(As the Calgary quad incident begins to receive international attention, I thought today would be a good time to revisit my 2005 piece on zero-tier health care for newer readers to SDA.)
After my mother died, my brother quipped sarcastically that no one should be admitted to Regina General unless they first survived two hours on a vibrating gurney.
Saskatchewan spends $4 billion a year on health – 44% of the total provincial budget – on a population of under one million, and those dollars are increasingly directed to more centralized systems of delivery. While debate about “wait times” tends to revolve around diagnostics and scheduling of surgery (especially “elective” surgery such as knee and hip replacement), few consider the “wait time” facing the farmer in Val Marie with a crushed pelvis or severed artery.
For when it is decreed that your local hospital is no longer “economically viable” (a curious complaint to put forward under not-for-profit ideology), bureaucrats gather a few hundred miles away, debate the best way to release the bad news, and with a big red pen, draw a line through your town. They will apologize, quite properly, while they advise you, quite improperly, to be grateful that health care is still “free.” You’ll just need to start out a little earlier in the morning to get to it.
Welcome to zero-tier health care.
While the sacred cow of “universality” grazes on in the world of the reality-challenged, vast regions of the country are being transformed into zones of health care prohibition.
With every new cut, more and more rural Canadians are faced with travelling long distances over crumbling roads to seek emergency care – the “vibrating gurney” of the rural ambulance. The only thing “universal” about the system is the rate of taxation and the powerlessness of the very people who pay the bills – the taxpaying patients. The patient taxpayers.
After waiting 10 days on oxygen in an intensive care ward, where it was more likely that a knowledgable visitor would tend to a distressed patient or dysfunctioning equipment than any of the five nurses charged with holding down chairs, we began to wonder when the lung specialist planned to show up to discuss our mother’s condition.
He had to be reminded, as it turned out. Standing over the duct-taped linoleum, he shared the diagnosis and advised it was terminal. With no hope of treatment, we arranged for her return by ambulance the 120 miles to our local rural hospital, where she was finally treated for pain and was tended to by a nurse she knew as a friend. Thank heaven for small mercies – for it had been slated for closure earlier that year.
The “not for profit” lie is so bold, so obvious, so outrageous, that it’s difficult to understand how it’s survived this long.
The truth is precisely the opposite. Everyone in the Canadian health-care system, from top to bottom – from doctor, to nurse, to bureaucrat, to cleaner, to kitchen staff – has a guaranteed profit, guaranteed payment, often in wages that eclipse those in the private sector, regardless of quality or timeliness of patient care.
And even this isn’t enough for some – they demand guaranteed patients, through the eradication of what private sector competition there is.
The only participant who lacks a guaranteed return under this “not-for-loss” monopoly is the one paying the bill, the patient whose assets are involuntarily seized through taxation to keep the hulking, insatiable bovine alive and belching. The most powerful check and balance of all – the ability of the customer to refuse payment to protest inadequate service – has been removed from the equation.
Discussing the abysmal quality of care my mother received with a friend who works in the bureaucracy, I suggested that the imbalance might be partially restored through a holdback system, in which a percentage of wages or fees would be released only upon patient or family signoff – in the way that holdbacks are used in the construction industry to ensure the job is well and truly complete.
She disagreed with the idea, for, as she correctedly argued, “Some people might withhold payment unfairly.”
To which I replied; “Welcome to the world the rest of us live in.”
More – a doctor turns number cruncher. “The main reason socialists love public health care is because they know they can get rich off of it. “
I used to have an excellent doctor but he packed in during the last NDP rain in BC.
I hear he now has a thriving practice in the States, pity I can’t drive to Hawaii.
As good as commenting gets Kate. Thanks for the repost.
Your best observation is that all kinds of profits are made in the health care system (often by nurses who are so overworked that they can hardly get in ten minutes of gabbing with each other every quarter hour). Very few people seem to get that point. More importantly, the groups that get these guaranteed profits act the same as any evil monopoly by protecting the monopoly rather than providing better service. Until someone gets hurt economically for poor service, the situation will not change. Why would it?
The most powerful check and balance of all – the ability of the customer to refuse payment to protest inadequate service – has been removed from the equation.
Except that even in a private health care system, this “most powerful check and balance” isn’t available either — because health isn’t a commodity.
Instead of cherry-picking horror stories from Canada and feel-good stories from the States, try comparing both all multiple measures. You’ll find that, on the whole, the US system is more expensive per capita, less safe for patients, and produces poorer health outcomes.
The “not for profit” lie is so bold, so obvious, so outrageous, that it’s difficult to understand how it’s survived this long. The truth is precisely the opposite.
Only if you mistake “not for profit” with “volunteer.” NFP status isn’t incompatible with paying out salaries, service fees, etc.
“Except that even in a private health care system, this “most powerful check and balance” isn’t available either — because health isn’t a commodity.”
That is an awesome debate technique, A’dam. Here, let me try:
“A legislature isn’t “the most powerful check and balance” against the executive branch – because democracy is not a zebra.”
I am indebted to you, ma’am.
Here’s what I tell those passionate proponents of the idea that all Canadians should have equal rights to health care.
“Is there a law stating that all Canadians have to eat the same quality and quantity of food? Or, do those with the means, or who choose to spend their money on this as a priority, get better food?
Is there a law stating that we must all sleep in the same quality home. Or, if you have a good job, or sacrifice, or are lucky enough to be born with the money, would anyone question your right to get a better house for yourself?
Then why are we forcing people to have equal health across Canada? Why can’t you spend your money, as you do for food or shelter, to get yourself whatever healthcare you want?
Is food and shelter a more basic right than healthcare? ”
Usually, there is no response.
Cherrypicking? In that I “cherrypicked” our own family’s experience?
You are truly an idiot.
Thanks for reposting this. It made me think of my own Mom’s passing away in 1997. She had liver cancer. My Dad had to threaten to punch a hospital manager back into the stone-age just to get her moved out of the hallway. At the time they had an entire wing shut down. Not economically viable, apparently.
This was in Toronto, by the way. I will never forget that and what they put our family through.
Thanks for debunking the NFP myth. I call “non-profits” what they are in the USA: Tax exempt.
I really hate the way the left turns the healthcare debate into an either or scenario; either we have the Canadian system or we have the American system, and complete ignore the dozens of different systems for providing healthcare from around the world.
It’s not just rural areas that are suffering. My wife’s elderly grand parents have been to the emergency room in Mississauga 4 times in the past few years. They have not had to wait less than 6 hours on any of those visits. Even the local clinics for minor stuff usually come with a 2 hour wait. There is no benefit from our health care system to working people in this country. We get poor service at a premium cost.
And let’s not forget that many of the US health care systems that are bad are ALSO bad because of crappy/ intentionally disconnected feedback loops.
“Zero tier” is an excellent description of the state of “health care” in this country.
Here in B.C., one of the biggest problems, once you get outside the Lower Mainland, is lack of specialists in most communities, requiring long trips to the few communities where said care is available.
Combine that with drastically overcrowded and under equipped hospitals, and you have a situation where medical staff are in constant crisis mode.
This causes a lot of good people to take early retirement, exacerbating the shortage of staff. Governments talk of recruiting in Third World countries to fill the positions. The fact that those countries will now have shortages doesn’t seem to matter, even while we’re castigating the U.S. for raiding our doctors and nurses.
Eventually, even the most “socialist” will realize the current system is failing, probably when enough of us die in the Emergency ward, and we’ll have to open the system to private medical providers.
I can’t wait.
What a gloriously destructive story to befall Canadian leftists…
Kate:
Fantastic piece. Well worth a repost, particularly since nothing has changed since then, except that the same problems are now worse.
Interesting point that there is no real difference between the profit of an organization or the profit of an individual. If the differene between revenues and expenses (aka profit) is distributed to shareholders or is distributed as increased salaries to employees, there is no difference to the consumer in the end. Either the shareholders make the profit or the employees make the profit. In a monopoly, the consumers are the ones that suffer.
Being from the city, the problems I am familiar with are the lack of doctors, the never-ending waits in emergency rooms, the huge waiting lists (for just about anything) and the poor service.
But in rural areas I can imagine that you have all those problems and additionally you have a lack of access to the rationed facilities as well.
The other point I want to rebut is A’dam’s comment that health is not a commodity.
The government doesn’t provide “health”. They provide “care” and that indeed is a commodity just like any other. It’s why we don’t have shortages of dentists or veterinarians in the same small towns where hospitals are being closed and doctors can’t be found.
“Eventually, even the most “socialist” will realize the current system is failing, probably when enough of us die in the Emergency ward, and we’ll have to open the system to private medical providers.
I can’t wait.”
dmorris,
The Left has an infinite capacity to tolerate death. They support our Islamic enemies … big on death that bunch. They seem to have no problem with the Maxist philosophy that have seen tens of millions of deaths in it’s efforts to be the way of the world.
Even those who do less killing certainly have no problem with having it’s populations live in hopeless misery and poverty IE Cuba and now Venezuela.
You will wait forever if you are waiting for these genetically flawed carbon units to come to what you might term “their senses”.
What say you?
The old Soviet joke:
A man is negotiating to buy a refrigerator, and is told to expect delivery “in ten years, on a Friday.”
The man replies “Oh no, not then, that’s when the plumber is coming!”
It’s the same with health care in Canada. There’s just one difference – you can live w/o a refrigerator, or a TV or a plumber…
There’s just one difference – it’s a hell of a lot more important to get timely medical care…all the more reason we should allow people to pay for it instead of dying waiting lists for the sake of superior “Canadian values”.
I agree with you completely and I am a doctor. I’ve seen way worse cases of neglect and dysfuntion in the system than the moron who wrote about cherry picking can ever know.
And that idiot A’dam doesn’t know what he is talking about when he talks about statistics. The left loves certain statistics yet completely ignores outcomes that doctors can actually affect like mortality from cancer and coronary artery disease where one’s outcome in the US exceeds that of Canada. Do they look at specific stats? No they love aggregate ones like longetivity or infant mortality – things that involve confounders such as lifestyle or differences in data collection.
The other thing that people who love so called public Health care forget to think about is that a lot of people cannot even pay for the medication that we give them. So most people have private health plans in this country to pay for their expensive medication.
If any of these people think health care is expensive in the United States – just wait until it is Public care. If they expect to get the same services with tiny waiting lists then just wait until every Union, Hospital, and Physician lobbies the government for more money. Money no-one counts.
“Cherrypicking? In that I “cherrypicked” our own family’s experience?”
Just because it’s a personal experience does not therefore mean it is representative of all or most experiences and that being said, it is indeed cherrypicking. The fact is, Kate you are free to purchase medical services privately in Canada, from physicians who have opted out of the public system. So why don’t you do so?
Another personal story: My dog was sick so I took her on a weekend to Vetrinary Emergency Hospital paid the fees and she was attended to in 30 minutes. My daughter had to be attended to after a cat attack and went to the local emergenency for the required stitches and shots.It took 4 hours but it was paid for indirectly by my taxes. What kind of society offers faster treatment to its pets than to its kids.Welcome to Leftyland.
“The fact is, Kate you are free to purchase medical services privately in Canada, from physicians who have opted out of the public system.”
You can’t even buy a private MRI in this province. What are you on?
Kate,
Why do you remain in that horrid province. Alberta or BC will let you buy a lot more private care and the economies are brisker. Also, the politics are a tad less Socialist.
Either province would be proud to have you as a resident.
A’dam,
I read Kate’s post then scanned it again. I don’t see any reference there to the American Health Care System. Why do you believe that there are only solutions to be found from our neighbors to the south? I mean it is not like Canadians regularly go down there to spend money to get adequate health care.
If health care is not a commodity, then just what is it?
Why is it “fair” that I have to suffer unreasonable long wait times just because someone with less means can’t afford quicker care?
John West:
The health care system has the same problems in every province in Canada. Calgary needed to fly the lady pregnant with quintuplets to Montana because there were no neo-natal units available across the entire country.
Sometimes you have to make a stand…
I’ve heard enough horror stories about Canadian socialized healthcare to cause me to “hate” the system. Kate’s experience, as expressed in the post, is in fact not unusual and hardly qualifies as a horror story compared to what others have endured. I don’t mean that as an afront to Kate, just to point out that what she writes about is common.
My own experience with a sick daughter is worse by a magnitude of thousands of percent. From incompetent doctors, misdiagnosis, filthy rooms, to unioned nurses offering slovenly care, it’s a tale of horror. My wife is an ex-nurse, and she herself is stunned by the poor care available today compared to what she offered years ago.
The fact is, the triple hammer of socialized health care, powerful unions, and dirty doctors creating monopolies within the system has created a system that is hit and miss. A hit gives one decent care in a timely fashion … a miss causes a nightmare of pain, suffering, and third-world levels of care … but it’s all a matter of luck.
A’adam is a typical shill for socialized medicine … either a member of the establishment who gets timely care as a result … or a healthy individual who has never needed the services of the state run no-care system. A’adam has obviously never ended up in the care of a unionized hammer-head nurse, or a doctor churning the system for bucks, not to mention subjected to the whims of the army of bureaucrats who move at the speed of grass growing.
Kate calls it a “cow” … I call it a giant shapeless blob that exists only for its own sake having long forgotten what it was supposed to be.
Kate, I suggest you re-post this every year on the date of your mother’s death. Let’s call it National Healthcare Day, and solicit stories — either good or bad — about our nation’s healthcare system.
Great post Kate. Was it ever published in the print media? If not, it certainly should be.
A’dam, who called your personal family grievance “cherry picking” deserves some sort of asshole of the year award.
I left my rural Saskatchewan home partly because the combination of closed hospitals, retiring doctors and crappy roads was an aggrevation that an old fart with health problems didn’t need. Now I’m in Calgary, where I was able to get on a GP’s patient list only by using a connection – something for which I don’t appologize one bit.
Back in the 1940s, my family worked hard to get the initial public health care system in Swift Current Health Region No. 1. It was a blessing to families who had suffered through “wait periods” of like, forever, except for emergencies which the country doctors often handled on a “what you can pay, when you can pay it” basis. The new system worked beautifully for about 25 years, i.i. as long as it was administered by volunteer local hospital boards, which usually included the Reeve of the RM and the local doctor. It flatlined when control was ceded to massive central bureaucracies and when rural people lost their traditional ethic that you only go to the doctor if the pain is unbearable and/or getting worse.
I swear that the system in Swift Current, with which I am very familiar, has many more administrative and clerical workers than medical workers. I assume that, because there is more public money available, the situation here in Calgary is even worse.
Medicare was a noble experiment but, in the end, it was killed by human nature. Political expediency being what it is, I see no hope of reviving it through a massive house cleaning which every insider, including even the nurses (who used to be professional people) would resist with the tenacity of wolverines. The only hope is to introduce the discipline of the free market, and the sooner the better.
My trackback for this was blocked
The left-wingers, union members, NDPers, and Liebranos who support the Canadian “health care” system have serious problems understanding what facts are. They label whatever they dream up a “fact”. And then label anyone who does not accept the so-called “fact” a right-wing bigot, or a “cherrypicker”. Whereas, anyone with experience with, or knowledge of, the Canadian “health care” system knows that Kate’s example is representative of the system. I have representative examples of my own, and I know many people who have had even worse examples of the disasters the “health care” system metes out.
manul – you should talk to John’s refrigerator (that is John “the shlub in a basement, with a big mouth”). You could have a grand time making up stuff, oops “facts”…
Medicare was a noble experiment but, in the end, it was killed by human nature.
You have just described almost every left-wing ideology that has ever been thought up.
And I reject the false dichotomy of UK/CA system vs. US system. There’s enough experience and documentation out there that honest people could find a system that balances the need for healthcare (which, along with low corporate taxes, improves European competitiveness vs. the US) and human nature.
A system that provides, say, a baseline standard for care and a public voucher which can be used to purchase private insurance. Multiple forms of private insurance to accomodate various needs and with various requirements. Paid for mainly by individual and/or goods taxes to keep corporate rates competitive (oh there go the lefties screaming about corporate welfare).
But every time I get to thinking like that, I have to remember that there’s nowhere near the level of maturity and responsiblity out there to permit something like that to work.
Oh well.
Anyone know if Bob Rae is on a wait list for his heart surgery. Is he going into a regular hospital or that one Layton went to for his hernia.
You can’t even buy a private MRI in this province. What are you on?
Nothing prevents private services from being set up, as long as they opt out of the public system. No one is without a story to tell about catastrophic health experiences in this province and this country. For every negative from a right-wing cherry-picker with an ideological ax to grind, there are a thousand positives that go unreported. You are not the only one with a story.
Yes Kate, I do think you are right in the assessment of a “non-profit” medical system. I am from the USA and a staunch republican and am in favor of a universal health system. What bothers me most is the number of people not able to access our health system — Our “non-profits” will take away houses, assets and anything else they cling to for reimbursement — especially in these “disparate economic times”. My brother died, exactly for this reason — not being able to pay for it for fear of the “Non-profit” taking away all of his family assets. What pained me most is thata hospital, board director and good friend of mine, told me “what else can we do to get them to pay up” — taking all their assets. Oh well… If you have insurance, you’ll be covered to the point that the companies won’t take eveything you have. If not — “tough luck” you “unfortunate 47 million” !!! To the rest of you, keep you head in the sand and hope you never are unemployed and not able to afford health insurance. That IS the bottom line Kate…
As a two time kidney transplant patient, with a 30 year journey through the Canadian Medical system under my belt, I feel uniquely qualified to make this statement.
Employees and supporters of the Canadian System are very comfortable with patient suffering.
The A’dam’s of this country would rather someone die a horrible death on a two year wait list, than subject the monopoly to competition, or allow a private alternative. To them, a higher death toll and human suffering is simply a necessary sacrifice on the way to achieving their socialist dream.
Not a bit different, really, from the way Lenin, Stalin, Mao went about things. Death’s were necessary there to achieve loftier goals.
The stories I could tell you. I leave you with this. Next time you are on a waiting list, go to Bangkok International for treatment. And don’t give me that bull about not being able to afford it. 5 grand plus airfair for a hip trumps a 2 year waiting list every time.
The primary focus of all within the monoploy is to protect generous wages, working conditions, and most importantly, the right to be imcompetant and keep your job.
Just to “cherrypick” the one example that I’ve had personal knowledge of, a kid broke several bones in his foot. Dual-citizen child – mother took kid to Canadian doc, who either wouldn’t or couldn’t get the kid in for x-rays or MRIs to deal with aligning the bones until AFTER the bones had already set wrong. Kid had bone spurs bad enough to create bruises while walking/running, still does if they haven’t surgically corrected it yet (I’m out of touch with that family now).
As a matter of fact, there are areas of the American Health Care system that don’t function very well. They tend to be (in my personal experience) either a part of a University System, where the patients don’t have a lot of choice where they go, and “emergency” rooms that must serve everyone regardless of if they can or can’t pay (which, as a result, tend to be crowded with cases that shouldn’t have gotten to ’emergency’ status). I have had a bad doctor outside of this. And I promptly took myself and my money to another doctor who was much better. I have also been to an emergency room when it really was an emergency, was ushered into a smaller room for someone to listen to what exactly was wrong, and was treated immediately.
Similarly, I took my pet to a vet that was very close. I was unimpressed by their “exotics” vet and their honesty and am now going to a different vet that is farther away and costs more, but knows what they’re doing.
A lady at work had her husband die because a nurse gave him too much morphine after an operation. She could not sue anyone for this wrongful death, as far as I know that nurse is still working at that hospital. Scary!
Manuel: Think about it for a minute … “For every negative from a right-wing cherry-picker with an ideological ax to grind, there are a thousand positives that go unreported.”
If there is “one” horror story for every thousand good stories (an unsubstantiated claim), then the system has failed utterly. Healthcare is not a debate about the taste of food … that “one” negative example you so casually dismiss means a ruined life … or a death … or pain that didn’t have to be … and the mental anguish of loved ones. Are you suggesting that one horror story in every one thousand good experiences is justified? Apes could run a healthcare system with a ratio of one horror story to one thousand good ones.
You fail to recognize how completely unacceptable every singe one of the horror stories is because of the devastation that accompanies it. Yet, anyone with their ear to the ground knows that our system is loaded with stories of tragedy and suffering because of socialized healthcare.
Your dismissal of horror stories is truly callous.
Manuel would be second runer-up for asshole of the year!
the US system is more expensive per capita, less safe for patients, and produces poorer health outcomes.
Nice try, A’dam, but, totally bogus.
Try wrapping your mind around this thought, first off, all health care is rationed as it must be, no matter what or where the system. It is a commodity. The state rations it for you in Canada. You don’t get an MRI on demand. Take your pick as to whom you want having control – consumer driven or state? Simple.
Secondly, as a participant in private care, paying my own premiums in the US, I have more of an incentive to not abuse my insurer, not run to ER’s for common colds, abide by my physican’s treatment plan or otherwise I’ll be penalized as I should be. I’m also very happy to have choices that I can exercise it in deciding which private system I want to receive care.
Litigation drives US health care prices up, Bush attempted, but, was thwarted by the Dems in reforming our tort laws. No amount of common sense could prevent them for an alliance with the lawyer’s lobby. They are idiots.
Defend socialized health care all you want, but, present the correct facts, and, not the left’s de facto knee-jerk defense of their sacred cows. It is required to be a socialist in good standing to be ill-informed, don’t question, and memorize the sacred dogma.
I know it’s painful to consider alternatives from a life spent regurgitating liberal mantras, but, there are quite a number of us that don’t want government caring for us beyond the simplest tasks like infrastructure maintenance, our common defense and I would have added post office, but, that should be privatized, Fed Ex and UPS are more cost efficient.
As Jefferson noted, he who govern least, governs best.
Paul, you use far too much common sense and reason for manuel. He operates on an emotional level, as does A’dam. They can be good for a laugh, but not serous intellectual exchange.
Kate: Cherrypicking? In that I “cherrypicked” our own family’s experience? You are truly an idiot.
Insofar as you presume that your own anecdotal experience is representative of everyone else’s realities, then yes, you are cherry-picking — and you’d be an idiot to argue otherwise.
They provide “care” and that indeed is a commodity just like any other.
Actually, no, the government doesn’t provide care (by and large, Canadian health care services are publicly funded, but privately delivered). What they provide is insurance, which is indeed a commodity, and one in which a single-payer monopsony proves more efficient for clients (i.e., patients) than a multi-payer system. Which is another reason why health (unlike insurance and care) isn’t a mere commodity — it’s something that’s in the public interest to maximize, even if to do so requires overriding (in this case, ineffective) free market principles through laws that support monopsony conditions (i.e., Medicare).
It’s why we don’t have shortages of dentists or veterinarians in the same small towns where hospitals are being closed and doctors can’t be found.
Actually, there are dentist shortages in a number of provinces and many rural areas across Canada. Ditto for pharmacists, optometrists, and other health care professionals whose services are not covered under Medicare. Ditto too for veterinarians (google it if you don’t believe me; arguing that there are dentists and vets in your town would, of course, be purely anecdotal). Think these shortages might be related to something other than the public/private funding debate, say, insufficient professional school funding/enrollment levels or a general preference among young professions to work in major urban centers rather than rural communities?
What really bother me about the Canadian health care system is its political attachment. The more political it has become the more it is controlled by political correctness. It’s wrapped around this need for social justice rather timely health care.
So now the average person simply saying that we should maybe take a look its shortcomings causes the progressives to get defensive. The first defense is a complete denial that there are any problems or that more tax money is all that is needed. Next follows the usual accusation of being a neo-con, American worshipping, poor people hating, capitalist profiteer. When all citizens really want is to be assured that they are going to get care when they need it.
Most Canadians seem to want it publicly funded but I doubt they really care if the delivery is public or private or mixed. They just want access to doctors, specialists, diagnostics and surgery at a reasonable price. I think that we can have a publicly funded, privately delivered health care system that is more efficient for the same price we are paying now.
Look at the amount of tax money currently goes towards health care. At the very least it should be able to provide for the majority of common and emergency care. Perhaps we will discover that some care is unaffordable. In these areas the government may need to be honest about its limitations. Encourage people to buy health insurance coverage in those areas by making the premiums tax deductible.
There are many ways to improve health care. It is too bad that all new ideas are suppressed because it has become a sacred cow to the progressives. How can there be any improvements if discussion is not permitted?
Paul at 5:28
How silly of me. Of course the only other places one can find medical horror stories are…let me guess… Cuba and N Korea, right? Certainly not the good old free enterprise USofA.
penny, I’m sure the aristocratic Jefferson never had to deal with an HMO. Your ignorance of Canada is encyclopedic. Why bother trying.
@ A’dam – are you an economist? The problem with a monopsony (fi you want to define the Public Health care system that way) is that it results in an inefficient quantity purchased as compared to a competitive market.
As a doctor I can tell you that in our system people suffer constantly due to this.
In addition there are many medications for both cancers and auto-immunue diseases not covered by our system which are covered by both the priavte and public systems in the US.
Moreover our system results in worse outcomes in terms of mortality and morbidity for myocardial infarctions and cancer therapy compared to the US.
Penny: Secondly, as a participant in private care, paying my own premiums in the US, I have more of an incentive to not abuse my insurer, not run to ER’s for common colds, abide by my physican’s treatment plan or otherwise I’ll be penalized as I should be.
Good for you. 47 million of your fellow citizens don’t have the opportunity to practice such prudence and restraint, because they’re uninsured. 47 million. What do you have to say to them? And please, don’t try to (mis)characterize them all as people who choose not to purchase private insurance. Such people do exist, but the vast majority are either those with prior medical conditions that disqualify them from coverage, or those who genuinely can’t afford it.
Litigation drives US health care prices up…
And why do patients litigate? Unsatisfactory quality of service, perhaps?
“The only participant who lacks a guaranteed return under this “not-for-loss” monopoly is the one paying the bill, the patient whose assets are involuntarily seized through taxation to keep the hulking, insatiable bovine alive and belching. The most powerful check and balance of all – the ability of the customer to refuse payment to protest inadequate service – has been removed from the equation.”
Sage observation Kate. I lost my Mother in similar slip-shod one-tier fashon…misdiagnosed for months her once treatable cancer spread to untreatable as she lay in the living room neing treated for a skin rash…when things got critical the sate kindly offered her a warm bed to die in….on a Thanksgiving weekend where there were no staff doctors in duty.
Where do I get money back? Can I sue for compensation for gross systemic incompetence?…guess not…guess I’ll have to settle for the seething contempt I feel for monolithic socialist public systems which protect the incompetent and celebrate mediocrity.
Manual — Yes, that was a terrible plane crash with a couple hundred victims. But think of all the other thousand planes that didn’t crash that day!
Manual: You are avoiding the point … that our system has enormous shortcomings despite the assurances offered by those like yourself. I resent those like you who would take away our choices, while offering a substandard product.
You are offering ideology based healthcare; not results based healthcare … and that is typical leftist fantasy based thinking. And worse, you are preaching to those of us who have suffered under the Canadian system. Again, typical leftist thinking … in finding suffering necessary to keep the collective alive and well, no matter how badly it fails. Maintaining the collective becomes more important than actually improving individual lives.
I ask you … who has the best healthcare system in the world then … in your opinion? Who should we model our system on? Or, Manual, is ours already the best there is?
Why would a hospital ever provide quick emergency care? The best way to extort more dollars from the public teat is to offer poor service and put on a PR campaign that you don’t have enough money. Politicians and many citizens eat this stuff up without any critical thought.
It has been noted that the left doesn’t mind deaths as long as they further their cause. Unfortunately deaths from poor care in our health care system bolsters those already in the system. Poor care must equal lack of funding, you know. It couldn’t possibly because of stupid incentives that cause doctors to focus on quantity over quality while nurses are promoted based on seniority rather than skill.
Zog, I had the opportunity to visit the HQ of the Calgary Health Region a couple of years ago. The building was so full of administrators that our meeting took place in a converted broom closet. Parking was impossible to find despite a massive lot. I was told by an individual working there that only a few years before (when Klein’s government still kept spending to a minimum) that the building was almost empty. It seems that much of the increased spending on health care in the early 2000s was not spent on care but on administrators (who will never get fired for anything, except criticizing the current system). Until health care districts and administrators are held to some sort of standards that measure both care and spending levels, the system will not change. The free market may not be the best system to do this, but I have not yet heard anyone come up with an alternative.