Because high risk pregnancies come with so little warning;
Well, you can’t expect a G7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal ICU coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote rural Montana. And let’s face it, there’s nothing an expectant mom likes more than 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop over the Rockies.
More on the Calgary quartet at BBC.
More reaction: Don Surber strikes a similar theme.
@John:
“In 2004, the government of Canada spent $2,120 (in US dollars) per person on health care, while the United States government spent $2,724.[5]”
My numbers, from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, are CAN$3839 per person for 2003. See their report: “Health Care in Canada, 2004”
WHO is a suspect source, and Wikipedia is not an appropriate cite.
You know things are bad in a government-owned health care system when these kind of jokes make the rounds:
“Q: What’s the only part of our health-care system that’s completely private?
“A: Narcotics pushers.”
“Q: Why did the government invent waiting-list databases?
“A: To give the morphine pushers a cold-call list.”
These riddles were made up by me for example purposes. Things really ain’t that bad in Canada, as far as I know.
Rush Limbaugh mentioned this today, and asks a question, Why didn’t they go to Cuba, as cdns they would have no problem getting in. He also gives a slam to Sicko, by stating this is an example of the great cdn health care.
There’s another angle to consider with the out of country birth of the quadruplets. Maybe there was the physical space but not the expertise available to deal with the tricky birth. Half the people on my floor are away on vacation and it took me a few weeks last summer to get in to see my own family doctor.
The mom and dad should be really happy that someone had the presence of mind to get them under the expert care of a good physician. Dr. Tom in Great Falls was available, able to recognize and follow through with the early emergency delivery needed to avoid serious consequences for the 4th baby.
I know from experience what happens in our beloved Canadian system when key caregivers happen to be away on vacation – people die. The lack of backup expert care during the summer in Canada is very scary and I think at times an understated crisis.
People like John can beat the drum for Canada’s healthcare system all they like…but if they end up in the hospital on a Canada Day long weekend there’s an ugly truth they may discover a bit too late.
Do I smell a troll or did I step in some dog sh#t?
…hey Chebodinik!
Calgary has the highest birthrate of any city in Canada. Add to that, interprovincial migration and nurses moving out in droves for more affordable housing, and you’ve got a major health care supply constraint. Infrastructure just hasn’t caught up to the population boom, as migrants from Saskatchewan and BC don’t bring their hospitals with them. Molehills into mountains – this says less about Health Care in Canada than it does about differences in capacity.
The birth of our son was easy as can be with our system, and even when he got very sick at 3 months….If we lived in the States… we’d probably be screwed, or our son might be dead.
Hey, John, what are you a paid shill for the Liberal party? You haven’t supported the garbage you’ve spewed with a solid fact yet. Your link to the privately funded lefty Center on Budget and Policy organization with its Paul Krugman(the NYT’s shill) and Thomas Oliphant(another lefty journ shill) endorsements is so transparent. I suggest you try harder at duping anyone.
Just suggesting that your kid could have been killed by the inferior US medical system reeks of an agenda, stupidity and total disingenuousness.
I’m calling your bluff on your stupid statements. I think you have an agenda. You lost all credibilty with the American healthcare as a threat to your son’s life. I think to put it in stronger terms are a liar. Most likely you are a government employee hack somewhere in the Canadian healthcare system or working for the Liberal party. It doesn’t matter, you are ignorable.
1. although the name kingstontard was bestowed upon me by a leftoid, it is obviously offensive to some, therefore I am going back to kingstonlad
2. in reference to Lougheed/Douglas, the conversation was that somehow Lougheed was involved in eugenics, which we all know is bulls@#$, as he ended the remnants of that program, whereas with commie douglas, well, the facts speak for themselves
Yeah kingstonturd, the facts speak for themselves: Douglas never initiated a eugenics program.
Aaron: “…this says less about Health Care in Canada than it does about differences in capacity.”
Huh? As per previous comments – there wasn’t any room in CANADA period. Nobody would take the case. Looks like there’s a common lack of capacity across this great land of ours. I’d call that a direct and damning indictment of our collective healthcare system.
Our public healthcare system has been hijacked by nurses unions and other self-interested groups.
Any attempts at honest debate or suggestions for needed changes to this system are promptly squelched with rhetorical accusations of ‘American-style’ or ‘private-for-profit’.
Ever wonder why there is never any real change or substantial improvement despite billions of additional funds regularly poured into this system by all governments?
Because protecting the inefficient status quo is in these groups’ special interest.
As Kate previously highlighted,there are already plenty of people making an absolute ‘killing’ in our supposed ‘not-for-profit’ healthcare system.
Tenebris you missed the bit where I said that Canadians also paid 917 for insurance to top things up. This brings the total to over 3k, but that’s still less than the 6K americans pay.
The fact is, that Americans are being crushed by crippling healthcare costs. People can attack Moore all they want, but that doesn’t mean he’s not right sometimes.
Bottom line… the US is not a model to emulate.
And me… I’m happy to pay more taxes if it means we can take care of everybody.
“Surely, the continued policy of allowing the subnormal family to bring into the world large
numbers of individuals to fill our jails and our mental institutions, and to live upon public charity, is
one of consummate folly.”
Tommy Douglas master’s thesis, 1932.
Ironic to say the least.
Hey everyone, I think John needs a group hug.
“And me… I’m happy to pay more taxes if it means we can take care of everybody.” That sounds very noble of you but the fact is that throwing more money (your hard earned tax dollars) will not fix the problem.
Here is another thought for all to ponder: down here a patient is seen as a source of revenue while in Canada they are a cost. Down here in nasty US of A hospitals and care givers want patients to treat. Besides the revenue putting food on the table for the heathcare workers, the income allows them to get more or newer equipment, better facilities and such. Not so in Canada, more patients means the hospital has more costs and has to find more revenue from government as that is the only source of money.
I work in a not-for-profit facility here in Texas. That means that any monies not used in operating costs goes into research, better facilities, new equipment and such. Our patients can be politicians, famous types, wealthy sheiks, prisoners and indigent (homeless). They all get the same top notch care. Without boasting I can say that we have more MRIs on site than most provinces have in total. no real waiting lists here.
Oh yeah, referring back to the generosity to charities thread a while back, it is not a rare occurance to have people donate $$$ as in millions to their favourite hospital.
I would imagine the team of doctors and nurses needed for quads would be something to behold, something we are short of all over Canada.
I think we should have private health care for those who want it, and if public health care isn’t able to take patients in a timely fashion, patients should be able to go to private health care clinics and have the public health care system pay.
The public health system is a socialist entity, hell bent on disregarding fiscal responsibility and on creating conditions where no one, who has or wants a life, wants to work.
During the last election I heard mention that the total annual cost of health care in Canada is about $142 billion. Divide that by, say, 30 million Canadians and you arrive at about $4,700 p.a. for every man, woman and child in the country, or $394 per month. That’s a lot of money for health care. How does that compare with U.S. costs?
Communism at work in Canadian “health care.”
Mealy mouthed Canadians keep trashing the American Health Care System, yet who do we have to turn to
when affluent Canadian communities don’t provide essential lifesaving care?
Answer: The USA.
I suspect the private abortion clinics could have dispatched the foetus in a matter of minutes and for “free.”
Free fast service to abort – no money for lifesaving service.
Go figure.
It’s time to bring true competition into the healthcare industry while fostering some personal
/ private insurance system to alleviate the notion that care is “free.”
“Don’t see what the big deal is? Aren’t those babies American citizens now?”
Dual citizens. Lucky them. They can play both sides of the border medical game as they get older.
Some comparisons of health care:
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf
http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm
To make our hospitals efficient again we have to take them out of the public hands. That’s the only way to end the drain and the bulging bureaucracies that we have demanded because of the “need” to monitor what is happening with the funds, waiting lists, etc.
The fastest and most cost effective way of achieving this is to turn these hospitals back over to the religious groups that used to run them. That’s right, the Salvation Army, the Nuns, etc. They’ll straighten out the finances and the unions and get rid of the deadwood very quickly. And their administrators won’t get paid the huge salaries thus lowering the expectation level for the unions.
From the Great Falls Tribune, including some cute pictures:
“Four of a kind: Rare identical quads grace Benefis”
http://tinyurl.com/2qppw8
So, please tell me where Alberta Blue Cross fits into health care, isn’t it insurance for those that can afford it? If we do not have a two tier system why pay both Alberta Health Care Premiums and Alberta Blue Cross?
Also Alberta is attracting young people here, that means more babies, which I love, Alberta is booming with babies, not immigration sponsored families like Saskatchewan. My neighbour explained to me how immigrants are being fast tracked in Saskatchewan, don’t know if it’s true, but I do know that Alberta is having a baby boom, and I’m just glad that those 4 babies were well taken care of by qualified people.
Blue Cross covers procedures not on the AHC approved list.
I stayed in Great Falls one night. I remember I was looking for a room and it was tough due to 3 or 4 hospitals. All had helipads on the roofs.
They also had MRI’s in semi-trailers and even though that was at least 12 years ago I could never understand why southeastern and southwestern parts of Sask. didn’t contract them when there was so obvious a need and no clue how to fix it.
What an absolutely dishonest deflection of responsibility for your inaccurate comment here.
You’re forcing me into the unusual position of agreeing with leftist, Iberia, which has never happened before, but only because you are more moronic.
You said something provably false. It would be just as easy to say, “I was wrong about that,” again, if you had it in you.
For every person who says, “let’s just just pay a bit more and we’ll have good health care” there are ten more working in the underground economy who expect to be taken care of when they or their kids are sick but who have no intention of paying for it themselves.
The left would have more credibility if they acknowledged that the underground economy’s non-payment of taxes on the one hand and high-priced labour monopolies on the other are part of the reason why social services such as healthcare are in bad shape — rather than suggesting that ever-increasing taxation is the answer to every problem.
Who ever heard of identical quads prior to global warming?
Richard Ball: “Who ever heard of identical quads prior to global warming?”
That’s very funny!
Congrats to the quad family.
“Who ever heard of identical quads prior to global warming?”
Or prior to Bush?
How embarrassing. Canada is better than this.
From yesterday’s Globe and Mail:
(take note that the guy who wrote this isn’t some shlub in his basement, or some Fox News host who’s only talent is having a big mouth)
…
I have been studying and writing about the consequences of commercialized medical care in the U.S. for many years. My conclusions, summarized in a recent book (A Second Opinion, Public Affairs), are that the high, rapidly rising cost of the U.S. health-care system, its failure to provide insurance coverage for about 15 per cent of U.S. citizens, and the uneven quality and limited accessibility of services it provides to so many more, can all be attributed in substantial degree to the fact that the U.S. has the most commercialized health-care system in the Western world.
This, despite the government’s funding of more than half the total cost of U.S. health care, through the Medicare plan for the elderly, the Medicaid plan for the poor, and through many other public programs.
For-profit medical care in the U.S. has usually been found to be more expensive than not-for-profit care, when facilities providing similar types of services to similar patient populations have been carefully compared. Also, the quality of investor-owned services has often been inferior — never better — when compared with those provided in similar non-profit facilities. Physicians in our commercialized, profit-driven system tend to gravitate toward the highly paid specialties, so we now face a major shortage of primary-care doctors.
Financial incentives are also causing an increasing number of U.S. physicians to avoid Medicare and Medicaid patients in favour of those with private insurance, or patients who can pay out of pocket. Uninsured patients, and even many of those insured under public plans, now must wait to receive specialty services. Many poor patients never receive such services at all. Our hospital emergency rooms are increasingly flooded with patients who cannot find or afford care from private physicians. Waiting times for those with limited means are increased — certainly not eliminated — in our privatized health-care system.
If Canada were so unwise as to allow privatization to grow in its health-care system, it would sooner or later experience all of the problems driving the U.S. system toward collapse. One thing is certain: When medical care and health insurance are allowed to become private businesses, costs go up and patients with little or no resources do not get the care they need. That is the lesson Canadians should learn from the United States.
If they are to avoid exploitation by those who would like to make profits from publicly funded health care, Canadians should not follow Americans down the path to greater privatization.
Arnold S. Rahlman is a professor emeritus of medicine and of social medicine at Harvard Medical School, and is a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
“down here a patient is seen as a source of revenue while in Canada they are a cost”
Gross. So what you are saying is that you take a person who is ill, and then ring the money out of them? This is in fact the case, because tens of thousands of Americans go bankrupt trying to pay medical bills.
This tears apart families, and weakens your social fabric. America is dying, because nobody gives a shit about anybody else anymore. You can think that giving dough to charity goes towards solving the problem, but clearly this couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I work in a not-for-profit facility here in Texas. That means that any monies not used in operating costs goes into research, better facilities, new equipment and such. Our patients can be politicians, famous types, wealthy sheiks, prisoners and indigent (homeless). They all get the same top notch care.”
Whoa there Santa Claus… sounds like the land of milk and honey. Clearly this is the exception, not the rule, or else facilities like yours would have all of the millions of uninsured beating a path to your door.
You can’t honestly pretend that there are no waiting lists for the millions who are uninsured?
It turns out, my numbers were off. The US Chamber of Commerce (buncha lefties they are) quotes the census office that 45 million americans are uninsured.
“The Census Bureau’s latest estimate reveals that the number and percentage of Americans without health insurance increased by 1.4 million from 43.6 million (15.2%) in 2002 to 45 million (15.6%) in 2003.”
That’s insane.
If only Alberta had a good economy, then they could afford to have good health care.
@John
My point was that your quoted number was inaccurate and your sources suspect. Your combined number of $6096 per person for total US spending appears roughly accurate (cite: California Health Care Foundation).
I am not disputing the apparent cost of the US system, just the exaggeration in some numbers. I will also point out that category costs need much more careful benchmarking than is done.
However, we will grant the obvious that US health costs are also higher than Canadian one. This was NOT the point of the post, which was service. The US health system is demonstrably better than the Canadian one.
As for affordability: average monthly insurance premiums for a family are $830. This is offset by the much lower US tax rate.
You are objecting to taking personal responsibility. Others here are objecting to the denial of health services. I leave you to decide which is the morally defensible position.
Just a quick comment to explain the obvious…
Those who blindly worship at the alter of universality and state control believe two things about people in general: that they are inherently good, and that they are incompetent.
Folks, there already is a two-tier system within the current one-tier public health system in Canada. If you are wealthy, are employed in the health care system or are friends with / related to someone in the health care system, you get (at least) much faster service and often access to the better specialists.
I am married to a health care worker…I am able to get faster service and access to better specialists. Professional sports teams get MRI’s with only a few hours notice (because they pay) and the wealthy who donate to hospitals jump the queue to health care at the hospital they support with their charity…we’ve seen it first-hand.
Unions (including doctors, nurses, cleaners, etc.) are sucking the lifeblood out of the health care system…its time to bust the unions and permit private-for-profit health care in Canada. They would still be reimbursed by tax dollars to an amount not exceeding what OHIP (in Ontario, of course) pays public hospitals (like the Shouldice Clinic that Taliban Jack Layton made use of)…and when that happens, compare the level of administration between the private and public systems. The private hospitals will cut the deadwood administrators / managers and contract out the janitorial and other positions…leaving more money for nurses, doctors and equipment.
After the SARS crisis here in Ontario, the front-line health care workers were NOT rewarded for their efforts…but the administrative staff received $1000 bonuses for their hard work!
BUST THE UNIONS!
Oops, I should have added to my third-last paragraph “…leaving more money for nurses, doctors and equipment AND A PROFIT TO BOOT!”
All that research and developement taking place in the U.S., that Canada rides on the back of, costs a lot.
Canada’s socialist system couldn’t afford the strain of developing it’s own knowledge and technology. Just as the USSR had to steal technology from the US because the USSR’s backward socialism couldn’t develope their own.
The forty million without insurance actually is forty million who are uninsured at some time during the year. That means if you change jobs and are uninsured for a few days, you get counted in this stat.
Same way that ‘fifty percent of personal bankruptcies are because of medical bills’ actually means fifty percent of personal bankruptcies have medical bills of over $1000.00.
They might have gambling debts and a coke habit or have had any number of reasons to declare bankruptcies, but if they have a medical bill of over $1000.00, it’s lumped in with the scaremongering stats.
Speaking of two tier healthcare, what do we call the health benefit portion of our federal unionised workers contracts?
I can’t wait for the day when all the hard core lefties get old and in need of specialized medical treatments. will the likes of Romanow, Calvert, Brodbent, Layton, Byers, Hubich, and on and on get in the line up like good little socialists and wait their turn. I hope the pain of months and months of waiting isn’t too much to bear. or will these fine well to do socialists use their money to jump the cue and head south for faster service.
government isn’t it great/
how does in excess of 40% of provincial gdp calculate out per person in ont? our heath care costa exceed that.
America is dying, because nobody gives a shit about anybody else anymore.
Spare us the hyperbole. Americans give more to charity than any other people on the face of the earth. Google it. And, grow up, healthcare is a commodity like any other service, someone pays for it whether it be through across the board incomes taxes, charitable funds out of someone’s earned income, or privately.
You can’t honestly pretend that there are no waiting lists for the millions who are uninsured?
Waiting lists for what? Enter an ER as uninsured there is no waiting list, you will not be discharged without a follow-up plan if indicated, the appointment to the appropriate f/u place is often made there or you make the phone call and get an appointment. Enter the system as uninsured sans the ER, you are evaluated, then, given an appointment. How do I know, I managed for years an o/p psych clinic where many of my clients had no insurance. Wait time, about the same as the private clinics in the city.
Hey, John, how about listing for all of us the fabulous innovative, life enhancing medications, medical devices, surgical procedures that have come out of socialized medical systems in the past 30 years? Anywhere?
If my kid was born with a very complicated heart defect or rare genetic disorder, I know what country I’d be seeking care in. Oh, and, John, most likely those selfish American that don’t give “a shit about anybody else” would figure out a way for me to get access and finance the care, most likely doing what they do when financial means are an issue, eat the cost.
John said:”Gross. So what you are saying is that you take a person who is ill, and then ring the money out of them?”
Well, that is what I’d expect for a FoM type. Trying to make it sound like people are bleeding trying to write a cheque before being treated. Truth is that the medical facility bills the insurance company or the government if the patient cannot pay. Emergencies are taken care of while general hospitalization needs are met by public hospitals.
There is nothing wrong with paying for a service if you can, Canadians do it all the time with their dentist. There you are allowed to buy an insurance plan so why not medicine? I pay a co-pay fee when I see the doctor but then again spending $25.00 to see a doc sort of prevents most from going to see the doctor with every sniffle they catch. Gee, something like what they had, for a brief time, in Alberta way back when.
Nobody ever said that the US system was perfect but as I said before, the American system isn’t all as evil as it is made out to be and there are other countries that have something better than Cuba & Canada.
My recent eloquent post was blocked or disappeared into limbo so I’ll just provide this link and point out that these are the sorts of comparisons Canadians should be making, rather than falling for that old U.S. as bogeyman straw-man argument seen yet again in this thread:
http://www.nchc.org/facts/world.shtml
Is there perhaps a reason why no countries (other than a fringe in the U.S.) are mounting movements to emulate the private-insurance-outlawed system shared by Canada, North Korea, and Cuba?
A riposte from Mark Steyn to critics of his original comments: http://tinyurl.com/2s3lr5
Mortality rates are NOT calculated the same in all countries. The EEEVIIL USA counts early neonate births as live births; furthermore, should the child die with a few days, they count that as a death. Other countries do not count like this; they not count the neonate births until the child is determined to have a good chance to live. In theses countries, a neonate that dies within a few days is counted as a still birth (not a live birth). In these countries, the mortality rate is not affected by neonate deaths. In the EEVIIL USA, the mortality rate is affected (it is reduced significantly). Furthermore, the EEVIIL USA tries heroically to save neonates that would be discarded in other countries.
I am sure a “shlub in his basement” like John would have trouble understanding the above, but then his “only talent is having a big mouth”, not appreciating the details of health care systems. Anyone who thinks Canada has a good health care system is an uninformed fool. Period. Or they are sucking at the teat. They, or a relative, are most likely in a union , the NDP, or the Liebral party, and simply trying to rationalize their obscene privilege, and disgustingly over paid and unearned income.
“If only Alberta had a good economy, then they could afford to have good health care.”
Posted by: lberia
Bwhahahahaha! You’d think!