Posted on 07/30/2007 1:32:54 PM PDT by neverdem
If this trend continues, Canada will evolve into a two-tier system, where uninsured individuals rely on the Government for care, and are subjected to all the indignities and wait times, and insured individuals recieve prompt and competent care through a private network. This is pretty much the situation we have in the United States today. The uninsured and indigent in this country recieve care in ERs and government-run clinics, but the insured majority receives a much higher level of care at private hospitals.
But the same political pressures that are driving the US toward socialized health care will inevitably drag any private insurance back into the muck of the government operation in Canada. There will be a demand that the system be "fair" to all, regarless of whether they pay or don't pay. Politicians will exploit jealosy in order to demand everyone get access to the highest level of care, and the Golden Goose will be slain anew.
In Canada, access to the system is based on your ability to survive. If you can survive the wait times, you will get the care.
I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that an uninsured person who walks into any hospital in the US will be treated about as well as any Canadian who walks into a Canadian hospital. US hospitals cannot turn anyone away, by law.
Of course, this is an inefficient way to deliver healthcare to poor people. A mandatory private insurance program, like the one recently implemented in MA, may be an improvement over the existing system, but we'll have to wait and see. Some people just won't buy insurance, even if the gov't is picking up, or greatly subsidizing, the cost.
I have relatives in the UK, and this is the way it's been there for as long as I can remember. The government simply can't stamp out fee-for-service transactions. They'll either be done on the books or off the books.
“But if Canadians are looking to the United States for the care they need, Americans, ironically, are increasingly looking north for a viable health-care model. There’s no question that American health care, a mixture of private insurance and public programs, is a mess.”
This is true.
And yet, on any given day, the American system usually provides world-leading care.
Let’s not throw away our world-leading medical care in our efforts to fix the mess of how we provide that care.
“On balance Canadians live longer, but there are no guarantees on any individual situation.”
If you read the article, you will learn that if one excludes mortality from non-health care related causes, such as homicide and auto accidents, that Americans outlive Canadians and Western Europeans.
sitetest
I recently broke my leg in Cheyenne Wy and had care there and in Twinfalls ID.
I needed future care while traveling. Both the WY and ID doctors told me to arrange my travels to avoid needing the checkup in Canada.
I heard about a Canadian man on the radio yesterday, who had to come to the U.S. for surgery, etc., and it ended up costing him $43,000.
Ain’t “free” healthcare grand, and doesn’t everyone “deserve” “free” health insurance, as the libs like to say.
Nobody deserves THIS kind of healthcare.
Remember folks, universal healthcare = socialized medicine.
“Oddly enough my Doctor has suggested a treatment that is only available in Canada and Europe.”
But they would still have that treatment even if they didn’t have socialized medicine.
And we have treatments that they don’t have, and the best doctors in the world, on the whole.
It would be bad enough if national healthcare merely offered patients low-quality treatment. Even worse, Ridenour finds, it kills them.
Breast cancer is fatal to 25 percent of its American victims. In Great Britain and New Zealand, both socialized-medicine havens, breast cancer kills 46 percent of women it strikes.
Prostate cancer proves fatal to 19 percent of its American sufferers. In single-payer Canada, the National Center for Policy Analysis reports, this ailment kills 25 percent of such men and eradicates 57 percent of their British counterparts.
After major surgery, a 2003 British study found, 2.5 percent of American patients died in hospital versus nearly 10 percent of similar Britons. Seriously ill US hospital patients die at one-seventh the pace of those in the U.K.
“In usual circumstances, people over age 75 should not be accepted” for treatment of end-state renal failure, according to New Zealand’s official guidelines. Unfortunately, for older Kiwis, government controls kidney dialysis.
According to a Populus survey, 98 percent of Britons want to reduce the time between diagnosis and treatment. Unlike America’s imperfect but more market-driven healthcare industry, nationalized systems usually divide patients and caregivers. In America, patients and doctors often make medical decisions and thus demand the best-available diagnostic tools, procedures, and drugs. Affordability obviously plays its part, but the fact that most Americans either pay for themselves or carry various levels of insurance guarantees a market whose profits reward medical innovators.
Under socialized medicine, public officials administer a single budget and usually ration care among a population whose sole choice is to take whatever therapies the state monopoly provides.
Under socialized medicine, public officials administer a single budget and usually RATION (emphasis mine) care among a population whose sole choice is to take whatever therapies the state monopoly provides.
excerpt; http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16494
Thanks Neverdem.
Thanks for posting.
In my view, the chief reason American health care is so costly is not drug R&D, but out of control tort lawyers.
In Canada, our chief problem is out of control public sector unions.
If you exclude mortality from auto accidents and homicides on both sides, Canadians still live longer on average. If you only exclude Americans who die in auto accidents and homicides but not Canadians, the comparison isn’t equal but then those stats would show Americans living longer.
“If you exclude mortality from auto accidents and homicides on both sides, Canadians still live longer on average.”
My reading of the article is that isn’t what it says.
However, auto accidents and homicides are only two sources of mortality that aren’t especially related to the quality of medical care.
Other factors include genetics, diet, proclivity to exercise or otherwise healthy living, rates of drug and alcohol addiction, to name a few. Just the US's obesity epidemic (mostly caused by a strange disease known as "too-much-eating-not-enough-exercising-itis," and not principally tied to medical care) likely accounts for most or all differences in longevity. I understand many Western Europeans, at least, are catching up to this in this category. It will be interesting to look at longevity changes should Western Europeans get as fat as we Americans.
It hardly seems a solid foundation to attribute a difference in longevity of two years primarily to the quality of medical care. In that many other factors come into play in causing differences in longevity, measuring the quality of health care by looking at relatively-small differences in longevity seems weak at best.
On the other hand, research that shows actual outcomes for specific serious health issues seems to get nearer to the question. Thus, this sort of thing seems more pertinent:
“And if we measure a health-care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50 percent; the European rate is just 35 percent. Esophageal carcinoma: 12 percent in the United States, 6 percent in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2 percent here, yet 61.7 percent in France and down to 44.3 percent in England—a striking variation.”
Or the statistic provided by Sun in post 50, one of which shows that if you’re going to get prostate cancer, it’s better to do it in the US than in Canada. In that a high percentage of older men eventually develop prostate cancer, that’s a big one for me as I get into my late 40s and start heading for 50.
Too many of my own family live today because of early, aggressive medical intervention. I'd be loathe to live somewhere where someone I loved, or I, myself, had to wait months or more for life-saving care.
sitetest
Having the best doctors in the world does me no good if they don't have access to a treatment that's been in use elsewhere for 10 years.
Don’t get mislead by my half-hearted defence of the Canadian system. It works for some people, but I know if I get in a situation where I need treatment and time is of the essence, I’m hopping on a plane to somewhere where I can get treated properly and quickly.
I understand.
“Having the best doctors in the world does me no good if they don’t have access to a treatment that’s been in use elsewhere for 10 years.”
Is the FDA the problem? Sometimes they push through meds, etc. that kill people, and hold up meds, and other treatments that help people. I’m not a huge fan of the FDA.
But, anyway, this has nothing to do with socialized medicine, but it is an interesting and important aside.
“I’d be loathe to live somewhere where someone I loved, or I, myself, had to wait months or more for life-saving care.”
I listen to a Canadian radio station and hear stories about how people would have died if they didn’t come to the U.S. and pay for their health treatments themselves.
But Germany has a far more restrictive tort system than the United States. The tort system in America drives up insurance premiums because doctors and equipment suppliers charge higher fees that in turn are paid to their own liability insurance schemes against torts.
If you take this out of account, I doubt you are really having better end of the deal in your country. If you are interested I can point you to some articles on Deutsche Welle about the troubled German healthcare system.
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