Canadians? Britians?

see below post

 

That is a very good post

 

Terriffic post Ps.

The government does not do much of anything very well. Interstate Highway systems, and national security are arenas that they do OK in. Any job that requires them to deal with the public is universally disastrous. If vast sums of money are involved, as will happen in universal health care, vast sums of money will be wasted. It is what government does. It is not fixable, and it is not changeable.

Big government is like Jobba the Hutt, taking in vast oceans of money and distributing it back out to those that keep them in power, while getting fatter.

It is this huge bureaucracy that is telling us that the health care system is ill and needs a huge green back poultice to fix it. Hillary knows that once the fed gets this segment of the peoples trust, she/they, the liberals will never again lose power.

It will result in bureaucrats deciding your health care, instead of doctors.

 

Canadian here who is going to go Australia to study medicine.

Here is an excellent article I found in my research of health care systems a while back.

Commonwealth Fund: Comparison of Health Care System Views and Experiences in Five Nations, 2001

Click on the pdf link on the right side of the page for the article brief. It compared patient experiences in Canada, US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Definitely wait times were longer outside the US. However, health and satisfication with health care within the US was strongly linked to income.

I would agree that some of the best health care facilities and practicioners in the world are in the US. Which makes it sad that the US is also among the most unhealthy populations in the world.

 

The irony is, the US pays far more for health care than any nation with a national health care system.

We're getting less heathcare, for more money. That's pretty much the definition of a broken system.

Can't go on the way it is. Either we decide to let people die in the street when they can't afford care, or something has to be done to bring it down to levels found in the rest of the world.

 

University of Maine: Bureau of Labor Education: Publications

On the right side of the page is an article from the summer of 2001 entitled:

The U.S. Healthcare System: Best in the World, or Just the Most Expensive? (pdf)[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[/FONT]This paper summarized the cost of health care and population health of 14 developed countries:

US
Switzerland
Norway
Germany
Canada
Luxembourg
Denmark
France
Australia
Japan
Italy
Sweden
Finland
U.K.

 

I believe part of the reason, if your assertion is correct is:
The decision to nationalize health care was envisioned years ago, because the political implications are huge and undeniable. So, lawyers were dispatched to cause as much damage as possible to the finest HC system on planet earth. They sued Drs for malpractice, demanding far more rigorous investigation and treatments. They sued pharma's for every conceivable reason. They sued HC systems and generally left the nation with a hopeless outlook and the idea that something must be done. And here come the Democrats, patting their lawyers on the back and assuring America that they have all the answers. We let them know (election 2006) in no uncertain terms that they've been right all along and we can't wait for them to save us from our terrible system.

 

Its all a vast left-wing conspiracy, right? This is ridiculous, but something I have learned to expect from you hilly!

 

So the overall health and mortality of the people served is a bad indicator of how good the healthcare system is? I don't buy that.

 

Is this some more of that "Compassionate Conservatism" I've heard about?

 

It's my one concern about a national healthcare system. Obvously, almost every first-world country in the world does better than we do. Better results at much lower costs.

My concern is that our government seems unusually incompetent at doing anything constructive. If I could be sure we could do as well as Canada, I'd say go for it.

But I'm not sure we can. Something has to happen, but I question whether or not national health care would work for us.

 

If Americans would voluntarily accept standards of living to include fewer driven miles, less convenience, less personal living space, etc... then they could pay for their own health insurance.

One car payment (w/associated taxes and insurance), internet, and cable... would come close to covering the full costs of a private plan.

A vote for socialized medicine is a vote to reduce the American standard of living... including the poor but excluding the rich.

Where would we get to go when we wanted/needed a procedure that had too long of a waiting list or was not approved?

There is only one solution. Personal control and responsibility. It works each and every time it is tried.

 

Classic.

Your idea about making insurance individual rather than employer based is dead on btw.

Who would ever agree that they should get their car insurance through their employer so that costs could be distributed between good drivers and poor drivers? No one... because it is just as ridiculous as having people with bad lifestyle habits drive up costs for everyone else because they are hidden from the market realities.