The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care (& Other Refs), page 1

The following list of refs are in behalf of a discussion of so called UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.

It seems like 98% of the comments hereon are blindly, blithely, uncritically, unthinkingly in behalf of socialism (plus the intense social monitoring a la Shrillery Kllintoon's system) and socialist medical care.

This is to present the other side . . . in the interest of DENYING IGNORANCE.

A number of articles are excerpted below. I hope readers convinced they know enough to pontificate on the topic will at least read 3 or more of the referenced articles before and instead of BLATHERING IGNORANCE.

Cheers

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From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.city-journal.org...

Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.

. . .

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. I don’t want to overstate my case: growing up in Canada, I didn’t spend much time contemplating the nuances of health economics. I wanted to get into medical school—my mind brimmed with statistics on MCAT scores and admissions rates, not health spending. But as a Canadian, I had soaked up three things from my environment: a love of ice hockey; an ability to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit in my head; and the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people. When HillaryCare shook Washington, I remember thinking that the Clintonistas were right.

. . .

Nor were the problems I identified unique to Canada—they characterized all government-run health-care systems. Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled—48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. A while back, I toured a public hospital in Washington, D.C., with Tim Evans, a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe. The hospital was dark and dingy, but Evans observed that it was cleaner than anything in his native England. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave—when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity—15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available. And so on.

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The following one is from:

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.worldnetdaily.com...


The Beginning Of The End Of Socialist Health Care? (Alberta's Private Health Care Heresy Alert)

This would end in Alberta the utopian socialist vision that inspired the institution of state medicine in Canada four decades ago, wherein rich and poor alike were to get the same level of care. But it was a vision increasingly belied by reality, because the rich could acquire the best care simply by traveling to the United States.

This they have been doing in ever larger numbers because waiting times for surgical and other specialist services in Canada can run to as much as two years, and people sometimes die waiting for them. One of the central causes for this was the exodus of doctors to the U.S. where their income would wildly exceed what they could earn in Canada.

. . .

Two factors, however, will ease to a degree his discomfort. One is the fact that Quebec, too, is establishing a somewhat more modest private medical system, so Harper must deal with two renegade provinces, not just his own. But Quebec's plan differs substantially from Alberta's. For instance, where Quebec doctors would have to choose whether to work in the private system or the state system, Alberta doctors would be encouraged to work in both, in fact be required to devote a proportion of their time to delivering services under the state system.

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Report Slams Universal Health Care Plan

From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.madison.com.../tct/2007/01/09/0701090335.php

A study by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute also said revenues needed to run the plan would not increase as quickly as health care costs, leading to pressure to approve tax increases, benefit cuts and lower reimbursement rates for providers.

Thiensville-based WPRI, whose board includes aides to former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson, warns in its study that a higher payroll tax than initially proposed - as much as 17 percent - would be needed to fully fund the plan.

It also warns that many employees, especially those in the public sector with generous benefits, would see a cut in their coverage, and many companies would be forced to spend more for health care than they do today.

Additional article excerpts to follow . . .

Additional articles:

NOTE: I include the FR link because the articles tend to be easier to read in their format. The original link is usually provided second.

Government Health Care a Universal Failure

From:

In this case, the full article is available only at the 2nd link

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.goldwaterinstitute.org...

According to 2004 survey only 22 percent of Spaniards think their universal care system offers “satisfactory” service. It is certainly unsatisfactory that citizens there have to wait months for a simple test like an MRI. In England, patients must wait nearly a year for hip and knee replacements.

In Spain everyone pays taxes for the universal health care system. There is, however, a select group of people who get to choose. Central government civil servants can opt-out of the public system and have the government pay for their private insurance. 91 percent of civil servants choose private insurance. That is quite an endorsement of the free market’s ability to meet consumers needs better than socialized medicine.

Actually, the above is a very short article.

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A Deficient Monopoly (Canadian health-care — nothing close to paradise.)

From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.nationalreview.com.../comment/dick200512200840.asp

. . .

HEAL THYSELF Before filing his lawsuit, Dr. Chaoulli had been practicing medicine in Canada for years. At one time, he was in the practice of making house calls to some of his more enfeebled patients who found it difficult to leave their homes. He had even converted his personal car into a sort of makeshift ambulance for emergency situations. “I bought a siren and got an emergency driver’s license,” he says.

. . .

Many of the doctors worried that Chaoulli’s house calls were setting too hectic of an example and raising patients’ expectations too high. There were whispers that he was making them look lazy by comparison. To put an end to the problem, the medical union pushed through a new law imposing harsh financial penalties on doctors who made house calls, effectively preventing Chaoulli from continuing.

. . .

Robert Nozick called this the politics of envy; it would be equally accurate to describe it as a brand of uncompromising left-wing idealism. Leftists want so badly to realize their vision of quality health care, free and equal for everyone, that they are unwilling to entertain any of the imperfect alternatives that are available in reality. In the words of Jack Layton, head of Canada’s leftist New Democratic party, “We want our health-care system to be one where it's your health-care card that gets you the health care — not your credit card.” And if the health-care card can’t get the job done? Well, then everyone will enjoy an equal share of misery.

The honorable doctor went on a hunger strike to protest the new law that had targeted him so ruthlessly. That article is a horror story of examples of patients getting short shrift and often NO TREATMENT because of the dynamics and hideousness inherent in such a system. I encourage folks to read the whole frightful article.--BX commentary.

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BC woman forced to give birth to dead baby in hotel (Canadian Health Care)

The full article is available only at the 2nd link. And quite a hideous experience it was for the beleagured couple.

From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.edmontonsun.com...

CRANBROOK, B.C. — A mother says she was forced to give birth to her still-born child over a toilet in a hotel room after she was turned away from the East Kootenay Regional Hospital because of a lack of beds.

. . .

Jennifer Norgate, a mother of three in Elkford, B.C., began her ordeal May 30 when she and her husband Carl travelled to a Calgary clinic for an ultrasound to determine the gender of their 18-week-old unborn baby.

. . .

“Unfortunately, we found out that our baby had died approximately four weeks earlier. We were sent home to see our family doctor the next day.”

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The Titanic of health care (UK Health Care)

From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.melaniephillips.com...

Has there ever been a more bizarre notion of political responsibility? The NHS is currently engulfed by a deep financial crisis as it careers towards a deficit of between £600 million and a staggering £1 billion.

Operations are being cancelled. Hospitals and primary care trusts have frozen staff vacancies. Managers are even threatening to withhold tax and national insurance contributions because they don’t have enough cash to pay them. The service is descending into chaos.

. . .

The present system is already a lottery which will become dramatically more unfair as the population ages and new treatments become available. Cancer care alone is forecast to cost an extra £15 billion by 2011. The consequent rationing will become unendurable and unsustainable.

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Don't Use Canada for Health-Care Model

Full article available only at the 2nd link.

From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Originally from:

www.realclearpolitics.com...

Excerpts will follow in next post.

Excerpts from original article link:

www.realclearpolitics.com...

If you want to sell Americans on universal health coverage, it's not helpful to use a model that makes patients wait five weeks to see a cancer doctor. That's Canada

. . . . . A health-care system that tolerates an average 10-week wait to use an MRI machine is not to be copied.

. . .

Canada and a few others take pride in not asking patients to pay a cent of their health-care costs, but it's a mistake not to charge user fees. If people don't have to dig into their own pockets when they use medical services, Walker says, "you find yourself giving universal access to a physician for sniffles and company."

BX commentary: This last point is not well known or understood. A 3rd cousin of mine gave up on chiropractic . . . research shows that HALF of folks going to chiropracters have basically, nothing wrong with them. They want company; to be touched, to be comforted from relationship problems etc.

My PhD program's President did a study of Kaiser Permamente HMO in California. Those patients who received 1-3 sessions (if I remember correctly) of counseling . . . used health care services 30% to 50% less (IIRC) than those who did not over the following several years.

Many folks go to MD's with exacerbated or non-existent ills primarily because of emotional or relationship problems with living. Such factors outrageously increase health care costs as patients insist on tests not needed just to prolong contact--human contact with largely caring folks in warm skin compared to their compaions the TV at home.

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A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the US (Univ.Care alert?)

The full article is only available at the 3RD link

From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Original abstract only article from:

www.openmedicine.ca...

FULL ARTICLE AT

www.openmedicine.ca...

Objectives: To systematically review studies comparing health outcomes in the United States and Canada among patients treated for similar underlying medical conditions.

Results: We identified 38 studies comparing populations of patients in Canada and the United States. Studies addressed diverse problems, including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies that included extensive statistical adjustment and enrolled broad populations, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 showed equivalent or mixed results. Of 28 studies that failed one of these criteria, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 showed equivalent or mixed results. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada (relative risk 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.92–0.98, p = 0.002) but were very heterogeneous, and we failed to find convincing explanations for this heterogeneity. The only condition in which results consistently favoured one country was end-stage renal disease, in which Canadian patients fared better.

From 3rd link:

www.openmedicine.ca...

NOTE--THIS IS A VERY SCHOLARLY FORMATTED AND EXTENSIVE STUDY. It is not light reading nor short. But it has a wealth of info in it.

Of the 5 studies that reported superior outcomes in the United States, we classified 2 as high quality (one of which utilized population registries) and 3 as low quality (Table 2). Of the 2 high-quality studies, one presents results from a population-based registry that showed higher 30-day post-operative mortality after hip fracture in Manitoba and Quebec in comparison to several American states.15 Canadians had longer wait times for surgery, longer post-operative lengths of stay, and higher inpatient mortality. Differences in mortality were not, however, attributable to differences in wait times for surgery. Furthermore, the increase in mortality did not persist over time, and Canadian outcomes proved superior for several other surgical procedures16,17 (Table 4).

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Is Nationalized Health Care Terminal? (Ted Byfield On Second Thoughts In Canada On Medicare Alert)

From:

www.freerepublic.com...

Canada's nationalized health-care system, admired by the left all over the world and deplored by the right all over Canada, took another hit last week. The Canadian Medical Association, long its unfailing supporter, suddenly turned against it.

. . . .

For two reasons, Dr. Day's election was viewed as a tidal change in the CMA attitude. For one, he not only opposes Medicare, he is one of its most articulate critics. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week," he told the New York Times earlier his year. "Humans can wait two to three years. ... In a free and democratic society, where you can spend money on gambling and alcohol and tobacco, the state has no business preventing us from spending our own money on health care."

. . .

Raised in Britain, he came from a socialist family and began by supporting the state system. "But then when you find that your operating room time is cut from 22 hours a week progressively over the years to five hours a week, and you have 450 patients waiting for health care, you realize that something has to give."

Maybe an additional article or two will be excerpted in the following post.

I think, though, that there's a wealth of material already linked to above.

Let the games begin . . . errr . . . continue . . . I think they've already begun! LOL.

Actually, this article is too difficult to excerpt being in a pdf file:

www.oecd.org...

EXPLAININT WAITING TIMES VARIATIONS FOR ELECTIVE SURGERY ACROSS OECD COUNTRIES

OECD = ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT

The study is 74 pages long.

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Paging Dr. Napolitano

From:

www.goldwaterinstitute.org...

Economists at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found public insurance programs like Medicaid crowd out private alternatives. They estimate between 50 and 75 percent of enrollment increases that resulted from expanding Medicaid came from people who left private sector insurers.

For Arizona, that means many middle class families will naturally jump to this “free” insurance, even if they truly can afford to pay for it on their own. In turn, the state’s financial liability balloons. For example, since the 1998 expansion of AHCCS eligibility to families making up to $40,000, the program’s inflation adjusted spending has increased more than 100 percent.

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State Health Insurance Index 2006:

From:

www.cahi.org...

A 50-State Comparison of the Nation’s Health Insurance Market
Revised Version*

The purpose of the index is to identify the states that provide a dynamic, competitive market for health insurance, where consumers have a wide range of affordable coverage options,” stated CAHI Director Dr. Merrill Matthews. “Iowa is doing a good job, with several other states running a close second. While in New York, New Jersey, Maine and Massachusetts, consumers have few health insurance options, and what they do have is very expensive.”**

. . .

The Index considers six important measures of state health insurance viability, including the regulatory environment, the number of health insurance mandates, the uninsured, access to a high risk pool and the average premiums in the individual and small group markets.

. . .

“Health insurance may not be cheap in any state,” concluded Dr. Matthews. “But it can be available and affordable if states implement the right policies. The Index helps identify those policies that will increase access to affordable coverage and reduce the number of uninsured.”

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July 17, 2006
The Health Care Choice Act:
Eliminating Barriers to Personal Freedom and Market Competition
by Robert E. Moffit, Ph. D.
WebMemo #

From:

www.heritage.org...

The Heritage Foundation

While interstate commerce in goods and services is routine in virtually every other area of the national economy, such as banking and financial services, it is largely frustrated in the health care sector by law and government regulation. For individuals and families, this means that they are not able to secure the kind of coverage they want at the prices they wish to pay. The Health Care Choice Act (H.R. 2355 and S.1015), sponsored by Representative John Shadegg (R-AZ) and Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), would amend current law to allow for interstate commerce in health insurance plans while preserving states’ primary responsibility for the regulation of health insurance. These changes would broaden and intensify competition among health plans and medical providers, encourage a serious review of existing health care regulation in the states, and expand the choice of millions of Americans of more affordable health insurance plans. The result: reduced health care costs and greater access to health care coverage.

. . .

Improving the Health Care System
The Health Care Choice Act would substantially improve the functioning of health care markets and, through greater breadth and intensity of competition, the delivery of health care services from medical professionals.



Broader and More Intense Competition. State health insurance markets are increasingly concentrated and less competitive, often dominated by a few large insurers. Market consolidation has been accelerated by mergers and acquisitions, as well as by rigid state government policies that have discouraged carrier participation. In the individual market, insurance companies’ participation varies, and many markets are dominated by fewer and fewer number of large carriers. In many cases, this consolidation has been facilitated by misguided state government policy. Likewise, in the small group market, the declines are dramatic. In Maryland’s highly regulated small group market, for example, between 1995 and 2004, the number of participating insurers dropped from 37 to 9; two of the largest health insurers now account for the enrollment of 94 percent of covered lives; and 58.8 percent of small firms do not enroll their employees in that market.[1]

BX: I think that's sufficient grist for the mill.

Personally, I'm for the weakest and least fortunate--particularly impoverished children getting public sponsored care--particularly for preventative and serious, readily treatable problems. I suspect, though, that even that population could be taken care of largely by adjusting things in the market economy wisely and cleverly.

I also believe that the Christian church has largely itself to blame for government excess and socialism. If Christians acted like Christians--EVEN "JUST" TAKING CARE OF THEIR OWN--the burden on public systems would be wholesale decreased, if not 75% or more eliminated. But Christians insist on being UNChristian in their selfishness.

Also, there is an excellent book:

A MORE EXCELLENT WAY by Henry W Wright. He is a Pastor who has researched health problems and their relationship to spiritual problems extensively.

He was upset with God because only 5% of the folks he prayed for got healed. Over several years, God began to show him that it was because individuals refused to live by the manual that they were sick and why God would typically not heal them.

A case in point illustrates what has become for Pastor Wright rather common place.

A woman came up to him after a service. She was scheduled THE NEXT DAY for major surgery to remove a sizeable malignant cancer tumor.

Pastor Wright asked her what type of cancer it was etc. He has been able to correlate specific cancers and a lot of other specific diseases to specific relationship, spirittual and/or family history problems-- 2 B cont

Originally posted by vox2442Drugs are substantially cheaper overall thanks to government intervention, but reimbursement - the complaint in the article - is the responsibility of employee health plans and personal insurance policies and so forth.

Agreed...I have a decent drug plan which costs me $25 annually, and the premiums paid by my employer are considered a taxable benefit. My extended health insurance is by no means special...but it means that I don't have to worry about health issue. Except braces...kids teeth will still put y'all in the poorhouse, even here.

Still, I see where Rudy...'America's mayor', says the following:

When pressed by a questioner on what steps he would take on health care, Giuliani said, first, he would "bring down the cost, so other people can afford it." Then, "give people a tax advantage to go buy individual insurance."
"We’ve got to bring down the cost of health care, and the government can’t possibly cover everybody," Giuliani said. "If the government covers everybody, the government will literally go bankrupt."
firstread.msnbc.msn.com...

Maybe it's just me, but I figure that if you take the profit margin out of health care, that'll save you about 30% off the top. You know, that's the dough the HMOs make based upon your suffering. While Rudy doesn't see it as the American way, I don't see it as a particularly American to turn folks away from treatment 'cuz they can't pay...or not to see a doctor 'cuz they can't afford it. Y'all are better than that, and who knows that better than your upstairs neighbours, eh?


[edit on 31-7-2007 by JohnnyCanuck]

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