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.
“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.”
Posted by: dj
They already do head south – socialism is for others, not for socialists.
from Karl Rove talking to Rush this week: (for John)
“Senator Clinton voted against allowing people to save tax-free for their out-of-pocket medical expenses. Senator Clinton opposes giving every American a standard health deduction so that they can deduct from the cost of their income taxes, their insurance premiums.
You know, when we started as a country to say, “You know what? You can deduct your mortgage interest off of your income taxes,” there was an explosion of home ownership in the country, which was a good thing. When we started saying to people, “You can save tax-free for your kids’ college expenses or save tax-free for your retirement expenses,” we saw an explosion of 529 Plans for college education, and 401(k)s and IRAs for people’s retirement. That was a good thing. Yet Senator Clinton, who deems to lecture this president on health care, opposed allowing people to do either save tax-free for their out-of-pocket medical expenses, or, she also opposed — she also opposes — allowing there to be a tax deduction for people to take off their income tax costs of their insurance premiums. She’s against having a level playing field so that the guy who has to pay for health care for his family or her family out of their own pocket, gets the same tax break the big corporations get for providing health insurance to their employees. She’s against allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines like we routinely buy auto insurance today so you can shop for the cheapest price and the best product for your family’s needs.”
Not only has John never worked in healthcare, he doesn’t even know any Americans.
$6000+ per person for insurance John? Not even for a family of four. Not even for the gold-plated Cadillac program.
No care for the un-insured? That’s a good one! You show up at emerg, you get taken care of, gratis. Or you own the hospital, because the lawsuit will ruin them.
Go lie to some gullible Lefty John. You’re a despicable troll.
also for John
Many Americans, especially the self-employed and those who tend to be in general good health, choose not to purchase insurance and instead pay cash anytime they visit the doctor. Health savings accounts (HSAs) enable individuals to save tax free for their own health care needs. 2003 Census Bureau shows the total number of Americans with health care insurance rose to a record 243.3 million in 2003. It also shows 45 million without health care insurance. as a percentage, this number is 15.6% lower than it was in 1997-98
One third of those who are unininsured are eligible for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health insurance program, but are not enrolled – more that 14 million americans who are eligible for insurance can apply when they require it.
according to the 200e Census Data, almost 15 million uninsured people live in households with incomes above $50,000 – 7.6 million of them in households over $75,000 – it is reasonable to assume those individuals with these incomes can afford to purchase the health care which best fits their needs.
18.8 million uninsured are between 18 and 34 and forgo coverage becasue many states offer guarantteed issue laws which enable individuals to put off purchasing insurance until they get sick and need it.
Also every American (and illegal immigrant) has access to health care at any emergency room in America.
(from “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies” 2006-2007 edition
One of the aspects of having “free” medical care in Canada is that it makes many people think much less of it than “alternative” medicine that they pay for. I’ve had people complain bitterly about having to pay me $15 for doing a form whereas in the same visit they will mention the $500 they paid to their naturopath for what is at best an expensive placebo. When people pay for something, they percieve it as being more valuable than something they get for free. The “alternative” medicine system is totally unregulated and I’ve seen naturopaths siphon off as much as $50K from desperate cancer patients who go to them in the last few months of their lives.
I’ve had a few patients recently go to the Mayo clinic for second opinions and in none of these cases has the Mayo clinic come up with anything that I’ve missed. One patient of mine had been diagnosed by me with fibromyalgia and depression; a diagnosis she wasn’t happy with. When she returned from her very expensive trip to the Mayo clinic she seemed in much better spirits and told me “the Mayo clinicic told me I have fibromyalgia and depression”; I wish I could have charged her only $10K to tell her this.
Under a socialist system all doctors are considered to be equivalent and are paid the same. Everyone soon gets to know who the good doctors are and they get sent the most challenging cases. I’ve talked to a few specialists who finally got fed up with this system and left the country as, while the intellectual stimulation is nice, it really pisses people off to see ones less competent colleagues billing more than they do from the easy cases that are entrusted to them. In the area of general practice, walkin clinics are far inferior to the care one gets from a full service GP practice, but walkin doctors often earn twice as much as full service GP’s dealing with what are often trivial problems. The only government solution to the coming shortage of full service GP’s is to add in yet more paperwork to compensate full service GP’s.
The Canadian system is totally broken and it would be nice to make some changes before it completely collapses, but I suspect that we’ll see a total meltdown at some point in the future and hopefully a free enterprise government will be in power and finally abort Tommy Douglas’s progeny.
Loki, I fully expect a nursing strike to be the wooden stake that finally kills this vampire.
Doctors put up with a hell of a lot, but nurses put up with way more. As a professional group nurses are getting older, fewer,their real wages are declining and they are burning out.
Duhlton McSquinty’s big bold funding boost to Ontario hospitals has been eaten by the secretaries and factotums every hospital seems to have hundreds of. The bureaucracy soaked it up and didn’t even burp. Pretty much none of it got out the the front lines to hire more nurses, more CLEANERS (anybody been to a hospital lately? Eeew!), more radiologists etc.
And you LEFTIES might want to perk up a bit at this, pre-Trudeau none of this all engulfing bureaucracy existed and people got their care just the same. Probably better.
If they fired every SOB in every hospital that didn’t have MD or RN in their name I doubt any patient would notice.
Well, loki, hopefully the new president of the CMA will be able to bring some sense to the clearly broken system. It might be a start, if we are lucky. But, it may well take some disaster to impact it meaningfully. But, some privatization is much better than no privatization, except for the union thugs who may not be able to dictate wages and benefits.
I don’t recall the details, but awhile ago the health union thugs were able to end the contracting out of hospital security in some BC (or Vancouver) hospitals. The new security “services” were, of course, unionized. The annual cost per hospital was massively more than when done by contractors. And, surprise, surprise, the level of security fell. Typical unionism…
terrence is correct about accounting for neonatal mortality, but there’s another aspect to the United States’s lower life expectancy and higher costs.
We have, for all practical purposes, no control over our borders, and as a result are getting 5+ million immigrants a year; the best guesses so far are that we already have something like 25-30 million illegals in country, and more come every day. And since, unlike Canada, that’s uncontrolled immigration, the vast majority of the new folks come from places where medical care is abysmal to nonexistent, are from demographics that had little or no access to health care in their home countries, or both. That skews the statistics in fairly horrific ways. When one of the immigrants dies of some disease picked up elsewhere, or a baby dies because its mother wasn’t healthy when she got here, it is no more and no less than one person added to the mortality statistics — we don’t distinguish when collecting such numbers.
The other thing is that it drives up costs. As Texas Canuck points out, Federal and State laws plus common-law liability add up to making it impossible for an ER or other medical facility to deny care — but somebody pays: the equipment and medicine that get used up, the salaries of the caregivers, and all the other costs don’t stop because the patient is indigent. Who pays? Answer: those who can — those who have insurance or can pay out of pocket. Health care providers jack up the charges to non-indigents in order to gain enough revenue to cover their total costs. Federal and State reimbursement from tax receipts fill in the gaps, but don’t come close to covering the costs of treating indigents, as hospital after hospital along the border is discovering as their paying clients (insurance or out of pocket) disappear and are replaced by immigrants who cannot pay.
Canada has much tighter border control, and by and large admits immigrants only from the upper levels of society, levels where health care was adequate or at least not hopeless in the immigrants’ home countries. As a result, Canada isn’t seeing deaths from stupid stuff that’s been eradicated or minimized in the developed world. If you had half a million people, largely illiterate peasants who have never seen decent health care before, descending on you every year, your system wouldn’t look as nice as it does.
That all sounds like I’m anti-immigration. I’m not — for one thing, it’s a Hell of a compliment that people want to come here; for another, our economy is big and robust enough to absorb them while keeping unemployment near nil, at a relatively modest cost in lower pay for unskilled and semi-skilled workers; and, in the long term, they’ll become productive and grow our economy even more. But they do have a negative impact on our health care system, and lying about that won’t help them or the natives.
Regards,
Ric
Man… I feel like I’m talking to my refrigerator.
“$6000+ per person for insurance John? Not even for a family of four. Not even for the gold-plated Cadillac program.”
If you’d bothered to pay attention, you’d know that I wasn’t talking about insurance. I’m talking about the cost of delivering medical care to the average American. The cost… as I do more research is in fact $6,700 per person, or 2 Trillion per year for the nation.
http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
Some of this cost is borne by the insurance company, but much is borne by the taxpayer. That’s my point re the uninsured… how is it that you think those costs are covered?
Do I need to speak. more. slowly?
Incidentally… take a look at this Globe article. It’s the story of your future:
“Ms. Barron, who is on dialysis, used her home as collateral for a $50,000 (U.S.) loan to pay for mounting medical bills. The initial interest rate was enticingly low. But typical of many subprime loans, the payments shot up after the second year and again this year. Monthly payments of $518 (U.S.) now consume half her meagre fixed income. Unable to pay her taxes, she recently filed for personal bankruptcy. Desperate to renegotiate the loan, she wonders how long she’ll be able to keep her home, the value of which sinks ever lower.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070818.wsubprime18/BNStory/International/home
Americans wish they had what we have. That’s why they’re starting to fight it, and why the Republicans are going to be hiding under a rock come 2008.
I just checked and somewhat to my surprise it was a guy named Antonio and not John who wrote the “One Note Samba.”
Apologists for the current coercive system should be intellectually brave enough to compare it to other similar systems rather than simply indulge in Amerika Bashing:
http://www.nchc.org/facts/world.shtml
Time to refer to Kate’s advice about troll-feeding…
Troll.
Why am I not shocked that you guys would rather scream “troll” than actually try and counter my facts with… well I don’t know… more bullshit I guess. Ah well.
Man oh man… it must be tough being a rightwinger these days when you keep having your ass kicked by reality.
Well… I’ve wasted too much of my time with you guys already. Have fun waking up to the fact that everything you believe is wrong.
John, John, John, if you stop coming here and making a fool of yourself, whom will we laugh at?
Show some compassion, John, stay around and continue to give us a laugh now and then (such as whenever you talk about “facts” and when you fantasize about what Americans want).
But, then, your refrigerator is probably on your intellectual level; so why don’t you go hang out with it. I am sure you will find it time well spent!
John:
Welcome to the Conservative blogosphere, where overwhelming facts are countered by cries of “troll” or “socialist.”
Overwhelming facts? Like bulk water exports? What a laugh.
Americans wish they had what we have.
I’m one. I don’t want what you have. We are how many decades past socialized medicine in Canada and still we Americans aren’t buying into it, think again before you speak for me.
I don’t want your damn Canadian taxes or government’s micro-managing of my life. I’m perfectly happy to have more discretionary money after taxes – I spend and respect my money more wisely than any politician ever will. I also like choices in healthcare, so do my neighbors and friends. I have more discretionary money to fund charities to extend those services to the less fortunate. They aren’t denied healthcare either here. Autonomy and self-reliance, the majority of Americans still cherish. Western Canadians also. It’s pretty apparent that a portion of Canada aren’t in love with the Nanny State’s opression.
John, you are a pompous ass, got to say it, it seems that most Americans and the Canadians posting here aren’t getting your pearls of wisdom. I’ll leave you to dialogue with your refrigerator. I’m sorry for Canadians that suffer you. Thankfully our “Johns” have been a minority here.
Well… I’ve wasted too much of my time with you guys already.
As we say south of Canada, don’t let the door slam you ass on the way out.
lberia – have you been talking to John’s refrigerator? You seem to be about as intelligent as one; you would probably get along well with John. You could discuss “facts” with John and his refrigerator, and have a grand old time; and you could talk about what Americans want, and have a grand old time. All three of you agreeing on the “facts” and what Americans want, and having a grand old time.
lberia: “… Welcome to the Conservative blogosphere …”
Unlike for our broken health system, you do have a choice on the Internet. There are several sites out there that share your beliefs … maybe there you can get the labels you crave.
Ural:
I come here when I need a laugh.
Iberia:
Fortunetly for us you come here when we need a laugh as well. Between you and John and the rest of the corrupt left of this country, tell me why Taliban Jack used a private health care hospital for his operation, or Fence post Martin has a privete clinic in quebec for his health care, or Ray days Bob had his diagnosis and operation so quick while the rest of us have to wait for months?????????
nemississs:
Are you surprised that politicians are hypocrites?
In any case, original point of this thread was about why Canadian hospitals are not able to treat all patients, thus forcing them to go to US hospitals. Contrary to what many people posting here may think, it’s not because the Canadian system is more inefficient than the US system; it’s more likely due to the US health system receiving more money (ie. costing more) than the the Canadian systems. I provided links above to some studies…feel free to read them.