Canadian ‘Health-Care Socialism’: When Will Americans Learn?
Jun 23rd, 2009 | 17 responses
My two friends (surely they can’t be described as “socialists” by any stretch of imagination) have come out in full support of the US government’s SINGLE PAYER HEALTH INSURANCE scheme. However, they are amazed at the misinformation that is being spread regarding the scheme in the US media and the ads.
Shyamal Bagchee, PhD, FRSA, Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, has drawn my attention to Bill Mann’s write up in HuffPost: “Americans Who’ve Used Canada’s Health-Care System Respond to Current Big-Lie Media Campaign.” While Suzanne White provides a detailed explanation and compares the proposed system with the French health system.
Bill Mann writes: “Americans who’ve lived in Canada and used their (health) system, as my wife and I did for years, are incensed by the lies we’ve heard back here in the U.S. about Canada’s supposedly broken system. It’s not broken – and what’s more, Canadians like and fiercely defend it.
Mann gives examples: “Our son was born at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. My wife got excellent care. The total bill for three days in a semi-private room? $21.
“My friend Art Finley is a West Virginia native who lives in Vancouver. ‘I’m 82, and in excellent health,’ he told me this week. ‘It costs me all of $57 a month for health care, and it’s excellent. I’m so tired of all the lies and bullshit I hear about the system up here in the U.S. media.’
“Finley, a well-known TV and radio host for years in San Francisco, adds, ‘I now have 20/20 vision thanks to Canadian eye doctors. And I haven’t had to wait for my surgeries, either.’
“We were always seen promptly by our doctors in Montreal, many of whom spoke both French and English. Today, we live within sight of the Canadian border in Washington state, and still spend lots of time in Canada.” More here…
Mann continues: So, government-run health care is only one thing we Americans can learn from Canada and its ‘left-leaning’ political leaders. Finally, on most issues, even Canada’s ruling Conservative Party is to the left of our own Democratic Party. That tells you a lot.” See here…
(Meanwhile US President Barack Obama issued an urgent call yesterday for quick action on sweeping health-care reforms in an attempt to deliver on his most important domestic policy promise from last year’s campaign, against fierce opposition from Republicans and much of the medical industry. It “cannot wait”, he said. More here…)
My friend Suzanne White writes on the same issue: “MANY AMERICANS DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH INSURANCE MEANS. Not understanding something often causes people to fear it.
“I have been in The States for about two weeks. I live in France. I am a health insurance exile. I notice some American faces go blank when I mention Single Payer Health Insurance. But rather than ask me what it means or try to find out on their own, they resist the very expression and sputter words like ‘socialism’ and ‘government control’ at me.
“One person even claimed that Single Payer means only you pay premiums. Your employer does not. That’s poppycock.
“And that’s too bad. A misunderstanding. The government is not trying to inflict some further torment on the American people by adopting single payer health insurance. It’s trying to help them get full coverage for a modest premium
“I will try to explain how it works for me in France.
“Single Payer Health Insurance is (with variations) a system wherein the government owns a non profit health insurance company. Not the ONLY health insurance company. There are many private carriers as well.
“In France, just about everybody chooses the national company because the premiums are based on their incomes and the coverage is the best for the money. Employers pay a percentage of our income (publishers, film productions, dance companies as well as businesses) so that everybody is covered.
“We also pay premiums (a percentage of what we make) to the government company every month or maybe every trimester. Health insurance costs do not come out of our taxes. Premiums are, in fact, tax deductible.
“So everyone pays something different based on his or her family situation (many children or handicapped people might probably pay less) and income. But … everyone is equally covered.
“The care one receives is not based on the amount he or she pays in. Rather, care is based on how ill one is. There are 19 or 20 major diseases (cancer, diabetes, MS, etc.) which guarantee 100% coverage for everything to do with that illness so long as you have it. Otherwise, in most cases, there is what Americans call a co-pay.
“The government company may pay 80% of my 20 Euro doctor visit. I pay the extra 20% out of pocket. Too, I choose my doctors. If I want to go to a more expensive doctor who is not fully covered on the government plan, I can and I frequently do.
“The best thing is that when you live in a place which offers Single Payer Health Insurance at modest prices, you don’t live in fear of yourself or your children or one of your family members falling ill. If someone gets sick, they get care. The sicker they are, the more care they get.
“Logically, when there is a government health insurance company, their job is to keep people healthy. The French government spends a lot of money on encouraging preventive health care.
“In France, there are prime time TV commercials and ads in the Métro and on buses giving advice and phone numbers of free clinics to stop smoking and curb alcohol abuse, etc.
“Naturally too, when a government owns a health insurance company, it wants to save money. How does it save money? By keeping the people healthy. No genetically modified foods. Fewer pesticides and fewer chemicals in the prepared foods and indeed fewer prepared foods.
“Ads about exercise, ads about eating 5 fruits and vegetables each day, ads to encourage careful driving, etc., abound. The government also controls prices on medicines. Nowhere is medicine cheaper than in France. The pharmaceutical companies don’t like this practice.
“They would rather everybody be ill and need their products. In France, one cannot even advertise prescription medication on TV. Only alternatives or homeopathic (comfort) medicines which can be bought over the counter are allowed to be advertised.
“Lastly, private insurance companies compete with the government company. Their first job is to absorb the rich people who don’t want to get the national company’s insurance because paying a percentage of their large income would prove too dear.
“So rich people often buy private coverage. Secondly, private insurers serve as co-payers. If you have both public and a small private additional policy, it will pay for the co-pay and dental and eye care (that the government plan pays only a minimum for) .
“What President Obama meant when he said he wanted a government company to compete with private insurers in order to keep the private insurers honest, he meant that if the myriad private insurers in the U.S. had to compete with a government health plan which covers everything for a percentage of income, the private companies would have to offer more coverage for less money.
“It stands to reason. That’s what Obama means when he says Single Payer helps keep private companies ‘honest’.
“Compare it to the BBC and Private TV in England. The BBC is free and without commercials and, as we know, has wonderful programs for all sectors of society. Their excellence keeps the private TV stations on their toes. They too have to make great documentaries, offer hilarious sitcoms and dramas and give great news coverage – or else the Brits will simply prefer the BBC.
“It’s a sound policy and it works.
“Is the French health care insurance company in debt? Yes. Constantly. But isn’t everybody? And I ask you, would you prefer your government be in debt from spending too much on health care? Or would you prefer the government be in debt because of squandering taxpayers’ money on wars?…Contact me at: suzanwhite@aol.com ” And also here…
Thank you Shyamal and Suzanne…
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17 Responses to “Canadian ‘Health-Care Socialism’: When Will Americans Learn?”
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Lots of people living in other countries don't understand our unique problems, either. For example, the United States is the only country in the world that shares a 1,500 mile land border with a country that has a per capita GDP a third (or less) its own. The 46 million statistic you frequently see for the number of uninsured is from the Census Bureau. When you examine it more closely you see that it include both citizen and non-citizen insured and that the non-citizen category doesn't distinguish non-citizens by status. It includes both legal and illegal immigrants. The problem of the uninsured in the United States is disproportionately in just six states and those states all have high proportions of illegal immigrants.
I'm not arguing against healthcare reform or even against a single payer system. I've favored a single payer system here for thirty years. However, our immigration problem and healthcare system problem are twins. They can't be solved independently. If we introduce a system of universal coverage, we must close our borders. If we don't close our borders, there's no way to control the costs of a system of universal coverage.
The Canadian system isn't a single federal system, it's a collection of different provincial and territorial programs. A closer analog for us would be state-run systems running some common federal guidelines. Nor is it quite universal, there are residential eligibility requirements that vary by province, so they wouldn't be covering illegal immigrants either.
Wikipedia has a pretty good description. It suggests the Canadians are spending less at least in party by not meeting demand very well. Queues get too long, there are shortages of doctors and equipment, and pressure to spend more or cut back care rises.
And let's not forget about this phenomenon respecting the much-loved Canadian public healthcare system…
October 6, 2008 12:35 PM
A Ontario Health Coalition study exposes the explosive growth of private, for-profit diagnostic, surgical and “boutique” physician clinics across Canada.
http://cupe.ca/health-care/private-clinic-study
Dave Schuler, for the last three years, you drop in every couple of months, drop a ton of facts about healthcare, with only a trickle of personal opinion, and then disappear. IMO, you possess about 3 times the knowledge of anyone else here……..hope you can find more time in your schedule as this matter heats up.
Germany has a private health care industry too. It costs twice as much as the normal plan, but you get instant access to your private doctor for any issue, as opposed to having to wait a couple of weeks for something non-urgent…like a yearly physical.
It is good to have both public and private plans. The public plan forces the private plan to have much higher service standards.
I was on the public plan and had the same care there that I have here in the US with my PPO.
The unofficial slogan for both the Democrats and Republicans is often times, “We never let facts get in the way of a good talking point”
While I'm pleased to see some Americans who've had experience with single-payer systems chiming in to note how well they work in the real world (certainly, as compared to the standout madness in the United States), it's important to note that there are *no* plans to implement a single-payer system in the USA: the President ruled it out early on, and it's firmly off the agenda in Congress. What they're talking about is adding in a restricted-access “public option” to compete with private insurers for an as-yet-undefined subset of the insurance market, possibly run by state or regional cooperatives to avoid the constant yammering about a 'government takeover of health care.'
I've not only lived and traveled all over the USA, and visited Mexico, but have traveled extensively in Canada. The “Canadian model” is probably preferable to the “British model” (National Health Service), but no foreign model is necessarily what we should follow; we merely should look at the details and the advantages and disadvantages of these relative to what we have now …
… which includes Medicare, a partial model we've put in place for ages already, and which makes the most sense to take and expand. (Reform of Medicare, which has long been sought, is a separate iseue.)
“If we introduce a system of universal coverage, we must close our borders. If we don't close our borders, there's no way to control the costs of a system of universal coverage.”
Do you see the Dems closing the borders, and do you see the Dems worried about the costs, not now when they claim costs will be lowered, but once they have expanded public care to everyone? And what of the Dems and the group of people beyond our southern border that comes here, politically? They already face abuse whenever they even mention one word about reversing their pro-immigration and pro-amnesty (and benefits-for-aliens) stance.
Do you see the Dems closing the borders, ever?
“What they're talking about is adding in a restricted-access “public option” to compete with private insurers for an as-yet-undefined subset of the insurance market, possibly run by state or regional cooperatives to avoid the constant yammering about a 'government takeover of health care.'”
They're afraid of a backlash from a public already worried about excess government intrusion (there is no yammering and mischaracterizing common sound-minded public concern is self-defeating and -debasing) and fiscal mischief. The “public option” is an incrementalist maneuver, a partial government takeover of health care, the same kind of maneuver as what was done earlier with S-CHIP. “Competition” will of course not be fair, nor to “keep the private sector honest” [sic] or any other lies. It's simply a way to siphon people into public care out of private care (and encourage employers to drop employer benefits, in addition to the motive resulting from taxation of those benefits).
As I've said correctly before, not only is the “public option” dishonestly described by its proponents, but these same people would be venomous and vicious in a future with public care for everyone, if disenchanted people argue for a “private option” alternative. It's years, decades away but fully predictable.
DLS: “Reform of Medicare, which has long been sought, is a separate issue.”
I don't see how you can separate the notion of expanding medicare from reforming its finances. It seems to come down to a basic question: are we going to have a sustainable health care plan or not?
Dr. J: I wasn't thinking here of finances (no matter what is to be done, it has to be paid for, which as I've said numerous times is a major reason why the current legislation, which also is horribly over-complex, should be killed and we should start over after a few months). Reform of Medicare finance is in order (as with Social Security, which also will fail as it currently exists), hopefully before we're forced to once the trust fund bonds need to start being redeemed in Social Security's case (when most will “discover” what some of us have spent years already trying to educate the ineducable about). But by “reform Medicare” I meant not necessarily (only) the finances, but details about the program, including a review of procedures with regard to streamlining them (before we add all kinds of new benefits to a much larger population than just the elderly — consider pre-natal care, pregnancy care, contraception, abortion [more political than medical], to name a few new things along with child-related things, to consider more). What about the current under-payment to providers (which Obama deliberately and openly wants to make _worse_)? What about fraud? Etc. These need addressing as much as funding for the existing as well as future larger public care. (The fradulent “premiums” only pay about a quarter for care; 3/4 comes from general revenue as “mandatory” spending. Making everything “mandatory” by itself solves nothing for the future.)
“are we going to have a sustainable health care plan or not”
Currently we don't with Medicare, nor is Social Security sustainable.
So many people don't realize what's coming with the programs as they exist _now_.
Sibelius and the other new people gave cameras some dumb-eyed, shell-shocked looks when saying this once again, and it promptly died as a news item.
I wonder if entitlement and the sense of it simply has so many in the public robotically stupid and insensibly demanding and expecting things never to go awry. Have they any idea of the fraction of GDP the federal government (and these two monster programs, in their current state _alone_) will later consume?
It's a European-level fraction of the GDP but not necessarily a European extent of social spending and dependence on government.
Of course, by that time, European programs and society will face far worse economic and related problems.
… and that's in a future in which I believe (inconceivable as it is economically, for one thing) many will want much greater Social Security retirement benefits (and expenditures). I believe it will happen later.
DSL wrote: “not only is the “public option” dishonestly described by its proponents, but these same people would be venomous and vicious in a future with public care for everyone, if disenchanted people argue for a “private option” alternative.”
That's because it would by necessity *be* an alternative to public care for everyone. A single-payer system can't work if it isn't single payer: its efficiencies are built on the fact that very nearly every human being who walks into a doctor's office or hospital has coverage, and has it from one provider with one set of coverage standards and one paperwork system that gives equal access to all without discrimination. Its efficiencies evaporate when alternative systems are introduced. By contrast, a system that is based in its architecture on multiple competing insurance plans is not fundamentally undermined in its very structure by introducing in one additional competitor, even if that competitor is a government-sponsored entity, especially when there are limited criteria for who can sign on to that option — any more than Medicare, the VA, SCHIP, etc fundamentally undermine private insurance now, or Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac fundamentally undermine other mortgage options in a private marketplace.
Reform is code for “dismantle”.
If Canada's health care system is so terrible, then how do you explain the relative life expectancies of the two countries? Canada: 80.3; United States: 78.
Maybe the correlation between health and the health care system is not as great as other factors. What are some of the these factors? I could only speculate. Overpopulation, crime and materialism may undermine peoples' health.
Remember: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
You can believe anything you want. I have talked to many Canadians and not one has made any positive comments about their health care system. Many Canadians travel to the US for health care and pay additional fees to get care or surgery.
My experience is that government creates problems, wastes money and generally impedes any process they are involved in. To think that by adding yet another layer of costly bureaucracy will improve service or enhance efficiency is tragically erroneous.
Let's leave to government those legitimate services proscribed by the constitution. We can solve the health care dilemma without government intervention.