“…the fact remains that most Canadians are satisfied with the health care system. 85.2%
of Canadians reported that they were “satisified” or “very satisfied” with
the way health care services are provided in their country and an even
higher number (89.8%) rated their physician in the same way though slightly
lower ratings were awarded to hospitals (79.9% being “satisified” or “very
satisfied”).”

I have seen similar figures elsewhere. They are also pretty good in England and other European countries. And, guess, what, they are lower in the US

Thanks

“Despite these stories emanating from the press and pressure groups (mostly
from the US) about the weakness of the universal health care, the fact
remains that most Canadians are satisfied with the health care system. 85.2%
of Canadians reported that they were “satisified” or “very satisfied” with
the way health care services are provided in their country and an even
higher number (89.8%) rated their physician in the same way though slightly
lower ratings were awarded to hospitals (79.9% being “satisified” or “very
satisfied”).” (Source: “Healthy Canadians: Canadian government report on
comparable health care indicators<http://www.healthcoalition.ca/index-eng.pdf>
“. http://www.healthcoalition.ca/index-eng.pdf.)

I believe the benefits of having universal health care outweigh the costs.
Universal health care is socialized health care and to many Americans that
scares them that the government would be in control. Socialism just does not
go right with the Republicans, but the Democrats lean to the left and are
open to ideas. Obama's plan scares Americans because they feel he will
cripple America's health care when in fact the system is already crippled in
not being able to provide health care to all citizens regardless of one's
income.

Many Americans are buying prescription drugs from Canadian distributors,
either over the Internet or traveling there to buy them in person, because
cost is substantially lower than they would pay in the US. Cross-border
purchasing has been estimated at $1 billion annually.

I believe some government control is better for a country in certain sectors
and not just free enterprise. All you need to look at is what happened with
America's banks (mortgages handed out like free candy). There are thousands
of banks in the US with little to no regulation, and now look at where the
current state of the US economy is in. I'm not being biased about how great
Canada is, but I do believe in some form of socialism. Canada has less than
100 banks that are fully regulated and have been a model to countries around
the world. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, was asked by
journalists from other countries how did Canada's banks stay healthy and
make profits. He responded that government regulation was key to making sure
banks don't take major risks. Canada is in a recession, but not as badly as
many countries around the world.

Thanks for the links and for the other constructive and helpful comments you have made.

Dorian

Agreed. I admitted that the rhetoric from the right is more inflammatory. That seems to be a pattern with the party that is out of power (see the 911 conspiracy theorists on the left when Bush was in power which have similar poll number to the current Birther's movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_opinion_polls…) The party in power wants to look calm and calculating, to give the impression of control and confidence (hows that for some alliteration). The party out of power wants to make it seem like the world is going to end tomorrow (but if it doesn't, vote us into office as soon as possible so we can fix it). So yes, we can expect a different type of rhetoric from both sides, but beneath the rhetoric are the same distortions.

anything else is unconstitutional

Can we assume that President Clinton will be opting into the public option?

sorry in advance, but please stop throwing marshmellows….lol

justmy02cents

I do think though that to some degree, healthcare resources have already been misallocated to senior citizens and end of life care. The problem is though that there is naturally going to be some skewing toward that end of the spectrum when care is most needed- but somehow we need to come to terms with the fact that none of us are immortal and the finite worldly resources can't keep every individual alive as long as we'd necessarily like. I'd rather have the power of govt left out of the calculus for that as much as possible, but the fact is they're already in it because of Medicare and the current cost trajectory is already unsustainable.

Please understand, I am NOT contending that these things were not said…..what I'd like to know is are any of them TRUE or close to TRUE (no parsing of words allowed here…right?)

JustMy02Cents

August 30, 2009 – Former U.S. president Bill Clinton swooped into Toronto yesterday, praising Canadian health care during an hour-long speech to just under 12,000 people.

Although Clinton's talk focused on the growing divide between the world's cities and its rural areas, he acknowledged Kennedy's passing.

“I hope that his lifetime dream, that America will finally follow Canada and every other advanced nation in the world in providing affordable health care to all of our people, will pass.”

Source: http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/canada/2009/08/…

“Among the OECD's 30 members — which include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom — there are only three lacking universal health coverage. The other two happen to be Mexico and Turkey, which have the excuse of being poorer than the rest (and until the onset of the world economic crisis, Mexico was on the way to providing healthcare to all of its citizens). The third, of course, is us.

As the study suggests, our grossly inflated and poorly managed health budget results from a variety of pathologies, including a greater prevalence of obesity and other chronic illness, a powerful pharmaceutical lobby that keeps prices high, and the profit-making imperative of the private insurance companies that still dominate American health policy, more than four decades after we established universal coverage for the elderly and the poor. Looking forward, the OECD advocates many of the same incremental reforms contemplated by the Obama administration.”

Source: http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/3/9/18277/26800

“A single payer system could save $286 billion a year in overhead and paperwork. Administrative costs in the U.S. health care system are substantially higher than those in other countries and than in the public sector in the US: one estimate put the total administrative costs at 24 percent of U.S. health care spending.”

Source: ^ Public Citizen. “Study Shows National Health Insurance Could Save $286 Billion on Health Care Paperwork:” http://www.citizen.org.

^ Reinhardt UE, Hussey PS, Anderson GF (2004). “U.S. health care spending in an international context”. Health Aff (Millwood) 23 (3): 10–25. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.23.3.10. PMID 15160799. http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/fu….

I guess I feel that regardless of the validity of your concerns, if you don't present them “well” (i.e. either rationally factual or calm…I say either because I don't think it's a vice be angry when you are actually being truthful) then you don't deserve to have them addressed. Of course the concern you have is completely valid to debate and you may never trust the government to handle it, but you stated it logically instead of saying that the government was conspiring to kill people. Tone matters.

I guess my problem is more about the people that know better that are spreading this to get people riled up, not so much the people that believe it. I don't see any reason why they should be “allowed” to do this.

It is my FIRM belief that the receipt of healthcare SHOULD NOT DEPEND on POLITICAL CLOUT!

period

finit

c'est sa

A perfect example of where EACH and EVERY ONE of the current crop of reform proposals will lead us to.

One has only to examine where the portion of $787 billion stimulus that have been committed to date have gone….80% as “rewards” to supporters of the current administration.

Did I just hear a chill run down your spine?

the following is from PatriotPost.US Monday 8/31/2009

Please take the time to read it and then understand that this is NOT about healthcare reform, healthcare insurance reform or any other type of reform…..

“read my lips” it is about POWER

TO he central government FROM the citizenry.

“Chicago politics is not about ideology. It is about, 'Who Gets What, When, and How,' to quote the inimitable Harold D. Laswell, one of the outstanding political theorists of the last century. The sine qua non of Chicago politics is power, getting it and keeping it. Everything else is incidental. Even corruption is a byproduct of power and is functional only if it enables you to stay in power. In Chicago politics, you don't make waves, you don't back losers, and you 'don't talk to nobody nobody sent.' Chicago politics is always about hierarchy and centralization. … If you want to understand Obama's health care policy, you need to start where Obama starts. You need to start with Chicago. You need to look at constituent interests. Obama won in 2008 because, among other things, he mobilized the electoral periphery. He mobilized young voters and minority voters, people who traditionally had a lower probability of showing up on Election Day. Chicago politics is about mobilizing the vote. 'Vote early and often' is the city's sardonic refrain. Obama needs his newly socialized base. He needs them to keep coming to the polls. In the vein of Chicago politics, he needs to deliver benefits to them. Unrewarded, the electoral periphery will revert back to apathy. Health care is a reward to this base of people who are on the economic as well as political periphery. … Obama understands that his objective is to provide his base with the spoils of power — in this case insurance. … If all that Obama wanted were to insure those who fall between the cracks, he could put them into the same wonderful program that Congress created for itself by subsidizing their premiums. This would neither require a thousand pages of legislation nor a new series of bureaucracies. But building a new power base resulting from the mobilization of the political and economic periphery requires redefining the nation's health problems as the nation's health catastrophe. Health reform is Chicago politics on a national level.” –University of Cincinnati emeritus professor of political science Abraham Miller

“Power to the People”

JustMy02cents

Short version is that I think we disagree on the value of ridicule. I think that even people making absurdly exaggerated claims really do have some basis for their concerns. Sometimes the concern might be completely unfounded and you can show them why; other times it's a valid concern but being blown out of proportion. I think it's important to try to validate real concerns while separating those from the ones that are completely off the wall. And while we may also disagree about validity of concerns from the right, I do happen to agree with some of the core principles about govt involvement in allocation of health resources. To date, the govt insurance programs haven't rationed much at all with some populations (seniors) due to the political clout of those groups, while they do provide inadequate resources for other groups with less clout (veterans, the disabled, and Native Americans). Adding more groups under the govt umbrella will likely lead to higher and higher expenditures and then turf battles over who gets the highest quality care and who has to give up more- and to some degree senior citizens are probably going to have to give up the most from what they have now (and that's not altogether bad or wrong either, but I don't really trust the decisions to be well made.)

For a supposedly moderate thread, there seems to be a majority of throwbacks to the past 8 years of the Presidential Administration….especially those with BDS…

So while reading through this swapping-spit festival with Dorian, I MUST have overlooked any post that actually examined the substance of the proported satire.

Did I miss it somewhere?

Nevertheless, I digress. For the record, I do not support any of the present healthcare reform proposals.

Each has serious failings and combining the “best” from each still leaves a lot to be desired.

Nowhere has anyone explained the difference between healthcare reform and healthcare insurance reform. It seems that these terms are used interchangeably when they are very different issues.

Let me start with healthcare insurance reform. I'll admit that there are pandemic problems with today's healthcare insurance industry…..some of which may be remedied with minor surgery…(pardon the pun).

For example:
allow insruance to travel with an employee across state lines

make insurance ala carte….I DO NOT NEED TO PAY FOR MATERNITY COVERAGE…those days are over for me…there are many other mandatory coverages that I will NEVER NEED yet I STILL MUST PAY FOR THEM

eliminate the odious “pre-existing condition” and force the insurers to add all insured to the pool of covered participants.

Eliminate “waiting periods”

OK now it is YOUR turn to be a moderate voice and suggest some additional changes that will save money and improve coverage….instead of slobbering over Dorian's sad attempt at satire.

Regarding eligibility for private coverage, I believe that coverage should only be available to:
legally employed
unemployed US Citizens
unempoyed Legal Residents
(oops there goes the new voting block the left was counting on)

By no means do I think that this is anything more than a small start at a reasonable approach to reform

Just My $0.02

We often have a short term vision for health care and not a long term. If the government and private sector started encouraging people to exercise, it saves the health care system millions of dollars in the long run: less hospital visits, and paying for medication. In Vancouver, exercise and eating right is promoted everywhere. The City of Vancouver recently closed one lane of Burrard Street Bridge for cyclists only to encourage people to bike to work. The university I work at has recently changed all their vending machines to healthy snacks and removed all junk food.

Dorian