Free Republic

Bus travelers bring the reality of rationed health care and price-controlled drugs over the border Another one rides the bus A week before Independence Day, 37-year-old Debbie Thomas(1) found herself on a bus headed over the border to seek medications. This was not, however, one of the highly publicized stories of Americans going to Canada to buy cut-rate prescriptions. This bus was headed the other way, from New Brunswick to Bangor, Maine, USA, and all 20 passengers were Canadians. A man suffering chest pain sought an echocardiogram, a procedure his Canadian doctor deemed necessary but couldn’t deliver until nearly four...

The Wonders of Socialized Medicine, the Horrors of British Teeth We have to salute the New York Times, for a change. Though it frequently agitates for the feds to impose socialized medicine on Americans, it is honest enough to expose the nightmare of the United Kingdom's government health system. In one of the funniest episodes of "The Simpsons," a deranged dentist terrifies children into brushing and flossing by forcing them to page through a ghastly "Big Book of British Smiles." Americans have long wondered why our English friends have such horrible teeth. Even the likes of Tony Blair and Prince...

The Washington Post ran a front-page story the other day about the "health gap" between Eastern and Western Europe. "As Hungary and nine other countries prepare to join the European Union next May, the bloc's leaders are paying much attention to closing the ‘wealth gap' between the low-income, former communist East and the affluent West. But little has been said about the equally wide ‘health gap.' ... Hungary ranked first in the world for the rate of cancer deaths among men and women in 2000, according to the American Cancer Society. For men, the other Eastern European countries held the...

Nearly 9,000 doctors, including two former U.S. surgeons general and a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, have signed on to a drive to create a Canadian-style national health insurance system. A group of top doctors led by Chicago doctor Dr. Quentin Young, a longtime advocate of national health insurance, drafted a proposal published in today's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the country's top medical journals. They are reigniting a decadelong battle and opposition remains intense. Despite publishing the article, the American Medical Association is opposed to universal health care and...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly 8,000 U.S. physicians are calling for government-financed national health insurance, which they say would cover every American while saving billions of dollars.</p> <p>Ten years after President Clinton's national health plan died in Congress, tangled in complexity and under fierce assault from the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the doctors argue that private sector solutions have failed.</p>

SEATTLE - All of us want extra attention from our doctors, we want to get in to see them quicker, and we'd love more one-on-one time when we're sick. Now, you can get that -- if you pay a special fee. But now, the state is trying to figure out if that fee is legal. Insurance paid for Meg Clara's major back surgery. But she pays extra to get extra attention from her doctor. A monthly $25 access fee on top of her insurance premiums buys her extra perks. "Longer appointments, more timely appointments, providing emergency care on site when...

WASHINGTON -- Aug-12 -- (CongressDaily) A government-funded, privately administered health insurance program that would cover all Americans is the only system that can constrain healthcare costs while expanding coverage, a group of physicians said today. In an article to be published in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, 7,782 physicians are proposing replacing the current privately funded healthcare system with a "single payer" structure in which the government would provide universal health insurance, a model used in many other countries where per capita health spending is much lower than in the United States. The plan would...

Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) recently became the first presidential candidate in U.S. history to propose solving the problem of the uninsured by making health insurance mandatory. Although his proposed health-care mandate is limited to children and young people, all under age 21, it offers the most promising way forward for eventually covering all 41 million uninsured Americans, and it marks a major turning point in our nation's health-care debate. The United States spends more on health care per capita than any other nation, yet one in seven of our citizens, and 12 million children, still lack basic health insurance. There...

Comments Spark Debate on Fairness Between Generations The head of the youth group of Germany's Christian Democrats has sparked a controversial debate on aging, the country’s cash-strapped social security system and whether it can afford hip replacements for pensioners. Never before has a 23 year-old caused such a commotion in German politics. Germany's social system is "not responsible for making every senior citizen fit for a pensioner's adventure holiday," said Philipp Missfelder, head of the conservative opposition’s youth outfit the Junge Union. The up-and-coming politician told the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel earlier this week that senior citizens over the age of...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Report says higher premiums force more plan revisions As health care costs skyrocket and the economy lags, employers are shifting more of the burden to workers, requiring them to pay higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments while wages remain stagnant. One-third of companies responding to a local business survey said they substantially revised employee health care benefits as a result of increasing premiums in the past year. Nearly 70 percent said the probability was "somewhat likely" to "very likely" that they would substantially revise their coverage plan as premiums continue to rise....

Should the federal government require all Americans to buy private health insurance? This intriguing proposal is being pushed by the New America Foundation, a liberal policy shop in Washington, D.C. "Universal coverage in exchange for universal responsibility," is how the NAF characterizes it. Before rejecting the proposal out of hand, stop and consider that it may be a second-best alternative for relieving the growing political pressure to create some sort of nationalized single-payer health care system modeled on the nearly bankrupt and increasingly shabby health care schemes in Canada and Western Europe. Make no mistake about it—private health care is...

<p>Some conservative lawmakers say they expect support for the Medicare prescription drug legislation currently in House-Senate conference will crumble over the August recess, allowing them to push key changes when Congress returns in the fall.</p> <p>"It is my fondest hope that the American people will let their elected representatives know what they think of a massive new entitlement," said Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican who voted against the House Medicare prescription drug bill.</p>

Patients left as doctors push trolleys Hospitals 'waste night staff time on menial jobs' Jo Revill, health editor Sunday August 3, 2003 The Observer Hard-pressed hospital doctors working at night have to waste up to a third of their time answering bleepers unnecessarily, hunting down missing x-rays and pushing patients on trolleys, a major new survey reveals. The Department of Health and the British Medical Association are astonished by the results of the first authoritative survey on the issue, which shows enormous mismanagement of junior medics' hours, even as the NHS is recruiting abroad to fill a staff shortage. Instead...

As the issue of prescription-drug pricing heats up south of the border, two questions come to mind. First, why should U.S. patients pay exorbitant prices for their medicines while heath-care systems in other developed countries — Canada most notably — get their medications at cut-rate prices, and thereby avoid paying their fair share of drug R&D costs? Second, why would U.S. drug companies continue to ship us their pills, capsules and serums if those products are then being "reimported" right back into the United States at the same low prices? The short answers are: They shouldn't and they won't. As...

In late June, the Business Roundtable enthusiastically endorsed the plan to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Normally, you'd think that the white-hot center of the industrial establishment would oppose the creation of an open-ended entitlement that will cost at least $400 billion over 10 years. After all, big business has historically cried "Socialism!" when Congress enacted safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicaid. But these days self-interest trumps ideology. Many large employers would love to dump the burden of buying drugs for their retirees onto the federal government. (A study by the Congressional Budget Office determined...

Rhonda Pickering's 13-year-old daughter needs six teeth pulled to make way for braces. The substitute teacher was planning to tap her Florida Healthy Kids low-cost insurance to pay for the extractions and orthodontia. But during a recent visit to the dentist, she discovered that state legislators had capped dental benefits to help slash the state budget. Now, only $750 of dental work is covered annually, which rarely covers more than cleanings, X-rays and fillings. "Talk about a slap in the face," the Orlando woman said. "I was happy to get this kind of coverage, and then you yank it away."...

Jul. 27, 2003 Health care system shake-up More fees for patients and reduced services - with more changes likely to follow By Kristina Merkner It's a rare case in German politics: Even before it reached parliament, all the parties have signaled support for an agreement struck between the government and the opposition on how to reform Germany's public health care system. Maybe the incentive to stick together was to have someone to share the blame with: The 92 percent of the population that belongs to the public health funds, or Krankenkassen, now face reduced services and, in case of illness,...

Fiscal Situation Causes States to Reconsider Medicaid Services 7/24/03 9:23:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National and State desks Contact: Gene Rose of the National Conference of State Legislatures, 415-905-1020 (until July 25) or 303-856-1518; Web: http://www.ncsl.org SAN FRANCISCO, July 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- At a time when the faltering economy is adding to the ranks of the needy, in some states you'll have to be poorer in 2004 to qualify for Medicaid than you did two years ago. Cash-strapped states are struggling to cover as many people and services with this program as they did in the 1990s. A new...

CANADIANS HEAD TO MAINE FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT Normally when you hear about bus trips between Maine and Canada related to health care, it's Mainers going north to buy prescription drugs. But right about now, a group of Canadians is in Bangor for treatment. Twelve Canadians came south for a similar trip last year. The trip from New Brunswick is sponsored by a Canadian consumer group which says Canada's universal health care system restricts many forms of treatment for Canadians, and forces long waits for tests and procedures such as m-r-i's. The Canadians will be treated in Bangor this afternoon,...

Apparently, buses filled with people looking for prescription drugs run not only to Canada, but run in the opposite direction. That will become clear Thursday, when a bus with about 15 people will leave St. John, New Brunswick, headed for drugstores and doctors' offices in Bangor. Most of the attention is focused on buses running the other way, filled with people who say price-controlled drugs in Canada are much less expensive than the same medications in the United States. Thursday's trip is being organized by Consumer Advocare Network in Toronto, which has been pushing for reform of Canada's single-payer health-care...