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If America adopts Canada's health care system

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a_majoor

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Ever notice that the Americans who are most ardent about their adopting the Canadian health care system are wealthy Democrats who would probably have private doctors on retainer for their own use no matter what? (Then again, lets imagine if you or I were to feel chest pains on the golf course and imagine how long it would take to get medical attention and bypass surgury, compared to, say, a former politician).

Happily, some people get it:

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2007/10/22
 

geo

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Is the Canadian health care system the "cat's meow"?  Nope, it has good & bad.
Is the US health care system the cat's meow?... Nope, it has good & bad.

Would a hybrid of the Canadian & US health care system be the solution?... probably not, but it would be a good start.
 

observor 69

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PROVIDING HEALTH CARE FOR KIDS WILL PAY OFF OVER TIMEMon Oct 22, 9:48 AM ET


Just four years ago, President Bush and the Republican Congress joined with Democrats to champion a program giving prescription drug coverage to senior citizens. It was poorly conceived and expensive, an added entitlement for a group of Americans who already had good medical care. But Bush and Congress insisted that seniors deserved it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/Lucas/20071022/cm_Lucas/

On line Health Care Poll

Apparently a lot of Americans are in favour of public health care.

http://www.citizenshealthcare.gov/recommendations/appendix_c.php
 

tomahawk6

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The problem with socialized medicine is that it results in rationed care. Those that have the means go to the US for treatment. A few states have tried this approach and have found that the concept just doesnt work. There is no free lunch.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005987
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/governor_schwarzenegger_should.html
 

observor 69

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America is spending more on Health care than Canada and other countries in the world and getting an inferior outcome.

Please read the link.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/29/52/36960035.pdf
 

Brad Sallows

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When Canadians spend money in the US (or anywhere other than in Canada) on health care, is that counted as what Canadians spend on health care?

How much more would Canadians spend if the system had the capacity to provide more?

Apples and oranges.

[And what exactly is an "inferior outcome"?  Life expectancy - how many variables are involved?  Infant mortality - the report points out that few countries use the strictest definition of live birth, which the US does?  Obesity - whose responsibility is that?]

If 45% of the US spending is governmental, and the portion of the population covered happens to amount to less than 45%, I wish them luck offering full coverage at public expense without spending yet more per capita overall.  Well, the answer to that is the same as it is here: delisting.
 

RangerRay

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I've said it before, and I'll say it again...we should be exploring European "mixed" models that are far less expensive and provide better outcomes than our outdated Soviet-style system.  And no one has to pay out of pocket for treatment.
 

observor 69

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/opinion/23herbert.html?ref=opinion
subscription required


The Long, Dark Night

By BOB HERBERT  New York Times
Published: October 23, 2021
Nashville


I was making small talk with Dan and Sharon Brodrick in a waiting area filled with anxious-looking patients on the first floor of St. Thomas Hospital. Mrs. Brodrick seemed tired, but she managed a smile. Her husband, a former truck driver who is now an ordained minister, was the talkative one.

“We found out five days after her 56th birthday,” he said. “How’s that for a happy birthday?”

While maintaining a pleasant facade for the outside world, the Brodricks, married 37 years and still deeply in love, are spinning toward the abyss.

“We’re in big trouble,” said Mr. Brodrick.

Mrs. Brodrick learned last May that she had cancer of the duodenum, and it had already spread to her liver and pancreas. Not only is the prognosis grim, but the medical expenses will soon leave the couple destitute. Mrs. Brodrick has no health insurance.

The emotional toll has been nearly as devastating as the physical. Mrs. Brodrick told her husband that she wasn’t ready to leave him. “I don’t want to die,” she said. When he told her they had to cling to their faith in God, she replied, “I know that God can take care of this. But how’s he going to do it?”

The American Cancer Society has been campaigning to raise awareness of the desperate plight of people trying to deal with cancer without health insurance. I offer Dan and Sharon Brodrick as Exhibit A.

The Brodricks never had much money, but they raised two boys and managed to buy a modest home in Gainesboro, a rural town about 90 miles east of here. Dan Brodrick severely damaged his back in an accident at work several years ago and is disabled. His wife has suffered from a variety of illnesses.

But by carefully managing their meager income, they have lived in reasonable comfort. “With a little bit of savings,” said Mr. Brodrick, “and with what I’ve been drawing in disability, we figured we’d be all right.”

But the absence of health insurance for Mrs. Brodrick left a gaping hole in their financial plan, and they knew it. She had been covered by her husband’s health insurance while he was driving a truck. But that coverage ended when he was forced to retire.

“We tried to buy insurance for her,” said Mr. Brodrick. “We applied to dozens of companies. But they wouldn’t touch her because she already had health problems.”

Without insurance, Mrs. Brodrick received treatment for her various ailments under a special program for uninsured patients at St. Thomas. But the cancer diagnosis was an entirely different story, a step for the Brodricks into a realm of dizzying, unrelieved horror.

First came the biopsy, accompanied by reassuring comments from doctors. Then came word that the tumor was indeed malignant. That was followed by surgery.

“They opened her up, and then they closed her right up again,” said Mr. Brodrick.

Not only had the cancer metastasized, it was moving very aggressively. Various estimates were given, each one shorter than the last, about how long Mrs. Brodrick might live.

While his wife was being prepped for chemo, Mr. Brodrick sat in the corner of another room and spoke about what it was like to have one’s life all but literally blown apart.

“It tears you down,” he said. “You’d like to fight this with your bare hands, but you can’t. We’ve been married 37 years Sept. 2, and when I think about it, it was the quickest 37 years I’ve ever seen go by in my life. It went by in a flash. And we have leaned on each other that whole time.”

The hospital is not billing the Brodricks for its costs. “But,” said Mr. Brodrick, “I’ve still got to pay the doctors’ bills and pay for the drugs. And the drugs are very expensive.”

He reeled off a long list of charges that are coming at him like machine-gun fire, bills that he cannot afford to pay.

“So we’re selling the house,” he said. He sat quiet for a moment, then added in a soft voice, “You shouldn’t have to go live in a tent somewhere just because you don’t have insurance.”

He said he wanted to tell his story publicly because he knew there were millions of others without health insurance, and that there are many families, like his own, facing the long, dark night of devastating illness.

“Something has to be done,” he said.

Mr. Brodrick was able to get his wife into a renowned cancer center in the Midwest to get another opinion on the course of treatment she was receiving.

“They said it was the perfect treatment for her and they wouldn’t change a thing,” he said. “They said the success rate with that treatment was 5 percent or less.”

He looked at me. “We’ve got faith in God,” he said. “Without that you might as well throw yourself off a cliff, because there’s nothing else left.”

 

Bruce Monkhouse

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Quote,
“They said it was the perfect treatment for her and they wouldn’t change a thing,” he said. “They said the success rate with that treatment was 5 percent or less.”


Not to be insensitive to this couples plight, but there is a good chance that by the time she started treatment up here she would already be dead and even if she "made the list" that would mean someone with a much higher chance of success would be held back.......................its not a bottomless pit.
 

geo

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Have noticed in the US media that the Republicans have started to hammer away at Hillary.

Guess they feel it is best to get her out of the way right now cause they feel they have a better chance facing off against someone like Obama.
 

a_majoor

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While this is the sort of story that is always used to "justify" government run health care, there are several things to keep in mind:

In Canada, patients have actually died as a result of being put on waiting lists for tests or treatment. As heartless as it sounds, this is actually the preferred outcome for the system, since the patient is not drawing on scarce resources.

Reading the article carefully, you see that there are charitable institutions which are offering help. Often, even patients with insurance find their coverage is not enough, and charity becomes the source of support.

The reason that treatment is so expensive and the Americans spend so much of their GDP on health care has more to do with distortions of the market place. Medicare and Medicaid provide virtually unlimited coverage, and insurance companies carefully "wargame" the system to ensure they can receive the maximum possible payout from the taxpayer.

The "ideal" system would be a combination of Medical Registered Savings Plans to save for the routine costs and some sort of catastrophic coverage from insurance, charity and government sources. Smart consumers would look to save their money, forcing the costs of medical care to come down.
 

tomahawk6

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Some US experts think that if health insurance companies were able to expand their pool nationwide that would drop private insurance rates. Right now the pool is limited to a particular state, I might be wrong though.
 

geo

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WRT waiting lists...
I know that Quebec medicare has indicated that, if someone is left on a waiting more than 90 days, then the Quebec medical system will see about having the patient treated outside the province.  Starting with neighboring provinces but not excluding northern US states.  As long as it works, I have no problem with it.

My sister has only just recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor... +/- Cdn Thanksgiving.  They did a biopsy on her yesterday - and results expected by early next week....  Will see how prompt service is tendered.
 

Brad Sallows

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The reason for public catastrophic insurance is simple, and Fred Reed makes it.  Pay particular attention to his admonition in the last paragraph.

But argument by anecdote is barely one step above resorting to personal insults.  Regardless, our provincial health care systems will not prolong life at any cost, and will refuse life-extending treatment in some cases.  In a publicly-funded system, the value of your life is explicitly measured in dollars just as it is by private insurers, and sometimes all you will get is a course of pain management until the end.

But public catastrophic insurance doesn't mean every medical service must be covered, or that nothing may be means-tested, or that medical services should be insulated from a free market.  Canada does not have as good a health care system as is affordable.  Those willing and able to spend more should have every opportunity to do so, in Canada.
 

Greymatters

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tomahawk6 said:
The problem with socialized medicine is that it results in rationed care. Those that have the means go to the US for treatment. A few states have tried this approach and have found that the concept just doesnt work. There is no free lunch.

Definately no such thing as a free lunch which is why so much of our provincial taxes goes towards health care.  Very few actually go to the US for expensive treatment where your money can get them pushed to the front of the line.         
 

observor 69

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geo said:
Have noticed in the US media that the Republicans have started to hammer away at Hillary.

Guess they feel it is best to get her out of the way right now cause they feel they have a better chance facing off against someone like Obama.

Lot's of luck with that one! Hilary has such a serious lead that it is approaching a done deed ref becoming the Democrat presidential nominee.
I find it fun to follow this lnk at Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2175496/
Open the "Nation" to see how Hilary is doing versus Obama.  :)

 

geo

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Yup, that's why the Republicans have started hammering away at her.
Some survey published today or yesterday that claims 56% of voters would not vote for Hillary...
Question is... who the survey was targeted at?
 

a_majoor

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Once again, examining the metrics gives a different story:

http://jr2020.blogspot.com/2007/11/healthcare-canuckistan-versus-america.html

Friday, November 23, 2021
Healthcare - Canuckistan versus America

As all Canadians are reminded almost daily -‘American-style’ health care is B A D. It’s a given that the Canadian/Cuban/North Korean/Soviet universal healthcare model is the best in the world.

According to a new study by economists at Baruch College in New York - not quite so. William Watson summarizes the results:

    The health payoff to higher income ("income-health gradient") is bigger here than in the United States... even though the whole purpose of medicare is to eliminate the effect of income on health. [my bold]

And some small details:

    one magnetic resonance imager for every 37,000 Americans, versus one for every 182,000 Canadians.

    computed tomography scanners ... one for every 31,000 Americans, versus one for every 87,000 Canadians...

    The Japanese ... have even more [CT scanners and MRI’s] than the Americans.

    ...Americans seem happier with their health care than we are with ours.

    ...we have better longevity and infant-mortality statistics. But other differences between our societies explain that..

    Fifteen percent of older Americans say their health is excellent, versus only 8% of
    Canadians...

    ...more Americans than Canadians who have a given condition receive treatment for it.

    In several forms of preventive care, we lag the Americans.

    Americans have a higher incidence of cancer, we have higher mortality rates...

And, there’s no mention of the fact that "waiting lists" are essentially unheard of in American healthcare.

Now, let’s hear it one more time for Saint Tommy.

 

Scoobie Newbie

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$28,000 grand for a broken leg.  Thanks I'll pass on the American system and wait in line to have my leg fixed.
 

a_majoor

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While the American system has its issues, be very careful what you wish for:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/900134/posts

Mark Steyn: The system infected us
National Post ^ | April 24 2003 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 04/25/2003 6:47:59 AM PDT by knighthawk

One of the most tediously over-venerated bits of British political wisdom is Prime Minister Harold MacMillan's amused Edwardian response as to what he feared most in the months ahead: "Events, dear boy, events."

But even events come, so to speak, politically predetermined. If, for example, you have powerful public sector unions, you will be at the mercy of potentially crippling strikes. The quasi-Eastern European Britain of the 1970s was brought to a halt by a miners' strike in a way that would have been impossible in the United States.

So it is with SARS. The appearance of the virus itself was a surprise but everything since has been, to some extent, predictable. Because totalitarian regimes lie, China denied there was any problem for three months, and thereafter downplayed the extent of it. Because UN agencies are unduly deferential to dictatorships, the World Health Organization accepted Beijing's lies. This enabled SARS to wiggle free of China's borders before anyone knew about it. I mentioned all this three weeks ago, but only in the last couple of days has the People's Republic decided to come clean -- or, at any rate, marginally less unclean -- about what's going on.

As for our diseased Dominion, like the Chinese our leaders behaved true to form. When something bad happens in Canada, the priority is to demonstrate how nice we are. After September 11th, the Prime Minister visited a mosque. After SARS hit, the Prime Minister visited a Chinese restaurant. Insofar as one can tell, Chinese Canadians seem to be avoiding Chinese restaurants at a somewhat higher rate than caucasians. But, while it may have been blindsided by the actual outbreak of disease, the Canadian system is superb at dealing with entirely mythical outbreaks of racism. I think we can take it as read that if a truck of goulash exploded on the 401 killing 120, the Prime Minister would be Hungarian folk dancing within 48 hours. Personally, I'd have been more impressed if he and Aline had had a candlelit dinner for two over a gurney in the emergency room of a Toronto hospital. That's the issue -- not Canadian restaurants, but Canadian health care.

But the piped CanCon mood music has wafted over Jean and Aline's table and drowned out the more awkward questions. Toronto is the only SARS "hot zone" outside Asia. Of nearly 200 nations on the face of this Earth, Canada is one of only eight where SARS has killed, and currently ranks third, after China and Singapore, in the number of SARS deaths. Indeed, Canada had the highest SARS fatality rate in the world until one of two infected Filipinos died a few days ago -- and according to its government she picked it up from the mother of her Toronto roommate.

But why get hung up on details? "Over the past six weeks, health care workers across Toronto have done an amazing job," wrote Joseph Mapa, president of Mount Sinai Hospital, on our letters page yesterday. "We need to applaud these men and women for their dedication and commitment."

No, we don't. We can indulge in lame-o maple boosterism if we ever lick this thing. Until then, we need to ask: Why Toronto? London, Sydney, San Francisco and other Western cities have large, mobile Asian populations. But they don't have SARS. The excuse being made for China is that they have vast rural provinces with limited access to health care. So what's Toronto's?

Here's the timeline:

February 11th: The WHO issued its first SARS health alert, which was picked up by the American ProMed network, which distributed it to Toronto health authorities. The original alert has been described as "obviously significant" by those who saw it.

February 28th: Kwan Sui-Chu, having recently returned from Hong Kong, goes to her doctor in Scarborough complaining of fever, coughing, muscle tenderness, all the symptoms of the by now several ProMed alerts. As is traditional in Canada, the patient is prescribed an antibiotic and sent home.

March 5th: Having apparently never returned for further medical treatment and slipped into a coma at home, Kwan Sui-Chu is found dead in her bed. The coroner, Dr. Mark Shaffer, lists cause of death as "heart attack." Later that day, Kwan's son, Tse Chi Kwai, visits the doctor, complaining of fever, coughing, etc. He too is prescribed an antibiotic and sent home. Later still, the son takes his wife to the doctor. Likewise.

March 7th: Tse Chi Kwai goes to Scarborough Grace, and is left on a gurney in Emergency for 12 hours exposed to hundreds of people.

March 9th: Scarborough Grace discovers Tse's mother has recently died after returning from Hong Kong. But Dr. Sandy Finkelstein concludes, if Tse is infectious, it's TB.

March 13th: Tse dies, and Scarborough Grace calls Dr. Allison McGeer, Mount Sinai's infectious disease specialist, who finally makes the SARS connection.

March 16th: Joe Pollack, who lay next to Tse on that Scarborough Grace ER gurney for hour after hour, returns to the hospital with SARS. He's isolated, but not his wife. Later that day, while at the hospital, Mrs. Pollack comes in contact with another patient who's a member of a Catholic Charismatic group.

March 28th: At a meeting of the Charismatic group, the ailing Scarborough patient's unknowingly infected son exposed 500 others to SARS ...

Let's leave it there. If this is what the President of Mount Sinai calls an "amazing job," then we might as well head for the hills screaming "We're all gonna die!" Toronto health authorities have done an amazing job that's amazing only in its comprehensive lousiness. At every link in the chain, anything that could go wrong did go wrong.

In rural China, SARS got its start through the population's close contact with farm animals. In Hong Kong, it was spread by casual contact in the lobby, elevators and other public areas of the Metropole Hotel. Only in Canada does the virus owe its grip on the population to the active co-operation of the medical profession. In Toronto, the system that's supposed to protect us from infection instead infected us. They breached the most basic medical principle: first do no harm. Even after they knew it was SARS, Scarborough Grace kept making things worse.

Dr. Mapa's pathetic attempts at covering his profession's ass are understandable. But most people who've had experience of Canadian health care will recognize the SARS chain as an extreme version of what usually happens. The other day, a guy I know went to a Quebec emergency room, waited for six hours, was told he had a migraine, and sent home. It turned out to be a life-threatening parasite in the brain. I'm sure you've got friends and family with similar stories. A chronically harassed, understaffed, underequipped system reaches reflexively for routine diagnoses, prescriptions. Did Kwan Sui-Chu's doctor, an Asian Canadian herself with many Asian patients, get the Toronto Public Health alert? Is it normal for coroners to mark "heart attack" as cause of death for elderly patients even when they've been prescribed antibiotics for a new condition in the last week? Why, after Scarborough admitted Mr. Pollack, whom they knew to have been infected during his previous stay with them, did they allow Mrs. Pollack to circulate among other patients? Why did Scarborough compound its own carelessness by infecting York Central?

Most of what went wrong could have been discovered by a few social pleasantries: How's the family? Been travelling recently? The so-called "bedside manner" isn't just to cheer you up, it's meant to provide the doctor with information that will assist his diagnosis. In Canadian health care, coiled tight as a spring, there's no room for chit-chat: give her the antibiotics, put it down as a heart attack, stick him on a gurney in the corridor for a couple of days. Maybe you could get service as bad as this in, oh, a Congolese hospital. But in most other Western health care systems the things Ontario failed to do would be taken for granted. There might be a lapse at some point in the chain but not a 100% systemic failure all the way down the line.

You'll notice that just like Red China, the Prime Minister and Toronto's medical staff I've reacted reflexively, blaming it in my right-wing way on the decrepitude of socialized health care, which almost by definition is reactive rather than anticipatory, and belatedly so at that. But my analysis, unlike Dr. Mapa's, fits the facts. But not to worry: as our leader is happy to assure us, our no-tier health care "express da Canadian value."

Given the literally billions of dollars pumped into Canadian "Health Care" over the preceding decades, it defies belief that the system could be "chronically harassed, understaffed, underequipped", but since we don't spend the money directly on our own health care, we have no control or accountability over how it is spent by bureaucrats, whose prime interest is to increase the size and power of their bureaucracy, not to actually achieve a solution (which by definition eliminates the need for their services).
 
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