If US health care is so much more expensive than ours….
….how come they drive nicer cars?
47 Replies to “Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough”
…how come they drive nicer cars?
I must admit having to learn some economic lessons the hard way. In that Great Trudeau 70’s era, a business associate and I made a trip to assess our counterparts operations in the bad old USA. We observed that equivalent ranks indeed drove cars and pickups we could not even think of affording. They wore more expensive suits and we didn’t want to see their homes. We assessed something was wrong. Let’s see: same company, same pay scales or not, what, What?
Yes..but that is about to change, they have ‘change’ down there. Best line I have seen so far: I will cling to my Bible and my guns; you can keep your ‘change’.
I am very concerned about my American friends (who did not drink the kool aid). For the first time in my life, I am terrified for America.
Thank Heaven we have PMSH, here in Canada.
….how come they drive nicer cars?
Not for much longer.
Pretty soon their Fiat dollars will only buy Fiat Cars.
FEROCITY EXPECTED IN LOBBYISTS’ ASSAULT ON OBAMA’S HEALTHCARE PLANS
“In an age when Americans compare hotel rooms, cars and even prospective mates with the click of a mouse, helping people identify the most cost-effective medical care seems like common sense.”
Nope Comparison shopping is socialism. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/24/nation/na-healthcare24
More government insurance?
They already have medicaid.
My wife was doing a WTF!!!? at today’s announcement.
More, bigger and meaner government on it’s way. Maybe…
At 300 million people compared to our 33 million?
Healthcare is going to get A LOT more expensive.
It bear repeating:
OBAMA
O – One
B – Big
A – Ass
M – Mistake
A – America
*sigh*
It BEARS repeating……
RE reducing spending in the long haul, as per the article:
I have friends in Canadian health care (GP, anesthetist, pediatrician, nurses, cardiac profusionist) and they all tell me the same story–the biggest problem with Canadian health care is wastage of time and materials. Nobody really cares about wasting materials or tools or whatever because the hospital isn’t really paying for it; we are. The unions are crippling people efficiency.
Two of my buds used to work in the American system and both of them agree the American system is better than the Canadian one. They also testify to the role of the hospital management personnel in the US, some of whom oversee every operation/surgery and ensure people aren’t wasting anything, including time.
Perhaps they won’t be driving “better” vehicles much longer, thanks to the Soros-Obama Regime’s destructive, devastating economic policies.
Next thing you know, Obama’s boss, George Soros, will succeed in his plot with Maurice Strong and Malcolm Bricklin, he of lemony Bricklin SV1 and Yugo infamy (the Subaru thing was pure dumb luck), to dump cheap Chinese Communist lemons onto the American market, perhaps destroying the domestic auto industry.
Oh, well, maybe India will export its very strange-looking Tata Nano to America to provide an at least reliable, if ludicrously bare-bones (and bare-bones isn’t an exaggeration, as the Nano is about as feature-rich as an old Model T), alternative.
Maybe we’ll witness the return of the Russian Lada to America.
Canada will soon probably have better cars.
I almost hate to say this. But I think the only way one can get rid of the “nanny state mentality” is to only allow votes for people with either a full-time job and/or property. Since these are the folks who have something to actually protect from the tax man. If I had nothing to lose I’d vote for the idiot who promised me the world–these are the only people who are consistent with their votes (that’s why Jack Layton gets voted in every time, the NDP or very left-leaning Liberals)
Furthermore, wouldn’t it be interesting if we took the stance of the classical Greeks that allowed only those who had served (and survived) in the Army the right to be part of the government (as a member of the governing class)?
~~favill~~
mark peters…right on.
The other huge cost is the middle-upper management with many administrative assistants in every hospital in Ontario.There has been a hiring spree in our local, but just now they are talking about cut-backs…which of course means laying off more nurses and techs at the front lines.
They’ll blame Harris.
Beaurocracy will flourish under Obama.
Health ‘care’ will go down the tubes.
Well he needs a new game changer to pay for his Health Care plans . . . he originally figured his Cap & Trade on CO2 would get him the money, but that Bill ain’t gonna fly now that people have figured out Obama was right when he said he plans to make Americans energy bills “skyrocket”.
Now he is trying to squeeze other players out of their jobs & money so he can play “Let’s Redistribute”
Socialism with a nice candy coating to help the medicine go down.
Socialist health care systems are about rationing meagre and dwindling medical resources (resources made scarcer by the killing of the merit success model)
America’s for profit health system revolves around insurance industry actuarials and profitability to stock holders. The corporate motive is to get the insured patient healthy as soon as possible to relieve the strain on contractual obligations of the insurer. To this end the best and most immediate treatments are afforded to policy holders. Your good health is their profit margin.
From the perspective of a health care consumer I would rather subscribe to a system where the profit motivation revolves around the making me well, rather than a system which prioritizes rationing out mediocre medical resources regardless of my needs.
A socialist health system is a Ponzi scheme where there can never be more benefit draw then premium payers. Being sick in this system makes you a revenue burden for the state and a political problem. In such a system, from the bureaucratic stand point, patient mortality due to resource deficiency is more fiscally judicious than the system-crippling expense of high cure rates.
Well, part of it is because their house mortgage interest is tax deductible. And to get the nicer cars, they buy it using a home equity loan (thank you, higher market values) so the car’s interest portion is now also tax deductible. So they are able to finance at ridiculously low rates.
We must fight tooth and nail to ensure that accessable,universal government funded health care for all Canadians is retained regardless of ability to pay. Any form of attempting to privatize hospitals should be stopped dead in its tracks. Many people in the so called good ‘ol USA can not afford insurance; hence do not have proper access to health care.
The USofA has alot of our Canadian doctors who went there because they did not particularly like to do business within our medicare system. And the pay was better.
Maybe we’ll get some of them back. If they don’t want to work within the US medicare system where will they go – Mexico?
Canada: a health care system worth waiting in line for.
Right, T?
T -Any form of attempting to privatize hospitals should be stopped dead in its tracks. Many people in the so called good ‘ol USA can not afford insurance; hence do not have proper access to health care.
I fail to see how people in the USA not having insurance has anything to do with Canada allowing private hospitals/clinics. Firstly, there is always medical care available at county hospitals, and funding illegals in the US should hardly be a priority except for the nanny state voter buying DemocRATS.
I resent the fact that if I get injured, and being self employed I cannot collect “sick pay” or cash in “vacation time” I am not allowed to pay on my own for surgery to get me back to work sooner. Instead I have to get in line with possibly tens if not hundreds of others who will be paid to sit on their ass and wait.
mark peters – You’re spot on with the efficiency in the USA. Having lived there while in college I had to make an ER visit and was summarily billed for the number of stitches, bandaids, and gauze. Every i was dotted with reference to supplies used. Here costly machines that were sent home with me following my child’s surgeries were never followed up on, and only returned because I cared to do so.
After spending 7 hours waiting for my son to get a stitch (which he didn’t get), I think T’s argument is starting to get old and very stale. A mix of privatized and socialist health care is what is needed…because I would have been more than happy to pay for my child’s medical treatment vice waiting 7 hrs and getting none. We left because the wound had stopped bleeding and had started to knit, albeit not as well as it would have with a stitch or two holding it together–and it was 2 o’clock in the morning (too bad accidents don’t happen during “normal” business hours – that’s right we were there from 7 PM to 2 AM).
If the gov’t legislates that doctors must put in “x” number of hours in the socialist system and allow them to work as much as they want (ie. make as much as they want in the private system). I think you’d see more Canadian medical grads staying here than going to the US.
~~favill~~
favill:
It sounds like you’re articulating a single insurer/competitive delivery system.
I’m sure everybody would agree on the single insurer part (why is there only one government anti-monopoly department?).
The trouble with Canada’s system is on the delivery side, where it is government monopoly delivery with union labour.
At the very least, opening up delivery to a competitive delivery model seems to be the way to ensure quality delivery, since the inefficient delivery systems will go bankrupt.
A single insurer/government monopoly model makes Canada one of three similar systems in the world … alongside Cuba and North Korea. That’s a fact.
Can the truth be squeezed into one comment? One might try.
1. Healthcare costs grow all out of proportion to the rest of the economy.
2. In a healthy capitalist, competitive economy this is prevented by competition and real choices made by consumers on an individual basis.
3. But the medical sector has, effectively no competition. From drug Mfgs. to Insurance Cos, to the all – time bad boys, the doctors, these cats run a stone monopoly. Your money or your life.
4. What’s a poor governmental economic planner to do? No market to decide rationing, so the government boys must do it for you, otherwise the rich (mostly old) will sop up all the healthcare leaving little for the babes in arms, the woikas, and other economically essential little people.
5. The simple fact is that absolutely nobody is interested in freeing up the market for healthcare and allowing costs to tumble. Not my ‘economically essential little people’ who cannot think beyond getting something for nothing, not the Government, whose ‘wisdom’ and power grows inexorably, certainly not the doctors, who don’t care what happens just so long as they can set prices and maintain their monopoly.
What I particularly don’t like is the endless piles of words shed on this topic without a clue, without a hint of tackling the core problem – the decline and fall of free market capitalism bit by bit, sector by sector. Why we even bothered to contain Soviet communism all those years is quite beyond me.
Canadian health care is infinitely more expensive even though the total expenditure per capita is less.
Why?
Simple. In the US, there is no one dying while on waiting lists for basic care like cancer treatments. The local hospital almost killed my father when he came in with a bad heart he only received proper care after he had a SECOND heart attack (two weeks after the first. I guess they figured he wasn’t going to save them money by dying so they decided to get around to fixing the problem.)
If a US HMO denied care and people were dying, they’d be sued out of existence. What is government run lack of health care but the world’s worst, least accountable HMO?
Try asking a person on a waiting list for knee replacement (for 18 months or so) how the system is working for them. Bad knees hurt. Badly. Many people end up hooked on opiate pain killers because they’re languishing for so long on waiting lists.
That and the Yanks get to upgrade with their own money without commies attempting to ban it. They have the best equipment available and there aren’t waiting lists like here.
The same can be said for every country in Europe sans the UK where they apparently can’t do anything right.
“–the biggest problem with Canadian health care is wastage of time and materials.”
The most important principle taught to me regarding the management of an company was “Own The Business”. These three words will decide if someone is successful or not in managing any operation.
favill
My father used to say that “you should get 1 vote for every $ you pay in taxes”.
btw, still waiting(my wife that is)
Canada needs to privatize the entire health care industry. That will force them to run more efficiently and treat patients like paying customers. Our medical system is a joke, anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t experienced it.
They do not act in our best interests, they act on the directives from the government. I have had family members with cancer go for treatment in the US to see to the problem effectively, rather than slowly die away here.
I suppose if we just let people die, it’ll be cheaper on the system and they’ll still get their government paychecks
Indiana Homez,
I’ll settle for the “dead wood” not being allowed to vote like criminals and people on welfare. While somebody is on government assistance (ie. welfare) they shouldn’t be allowed to vote…much like children aren’t allowed to vote or decide anything important. If you can’t straighten out your life enough to get a full-time job and be a contributing member of society why in heaven’s name should you be allowed to decide who imposes laws and taxes on the rest of society (especially those who actually pay taxes and allow you to live without having to work)?
~~favill~~
Indiana Homez, favill
Limit voting to NET tax payers. If you get more from the government than you pay, why should you have a say in spending other people’s money? If you pay, you should have a say. To reverse the US founding mantra: no representation without taxation.
As for the health care system, two points;
1)Hospitals are given operating budgets instead of being paid to deliver services. If you only paid for services performed, they’d have the incentive to perform more of them instead of limiting procedures like they do not. That and privatise the delivery of healthcare and open the door to private companies building new hospitals and surgical clinics at their own expense to be paid for on a fee-for-service basis.
2)adopt the European two-tier system which works better than either our system or the US system.
Fav
Judging by the progress on this file considering I think my dad was driving me to hockey practice when he spoke those words; I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Rick in AB
Agreed. The reason I refer to my wifie regarding this topic is because she was in the Micheal Moore camp until she expirienced commie-care herself. She reads SDA so the reference is an “I told you so” type of shot.
I should have prefaced my rant with the fact that a young man at our local Loebs store is mentally retarded, but manages to come to work every day and make a contribution to society. And if anybody gives me the sob story of parapalegics…all I have to say to that is Steven Hawkins. People still have functioning brains and with the computer and its inherent abilities the possibilities are almost limitless. Yes, it’s pretty hard-core, but imagine a society working at almost 100% capacity and demanding less government intrusions in our lives. Then we, the people, would have the power not some bureaucrat.
~~favill~~
favill,
We won’t see that happen unless we actually stand up for ourselves a whole. Too many sheep out there.
Indiana Homez,
I wouldn’t say my wife is the Moore camp, but she is from nova scotia and I had to spend a lot of time breaking her out of the entitlement attitude. I’m not saying they all think like that there, just many I met did.
as a whole I meant to say
I need to look into the “two-tiered” system in Europe. I’m rightfully skeptical of anything from that front while at the same time, something has to be identified that improves the system without making the employed suffer. We are of an age where we’re going to be sucking up the resources and why not? We’ve both been paying insurance for a combined 70 years. The little town north of us has just a little over 60K population. A recent emergency visit resulted in a couple of cat scans, a full blood panel and a urinalysis, including interpretation of all, in under two hours. I can’t see how any government-run system could ever beat that. Of course, the punchline is: How does one deal with the resulting $10K bill?
Anna Mac
Sorry to point it out but if your generation had paid enough, there would be no national or provincial debt and no unfunded liabilities in the pension and health care systems.
P.S. I’m still driving superior vehicles but with the TJ election, they won’t be turned over every four years. In fact for the first time in many years, my next “new” car may in fact be used. If the money’s going to underwrite some of TJ’s pinhead plans instead of GM designers and engineers, I’m out. If I wanted a Camry, I’d buy one.
“We are of an age where we’re going to be sucking up the resources and why not? We’ve both been paying insurance for a combined 70 years.”
Pathetic!
What you paid into is what has been spent already! You didn’t pay into tomorrow’s coverage, you didn’t even pay enough to cover the services that have already been rendered; if you did there would be a healthcare surplus. You expect your children and grandchildren to foot the bill for you because you were hoodwinked by your parents. Oh I forgot, your generation didn’t have enough kids to carry your arses, but instead your generation had/has more disposable income than any other before it or after.
It is becoming all too apparent that the boomer crowd is completely obsessed with entitlements. This is the mentality we’re seeing in the Auto Sector with unions demanding pensions be covered by me the tax payer. I’ve yet to get a contribution to my RRSP plan from any union or government agency, and health care will be bankrupt long before I or my kids are of an age to start “sucking up the resources”.
There is a saying that always rings true: Buyer Beware; that goes for pensions and healthcare too.
The only remaining question is how much damage will the boomers cause to our economy on the way to their graves?
Indiana Homez
Heh. Normally I’m the one throwing the fire and brimstone…
Quite right you are though!
Warwick and Indiana Hormez,
Well said. If the Boomer generation had indeed paid the actual price of services rendered all levels of Canadian gov’t would not be in debt.
Although the Boomers’ parents were the ones who foisted socialized health care on us (the first one was in Sask in ’46), they at least had approximately 4 kids per couple, ensuring a larger tax base to take over from them. The Boomers had 1.7 kids per couple…hence, the negative population growth and the reliance on immigration to make up the difference.
Unlike earlier immigrants of the 19th and early 20th centuries, today’s immigrants come to Canada with the expectation that when they arrive the Canadian gov’t (read as “chumps”) will support them. And for those of you who think I’m only talking about the European immigrants who took part in building Canada, the Chinese and Japanese men who came over to build the railroads overcame really horrendous racism and built businesses and thrived here all without the benefit of HRCs and PC laws.
By the way, I’m a naturalized Canadian. I came here in the early 70’s when the expectation was still that we (the immigrant) would embrace our new country’s ideals and laws–and more importantly WORK FOR A LIVING AND PAY TAXES (which both my parents and grandmother did).
~~favill~~
I so want to dig up Tommy “the commie” Douglas so I can put a stake thru his black heart.
I hope T gets in my way while I’m doing it.
You just don’t get it. Everyone has the RIGHT to universal free healthcare. Actually getting it is besides the point.
Wouldn’t you rather be in Canada where you suffer, but don’t have to pay for the care you might get sometime in the future if you don’t die first?
how much is 46% of the u.s. gdp? if anyone has the number then you know how expensive our system of health care will be for the u.s. should be the nail in the financial coffin that the big o has been building. rip u.s.
free. his heart is in a jar and connected to electrodes and is pumping socialist shit all over north america.
More like Ayn Rand, not dead enough. Good luck with that freemarket fundamentalist agenda, Angry Right Fringe.
Calm down, children. Your temper tantrums are cannibalistic of like minds from different backgrounds. Since this industry falls outside social security, I’ve paid one, two and three tiers into a fully vested pension plan and invested the max into my 401K since it became available to do so in the early ’80s. My fortune 200 company has steadily increased the health insurance premiums from both ends while aggressively searching for an equitable solution.
And, after 38 years paying taxes and making thoughtful and conservative life decisions including not reproducing, avoiding a big mortgage, avoiding debt, you’re damned right I’m entitled. While parks and bridges crumble around us, the taxes I’ve paid have clearly gone to support an illegal family of six, their mortgage, their 52″ flat screen and two cars.
Tamp that in your Camry and, well, you know the rest.
I guess those who either don’t aspire to anything (ie. lazy) or who really do not have any talent in anything that anybody is willing to pay them for is the target of the socialist agenda.
Being an entrepreneur takes a lot of hard work and a lot of guts…A personal friend of my family started out as a stockboy at Beaver Lumber some 35 years ago…then took the plunge and started his own business. The stories he tells me about how scary his first few years (plural) were and how hard he had to work to get his first big job is an eye opener and is a great source of inspiration. The man is a millionaire many times over now and employs a number of people in his company…he’s in his late 50s but he’s still the first one into work and the last one out. His wife (the same one he’s had all these years) and daughters love and respect him. But to a person like philboy, who probably has numerous post-graduate degrees, my friend shouldn’t have aspired to anything higher than stockboy, because he barely finished high school. There is nothing on this earth that can gauge a person’s capacity and the levels he can attain if he’s allowed to dream and is willing to work for it–the free market, the rule of law and capitalism makes this all possible. I’m not angry, I admire people like my friend who work their butts off everyday not just to fulfill their dreams but who employ people and enrich our country–that’s why I put a soldier’s uniform on so people like him can achieve their dreams–because I KNOW I can’t do what he does–so I’ll protect him and those like him.
I wish this country would get over the idea that people with advance degrees are more knowledgeable than common folk on what’s good for this country–look what it got us: bilingualism (a huge waste of money and a federal civil service that only hires francophones at the highest levels), multiculturalism (a huge waste of money that encourages immigrants to hang on to the cultural baggage of their homeland and to never feel a sense of belonging or loyalty to Canada), HRCs (the relization of Orwell’s thought police), politically correct speech (self-censorship), the long-gun registry (an effective means of disarming law-abiding citizens yet allowing the criminals to be armed), socialized medicine (aka rationed health services) and a school system that is definitely a lot less effective than it was 30 years ago.
It’s time to stop the descent.
~~favill~~
Tommy Douglas had his faults, but I’m going to go against the flow here and say that the present faulty, extrvagant so-called health care system that we have cannot be totally blamed on him.
It’s an accumultion of 50 + years of beaurocracy politics, socialism and bad management grown into a monster heading downhill out of control.
Bluetech,
And who exactly started that “monster” rolling downhill?
With the exception of a few Veterans’ Affairs hospitals turned over to the provincial government in the 1960’s and 1970’s, none of the hospitals in BC are owned by the provincial government. The hospitals are owned by charitable societies especially various orders of the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church.
The block funding for the hospitals does come from the Ministry of Health via various health authorities established to do various health stuff e.g. inspect and license food services, hand out free needles to junkies and free condoms to pre-schoolers. The hospital itself (buildings, land and chattel) is owned by PRIVATE organizations.
Of course, when the local health authority decides to cut off funding for a specific hospital, the owners cannot operate as a private hospital and the property is sold for new strata apartments (condos for you folks east of the Rockies).
There in lies the rub of government medical care (post secondary education too). We, de facto, expropriated the medical infrastucture in 1968 (i.e. you can only have a hospital if we provide the revenues) and lived off the carcass for 25 years. When the bills for new buildings, land and chattels has came due in the 1990’s the wallet was empty.
favill…do you assume the monster we have now is identical to the ‘system’ that originated?
…how come they drive nicer cars?
I must admit having to learn some economic lessons the hard way. In that Great Trudeau 70’s era, a business associate and I made a trip to assess our counterparts operations in the bad old USA. We observed that equivalent ranks indeed drove cars and pickups we could not even think of affording. They wore more expensive suits and we didn’t want to see their homes. We assessed something was wrong. Let’s see: same company, same pay scales or not, what, What?
Yes..but that is about to change, they have ‘change’ down there. Best line I have seen so far: I will cling to my Bible and my guns; you can keep your ‘change’.
I am very concerned about my American friends (who did not drink the kool aid). For the first time in my life, I am terrified for America.
Thank Heaven we have PMSH, here in Canada.
Not for much longer.
Pretty soon their Fiat dollars will only buy Fiat Cars.
FEROCITY EXPECTED IN LOBBYISTS’ ASSAULT ON OBAMA’S HEALTHCARE PLANS
“In an age when Americans compare hotel rooms, cars and even prospective mates with the click of a mouse, helping people identify the most cost-effective medical care seems like common sense.”
Nope Comparison shopping is socialism.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/24/nation/na-healthcare24
More government insurance?
They already have medicaid.
My wife was doing a WTF!!!? at today’s announcement.
More, bigger and meaner government on it’s way. Maybe…
At 300 million people compared to our 33 million?
Healthcare is going to get A LOT more expensive.
It bear repeating:
OBAMA
O – One
B – Big
A – Ass
M – Mistake
A – America
*sigh*
It BEARS repeating……
RE reducing spending in the long haul, as per the article:
I have friends in Canadian health care (GP, anesthetist, pediatrician, nurses, cardiac profusionist) and they all tell me the same story–the biggest problem with Canadian health care is wastage of time and materials. Nobody really cares about wasting materials or tools or whatever because the hospital isn’t really paying for it; we are. The unions are crippling people efficiency.
Two of my buds used to work in the American system and both of them agree the American system is better than the Canadian one. They also testify to the role of the hospital management personnel in the US, some of whom oversee every operation/surgery and ensure people aren’t wasting anything, including time.
Perhaps they won’t be driving “better” vehicles much longer, thanks to the Soros-Obama Regime’s destructive, devastating economic policies.
Next thing you know, Obama’s boss, George Soros, will succeed in his plot with Maurice Strong and Malcolm Bricklin, he of lemony Bricklin SV1 and Yugo infamy (the Subaru thing was pure dumb luck), to dump cheap Chinese Communist lemons onto the American market, perhaps destroying the domestic auto industry.
Oh, well, maybe India will export its very strange-looking Tata Nano to America to provide an at least reliable, if ludicrously bare-bones (and bare-bones isn’t an exaggeration, as the Nano is about as feature-rich as an old Model T), alternative.
Maybe we’ll witness the return of the Russian Lada to America.
Canada will soon probably have better cars.
I almost hate to say this. But I think the only way one can get rid of the “nanny state mentality” is to only allow votes for people with either a full-time job and/or property. Since these are the folks who have something to actually protect from the tax man. If I had nothing to lose I’d vote for the idiot who promised me the world–these are the only people who are consistent with their votes (that’s why Jack Layton gets voted in every time, the NDP or very left-leaning Liberals)
Furthermore, wouldn’t it be interesting if we took the stance of the classical Greeks that allowed only those who had served (and survived) in the Army the right to be part of the government (as a member of the governing class)?
~~favill~~
mark peters…right on.
The other huge cost is the middle-upper management with many administrative assistants in every hospital in Ontario.There has been a hiring spree in our local, but just now they are talking about cut-backs…which of course means laying off more nurses and techs at the front lines.
They’ll blame Harris.
Beaurocracy will flourish under Obama.
Health ‘care’ will go down the tubes.
Well he needs a new game changer to pay for his Health Care plans . . . he originally figured his Cap & Trade on CO2 would get him the money, but that Bill ain’t gonna fly now that people have figured out Obama was right when he said he plans to make Americans energy bills “skyrocket”.
Now he is trying to squeeze other players out of their jobs & money so he can play “Let’s Redistribute”
Socialism with a nice candy coating to help the medicine go down.
Socialist health care systems are about rationing meagre and dwindling medical resources (resources made scarcer by the killing of the merit success model)
America’s for profit health system revolves around insurance industry actuarials and profitability to stock holders. The corporate motive is to get the insured patient healthy as soon as possible to relieve the strain on contractual obligations of the insurer. To this end the best and most immediate treatments are afforded to policy holders. Your good health is their profit margin.
From the perspective of a health care consumer I would rather subscribe to a system where the profit motivation revolves around the making me well, rather than a system which prioritizes rationing out mediocre medical resources regardless of my needs.
A socialist health system is a Ponzi scheme where there can never be more benefit draw then premium payers. Being sick in this system makes you a revenue burden for the state and a political problem. In such a system, from the bureaucratic stand point, patient mortality due to resource deficiency is more fiscally judicious than the system-crippling expense of high cure rates.
Well, part of it is because their house mortgage interest is tax deductible. And to get the nicer cars, they buy it using a home equity loan (thank you, higher market values) so the car’s interest portion is now also tax deductible. So they are able to finance at ridiculously low rates.
We must fight tooth and nail to ensure that accessable,universal government funded health care for all Canadians is retained regardless of ability to pay. Any form of attempting to privatize hospitals should be stopped dead in its tracks. Many people in the so called good ‘ol USA can not afford insurance; hence do not have proper access to health care.
The USofA has alot of our Canadian doctors who went there because they did not particularly like to do business within our medicare system. And the pay was better.
Maybe we’ll get some of them back. If they don’t want to work within the US medicare system where will they go – Mexico?
Canada: a health care system worth waiting in line for.
Right, T?
T -Any form of attempting to privatize hospitals should be stopped dead in its tracks. Many people in the so called good ‘ol USA can not afford insurance; hence do not have proper access to health care.
I fail to see how people in the USA not having insurance has anything to do with Canada allowing private hospitals/clinics. Firstly, there is always medical care available at county hospitals, and funding illegals in the US should hardly be a priority except for the nanny state voter buying DemocRATS.
I resent the fact that if I get injured, and being self employed I cannot collect “sick pay” or cash in “vacation time” I am not allowed to pay on my own for surgery to get me back to work sooner. Instead I have to get in line with possibly tens if not hundreds of others who will be paid to sit on their ass and wait.
mark peters – You’re spot on with the efficiency in the USA. Having lived there while in college I had to make an ER visit and was summarily billed for the number of stitches, bandaids, and gauze. Every i was dotted with reference to supplies used. Here costly machines that were sent home with me following my child’s surgeries were never followed up on, and only returned because I cared to do so.
After spending 7 hours waiting for my son to get a stitch (which he didn’t get), I think T’s argument is starting to get old and very stale. A mix of privatized and socialist health care is what is needed…because I would have been more than happy to pay for my child’s medical treatment vice waiting 7 hrs and getting none. We left because the wound had stopped bleeding and had started to knit, albeit not as well as it would have with a stitch or two holding it together–and it was 2 o’clock in the morning (too bad accidents don’t happen during “normal” business hours – that’s right we were there from 7 PM to 2 AM).
If the gov’t legislates that doctors must put in “x” number of hours in the socialist system and allow them to work as much as they want (ie. make as much as they want in the private system). I think you’d see more Canadian medical grads staying here than going to the US.
~~favill~~
favill:
It sounds like you’re articulating a single insurer/competitive delivery system.
I’m sure everybody would agree on the single insurer part (why is there only one government anti-monopoly department?).
The trouble with Canada’s system is on the delivery side, where it is government monopoly delivery with union labour.
At the very least, opening up delivery to a competitive delivery model seems to be the way to ensure quality delivery, since the inefficient delivery systems will go bankrupt.
A single insurer/government monopoly model makes Canada one of three similar systems in the world … alongside Cuba and North Korea. That’s a fact.
Can the truth be squeezed into one comment? One might try.
1. Healthcare costs grow all out of proportion to the rest of the economy.
2. In a healthy capitalist, competitive economy this is prevented by competition and real choices made by consumers on an individual basis.
3. But the medical sector has, effectively no competition. From drug Mfgs. to Insurance Cos, to the all – time bad boys, the doctors, these cats run a stone monopoly. Your money or your life.
4. What’s a poor governmental economic planner to do? No market to decide rationing, so the government boys must do it for you, otherwise the rich (mostly old) will sop up all the healthcare leaving little for the babes in arms, the woikas, and other economically essential little people.
5. The simple fact is that absolutely nobody is interested in freeing up the market for healthcare and allowing costs to tumble. Not my ‘economically essential little people’ who cannot think beyond getting something for nothing, not the Government, whose ‘wisdom’ and power grows inexorably, certainly not the doctors, who don’t care what happens just so long as they can set prices and maintain their monopoly.
What I particularly don’t like is the endless piles of words shed on this topic without a clue, without a hint of tackling the core problem – the decline and fall of free market capitalism bit by bit, sector by sector. Why we even bothered to contain Soviet communism all those years is quite beyond me.
Canadian health care is infinitely more expensive even though the total expenditure per capita is less.
Why?
Simple. In the US, there is no one dying while on waiting lists for basic care like cancer treatments. The local hospital almost killed my father when he came in with a bad heart he only received proper care after he had a SECOND heart attack (two weeks after the first. I guess they figured he wasn’t going to save them money by dying so they decided to get around to fixing the problem.)
If a US HMO denied care and people were dying, they’d be sued out of existence. What is government run lack of health care but the world’s worst, least accountable HMO?
Try asking a person on a waiting list for knee replacement (for 18 months or so) how the system is working for them. Bad knees hurt. Badly. Many people end up hooked on opiate pain killers because they’re languishing for so long on waiting lists.
That and the Yanks get to upgrade with their own money without commies attempting to ban it. They have the best equipment available and there aren’t waiting lists like here.
The same can be said for every country in Europe sans the UK where they apparently can’t do anything right.
“–the biggest problem with Canadian health care is wastage of time and materials.”
The most important principle taught to me regarding the management of an company was “Own The Business”. These three words will decide if someone is successful or not in managing any operation.
favill
My father used to say that “you should get 1 vote for every $ you pay in taxes”.
btw, still waiting(my wife that is)
Canada needs to privatize the entire health care industry. That will force them to run more efficiently and treat patients like paying customers. Our medical system is a joke, anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t experienced it.
They do not act in our best interests, they act on the directives from the government. I have had family members with cancer go for treatment in the US to see to the problem effectively, rather than slowly die away here.
I suppose if we just let people die, it’ll be cheaper on the system and they’ll still get their government paychecks
Indiana Homez,
I’ll settle for the “dead wood” not being allowed to vote like criminals and people on welfare. While somebody is on government assistance (ie. welfare) they shouldn’t be allowed to vote…much like children aren’t allowed to vote or decide anything important. If you can’t straighten out your life enough to get a full-time job and be a contributing member of society why in heaven’s name should you be allowed to decide who imposes laws and taxes on the rest of society (especially those who actually pay taxes and allow you to live without having to work)?
~~favill~~
Indiana Homez, favill
Limit voting to NET tax payers. If you get more from the government than you pay, why should you have a say in spending other people’s money? If you pay, you should have a say. To reverse the US founding mantra: no representation without taxation.
As for the health care system, two points;
1)Hospitals are given operating budgets instead of being paid to deliver services. If you only paid for services performed, they’d have the incentive to perform more of them instead of limiting procedures like they do not. That and privatise the delivery of healthcare and open the door to private companies building new hospitals and surgical clinics at their own expense to be paid for on a fee-for-service basis.
2)adopt the European two-tier system which works better than either our system or the US system.
Fav
Judging by the progress on this file considering I think my dad was driving me to hockey practice when he spoke those words; I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Rick in AB
Agreed. The reason I refer to my wifie regarding this topic is because she was in the Micheal Moore camp until she expirienced commie-care herself. She reads SDA so the reference is an “I told you so” type of shot.
I should have prefaced my rant with the fact that a young man at our local Loebs store is mentally retarded, but manages to come to work every day and make a contribution to society. And if anybody gives me the sob story of parapalegics…all I have to say to that is Steven Hawkins. People still have functioning brains and with the computer and its inherent abilities the possibilities are almost limitless. Yes, it’s pretty hard-core, but imagine a society working at almost 100% capacity and demanding less government intrusions in our lives. Then we, the people, would have the power not some bureaucrat.
~~favill~~
favill,
We won’t see that happen unless we actually stand up for ourselves a whole. Too many sheep out there.
Indiana Homez,
I wouldn’t say my wife is the Moore camp, but she is from nova scotia and I had to spend a lot of time breaking her out of the entitlement attitude. I’m not saying they all think like that there, just many I met did.
as a whole I meant to say
I need to look into the “two-tiered” system in Europe. I’m rightfully skeptical of anything from that front while at the same time, something has to be identified that improves the system without making the employed suffer. We are of an age where we’re going to be sucking up the resources and why not? We’ve both been paying insurance for a combined 70 years. The little town north of us has just a little over 60K population. A recent emergency visit resulted in a couple of cat scans, a full blood panel and a urinalysis, including interpretation of all, in under two hours. I can’t see how any government-run system could ever beat that. Of course, the punchline is: How does one deal with the resulting $10K bill?
Anna Mac
Sorry to point it out but if your generation had paid enough, there would be no national or provincial debt and no unfunded liabilities in the pension and health care systems.
P.S. I’m still driving superior vehicles but with the TJ election, they won’t be turned over every four years. In fact for the first time in many years, my next “new” car may in fact be used. If the money’s going to underwrite some of TJ’s pinhead plans instead of GM designers and engineers, I’m out. If I wanted a Camry, I’d buy one.
“We are of an age where we’re going to be sucking up the resources and why not? We’ve both been paying insurance for a combined 70 years.”
Pathetic!
What you paid into is what has been spent already! You didn’t pay into tomorrow’s coverage, you didn’t even pay enough to cover the services that have already been rendered; if you did there would be a healthcare surplus. You expect your children and grandchildren to foot the bill for you because you were hoodwinked by your parents. Oh I forgot, your generation didn’t have enough kids to carry your arses, but instead your generation had/has more disposable income than any other before it or after.
It is becoming all too apparent that the boomer crowd is completely obsessed with entitlements. This is the mentality we’re seeing in the Auto Sector with unions demanding pensions be covered by me the tax payer. I’ve yet to get a contribution to my RRSP plan from any union or government agency, and health care will be bankrupt long before I or my kids are of an age to start “sucking up the resources”.
There is a saying that always rings true: Buyer Beware; that goes for pensions and healthcare too.
The only remaining question is how much damage will the boomers cause to our economy on the way to their graves?
Indiana Homez
Heh. Normally I’m the one throwing the fire and brimstone…
Quite right you are though!
Warwick and Indiana Hormez,
Well said. If the Boomer generation had indeed paid the actual price of services rendered all levels of Canadian gov’t would not be in debt.
Although the Boomers’ parents were the ones who foisted socialized health care on us (the first one was in Sask in ’46), they at least had approximately 4 kids per couple, ensuring a larger tax base to take over from them. The Boomers had 1.7 kids per couple…hence, the negative population growth and the reliance on immigration to make up the difference.
Unlike earlier immigrants of the 19th and early 20th centuries, today’s immigrants come to Canada with the expectation that when they arrive the Canadian gov’t (read as “chumps”) will support them. And for those of you who think I’m only talking about the European immigrants who took part in building Canada, the Chinese and Japanese men who came over to build the railroads overcame really horrendous racism and built businesses and thrived here all without the benefit of HRCs and PC laws.
By the way, I’m a naturalized Canadian. I came here in the early 70’s when the expectation was still that we (the immigrant) would embrace our new country’s ideals and laws–and more importantly WORK FOR A LIVING AND PAY TAXES (which both my parents and grandmother did).
~~favill~~
I so want to dig up Tommy “the commie” Douglas so I can put a stake thru his black heart.
I hope T gets in my way while I’m doing it.
You just don’t get it. Everyone has the RIGHT to universal free healthcare. Actually getting it is besides the point.
Wouldn’t you rather be in Canada where you suffer, but don’t have to pay for the care you might get sometime in the future if you don’t die first?
how much is 46% of the u.s. gdp? if anyone has the number then you know how expensive our system of health care will be for the u.s. should be the nail in the financial coffin that the big o has been building. rip u.s.
free. his heart is in a jar and connected to electrodes and is pumping socialist shit all over north america.
More like Ayn Rand, not dead enough. Good luck with that freemarket fundamentalist agenda, Angry Right Fringe.
Calm down, children. Your temper tantrums are cannibalistic of like minds from different backgrounds. Since this industry falls outside social security, I’ve paid one, two and three tiers into a fully vested pension plan and invested the max into my 401K since it became available to do so in the early ’80s. My fortune 200 company has steadily increased the health insurance premiums from both ends while aggressively searching for an equitable solution.
And, after 38 years paying taxes and making thoughtful and conservative life decisions including not reproducing, avoiding a big mortgage, avoiding debt, you’re damned right I’m entitled. While parks and bridges crumble around us, the taxes I’ve paid have clearly gone to support an illegal family of six, their mortgage, their 52″ flat screen and two cars.
Tamp that in your Camry and, well, you know the rest.
I guess those who either don’t aspire to anything (ie. lazy) or who really do not have any talent in anything that anybody is willing to pay them for is the target of the socialist agenda.
Being an entrepreneur takes a lot of hard work and a lot of guts…A personal friend of my family started out as a stockboy at Beaver Lumber some 35 years ago…then took the plunge and started his own business. The stories he tells me about how scary his first few years (plural) were and how hard he had to work to get his first big job is an eye opener and is a great source of inspiration. The man is a millionaire many times over now and employs a number of people in his company…he’s in his late 50s but he’s still the first one into work and the last one out. His wife (the same one he’s had all these years) and daughters love and respect him. But to a person like philboy, who probably has numerous post-graduate degrees, my friend shouldn’t have aspired to anything higher than stockboy, because he barely finished high school. There is nothing on this earth that can gauge a person’s capacity and the levels he can attain if he’s allowed to dream and is willing to work for it–the free market, the rule of law and capitalism makes this all possible. I’m not angry, I admire people like my friend who work their butts off everyday not just to fulfill their dreams but who employ people and enrich our country–that’s why I put a soldier’s uniform on so people like him can achieve their dreams–because I KNOW I can’t do what he does–so I’ll protect him and those like him.
I wish this country would get over the idea that people with advance degrees are more knowledgeable than common folk on what’s good for this country–look what it got us: bilingualism (a huge waste of money and a federal civil service that only hires francophones at the highest levels), multiculturalism (a huge waste of money that encourages immigrants to hang on to the cultural baggage of their homeland and to never feel a sense of belonging or loyalty to Canada), HRCs (the relization of Orwell’s thought police), politically correct speech (self-censorship), the long-gun registry (an effective means of disarming law-abiding citizens yet allowing the criminals to be armed), socialized medicine (aka rationed health services) and a school system that is definitely a lot less effective than it was 30 years ago.
It’s time to stop the descent.
~~favill~~
Tommy Douglas had his faults, but I’m going to go against the flow here and say that the present faulty, extrvagant so-called health care system that we have cannot be totally blamed on him.
It’s an accumultion of 50 + years of beaurocracy politics, socialism and bad management grown into a monster heading downhill out of control.
Bluetech,
And who exactly started that “monster” rolling downhill?
With the exception of a few Veterans’ Affairs hospitals turned over to the provincial government in the 1960’s and 1970’s, none of the hospitals in BC are owned by the provincial government. The hospitals are owned by charitable societies especially various orders of the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church.
The block funding for the hospitals does come from the Ministry of Health via various health authorities established to do various health stuff e.g. inspect and license food services, hand out free needles to junkies and free condoms to pre-schoolers. The hospital itself (buildings, land and chattel) is owned by PRIVATE organizations.
Of course, when the local health authority decides to cut off funding for a specific hospital, the owners cannot operate as a private hospital and the property is sold for new strata apartments (condos for you folks east of the Rockies).
There in lies the rub of government medical care (post secondary education too). We, de facto, expropriated the medical infrastucture in 1968 (i.e. you can only have a hospital if we provide the revenues) and lived off the carcass for 25 years. When the bills for new buildings, land and chattels has came due in the 1990’s the wallet was empty.
favill…do you assume the monster we have now is identical to the ‘system’ that originated?