A simple way to look at the healthcare issue

Jennifer - you make some valid points and some points that are simply not relevant. Socialized medicine is not the answer, but I completely recognize that there is a problem. Tiffany also makes a valid point. In fact there is a hybrid system in the UK. Just about everybody with a middle management level job and above has private medical insurance to back up the National Health Service. What this actually does is encourage a private system where you get the same doctors you would get in the public system, but quicker. The effect is that lines for important procedures (hip replacements, knee surgery, back surgery - non life threatening, but extremely painful conditions) grow because the doctors are busy making real money in the private sector while taking government money in the public sector. In other words (and this happened to me so I know what I'm talking about) you go and see your general doctor; he/she then sends you to see the national health service doctor for surgery or other important proceedures (therefore taking up appointment time); That doctor tells you that you need surgery and the wait time is currently nine months - BUT, he will then say "do you have private coverage?" If you answer "yes" to that question, you are seen the next day (taking u proceedure time). I believe the solution is with getting a lot more people into the private system and to do this I think two things need to happen.

1. Make contributions tax returnable.

2. Allow people to get coverage anywhere in the United States.

This will increase competition (always a way to bring prices down) and with you being able to claim your premiums against tax, many more people will be paying into the system - again, forcing a downward pressure on prices as the companies compete for all that new business.

Once you have done that, the safety net should also be available because no one should die simply because they cannot afford to live.

Real solutions are what is required, not political rhetoric.

It's easy - premiums are not tax returnable and you can only shop for coverage from a supplier who is registered with your State. Socialized medicine is a system where the Government is in charge. The Government will set targets (I hope you saw my blog on ambulances in holding patterns to see where that leads) and Government administers the system. THAT is socialized medicine. But hang on a minute. What else is out there that is essential? Power? Maybe we should socialize the oil companies? How about food? Maybe we should socialize the farms? How about agro-chemicals which help us produce more food? Maybe we should socialize them too? What about the druge companies? They certainly need socializing.

This is the problem Jennifer - you ignored every single point I made. Every one! And yet you are OK with this as long as we have free healthcare for all - paid for by the wealthy of course.

It's actually sad Jennifer. I didn't and indeed do not, hate England. I have merely lived with what you wish us to have. It doesn't work. The system is broken because Governments are not set up to run a country, much less anything else.

The points you ignored from me were about other essentials. You ignroed them all.

Finally, the rich pay way more than everyone else already. My point is you want them to pay more so that Government can waste their money. Please go back and see what the Founders envisaged because this a long way from that.

The top 5% of income earners in this country are paying 50% of the taxes - even though they are only earning 19% of the income. I know you can't be happy with that and yet you want more from them.

I'd love to see a change.  I lived in Canada for a few years and thought it was wonderful that everyone had healthcare.  They seem to have less worries than we do here in America when it comes to health.  I didn't run across anyone who had anything negative to say about the National Program.

The only negative I heard was that it took several years for everyone to adjust to the change.

 

 

The following is from the Toronto Sun. Any use of bold is mine. I have nothing to add.

ARTICLE SOURCE LINK

Shorter lines, more doctors, high-flying loonie has Canadians flocking south

By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD, TORONTO SUN

A soaring loonie isn't just good news for cross-border shoppers looking for a good deal on running shoes and plasma televisions.

Suddenly private health care in the U.S. is 30% more affordable.

American clinics have always been an option for patients in this province who want speedier access to health care than our one-tier public system can offer. What's more, this province has a doctor shortage. The U.S. does not.

Joanne Thompson knows all too well the heartache that happens when a loved one needs care in this province -- and can't get it.

Thompson, city editor at the Sault Ste. Marie Star, needed to find an MRI in May for her sister, Jennifer Abbott. A partial paraplegic, Abbott was fearful of the enclosed type of MRI machine, but the wait for a test on an open MRI in the border city was three to five months -- far too long for the neurological condition she suffers from.

So Thompson checked the ads and found a clinic across the border in Michigan that offered same day service for an open MRI -- two hours away.

"Her condition was such that we were too worried to wait any longer," Thompson said in a telephone interview.

"We were able to get an appointment the next day. To me that was unbelievable," she said. And she didn't mind paying a few hundred bucks out of pocket.

"When you can get an MRI within a day, it's worth a few bucks," she said.

Of course, Canadians have shopped for health care in the U.S. for decades. What's new is now it's 30% cheaper.

Windsor family physician Dr. Albert Schumacher is a consultant for the Detroit Medical Centre (DMC). Associated with Wayne State University, DMC is the largest group of teaching hospitals in Michigan. It has nine hospitals three miles from the border. He worries that Canadians seeking care in the U.S. may be attracted by cut-rate clinics. Schumacher's been working with DMC to provide quality care at affordable rates for cross-border health care shoppers.

"You have a lot of peripheral and suburban places not affiliated with brand name institutions that are doing a lot of stuff," he says. Prices for MRIs, colonoscopies etc., at quality institutions in the U.S., are higher than those in Canada. An MRI can cost as much as $1,800. He's working to get Canadians what he calls the "Montreal price." If patients in this province are, in effect, bulk buying from DMC, then they get a better price than a one-off patient from, say, the Middle East would.

Bariatric surgery -- stomach stapling -- is another procedure that is popular with cross-border health shoppers, since there's a shortage of service here.

It's hard to get an accurate count of just how many Ontarians are looking south for treatment, because there's a reluctance to talk about it, Schumacher says.

"There is a huge politics of resentment in this country. If somebody can get care somewhere else, many people are resentful of that, so therefore they don't talk about it," he said.

"If the airline industry was like health care, we wouldn't have first class in Air Canada, because people wouldn't want that to happen. They get very resentful about that," says Schumacher, who is a former head of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Ontario Medical Association (OMA).

This province just doesn't have the medical staff or the resources to provide the same level of care as the U.S.

Essex County, where Schumacher practises, with a population of 400,000, until recently had only two CT scanners and one MRI machine. They just got a second MRI. Across the border in Port Huron, Mich., population 12,000, they had four MRI machines 10 years ago, Schumacher says.

He points out that despite the new satellite medical school in Windsor, the 2,400 doctors that will be enrolled starting in 2010 will still only give the country 80% of self-sufficiency for doctors.

"The simple math is for every five of me practising here, Western Europe has six and we are only training four to replace us, so the crisis gets worse on a daily basis," he says.

The OMA estimates this province is short more than 2,000 physicians -- all just numbers and statistics for politicians, perhaps. But for Joanne Thompson and her sister, these figures add up to one thing: Prolonged suffering. And the cure? A passport -- and shopping trip.

I don't have health insurance. I personally do not feel the need for it, I have not been to a doctor in 20 years, I don't get sick, and I don't get hurt to the point I need to see a doctor, so I don't waste my money... hopefully they will figure something decent out when I am older and might actually need it.

Hi Terry,

I don't think the country would go for National Health care, but a National Health Insurance plan for those who aren't covered would make a lot of sense and it could be done.

We almost need a taxpayer revolt on some issues.

All the best!

 

Terry- Government doesn't even work for themselves, they work for big business. Plain and simple we have no say in what goes on in the government unless we are BIG BUSINESS controlling their every move like puppetteers.