…”
Yes, Canadians generally get good emergency treatment but you can also die and start to rot in a waiting room, at least in Winnipeg.
There are no people dying in the streets outside of hospitals. Like the stacks of bodies in the Superdome during Katrina, it ain’t so. Some hospitals actually have mobile indigent care programs to help prevent the “too late” scenario.
Canadian ads on TV telling women to take advantage of the “free” mammograms, but omit telling you that it takes 3 months for an appointment. Many US facilities have mobile programs so you can git-R-dun in the Wallyworld parking lot.
BTJ better go easy on the purple koolaid that the Fiends Of Medicare are passing around.
“Not because we’re morally superior”
What the hell are you talking about? Who said ANYTHING about morals?????
“but because we have a far lower population density”
Huh? Please show the correlation between life-expectancy and differences between the two countries population density.
” far fewer members of minorities who have cultural tendencies to get dead young.”
What are you talking about? ‘Cultural tendencies’? Please, crawl back in your hole.
“So your point is a complete red herring.”
How so? You’re previous point does not support this statement.
“I don’t know how you can comment on something you know absolutely nothing about”
Riiigght…I know nothing, you know everything…I’ve seen how the game works around here long ago. I have no idea who Tommy Douglas is, but thank you for dating yourself. Go lay down before you hurt yourself.
” I purchase private insurance at $267 a month for me and the kid.”
Ah, yes, another personal story that somehow is grounds for judging the entire system. Get real.
“That is a complete lie”
Prove it…go find a poll that says differently. I looked at numerous polls and they showed a majority supporting some form of public option. And your distortion of what a public option is comes straight from the propaganda machine. Way to recite whatever the tv told you. Does the Tea Party now represent the entire US population? Your posted name is very fitting…RATT.
“BTJ better go easy on the purple koolaid that the Fiends Of Medicare are passing around.”
Great rebuttal…don’t try so hard next time.
“The efficiency of the US system cannot be beat”
You’re delusional…the US health INSURANCE system is unprecedented in its lack of efficiency.
” I’ve never waited more then 15 minutes to see a doctor”
Well then…that’s it…you’re tiny, insignificant personal experience must be the defining judge on the matter. :S
Research says differently friend.
“Bottom line, the Capitalist system works perfect, if government gets the hell out of the way.”
Sure, but the US is FAR from being Capitalist…it’s closer to FASCIST than anything.
It proves my point that your anger at Assange is misplaced and has much more appropriate target. There is someone doing more damage to the Western civilization than the aussy hacker.
I live in Arizona 6 months of the year. I have not found one American who likes Obamacare. In fact, most are very worried about it. I think they believe it will be repealed, but that won’t be easy, perhaps next to impossible.
Canada’s medical overflow and emergency handler, the USA, is about to go tits up. Start thinking Bombay ad Singapore.
Well….i guess someday I may be visiting India.
http://www.recoverdiscover.com/
India, where doctors drug the people coming to the cities from the villages to find work and remove their organs?
Isn’t socialism great ?
Aaron, the poorest of the poor in India don’t have organs. About the best they can manage is a ukelele.
Yes, and then she found two bitten-off fingers in her Doberman’s mouth!
It proves my point that your anger at Assange is misplaced and has much more appropriate target. There is someone doing more damage to the Western civilization than the aussy hacker.
Posted by: Aaron at January 4, 2011 10:38 AM
—————————————
There ain’t much difference between what Assange is doing and what the NYT’s did during the Bush years.
Now, as far as someone doing more damage to the US than Assange, I agree. That someone would be Barack Hussien Obama.
,
Never mind Obamacare, the new hospital being opened in Victoria shortly has 450 new beds but no operating rooms. Tell me how that is going to shorten the waiting lists. Also because it is a P3 project(Public Private Partnership) the BC taxpayer will not learn the real cost of the building for at least thirty years. A great scam for the government to pay-off Liberal friends, does anyone remeber Adscam well in BC we now have Medscam and we didn’t even get a new scanner with it.
Gord: tsk-tsk
Waking up with a scar in the lower back after being promised work by a stranger sure deserves you below the belt jokes. What a dork!
Aaron, Hey I saw that scene on “Law and Order” about 20 years ago. A guy wakes up on a park bench, but can’t move as he’s still in too much pain from the kidney harvest… Those were the days. Did you know that the MSM and Hollywood are one and the same?
It may interest one and all to know that in the face of increased wait-times and massive emergency room overcrowding, Hamilton Health Sciences Corp. of Hamilton Ontario is -closing- one of its hospitals.
http://www.hamiltonhealthsciences.ca/body.cfm?id=925
If you wade through the bafflegab, you discover that McMaster University Medical Center (MUMC) will be pediatrics -only-, with everything else off-loaded to Henderson and the General.
Isn’t that great?
Take it easy mar, Aaron speaks from experience. Apparently on his last trip to India, he had a major portion of his frontal lobe harvested.
India, where doctors drug the people coming to the cities from the villages to find work and remove their organs?
So… doctors drug people to find work? And then the doctors remove their own organs?
I love alternative parsing!
Alex trying to earn brownie points on SDA, what did this world come to?
The “wait times” published by various interested parties,Fraser Inst.,the CCPA,etc., seem way too low,at least from my personal experience and that of friends.
My son’s wait time for an MRI,for an injury that kept him from working but wasn’t WCB related, 2 years. A friend,same situation, 2 and a half years.
You have to create an emergency to get treatment on a whole raft of conditions by checking into the Emergency ward of the local hospital,and after a 8 to 12 hour wait, you might get treated,or get shot full of painkillers and sent home.
If you have to stay in the hospital,be prepared to live in a hallway or closet for weeks on end.
The situation in hospitals is far worse than just calculating waiting times indicates,shortages of working equipment are commonplace, overcrowding is the norm in every ward.
At any given time,there are a dozen or so seniors who should be in care homes but there’s no space for them so they sit in a hospital ward for months. Same thing with mental patients,nowhere to go so drug ’em up in hospital,then send ’em back out on the streets to sleep in doorways.
The Health Care system is broken,but no government will spend the money to address the problems,and they won’t cut back on the many feather bedded management positions which plague the system in every Province.
The public only sees the proverbial tip of the iceberg in HC,as the conditions on the wards are unknown to them,and when a taxpayer checks into hospital due to an emergency situation,they usually find the care to be first rate,so they tell anyone who will listen that “there’s nothing wrong with health care in this Country”.
Health care,like anything else the government manages,is not being delivered efficiently,in terms of cost or patient care,but like any other government department,they will fight to the death to maintain the status quo, because it works for them.
When you think of government delivered health care,think of Indian Affairs,as the delivery of both is about the same for effectiveness and desired result.
We need private health care in competition with the current North Korean/Cuban/Canadian model, only then will we get an appreciation of how well HC is being delivered in this Country.
Regarding Europe’s economics someone yesterday said “hopefully we’ll learn from Europe’s mistakes” to which I responded “Bwaaaaahahahah”.
Now, hopefully Americans will learn from our health-care mistakes (bwaaahahahah), else where will Canadians go for care?
I’ve got it, I’ll wait in this line and wifie hold a space in the other line for me. Just like the SuperStore.
“The public only sees the proverbial tip of the iceberg in HC,as the conditions on the wards are unknown to them,and when a taxpayer checks into hospital due to an emergency situation,they usually find the care to be first rate,so they tell anyone who will listen that “there’s nothing wrong with health care in this Country”.”
This is exactly what my Liberal friend has been telling me for years. EXACTLY!
I’m praying for an asteroid, Aaron.
dmorris @ 1:12, exactly. Indian Affairs is a bang on analogy.
Kate, that was a beautiful opener. Suckers is right.
I don’t have a link to the news item, but early this morning on FoxNews there was mention of the official launch of what I believe is a congressional effort to overturn Obamacare.
Ken (Kulak) the vote is scheduled for 12 January, most watchers expect the repeal to pass in The House, the Senate will be the one to watch, but it’s all likely to stop on B. Hussien’s desk.
Short of completely de-funding this monster, or having it struck down by a federal judge, I think the USA is stuck with it for the next while.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/04/house-health-care-repeal-vote-pick-dem-votes/
Something to note during these coming 2 years, is that the Senate has about 20 or so Democrats that will be vulnerable in the next election, if B. Hussien faces serious challenge either within his party, or from a Republican candidate who’s polling starts to soar, those Senate seats may find some members, “we” only need 4, turning against the Democrat block.
The 10 or so Republican Senators up for re-election in 2012 have been seen as being on much more solid ground. (from how it was described by Hannity / Mark Levin in the November election period).
You will get one, Phantom. My courtesy.
Marc in cgy:
Repeal might get 50 or more votes in the senate, but not a veto-proof 60. Thus the potus will veto it. And have to fight the obamacare issue – a loser issue if there ever was one – for the rest of his term (and this his presidency).
The house will however, be able to defund Obamacare and throw rocks at it for the next two years whilst the uber-left majority of dem senators led by the ever-popular Harry Reid make fools of themselves defending it and implying that Americans are just ignorant and being led around by the GOP when they say they don’t like it.
….
As for the hc system north of the 49th, Chaoulli is beginning to have an impact:
Alberta has already begun the process of creating a healthcare bill of rights that establishes a reasonable wait time for various procedures. This is in response to the Chaoulli ruling where the QSC determined that beyond a reasonable wait a government preventing a person getting access to private care is violating their charter rights.
That’s part one.
The next stage was contained in a leaked PowerPoint (vehemently denied by the AB PCs as not being accurate) that outlined – post the election – changes where, if an Albertan had to wait longer than the reasonable period (set in part one above) they would be able to purchase the service privately in Alberta and even be allowed to buy insurance for such an event.
While this second stage is a clear violation of the CHA, it is not considered a sufficient roadblock for several reasons:
1. Alberta gets bugger-all in fed transfers for hc relatively-speaking, so a cutting off of these transfers because AB violated the CHA won’t cause much budgetary damage (and possibly the reduction might be offset somewhat by reduced equalization transfer going the other way?).
2. The AB govt will argue that the CHA is nullified by the Chaoulli ruling as it has constitutional supremacy (according to the qsc at any rate) and the it should not be punished for violating the CHA.
3. It allows the AB govt to get of the hc inflation escalator. These max wait times will rapidly become minimums. If you want quicker service – go buy your own privately (or better yet buy insurance to cover it)
This way of “solving” the healthcare crisis, – read: escaping the collapsing of the public system and its runaway costs – is a disaster. It will create a Canadian version of the British NHS/private model where the wealthy get good hc and those with less income do not or they potentially become prisoners of their employers in order to get the healthcare they or their family needs.
This is so typical of a gutless, reactive bureaucracy as that that has developed in the hc system in AB and across Canada.
There is a vastly better way of providing more equal access efficiently using market-driven mechanisms that hold both providers and users accountable and thus drive innovation and efficiencies on both sides and eliminate the slothful and arbitrary interference of government. There are politicians and others in Canada who believe such a system can be implemented. They are not members of the AB PC party.
Full disclosure: as an insurance broker who sell healthcare insurance I stand to make a very good living selling private insurance if the AB PCs implement what was in the PowerPoint document. The market-driven system that I vaguely refer to has potential revenue opportunities as well, but far less so.
Gord Tulk, I think we agree entirely on this issue. “it’s all likely to stop on B. Hussien’s desk” = “Thus the POTUS will veto it”
I have no problem with change being forced on healthcare in Canada, and I’ve never been on a wait list other than waiting for the Christmas holiday crunch to pass here.
Marc: it’s not that we don’t need change, it’s that the change they are looking at is not for better. It could be much worse. It is however the least hazardous politically and that’s what is maddening to me – the political expediency of it all.
GTulk
If the repeal gets to the TOTUS’s desk and he veto’s it, what do you think the political consequences for him be? Such a veto would likely be viewed as TOTUS’s final (i said final) betrayal of the American voters.JMO
Therefore, the way I see it, were I TOTUS is this… pull-out all of the stops and not let it pass through the Senate(ideal), or if it does pass the Senate, delay the Presidential signature until after a 2012 victory (et la 2011 budget).
do you concur with this analysis?
What a surprise – another payoff in the Obamacare bill to one of his supporters, the American Hospital Association. Wonder how many dollars in campaign contributions were pledged to get this little gem tucked into the bill. The corruption continues.
What I’d be curious in seeing is what wait times are for orthopedic surgery for injured workers who bypass queues and get seen in 1-2 weeks. There is an extensive network of private clinics in BC and they provide day surgery only as it’s illegal for them to keep patients overnight.
OR time is so restricted that many of the orthopedic surgeons do most of their arthroscopic procedures in the private clinics. It’s technically illegal for a person to purchase care for themselves at one of the private clinics, but that’s easily circumvented by having someone else purchase the surgery. A couple of years ago a patient of mine showed up in severe pain with his left knee stuck in half-flexion as the result of a meniscal tear. I figured this was an orthopedic emergency and sent him to St. Pauls Hospital. The orthopedic surgeon on call disagreed that this was an emergency and booked an appointment for the patient 2 months down the road. Fortunately the Cambie Surgical Center was quite happy to take the patients wifes money and the next day he had arthroscopic surgery to deal with the offending meniscal flap that had immobilized his knee.
I guess the rationale for not considering the above case emergent was that if I had pumped the patient full of opiates, his pain would have been under control while he hobbled around waiting for the orthopedic appointment 2 months hence. Some people don’t like being zombies and immobile for 2 months but I guess those are the sacrifices we have to make to keep up world renowned Canadian institutions that define us as a people.
The way fixes are attempted to a system that’s been broken for quite a while is to add another group of administrators to the system to study what went wrong with the last group of administrators that didn’t fix things. A huge amount of money is going to maintain this ever increasing number of non-medically productive individuals who are an increasing drag on the system. The common opinion among physicians is to simply fire them all and get on with the practice of medicine free of statist ideology.
Phantom- Sorry but that’s really old news.
Girlhowdy worked there for some 35 years and was aware of that well prior to her retirement some 3 years ago.
Yes, it’s a farking tragedy. The CEO is a public sector whore who thinks he can gain international fame by turning this into an all kids hospital. Us adults can go to hell, I guess.
The US health system is ridiculously horrendous for any industrialized country, let alone for the most powerful and richest of them all. Terribly overpriced, under-insured, and inefficient.
The fact remains, numerous polls have shown that the MAJORITY of Americans support a ‘public option’.
It also remains that the majority of Americans are not satisfied with their health care system, that most are for reform, and that the system as it was before Obama was a sham.
The new proposals do little to change this, but are at least headed in a better direction.
I. H. :
I don’t think Obama thinks he’s betraying anyone if he vetos a repeal vote. If anything, I think he views public opposition to obamacare as a betrayal. I also think he is okay with a few dems voting against OB care if it saves their necks in 2012. And I don’t see how he delays a veto decision beyond the end of 2011.
He either isn’t planning on running in 2012 – preferring being worshipped as a political martyr be the far-left – or that running in 2012 will be a cakewalk as he thinks he’s omnipotent, can play the racecard, can rally the vested interests – the KOS crowd, the Unions and the other usual suspects – to bankroll him and demonize his opponents (hes sure that they will back him because a GOP POTUS – especially a teapartier – would take away all the sweetheart deals he’s arranged for them) and that he will even in 2012 be able to hang all of the country’s difficulties over the past four years on the gwb administration.
Obama’s biggest fear is not the GOP, it is a run for the dem nomination by a candidate who is further to the left than he is – especially one who is anti-war. That kind of opponent takes away his base – his bankroll and splits the dem party two things that he will have trouble repairing.
Wait till Americans find out what triage medicine is. If your old, your left to die. Young & no matter if he’s a coke head they get first dibs. Criminals are more favored than working Citizens.No matter how much money you have unless part of the Political or social elite your doomed. That or go to an underground facility for work by black listed Dr’s. Some go completely Herbal medically.
As you watch Hospitals close that had been open for a century, to save money for Illegals. You can congratulate yourselves on mass madness. As you wait 18 hours for an emergency visit. Welcome to Obamacare or as we call it in Canada Social medicine. Oh yeah expect any new equipment to stop coming. Nurse wages are more important than your health.
Now no one has any place to go where REAL medicine is practiced.
JMO
I won’t try to predict what OBOZO will do…on the simple principle that I cannot think like an idiot…….even inebriated.
“The US health system is ridiculously horrendous for any industrialized country, let alone for the most powerful and richest of them all. Terribly overpriced, under-insured, and inefficient.”
I agree there BJT. I know the American health system sucks. Why just the other night on TV I watched Al Bundy try to get a circular incision for back pain. He had to wear a moo moo for 6 weeks afterward because his dime store doctor couldn’t read his own instructions.
Wait until Obama the narcissist gets old, he’ll be treated with the self same distain by his leftarded comrades.
Btj:
For Americans who have insurance, their healthcare is far better than what we can get under any circumstance.
For those that are healthy and don’t have it, they pay a fraction in taxes towards healthcare compared to a similar healthy Canadian.
For the less than ten million or so who have none and are seriously ill – they get emergency and acute care on a par with canadians, but suffer when it comes to preventative and chronic or long-term issues.
(there is a rarely talked about issue and that is the problem of employees who are healthcare prisoners of their employers because they would lose coverage should they quit work and thus, if they or a family member has a serious health issue they could bs faced with financial ruin and/or worse. Along with that is the suppression of entreprenuerialism (sp) that no universal system causes. It is striking to those in Canada who encounter it when they see or hear of americans who want to start a venture but can’t or won’t leave their employer because of the fear of not having healthcare for themselves and their families. This is a circumstance that costs the US billions every year in lost productivity.)
Americans, like Canadians would like to help the latter group, by public means if necessary, but not if it means losing what they have arranged.
Obamacare “solved” the latter issue but at an enormous cost and with an immense increase in the bureaucracy and it also took away what hundreds of currently insured Americans have – peerless high-quality healthcare.
No wonder two thirds of Americans want nothing to do with it.
Revenat dream:
Read my post at 3:42 to see what’s in store here in canada.
The only solution is to privatize healthcare, unfortunately, the US is headed the opposite direction.
oh, another side note to all this, in regards to the post at 3:42, AB should be leaving Canada as soon as we possibly can.
Government = Inefficient bureaucracy
Monopoly = higher prices
Combining the two we have the worst of both
I read an article about a year ago comparing a doctor-owned hospital in McCallan, Texas with a collegial facility in another state (sorry, can’t recall which, but the article was in the New Yorker). The doctor-owned hospital performed many more procedures per patient than the collegial group, billing Medicare almost twice as much per patient. For example, if a patient complained of severe heartburn and stomach pain, the Texas hospital would routinely perform gastroscopies, while the other group would first put the patient on antibiotics for their ulcer, and adjust diet and medication. The collegial group actually had better outcomes as a whole, at much lower costs.
Doctor-run hospitals are often run with the idea of maximizing profits per patient, and not necessarily maximizing patient outcomes. Since patients have no transparency in terms of information on outcomes, costs, types of treatment, etc., this cannot be considered an example of a “free market” – most of the time, you go to the hospital your GP refers you to. And, as the article points out, many of the GP’s demand kickbacks from the hospitals for referrals.
So, while I’m no fan of Obamacare and hope that it gets scuttled, I’m not necessarily a fan of doctor-run hospitals either.
” their healthcare is far better than what we can get under any circumstance.”
BS…they have some great doctors, but certainly not overwhelmingly superior…and it’s still a crap SYSTEM…it’s ridiculously over-priced, their board exam requirements are significantly easier, the paper trail required for insurance claims is miles long making the whole thing more inefficient than any government run program.
” they pay a fraction in taxes towards healthcare compared to a similar healthy Canadian.”
BS argument…the US pays twice as much per capita annually (and the highest in the world) and 50% more of its GDP goes to healthcare…only a fool would argue that Canadians pay more. The US is the ONLY industrialized country lacking a public option.
Average wait times are not as different as is being claimed here…especially for family doctors.
Canadians have a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates.
Clearly the US system is sub-par.
Aaron – why can’t I be angry at more than one person?
BTJ – those higher Canadian “life expectancy and infant mortality rates” are down to Canada having fewer ghettos/slums/whatever. Not because we’re morally superior, but because we have a far lower population density and – no un-dodgy way to put this, I’m afraid – far fewer members of minorities who have cultural tendencies to get dead young.
As Mark Steyn likes to point out, once you’ve mastered basic germ-theory your mortality rates are going to stabilize around the high seventies unless you’re living in the middle of an actual war. So your point is a complete red herring.
(lower Canadian infant mortality rates…)
BTJ … its must have been really early in the morning, when you smoked that big one…
I’ve used to live in Canada, and am very familiar with both systems. The efficiency of the US system cannot be beat, even if you don’t have insurance. I’ve never waited more then 15 minutes to see a doctor, and if a referral was required, it was within 2 days. In Canada you’d have to wait a month just to see your own Doc, or wait 12 hours in a clinic.
Bottom line, the Capitalist system works perfect, if government gets the hell out of the way.
I don’t know how you can comment on something you know absolutely nothing about, except for what your reading from your LIEberal friends. Of course, that is just what i would expect from a Tommy Douglas worshipper.
The US health system is ridiculously horrendous for any industrialized country, let alone for the most powerful and richest of them all. Terribly overpriced, under-insured, and inefficient.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
BS, wrong, I purchase private insurance at $267 a month for me and the kid. Covers Health, Dental and Vision for us both. I can see a Doctor the next day for anything. When I busted my knee 3 years ago, got a Doctor’s visit the next day, an MRI the day after and surgery the following week. Let me see you beat that in Canada, India or France, or the frigin Phillipines.
————–
The fact remains, numerous polls have shown that the MAJORITY of Americans support a ‘public option’.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
That is a complete lie. The “Public Option” as you cry is nothing more than FREE HEALTH INSURANCE for lazy do-nothing Democrat Voters. Did you not see the top priority of the Tea Party Voters was to REPEAL ObamaCare ? And, was it not the Tea Partiers that carried the day back in November ?
——
It also remains that the majority of Americans are not satisfied with their health care system, that most are for reform, and that the system as it was before Obama was a sham.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
Another BS moment as well. Was it a sham under Clinton and Carter as well ?
———
The new proposals do little to change this, but are at least headed in a better direction.
Posted by: BTJ at January 4, 2011 6:06 PM
WTH are you talking about, the only new proposal on the table right now is REPEAL.
BTJ, if ObamaCare is so great then why are the good CongressCritters exempt ? Why do the Muslims, Amish, American Indians and Tom Cruise get an exemption ? Why do Canadian Politicians come to America to get surgery ? Why are all the top bracketed companies asking for exemptions and Butt-Boy Obama is giving it to them ? Why did the Democrats use Stealth Legislation to pass this bondoggle ? Why did they use bribery, or threats to every Democrat to get their vote. Why didn’t the Democrats give us a chance to read it before they voted in ?
Are you even from America ? You don’t know what the hell you are talking about. And you are out here on the National Stage claiming this crap. Somebody put a fork in BTJ that tator is done.
On another note; I see Nancy “You gota pass it before you see whats in it” Pelosi loses her gavel today.
Been there, done that and have a T-shirt to prove it. Several actually. Had the doctor to specialist to MRI in a week. Kind of nice not hearing the doctor say ” If I had seen this earlier I could have done something but now the scar tissue is too old…”
Yes, Canadians generally get good emergency treatment but you can also die and start to rot in a waiting room, at least in Winnipeg.
There are no people dying in the streets outside of hospitals. Like the stacks of bodies in the Superdome during Katrina, it ain’t so. Some hospitals actually have mobile indigent care programs to help prevent the “too late” scenario.
Canadian ads on TV telling women to take advantage of the “free” mammograms, but omit telling you that it takes 3 months for an appointment. Many US facilities have mobile programs so you can git-R-dun in the Wallyworld parking lot.
BTJ better go easy on the purple koolaid that the Fiends Of Medicare are passing around.
“Not because we’re morally superior”
What the hell are you talking about? Who said ANYTHING about morals?????
“but because we have a far lower population density”
Huh? Please show the correlation between life-expectancy and differences between the two countries population density.
” far fewer members of minorities who have cultural tendencies to get dead young.”
What are you talking about? ‘Cultural tendencies’? Please, crawl back in your hole.
“So your point is a complete red herring.”
How so? You’re previous point does not support this statement.
“I don’t know how you can comment on something you know absolutely nothing about”
Riiigght…I know nothing, you know everything…I’ve seen how the game works around here long ago. I have no idea who Tommy Douglas is, but thank you for dating yourself. Go lay down before you hurt yourself.
” I purchase private insurance at $267 a month for me and the kid.”
Ah, yes, another personal story that somehow is grounds for judging the entire system. Get real.
“That is a complete lie”
Prove it…go find a poll that says differently. I looked at numerous polls and they showed a majority supporting some form of public option. And your distortion of what a public option is comes straight from the propaganda machine. Way to recite whatever the tv told you. Does the Tea Party now represent the entire US population? Your posted name is very fitting…RATT.
“BTJ better go easy on the purple koolaid that the Fiends Of Medicare are passing around.”
Great rebuttal…don’t try so hard next time.
“The efficiency of the US system cannot be beat”
You’re delusional…the US health INSURANCE system is unprecedented in its lack of efficiency.
” I’ve never waited more then 15 minutes to see a doctor”
Well then…that’s it…you’re tiny, insignificant personal experience must be the defining judge on the matter. :S
Research says differently friend.
“Bottom line, the Capitalist system works perfect, if government gets the hell out of the way.”
Sure, but the US is FAR from being Capitalist…it’s closer to FASCIST than anything.