Posted on 11/24/2004 8:34:45 AM PST by quidnunc
What's the defining characteristic of a government health service? It's one word, a word that, in its medical context, doesn't exist south of the border — "waiting," as in "waiting list," "waiting times," waiting, waiting, waiting.
I was sick over the summer and, down in New Hampshire, I went to see the local doctor, who referred me to a specialist. Let's just run through that manoeuvre again, in case it happened too quickly for those accustomed to Quebec levels of treatment: I saw the GP on Tuesday, got referred, saw the specialist Thursday. As is often the case in the U.S., the doctor was Canadian, and indeed came from a long line of Canadian doctors — both his parents practise in Ottawa. Making idle chitchat as his fingers felt his way around my fleshly delights, he explained that "waiting" is built into the concept of a government health service: "If you need surgery," he said, "it's in my interest to get you in and operated on as soon as possible, because that's money for me. The faster it happens, the better my cash flow. But when the government runs the system, every time you get operated on it costs the government money. So it's in their interest to restrict or delay your access. When you look at the overall budgets — salaries, buildings — it's not hard to understand that the level of service you provide to the patient is one of your few discretionary costs. So the incentive is to reduce that."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at westernstandard.ca ...
What's the problem 'o Canada? I'm sure your elected and appointed leaders get immediate appointments, convienient times for treatments, and whatever medical treatments they happen to need when they need them. I am also sure that the evil rich people among you also receive the best care available. All you lower class people will just have to wait.
Who cares if some of you little people die while waiting for an operation or if you are in pain because you are unable to access the healthcare system in a timely manner? The point is that your betters in government and business are doing ok. That is what you vote for year after year and you are getting what you have chosen to get. There are only so many government teats to go around and you are not on the list today.
Socialism for you, capitalism for them.
One of the interesting things about the browser Firefox (instead of Internet Explorer) is that it has an "extension" that makes it a lot easier.
The BugMeNot "extension" provides the following function. Just right click anywhere on the excerpt, and it opens a window with the username and password from BugMeNot. This is really really cool.
Holy Kamolie! Just great, so it's easy to not treat patients just by putting them on pain-killers or other drugs, while delaying actual treatment. Dear goodness, socialized medicine can't be allowed to happen in America.
Steyn as usual makes some good points, but yours are as valid. As someone who has worked in the healthcare system in this country for years I can guarantee you that any managed care system is all about denial of service, as much as they can get away with, in any case. The overhead administrative costs are also way out of line. I'm not a big fan of Canadian medicine, as it claimed an early death for both of my parents, but we can't pretend that we have a system that is working much better for many people in our society. Just spend some time in an inner-city hospital, and see what happens to people who cannot afford routine, preventive healthcare. Believe me, when they are diagnosed with advanced disease that could have been prevented if caught earlier on, someone pays, and it's us, in the form of higher taxes, higher healthcare premiums, and welfare for the family members deprived of their breadwinners. In the long run it costs us all more money to have these people uninsured. There has to be an answer somewhere between managed-for-profit care and the Canadian abyss. It is disingenuous to focus only on the worst of socialized medicine.
As we read in the article, Mark Steyn mentioned that he sought treatment for a medical problem this summer. Perhaps the problem is on-going. Hopefully, it will be resolved with a good outcome since he is not dependent on socialized medicine in New Hampshire.
If it is, does society owe you a car, too? Where does this end?
Is it the government's job to provide things to the people or is it the individual's duty to provide for himself? That is the defining question between liberals and conservatives, and I already know how you'd answer.
Your "share-the-misery" socialism has never been all that popular in the US. Since the poor have to wait (according to you) in either system, would not the system that serves the "non-poor" better be the preferred method?
Yeah, I'm thinking of going firefox. What I really need, though, is a nice LITTLE browser for my old computer at the beach cottage, which has little RAM and no way of putting more in without a new board. I'm running Netscape 3.x (!)right now, but.....Any suggestions?
Thx
Thank you.
Is Mark Steyn back from vacation? Perhaps he couldn't resist needling Paul Martin and getting in his digs at Carolyn Parrish... We'll find out soon enough if he's proposing new bars to be sung to O Canada. ;-)
That's society's choice.
I already know how you'd answer
No you don't.
I'm on the hospital board in a small, rural, isolated, very Republican county. You'd be surprised at how peoples' beliefs change when its the lives of their friends and relatives which are on the line.
It's not mine and you assume you know where my sympathies lie.
(according to you)
Visit big city hospital rooms in poor areas instead of making snide remarks.
would not the system that serves the "non-poor" better be the preferred method?
That depends on the details of each system. In Canada one poster claims that health care is not mediocre but terrible. My German and French friends tell me that the poor receive much better health care there than they do in our country.
and - increasingly - none at all to the many who can't. Hospitals cannot turn away patients even if they can't.. or won't...pay.
Feeling a little out of sorts since November 2? There's help available (though I don't know if the government will pay for it). BTW, my wife worked for several years at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Perhaps conservatives are not quite as ignorant as you seem to imagine.
My sympathies to the Canadians for their health system.
They can if they close...and that's what's happening all across the country.
I don't spend time on such foolish generalities. I was replying to you - not conservatives.
There is. But it depends on getting the government totally and completely out of the health care business.
With a pining regret, I recall when I started my first business -- in 1965. Comprehensive small business employee health care was available from Blue Cross/Blue Shield for the princely sum of $28/month -- $50 deductible, without spousal or pregnancy benefits (which were an additional $12 and $6/month, respectively, as I recall).
Consequently, it was no problem to fund health care for one's employees. And we offered the spousal and pregnancy benefits at the employee's expense as options, so that our cost per employee was the same for everybody.
Soon thereafter, the Johnson administration invented Medicare and Medicaid and began to regulate the health care industry -- encouraging, in their wisdom, the training of specialists and discouraging the training of GPs. Costs began a steady escalation, until they started becoming disproportionate and unbearable in the late eighties.
About ten years ago, around the time of Hillarycare, one of LBJ's staff admitted that the whole program had been "a tremendous mistake", which had distorted the market and raised costs across the board.
Nice of him to do so. But it was a little late...
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