The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care

[dyna]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
I think you already need help.
Go wave your flag somewhere else... don't you have some books to burn, some social activists to tar and feather, some Commies to unmask, some bibles to thump? Oh, and don't forget your Prozac!

Actually, I will probably get back to work so i can make money to support my family, provide healthcare, pay for your welfare checks. Thank you for your positive comments on the topic.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Andyb23
Vic man you seem to have like an anti-society streak going on bro.

How so? I see it as the opposite. It is not actually beneficial to society to allow the majority to force its morality on the minority. I'm not knocking democracy, I'm simply saying that it needs to be kept in check from abuses. Might don't make right.

John Stuart Mill is one of the greatest liberal minds ever BTW.

So should taxes be optional, or paying into social security? How about schools and fire? You raise a lot of questions.

See, I don't see what questions I raised. Taxes for schools and fire are clearly in the common interest in regards to societal self-protection, whereas UHC clearly falls into the category of forcing the individual to do a certain thing for his own good even if over his own objection.

"That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right."

Well I don't see this at all. If I have to pay so some child's house doesn't burn down or so he can go to school, why can't I pay for his trip to the doctor. Nobody says I have to call the fire department if my house is on fire, nor do I have to go to school, and I don't have to go to the doctor if I don't want to.

"why can't I pay for his trip to the doctor" You can moonie. It's called charity or donating. UHC FORCES you to do it instead of allowing you to so if you wish. You may wish to pay for other people's trip to the doc but others may not.

Jesus, Caddy, could you please get up to speed. I am forced to pay for school and for fire and so my point was why not medical? I can buy a sprinkler system, a fire extinguisher, or even a fire truck if I wanted to and I can go to private school. Why am I forced by this terrible communist government to pay for these things. Why do I also have to pay for police and jails when I can just shoot people.

And yes, why isn't everybody assured a modicum of human shelter. Why should we have created a pig society where there are fences and people sleep in the street. Why did we kill or put on reservations all the Indians who live where we do now for free. When was the last time any of you became a hawk, a wolf or a badger and flew over, ran over, or dug with the earth. When was the last time you held the Great Spirit's hand. You are a dead people and you do not know you are dead. Your vision totem is your own greed. Take your sick souls to your medicine man. He read a book and charges 200 an hour.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: Atheus

A must read for anyone against Universal Healthcare

It's one thing to be against govornment controlled national insurance schemes, but how can any sane person be against universal healthcare? I mean, do you think some people don't deserve to live, simply because they have a low paying job? I will never understand that view. If I found someone injured on the street I would help them - what economic bracket they fall into would be the last thing on my mind.

Exactly.

I keep asking these tightie righties to explain to me why there are so many people wha are working full time jobs who DON'T have any health care and can't afford it. Nobody ever answers, they just keep droning on about the "lazy people".

 

[spittledip]

I think healthcare should be universal- good healthcare that is. Despite what this article says, I know Canadians that love their healthcare system. It isn't perfect of course, but at least it is not highway robbery either. Although they do have very high income taxes, but I guess that is what it cost to have healthcare. Also, it doesn't seem right that companies can use a need as basic as healthcare as a bargaining chip with their potential employees.

Whoa re these people that say that there are some people that do not deserve good healthcare due to life situations? that is a very heavy judgment based upon ignorance. You don't know what peoples' lives have been like.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Whoozyerdaddy
I've seen the canadian halth care system in action, up close and personal. There is no way I want that here.

Well, i've seen the US health care and insurance system up close and personal, and i definitely wouldn't want that in Canada.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit
Exactly.

I keep asking these tightie righties to explain to me why there are so many people wha are working full time jobs who DON'T have any health care and can't afford it. Nobody ever answers, they just keep droning on about the "lazy people".

what about people who are working full time jobs and choose to spend the money elsewhere?

and why health care, rather than medical care? we're really talking about medical care, aren't we?

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson

Originally posted by: dyna

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: dyna

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson

Originally posted by: dyna

I might agree that people under 18 yrs of age should get free healthcare. But if your an adult, you should be responsible and not need the government holding your hand for the rest of your life. The next topic will be that we need to pay for housing for all the people who "can't afford it".

Maybe next month you find out you have a cancer! Go ahead and pay for the years of treatment from your own pocket. Let's see you practice what you preach - "responsibility"!

...Tool!

I guess if I was such a tool that I did not want to get off my lazy ass to get a job to pay for insurance then I would be in that situation. Are you communist/socialist?

...because everyone with a Job has Health Insurance and no one ever loses their coverage when a Medical issue arises!

US is the wrong country to live in if you want everything handed to you for free.

You wouldn't know what socialism is if it spat you in the eye. You just use it as a cliché.
Proud U.S. citizen, indeed! I hope you get to practice what you preach.

Wow, hoping that someone gets cancer and doesn't have health insurance, you must be one of those compassionate liberals that cares about everybodies well being....

I hope you get sick and have a ***** canadian Dr. that graduated last in his class, maybe you'll even be lucky enough to get AIDS in a botched blood transfusion! Hey, but at least you didn't have to pay for it right?

Well not really, I'm not that big of a POS that I would wish for someone else to get sick, but at least we know where you stand.

 

[JD50]

I'd think that on a scale of whats most important, food and shelter are more important than healthcare, so why aren't you all working on universal food and universal shelter?

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit
Exactly.

I keep asking these tightie righties to explain to me why there are so many people wha are working full time jobs who DON'T have any health care and can't afford it. Nobody ever answers, they just keep droning on about the "lazy people".

what about people who are working full time jobs and choose to spend the money elsewhere?

and why health care, rather than medical care? we're really talking about medical care, aren't we?

Health care, medical care, I guess I don't really see a difference? The ability to be able to afford the standard test and procedures and to have enough coverage to not have to declare medical bankruptcy should the become the victim of a serious accident or injury.

I'm talking about people who are working full time jobs and they aren't offered any type of health insurance and can't afford to purchase it themselves. Any job that is basically a full time job should have health insurance, vacation, retirement benifits, I don't care what it is.

You caught me at a bad time, I'm just leaving the house for the evening, going to do some trap shooting tonight with my Dad, son, and nephew who is visiting (from Montana).

 

[JD50]

I think its total bullshit that healthier food costs more. Poor people are being deprived of healthy food, why is it that only the rich can get good quality food? Obviously Universal quality foodcare is the answer.

 

[OutHouse]

if England can have a successful national health care system why cant we? why must we always bring up canadas example?

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: dyna

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson

Originally posted by: dyna

I might agree that people under 18 yrs of age should get free healthcare. But if your an adult, you should be responsible and not need the government holding your hand for the rest of your life. The next topic will be that we need to pay for housing for all the people who "can't afford it".

Maybe next month you find out you have a cancer! Go ahead and pay for the years of treatment from your own pocket. Let's see you practice what you preach - "responsibility"!

...Tool!

I guess if I was such a tool that I did not want to get off my lazy ass to get a job to pay for insurance then I would be in that situation. Are you communist/socialist?

:|
im neither but you are missing the whole arguement. there are many many people who do work FULL time and do not have health insurance offered by their employer. so if they want to they can buy health insurance on their own but for a family of 4 the monthly cost is 800 bucks. Then if you do get sick and max out your insurance or get treatment that the insurance company will not cover you are done. its chapter 11, you loose your house, car, and are homeless because of medical bills. then if you die your family is totally screwed.

so your blanket answer of "they are lazy" is total bullshit you are the tool my friend. get out in the real world, go visit a chapt-11 attonrney and let him tell you some horror stories.

health care should be available to everybody not to the few who can afford it or the few who happen to work for a company that offers it.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: Citrix
if England can have a successful national health care system why cant we? why must we always bring up canadas example?

Go look at statistics for cancer survival in England and get back to me about have a similar healthcare system.

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: Citrix

Originally posted by: dyna

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson

Originally posted by: dyna

I might agree that people under 18 yrs of age should get free healthcare. But if your an adult, you should be responsible and not need the government holding your hand for the rest of your life. The next topic will be that we need to pay for housing for all the people who "can't afford it".

Maybe next month you find out you have a cancer! Go ahead and pay for the years of treatment from your own pocket. Let's see you practice what you preach - "responsibility"!

...Tool!

I guess if I was such a tool that I did not want to get off my lazy ass to get a job to pay for insurance then I would be in that situation. Are you communist/socialist?

:|
im neither but you are missing the whole arguement. there are many many people who do work FULL time and do not have health insurance offered by their employer. so if they want to they can buy health insurance on their own but for a family of 4 the monthly cost is 800 bucks. Then if you do get sick and max out your insurance or get treatment that the insurance company will not cover you are done. its chapter 11, you loose your house, car, and are homeless because of medical bills. then if you die your family is totally screwed.

so your blanket answer of "they are lazy" is total bullshit you are the tool my friend. get out in the real world, go visit a chapt-11 attonrney and let him tell you some horror stories.

health care should be available to everybody not to the few who can afford it or the few who happen to work for a company that offers it.

While I do agree with your main points, I think the problem is the out of control healthcare costs and the way that insurance companies can just drop you and/or deny claims for bullshit reasons. But their definitely should be a better safety net in place for when tragedies do occur.

 

[mattpegher]

Just a glimpse into the two teired system that we will get if we have this system done wrong. I work in an ER and in an Urgent Care. Over the last 8 years we have gone from two 12 hour shifts (2 docs) per day to five 12 hour shifts. We have doubled the physical size of our ER.

Now if reimbursements were to drop. The first thing that we would do is to go to a cash only business at the urgent care (basically the 7-11 of health care) You would have to pay a premium to be seen on a same day basis without an appointment. Now in the ER we would still see people as before but our census would mostlikely double and without additional funds the same number of people and same number of beds would be available. I would most likely be paid less than previous per patient seen so I will have no incentive let alone ability to increase the number of patients seen. He11, I'm paid by the hour, with volume and severity bonus, take away the bonus and I will work about as hard as the guy behind the counter at the post-office. The critically ill will be seen as fast as we can but the rest will wait for much longer than before. (At the county trauma center in Miami where I trained, the average wait for a non-life threating illness was 24hours.)

Since I will probably make more in the urgent care, I may even leave the ER and with others open more Urgent Cares or other cash only businesses. Don't think for one minute that others won't do the same, and all the best docs will follow suit leaving the dregs to staff the public health care system. So who suffers, the poor and now the middle class. What we need is more public health clinics with federal funding, more medicaid for children and infirmed. For the working poor we need to make available income based sliding scale inclusion into the medicaid systems. And if they choose not to then they only have themselves to blame.

 

[randym431]

The biggest ongoining con is spreading the smear that Canadian health care does not work. It does, has and always will. They would have changed it if not the case.
But...keep on spreading those lies. :roll:

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: randym431
The biggest ongoining con is spreading the smear that Canadian health care does not work. It does, has and always will. They would have changed it if not the case.
But...keep on spreading those lies. :roll:

Our health system works as well.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: randym431
The biggest ongoining con is spreading the smear that Canadian health care does not work. It does, has and always will. They would have changed it if not the case.
But...keep on spreading those lies. :roll:

Our health system works as well.

For the shrinking number of people that can afford it.

 

[spittledip]

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: randym431
The biggest ongoining con is spreading the smear that Canadian health care does not work. It does, has and always will. They would have changed it if not the case.
But...keep on spreading those lies. :roll:

Our health system works as well.

For the shrinking number of people that can afford it.

Which is exactly the problem with it. I don't understand why people refuse to see that it is an option only for the privileged. I think it may be b/c many people in America really don't realize how many people cannot afford coverage and medical services b/c they are only in touch with people on their economic level. You have to see the struggle for the less fortunate to really appreciate what an unfair system it is.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: spittledip

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: randym431
The biggest ongoining con is spreading the smear that Canadian health care does not work. It does, has and always will. They would have changed it if not the case.
But...keep on spreading those lies. :roll:

Our health system works as well.

For the shrinking number of people that can afford it.

Which is exactly the problem with it. I don't understand why people refuse to see that it is an option only for the privileged. I think it may be b/c many people in America really don't realize how many people cannot afford coverage and medical services b/c they are only in touch with people on their economic level. You have to see the struggle for the less fortunate to really appreciate what an unfair system it is.

We live in a competitive society and most peoplr are too focused on "catching the carrot" to look in their rear view mirror and see that, despite their best efforts something is gaining on them.

Those that do catch a glimpse of the problem seem to want to put all the blame on the lazy, jobless, etc. when the facts don't support that conclusion. This is defintely a case of the facts having a "liberal" bias.

 

[ProfJohn]

Some of you really need to go back and re-read the OP.

Especially this part:

to contain rising costs, government-run health-care systems invariably restrict the health-care supply. Thus, at a time when Canada?s population was aging and needed more care, not less, cost-crunching bureaucrats had reduced the size of medical school classes, shuttered hospitals, and capped physician fees, resulting in hundreds of thousands of patients waiting for needed treatment?patients who suffered and, in some cases, died from the delays.

There is NO such thing as ?free healthcare? it will just be government funded healthcare.

Once people realize that they can see the doctor for virtually anything and for free there will be a massive rush of people going to the doctor for minor things such as colds etc.
This crush of people seeking medical services will cause the cost of universal healthcare to explode. In order to cope with this and keep the budget in-line the government will start to limit access to doctors etc. This will result in waits and delays etc.

This is exactly what you see in Canada and England with cancer treatment, or pain therapy etc.
In some parts of British Columbia the wait time for cataract surgery is 3 to 12 weeks. At one hospital the wait times reach up to 28 weeks.
For hip replacement you can easily wait 10 weeks.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Some of you really need to go back and re-read the OP.

Especially this part:

to contain rising costs, government-run health-care systems invariably restrict the health-care supply. Thus, at a time when Canada?s population was aging and needed more care, not less, cost-crunching bureaucrats had reduced the size of medical school classes, shuttered hospitals, and capped physician fees, resulting in hundreds of thousands of patients waiting for needed treatment?patients who suffered and, in some cases, died from the delays.

There is NO such thing as ?free healthcare? it will just be government funded healthcare.

Once people realize that they can see the doctor for virtually anything and for free there will be a massive rush of people going to the doctor for minor things such as colds etc.
This crush of people seeking medical services will cause the cost of universal healthcare to explode. In order to cope with this and keep the budget in-line the government will start to limit access to doctors etc. This will result in waits and delays etc.

This is exactly what you see in Canada and England with cancer treatment, or pain therapy etc.
In some parts of British Columbia the wait time for cataract surgery is 3 to 12 weeks. At one hospital the wait times reach up to 28 weeks.
For hip replacement you can easily wait 10 weeks.

Face the facts Prof, your free market thinking doesn't work when you expect the same people who are competing against the cheap foreign labor and/or illegal aliens to be able to afford health care and retirement on their own. If their choice is waiting 3 to 12 weeks for cataract surgery or go blind what do you think they will choose?

 

[bobdelt]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
"The "real" money is being made by the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the health care equipment providers."

Exactly the people who will lose the most in a universal system and the ones buying the politicians to keep it from happening.

Actually insurance companies aren't making money.

Design a system where the pharmaceuitcals dont make money - and you won't have any pharmaceuticals. There's a high risk in developing drugs so there needs to be a high reward. There are plenty of drug companies that just eat up money and produce nothing, as a whole the industry doesnt do that well.

 

[spittledip]

Originally posted by: bobdelt

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
"The "real" money is being made by the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the health care equipment providers."

Exactly the people who will lose the most in a universal system and the ones buying the politicians to keep it from happening.

Actually insurance companies aren't making money.

Design a system where the pharmaceuitcals dont make money - and you won't have any pharmaceuticals. There's a high risk in developing drugs so there needs to be a high reward. There are plenty of drug companies that just eat up money and produce nothing, as a whole the industry doesnt do that well.

Pharms don't make money?
That is a gross fallacy.

There is not much risk for pharms b/c they throw out products that have a ton of side-effects and dangerous ones at that, and are able to get away with it b/c they list the side-effects one may experience by taking the poison they produce. They are a money-making machine. That is all the pharms are about. If they came out with safer products that addressed more causes and less symptoms that would be one thing. But, in the interest of making money, they push out tons of unsafe products as fast as they possibly can, buying off the FDA to make sure it passes through our wonderful safety filter system.