Why Is National Medicare a Four Letter Word

I live in Canada where we have national health service. If you break your arm , you go to the nearest hospital and get it fixed. No bill at the end. You get healed , you go home. As a Canadian , I hear horror stories about the US, if you get sick , your broke. (unless your rich) So I have a hard time understanding how you wouldn't want health care for everyone, regardless of your income level. No need to flame me, but please inform me, as I fail to see the downside.

A few words for you ... Lines, Waiting Lists to see specialist, unable to get tests because the government system won't authorize it. Denial of surgery or simple unavailability of a surgeon.. the list goes on and on.

When the patient retains the power to financially reward providers for good service, providers will compete for the money by offering better quality at lower prices.

On a personal note, we have a new Urgent Care facility (attached to an imaging / medical diagnostic facility) in town that is open 24/7 and costs about the same as seeing a normal doctor and is a godsend because we cannot use our hospital emergency room on nights and weekends... there is a 4 hour wait (with chest pains) and more like 6-8 hour wait for anything less than dying. It is always chock full of "non-insured non-citizens"... That Urgent care is open for one reason, they saw a need and can make a profit from their "extra" service...

Universal Healthcare sounds nice but it has not worked well "anywhere" so why should we be so arrogant to think that WE can get it right. Always a shortage of physicians and medical facilities, a problem that plagues all government-run health care systems. The French have to have supplemental insurance (yeah, the pay into the socialized health care and THEN have to have extra insurance above and beyond... yeah,) The Japanese doctors are disappearing because they cannot make enough money, hospitals closing, etc.

And Canada, I am surprised you haven't heard about the horror stories of your own country.

www.healthcarebs.com...

Sure, free healthcare sounds good to me when it is just for colds, broken bones, etc.

But I sure as hell would want to use the U.S. system if I needed to see specialists, get MRI's and Catscans, Diagnostic tests, surgery, etc.

Those things are better for one reason... the ability to make a profit, be better than other centers, have a reputation to uphold. Pay for the best.. not settle for the "first available" mediocre underpaid surgeon.

www.capmag.com...

The failure of Canada's experiment with socialist medicine is readily apparent: long waiting lists and wait times for specialized services, conveyor-belt treatment for routine services, chronic shortages of family doctors and hospital beds, gross inefficiencies, slow innovation, stifling and wasteful bureaucracies, warring "special-interest" groups, and the exodus of good doctors to greener, freer pastures.

It's still illegal in Canada for private healthcare providers to compete with the government monopoly. Only North Korea and Cuba—two impoverished, brutal, communist dictatorships—still retain such restrictions. And there have been increasing accounts of Canadians suffering severe pain and even dying while waiting months or years for treatments that are readily available in countries that allow private healthcare.

The moral code underlying Canada's healthcare system can be inferred from how it is practiced. Everyone has free and equal access to healthcare providers (which naturally generates a lot of demand). Providers bill the government for services rendered. Government pays providers with the money it extorts via highly progressive taxation. Government has the power to restrict healthcare spending (which logically leads to long waiting lists and wait times).

As for health-care providers, the egalitarian message is also obvious. Study hard for years; work long and grueling hours; develop life-saving skills, but government will dictate your employer and compensation. The public demands high-quality services regardless of the extent to which your freedom and interests are being sacrificed to the "public good"—to hell with individual rights.

Form this one can extract the egalitarian notion of justice: Punish those who are creative, productive and responsible in order to reward those who (for whatever reason) are not. But if justice is the policy of granting to each person what he or she deserves, then egalitarianism is unjust. The champions of egalitarianism seem oblivious to what makes wealth and medical technology possible. They want us to believe that they can punish and enslave achievers and still have piles of money to seize and distribute—that high-quality services and technological advances are possible in a society where those who are ambitious and productive are sacrificed in the name of helping those who are not.

Given this moral code of egalitarianism, it's not surprising that Canada's healthcare system is so impractical.

Now consider today's wonderful trend of being offered higher quality computer products and services at ever lower prices, and what would happen if governments seized control and established a government-controlled monopoly offering free computing to all. What would happen to the computer innovators, product/service quality, real costs and government debt? Pretty much what has happened with the Canadian healthcare system.

Why is it immoral to personally benefit from one's own success? Surely, someone's computer innovation or breakthrough medical discovery is not stolen from those who didn't innovate. The aspirations and abilities of people vary immensely, and they expect to be, and should be, rewarded accordingly for their efforts and achievements. An opposite policy—an egalitarian policy—destroys the motivation to innovate and succeed.

Or consider socialist medicine from a somewhat different angle. When government has the power to extort money from people to pay for government services such as healthcare, the providers become directly responsible to bureaucrats, politicians and "special-interest" groups—not to patients. When the patient retains the power to financially reward providers for good service, providers will compete for the money by offering better quality at lower prices, which is what we get in the relatively unregulated computer industry.

There is no rational argument in favor of socialist medicine. It persists in Canada primarily because the majority of Canadians have accepted an irrational and impractical moral code—egalitarianism—which remains virtually unchallenged. Only when this moral code is widely challenged and debunked, will Canadians experience a significant improvement in healthcare. Americans should be wary when politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy try to glorify the Canadian healthcare system.

[edit on 8-3-2009 by infolurker]

With me, living feels like a gamble everyday, here in the USA. I don't have any health insurance, no medicare or medicaid or whatever, but I am covered by the VA, as an honerable veteran, but I don't live near a VA, currently. (It's a --long-- complex story as to why). Years ago, in this same situation, I was having ongoing chest pains, that made me think I was dying of a heart attack. So I went to a clinic, where they charged me over $80.00 in cash to be seen. This nurse was a b***h from h**l. She was mean and sarcastic to me, because she didn't believe me, and felt I was blocking other more important waiting people to be seen. My Mom took me to the nearest VA hospital later, which was a 2 hour drive away, and they saw me right away and x-rayd my chest, and told me my cartilage was inflamed, most likely from great stress I was going through, at that time.

Some Einstein suggested to me somewhere else, that I just only need to make myself more money. Goll, I'm glad that guardian angel contributed like that, because such an idea never would have occurred to me on my own. .............





[edit on 8-3-2009 by simonecharisse]

reply to post by infolurker


I can only judge by my experiences in this matter, but some of the things you think are going on in Canadian Health sytem are wrong. Failure to get surgery, well that doesn't happen. You go to see your Family doctor for most things of course , run of the mill ailments . If you need a specailist for something , he sends you to see him. If surgery is needed, it gets booked and done. Waiting rooms here, if its minor, your gonna wait , more urgent needs get priority. There is no refusal at any hospital for treatment, no credit checks. We in Canada seem to like the fact that all people are treated equal regardless of stature.

Good question!

Here is your answer.

When doctors get our money, we are powerful because we pay their bills.

When the doctors get the government money, the government is powerful.

As long as the doctors are getting our money, we can pick and choose .

If the doctors are getting federal funding, the government makes the rules on what you need or do not need.

It is that simple.

Hey you Libertarians, what about the cattle trains to the ovens? I'm certain you'all have thought of this, I'm just say'in it out loud for ya.

reply to post by branty


Everybody in America gets treated too. If people show up to the Emergency Room, no matter what it is they are legally obligated to do whatever it is that needs to be done.

The reason why our Health Care is so outrages is precisely the governments fault. With their medicare and medicaid programs they don't pay the hospitals on time and have to hire more staff to deal with just that. When the doctors and hospitals don't get paid they raise rates to compensate their losses. Just like any other business.

Not to mention that you can work out payment plans for the surgery's that you need if you don't have insurance. All you have to do is ask.

Personally I don't feel like I should have fork over 50+% in taxes to the government for what is a perfectly fine health care system. It is all the government intervention that makes all the problems. It is something called personal responsibility and it is not fair to me to ask to pay for somebody's ignorance.

Personally, I --would-- fork over half my money so that everyone would always have a safety net.

Actually, without nationalized health care, only the rich are served by short lineups. The average person is left really vulnerable. If they have a pre-existing condition, as my friend does, they either cannot get health care in the US or its beyond the ability to pay for. Consequently, I actually get far better and faster care. My monthly thyroid tests are covered, and I receive meds immediately. Should I need immediate care, and the appointment takes too long, I may go to a clinic without needing to go to er.

He, unfortunately cannot afford $800 tests regularly for his thyroid. A current condition came with a prescription for meds that cost 1500, or he could go into the hospital for 5 days and spend 40,000 down the road.

The idea behind privatized care, which according to released statistics for years cost the US gov more money per person, is not to benefit the working class in the least. And its not to save tax dollars.
It seems to be a complete disrespect of tax dollars, instead, and a grab for money to transfer this to their wealthy business elite friends in a system that creates an entirely unnecessary middle man. This is what privatization amounts to always. Its the biggest conservative rip off of public funds there is, and is done with massive brainwashing that this is the free enterprise way of doing things.

In actual fact, collectively pooling tax monies and resouces and running things at cost is the most cost effective and efficient method of handling anything. That is minus the fact that there is an enormous difference in wages between US doctors and Canadian ones.

The people wo are opposed to national health care have great coverage provided through their employers. Unions and government employees in particular have excellent coverage and they don't want to lose anything they have. People who must for whatever reason buy individual insurance pay huge premiums for minimum coverage. It's not a matter of shopping around. Most of us are trapped by the "existing conditions" clause that can be as ordinary as hayfever. People in this situation as well as the growing numbers of unemployed who are shocked at the cost of individual coverage so decide to go without. They still get treatment in an emergency, but at a very high cost that we all end up absorbing. All these folks struggling folks desperately need health care reform.

The medical industry is very incestuous in the way prices are set. It's colluson between the hospitals and the drug companies and the insurance companies. They are milking the government along with consumers. Health care professionals are, in my opinion, stuck in the middle. None of them really understand how it all works. We consumers are just stuck.

Health care is already rationed, people with generous insurance don't realize it. At some point they will because even they can't continue to have everything they want covered by insurance, let alone figuring out how to deal with those who go without. It's going to be a big job to straighten out this industry. My vision is some kind of basic coverage for everyone, but then people can chose to add enhancements in certain areas by paying for them. But more medical care is not always a good thing. Some people overuse it, and would be better off without so much medical care, so many drugs, so many procedures. I don't envy the folks tackling this problem but I think it can be done and it must be done.

Originally posted by wiredamerican
Good question!

Here is your answer.

When doctors get our money, we are powerful because we pay their bills.

When the doctors get the government money, the government is powerful.

As long as the doctors are getting our money, we can pick and choose .

If the doctors are getting federal funding, the government makes the rules on what you need or do not need.

It is that simple.

Not that simple

All sounded good till the last bit.

( If the doctors are getting federal funding the government makes the rules.......) THATS NOT TRUE


If your Doctor decides you need it , you get it.

reply to post by branty


In Canada that is might how it works, but here in America you will get the treatment that is "cost effective".

Subjects like this completely boggle my mind. Just about everybody is completely PO'd at the government for catering to special interest and serving their corporate masters and the like, but yet they are willing to hand over their health to the care of the government.

We are being fleeced in front of our eyes in the open. They are putting future generations into debt up to their eyeballs. They are raising taxes on everything they possibly can to pay for what they have now. Which it is mathematically impossible to do.

Yet people are sitting here saying we need to give more control at the expense of what freedom we have left to the government.

It really boggles my mind. It really is equivalent to your house getting robbed then going to the robber and handing over you paycheck to them every week and asking them to pay your bills.

The government is the cause of all of these problems. But people are willing to hand over their lives to the same people that don't care about them.

Nobody wants to look in the mirror and say to themselves I need to be responsible for myself. instead they would rather steal, that is what it is, from others for their own downfalls.

Universal Health Care is a 80/20 system. 80% of the people get decent care if it is minor such as a broke leg or flu or something if you have cancer or MS or some other type of condition that requires constant treatment then your quality of life is completely dependent upon what some bureaucrat up in Washington thinks.

reply to post by Hastobemoretolife


All I can add is Canadians are a docile polite nation. Probably the only thing that will cause us to protest , will be the removal of the basics, education, healthcare, retirement.

Originally posted by branty
If your Doctor decides you need it , you get it.

Depends on how your doctor makes that decision. There are sometimes various ways of treating conditions. Use the latest most expensive drug or something that's generic. There are even drugs of dubious value that advertise heavily in magazines and tv so people ask for them. There is very little oversight over the effectiveness of procedures, so again the doctor might prescribe it because the patient wants help, even if it might not help all that much. I'm not talking about life and death situations. I'm talking about day to day medical practice. Why do you think drug companies advertise directly to consumers? Doctors don't need tv ads to learn about new drugs. But it sure helps bring in the big $$$$ if you can get patients enthused. I don't mean to say the expensive drugs don't work, and maybe even work better, but that is not always the case.

My own opinions on this subject have changed a bit over the last several years.

I always thought that we had the better of the two systems, as far as getting decent treatment goes. But after eight years without a family doctor, some ten hour waits at an emergency room for medical issues and three friends who are MD's,(whom have mitigated the real need for a family MD. ) I have come to see that maybe full out Socialized medicare isn't the best way to go.

I believe that a mix of the two is best for all interested. Not the current model that the US runs where the lower classes are given medicaid or medicare, I can never remember which is which, but something more a kin to Doctors being able to run their own clinics, in a for profit model, but in a limited capacity. That is to say that they have to give X amount of hours every week/month to the Socialised system and the same amount can be dedicated to the private practice. That way every one benefits. The MD's have the ability to make money through their own practices and the average person still gets the care they need.

The one major detriment to that idea is the insurance companies. These leeches would find a way to turn it into a full blown privatized healthcare system within a few years. Them and Big Pharma are the real detriments to quality healthcare for most. The outrageous prices for drugs and things like the "pre existing condition" clauses in policies are a bane on society. Obviously there has to be some things that could preclude you from some services but a broken bone when you're a teenager shouldn't preclude you from getting your Arthritis medication payed for. Maybe a bad example but you get the idea I hope.

reply to post by GAOTU789


I doubt there is such as thing as a Perfect system, and having 2 boys play hockey, ive had some waits in the waiting room. Me personally, i have no prob with our healthcare system. The fact that some people can't see medical attention because of cost is a crime in itself. We supposed to be living in the Best countries in the world.

Well I can give some good input on this having fathered 3 children, one of them having a severe auto-immune disease the requires constant care and medications.

Now this system we have here, is a GOD SEND for me, and I don't use that term often folks. If it wasn't for the fact that I pay "minimal" costs for all of the ailments associated with raising a family, I would not be able to provide the decent living I do for my children today.

The system is not perfect, I will agree. No system will ever be perfect regardless of how you look at it. And I live in a have not province for one where we don't really receive a large budget for medical expenses every year such as Ontario and British Columbia for example.

Yes there are waiting lines for minor things (ie--Minor stitches/burns etc) but when it comes to major operations and major ailments the system has more than provided for me in a timely and cost effective manner.

I have a friend who lives in the US whose daughter has the same condition my son does, his medical bills usually run about 20 to 40 thousand a year on treatments and specialty doctor visits. My expenses run at about 1000 a year, and most of that are traveling expenses.

The horror stories that come out of the media and other various outlets about our healthcare system are usually speaking of rare cases in which some things did take very long to process or not having the availability of staff, but that comes with the territory.

A hospital will always have wait lines, whether your paying top dollar or not, everything here is priority based. I thought it outrageous when a fellow American told me that his cast for his son cost him five thousand dollars. Hell I received an air pump cast for my son for free, and all associated medications and such were covered underneath my Blue Cross.

Our doctors do have alot of power in this system, and they will choose the course of action that is best suited for your situation. They will not hold back care because it is not "cost effective". Doctors here take advantage of the fact that the government is footing the bill and provides us with optimal care at a very low price.

~Keeper

reply to post by branty


I agree with what your saying. I just think there has to be a better way to go about this than the either/or model. I know what I put in my previous post is in no way perfect but I do think there has to be a better way. There is no need for people not to be able to get decent healthcare because they can't afford it, which goes against basic human decency, imo and not having to wait for a year or longer to receive a procedure that could rightfully be done in a month or two depending on scheduling of the parties involved. I really think there has to be another way because both systems have to many major flaws to call either one viable.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


I have tonnes of personal experience in the system as well Keeper.

I had about a dozen surgeries and hundreds of hospital visits for Scheurmans Disease. I wouldn't trade what we have here for the US system ever. Like I have said previously, I just feel there has to be a better way, especially in a province such as ours.

I waited 8 months to get a nerve repaired in my elbow that was causing my hand to be numb and curl into a half fist. I make my living with my hands so needless to say I was a little peeved that it took that long to repair something that directly affected my everyday life and ability to provide for my daughter.

As a healthcare provider for 29 years....oh the stories I could tell!

If and when USA adopts a socialized healthcare system it will be immediately overburdened to the point that new and radical changes will be made. Mainly, the idea of "let the people die" will become popular.

Already I hear young people saying things like, "they're really old (60's) and they've had a good life; why should I have to pay to keep them alive?" Then there are major birth defects in which people in the waiting rooms (with kids of their own being treated!) have been heard to murmur things like, "nature didn't mean for that one to live; the parents should just let that baby go and save us all the tax burden."

I predicted this 20 years ago when DRG's first arrived on the scene to suck all the joy out of caring for people in need.

A few examples that have been discussed here on ATS:
Let them die
Let them die
Let them die
Let them die

Ironically, I've found that most people who are in favor of socialized medicine are those who are chronically ill and will be the first ones culled.

Be careful what you wish for, people. You may get it and I doubt anyone will like the form this beast called "nationalized healthcare" takes.