Americans who refuse to buy affordable medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000 under a health care overhaul bill unveiled Thursday by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines will raise around $36 billion over 10 years.

www.breitbart.com...

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by lagenese

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From my observation, Americans hate the old, kill the unborn, scorn at the mentally ill, disgust at the fat, scrim at the anorexic, and in general are simply hateful people to life.

Natasha Richardson dies, victim of Canadian nationalized health care?

Sadly, Natasha Richardson died after her simple ski accident on a “bunny hill” in Canada. After spending a day in a Canadian hospital with only observations, she was rushed to a well-equipped New York hospital where it was discovered the 45 year old was brain dead.

Why wasn’t there a scan and X-ray? The normal procedures in a head trauma. The blood could have been drained and prevented her death. That is a snapshot of what socialized health-care is about. Basic services. Get to a U.S. hospital as soon as possible.

Helmets will become much more popular on the slopes. Nationalized healthcare will still be on Obama’s agenda. The media will not go there.

But of course, citizen journalists will.

Here are some facts that you may never see in your “friendly neighborhood media” –

Despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) except Iceland and Switzerland, Canada ranks poorly in several categories according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.

For instance:

Canada ranks 17th in the percentage of total life expectancy that will be lived in full health.
It also ranks 22nd in infant mortality, 15th in perinatal mortality and fourth in mortality amenable to health care.
Other rankings for Canada included 9th in potential years of life lost to disease, 10th in the incidence of breast cancer mortality and 2nd in the incidence of mortality from colorectal cancer.
Further:

On an age-adjusted, comparative basis, Canada, relative to comparable countries of the OECD, has a small number of physicians, ranking 24th out of 28 countries.
Notably, Canada had the second-highest ratio among 20 OECD countries for which data were available in 1970.
Since 1970, however, all but one of these countries have surpassed Canada’s growth in doctors per capita.
While the age-adjusted proportion of doctors in Canada grew by 24 percent, the average increase in the proportion of doctors in the other 19 countries was 149 percent.
With regard to age-adjusted access to high-tech machinery, Canada performs dismally by comparison with other OECD countries:

Canada ranks 13th of 24 in access to MRIs and 18th in access to CT scanners.
It also ranked 7th of 17 in access to mammographs, and tied with two other nations at 17th of 20 in access to lithotriptors.
Lack of access to machines also means longer waiting times for diagnostic assessment, and mirrors the longer waiting times for access to specialists and to treatment found in the comparative studies examined for this study.

Source: “The Fraser Institute: High-Priced Canadian Health Care System Provides Poor Access to Care Compared to Other Nations,” Fraser Institute,” November 5, 2007.

For study:

www.fraserinstitute.org...

Private for-profit clinics are a booming business in Canada -- a country often touted as a successful example of a universal health system.

Facing long waits and substandard care, private clinics are proving that Canadians are willing to pay for treatment.

"Any wait time was an enormous frustration for me and also pain. I just couldn't live my life the way I wanted to," says Canadian patient Christine Crossman, who was told she could wait up to a year for an MRI after injuring her hip during an exercise class. Warned she would have to wait for the scan, and then wait even longer for surgery, Crossman opted for a private clinic.

As the Obama administration prepares to launch its legislative effort to create a national health care system, many experts on both sides of the debate site Canada as a successful model.

But the Canadian system is not without its problems. Critics lament the shortage of doctors as patients flood the system, resulting in long waits for some treatment.

"No question, it was worth the money," said Crossman, who paid several hundred dollars and waited just a few days.

Health care delivery in Canada falls largely under provincial jurisdiction, complicating matters.

Private for-profit clinics are permitted in some provinces and not allowed in others. Under the Canada Health Act, privately run facilities cannot charge citizens for services covered by government insurance.

But a 2005 Supreme Court ruling in Quebec opened the door for patients facing unreasonable wait times to pay-out-of-pocket for private treatment.

"I think there is a fundamental shift in different parts of the country that's beginning to happen. I think people are beginning to realize that they should have a choice," says Luc Boulay, a partner at St. Joseph MRI, a private clinic in Quebec that charges around $700 for most scans.

Canada's publicly funded, universal healthcare plan, which many Canadians consider the pride of their social security system, is currently being challenged by politicians urging more participation of private medicine.
Ralph Klein, the premier of the western province of Alberta, has introduced legislation that will allow private clinics to perform major surgery, such as joint replacement, which under the Canada Health Act is illegal. In addition, Dr Keith Martin, the health spokesman of the federal government's official opposition (the Reform Party), presented his shadow cabinet with a plan that would have a private medical care system function in parallel with the public one.

The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
David Gratzer

Socialized medicine has meant rationed care and lack of innovation. Small wonder Canadians are looking to the market.

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.