Being from Canada (a country where everyone and their dog enjoy free "healthcare") I'd like to (but probably shouldn't ) take this opportunity to set a few things straight.

There are no "death councils" in Canada.

Sure, someone somewhere decides what medicines/treatments etc. are to be offered/available, but those are then offered to one and all!  There is no "council" that decides this person get's this drug/treatment while joe over there gets an inferior drug/treatment.

Of course, this means that there are some treatments/drugs which are available in Europe or in the US that aren't available in Canada.  Sometimes the government will pay and sometimes it won't.  That doesn't mean there is some "death council" in Canada.  It just means that in Canada we believe if we can't afford a treatment for all, then it doesn't make it under the "free healthcare" umbrella.  Something inherently wrong with that?

Sure, wait-times.  Wait-times are atrocious.  Sometimes people end up dying before their scheduled appointment for treatment.  It happens in a system that tries to care for all at the same time.

 

I'd like to share two very differing experiences with our "free healthcare" system with you for analysis.

1. 

Many years ago the vehicle I was travelling in was hit head-on by a drunk (intent on killing himself).  Long-story short, I was ejected, bounced on the highway and sustained quite a few fractures.  As a result of those injuries I spent almost 5 months in the hospital, several more as an out-patient and am sure my "bills" (in a non-free healthcare system) would have made me bankrupt!

Did I receive the very BEST treatment known to man?  Probably not, I'm sure there are better technologies etc. available in Europe/USA for certain injuries I received, but at the end of the day I'm alive and not bankrupt!

 

2.

A few weeks ago while using a "mandolin" (yes I'm a man....and yes I do cook) I turned a portion of my thumb into a faux-potato slice (yes...I said I was a MAN!  ...what safety guard??).  At first my wife simply cleaned the wound, and bandaged me up nicely (we were having a dinner party so going anywhere at that moment was out of the question).

Hours later, (post clean-up) with my whole hand now throbbing and at 1am I decided to head down to the local hospital to get at least a tetanus shot (I hadn't had one in years).  It took almost an hour for the triage nurse to see me.  She un-wrapped my thumb saw it was still bleeding (this was now almost 10 hours after I initially cut it) cleaned it again, re-wrapped it and said "please have a seat".  So I sat down among the other 4 people in the emergency waiting area. 

One of the other four had a bad rash, another bad stomach pain (she left after waiting for 3 hours....) the third had what appeared to be a sprain as a result of drunken stumbling and the the fourth had a nasty cough.

So I waited......and waited........and....well my throbbing hand and I along with the security guard who didn't look like he could run down an old lady......watched almost the entirety of two movies.......while I waited.......and waited.....looked again at my yellow wrist-band and the large sign beside triage:

White wrist-band  =  can't remember (don't worry or something like that)

Green wrist-band  =  not urgent

Yellow wrist-band =  urgent

Red wrist-band = emergent

Purple wrist-band = resuscitative

 

Then at around 4am the triage nurse asked me to follow her into a room.  "The doctor will be right in to see you........".   Around 30min later a rather lovely nurse un-wrapped my thumb for the second time, saw it was still bleeding, cleaned it again and left....."the doctor will be right in to see you....."  An additonal 30min later the lovely nurse was back to stick me with a needle (the Tetanus shot I had come for) and once again said...."the doctor will be right in to see you..."

...somewhere around 5:30am a nurse just about to go take a nap (she spoke over her shoulder at someone outside the room) un-wrapped, and once again cleaned my still bleeding (and now slightly more aggravated.....thanks to the constant un and re-wrapping etc.) thumb, then she went to take a nap.  This time no one said "....the doctor will be right in.....".

Around 6:30am I left the room and started pacing the hallway.......was anyone even coming?  What was I still doing here?  I mean I'd received the shot I needed, was there anything left to do?  sigh........public healthcare....grumble grumble....

At 7:10am a doctor sidles into the room with a joke on his tongue.......nice.  Did you just get on shift buddy? cause I've been warming your waiting room chairs and now this flat-ass stretcher for the last six hours!   He got the hint.......monk was in no mood for jokes right about then.  So he got busy un-wrapping my thumb for the umpteenth time!  (and btw.......doctors SUCK at un-wrapping things......those nurses were much more sensetive......damn...I bit my tongue!)  So.....Mr. doctor-man looks at my thumb....says....."wow....nice potato-slice.....tee hee!..." then he says....we'll get it wrapped up again and you're free to go.  Then he leaves the room.....I'm sitting there holding bloody gauze against my thumb so the still bleeding wound won't mess up the otherwise clean room.

..another 20 minutes later....a third nurse......(chirpy little thing)..breezes in....sticks my thumb in some totally impractical condom-like device and gives me a hand-puppet!  Thanks.  I'm hoping my car hasn't been towed....

 

Of course I'm not exactly thrilled at the performance of our "system" in my second scenario.  So do I support a TWO-tier system whereby in scenario number one everything that happend, would happen the same way again, but in scenario number two I might have the option to go to a "paying clinic" and have had my shot and been out of there in minutes as opposed to hours.

Public free healthcare is GREAT but what would make our system BETTER, is to simultaneously have the option of going to other clinics (within Canada) where one could pay and therefore forego the wait-times of our free healthcare system.

I say, more options are always better.  Those claiming that public healthcare is wrong/bad, simply don't know what they are talking about!

 

-- monk out! 

now here is an intersting discussion and another one to highlight the quite fundamental cultural differences between north america and large parts of europe.

from the numbers I read, the US spends about 16%* of their GDP in health care. this is far, far higher than here. France for example spends 11.0%, Germany 10.4 and GB 8.4%. I don't have the numbers for my country at hand and though it is a sizable part, it certainly isn't 16%. also the coverage is higher here as far as I know, i.e. a lot more ppl are in fact insured. about the quality of health care I cannot say much, but here I have absolutely no trouble gettting whatever help I need. surgery on a 70 year old? no problem. expensive drugs? you get them if you need them.

so my point is: the cold, hard numbers say that the system performs extremely weakly compared to the funs it consumes. why that is so, I am not sure, but it certainly does not support anyone who opposes fundamental reforms.

another point I want to make is the difference between market failure and government failure. now, there are tons of theoretical and factual examples where the free market downright fails. you can check literature on public goods, external effects, signals, assymetrical information and a bunch of other things here to understand why. that's market failure. government failure is when it won't get any better by public control. this can happen, but it not always does, sometimes the public can do what the private cannot.

as such, I want to stress that at least from my perspective, control and order is NOT the only thing the government is required to do. what it should do is to define the desireable level for various policy areas (like amount of public health coverage, coverage of infrastructure services, status of competition in markets) and then chose the least intrusive measures to make it happen. so bottom line for me is: free market cannot and will not be a stable system long term in the absence of control. it is the basis for economy, but not the entirety of it.

 

* number from German magazine Der Spiegel (31/2009)

No, I think charles is right in a way. Leaving it in discourages the guys that genuinely believe that stuff from posting here.

ran a short calculation. If you factor in actual population size and current GPD, then US spends even more money per capita than everyone else.

The per capita cost of health care in Germany amounts to about $3688 while the US has to fork over $7430.

Numbers from Shadowhai & Wikipedia.

Some of the conservatives arguements do make me do a bit of an epic facepalm.

 

Your healthcare system sucks.  Sorry, but its true.  Whether Obama's plan is the best one remains to be seen, but at least he's put the issue on the table to let a debate happen.  It has shown though that a lot of Americans love to claim that they want their freedom.  And what a lot of them actually mean is they want their money.

 

Anyone actually noticed that Obama's plan will benefit the poor most, while most of the people opposing it are rich Republicans?

 

Poor Barack.  While he's a candidate everyone supports him, when he gets in the Oval office everyone hates him.  Is it me or is the reason the Republicans have more presidents because they like to sit back and reduce government power so that if something bad happens they can always blame someone else and claim that the Democrats would have made it worse?

You want the real reason?

 

POWER. 

 

Simple as that.  The government only gets as much money as it can tax.  it can only tax so much from the people, unless it controls the people.  The founding of the United States was to break that power over the people that governments had.... and now we want to reinstate it?!? 

I think not.

I think that about sums it up.

Has anyone looked at this bill at all?  Its over a 1000 pages.  I read enough to know this bill is just wrong.  Anyone here work for a goverment job?  Anyone deal with the health care you get with a goverment job?  Yes its better then not having health care but it really sucks.  The goverment has no place in this.  

Dubbya increased the size and might of the goverment by a large amound, and no one is happy about it.  What makes this any different?  Because hes a democrat and not a republican?  What difference does that make anymore.  When it comes to the ones in washington they are just two sides of the same coin.

Are you honestly saying that the Bush "reforms" reducing your civil rights are the same as the Obama initiative to provide health care for all americans?

And why shouldn't the government reform the health care system? Wo else can? The private insurers out of the goodness of their hearts?

The bill could consist of just  two simple points and they still would fight against it:

1. Health insurance must not be denied due to preexisting conditions or any other reason.
2. Payment for treatment or medication must not be denied by the insurers if the attending doctor considers either absolutely indispensible.

Once these points would be law, the insurers would have to invest their efforts in researching most cost efficient and effective treatments and work together with doctors to create a standarized treatment catalogue. But since these two points seem to be the main methods of protecting their high profit margin these sensible provisions are not acceptable.

You say reform is needed? Then it must come from the government or it will never happen.

Did this really need a second thread?

 

[quote]ran a short calculation. If you factor in actual population size and current GPD, then US spends even more money per capita than everyone else.

The per capita cost of health care in Germany amounts to about $3688 while the US has to fork over $7430.

Numbers from Shadowhai & Wikipedia.[quote]

 

You forgot to factor in lifestyle.  This would include exercise, diet, localized population density, air and water quality, climate, all kinds of things.  If germans were fat, lazy, donut stuffing, chain smoking alcoholics that drink a gallon of floride in their tap water, you'd have something.

 

This for instance, in combination with this.  There goes as much as 20% of the difference right there.  You can probably get rid of most of it without ever factoring in price controls on drugs that have shifted the lionshare of the cost to the US, and the handful of other countries still paying for R&D.

This is really just about control.  The one trying to scare us is obama.  Scare us into buying into all his crap.  

I think it may have been done already, but to qoute Benjamin Franklin, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". 

To psychoak, I think you have something there.  If american life style were to change and we kept health care as it is now, it would be a lot better.

As far as I've seen, no one is saying that reform shouldn't come from the gov't, but that the reform should not include a gov't sponsored public option. There is plenty else the gov't can do, including as you said regulation about pre-existing condition (though there has to be some limit to this, otherwise people won't pay for health care until they get sick, go buy the health care, get treatment, and cancel the next month) and tort reform (which has been very successful in Texas). Also, when you talk about motives, on which side do you mean? On the liberal pro-public-option or conservative anti-public-option? Or is it the motives of everyone? (the latter would be much more difficult to get nailed down)

No way... he's hitting the nail sharply into the plywood sheets that serve as coffin cover for the UNINSURED.

 

Back to the op "Pro/Con" gimmick;

Extremely simple -- The human rights to live healthy or die from natural causes. For or against. Fair or illegal. Costly or affordable. Pro or Con.

 

This is something I have to continue to remind people, not everyone is against reform, (some are but few) they are against Obama's reform. People here say that out system sucks, most will agree, even Republicans. You all need to get out of your heads the idea that Republicans/Conservatives don't want reform. We never said we don't want reform, we just don't want Obama's reform.

Well, lets keep in mind that when it comes to spinning things both sides are just as good so let's be fair here. Now, if this whole "kill granny" (which BTW, I think it's an exaggerated comment) thing was not in the bill, please explain why the Senate chose to remove the end-of-life part of the bill? I mean if they thought it was a good thing, why give in? To avoid misinterpretation or is it because they expected people not to get it at all and when faced with the possibility that people figured out their little game they chose to remove it just to avoid the getting caught all together? Talk about something "fishy". This current administration has one hell of an issue getting people to understand anything they say or write. I have lost count as to how many "what he/she really meant" quicker-fixer-upper comments have been done.

But feel free to remove it, my goal was to alow people to have their say just in the same manner you got to have your say. So if you gonna remove it, don't do it on my account, you have the right to express your opinions. I only ask not to disregard others opinions just because you find them "stupid". Calling something stupid does not make your opinion a fact.

You say that as if that's not something the Gov't does all the time? Do you think they won't do that? Funny you question that considering Democrats are all for raising taxes.The stimulus bills passed, the omnibus bill, etc were passed as being for specific reasons then all of a sudden we find all these very interesting pork add-ons. Even my firefox doesn't have that many add-ons.

Come on, was my response really that complicated? I didn't write a 1000 page reply written in Senate/Congress language you know. Control, the more the gov't controls the less they have to worry about losing it. Does it really matter what they are controlling?

I was talking about healthcare not the Gov't system. We don't really have control over our healthcare. What are our current choices? Pay insurance based on what the insurance company offers, get Gov't help depending on what you qualify for or pay up the ying yang out of your own pocket. Where is the control? How come doctors are not fighting for our business like other businesses due? Simple because no matter what price it is we need doctors more than they need us hence no control. As for the Gov't system and us havong control thanks to the Constitution it is the people who have control, but thanks to ignorance it's as if we don't because on average people would rather watch American Idol, Desperate House Wive, House or Deadliest Catch than make it their business to know whats going on around them. The way people vote and act one would think that our only duty as Americans is to vote some stranger into the highest office and then hope he does good.

Hmmm, that's a good question. Ask Obama. First the banks (with Bush's help), then the automobile industry, now he wants more energy control and to top it off, he wants to control healthcare. Next thing you know he'll make everyone a Gov't employee.

well if you think about it, with more control you have less chances of not getting reelected. I am curious though, do you think calling people unAmerican, brownshirts, stupid, mobs, etc is a good way of getting reelected?

 

The government should set guidelines; it should not, however, offer a plan of its own.

The Federal government is innefficient, i for one do not want a bureaucrat deciding the limits of my health care. I would rather deal with a profit-seeking vampyric corporation, at least i know where that will let me down; rather than the government that may decide halfway through my treatment to stop supporting me. Insurance companies are all or nothing, the government doesn't know where it is going to stop.