Stossel on Moore's Sicko

[Lyion]

Better, newer facilities. Better, newer equipment. No wait. Better specialists. The best foreign doctors come here, including many of the best from Canada. Generally, there is no line here and the treatment and care is more advanced.

Plus, as Ever explained most hospitals and states do their part to help and include everyone. My hospital is free for those who earn under 30,000/yr.

Some states are implementing their own coverage, which I think is good. It should be handled at the state level, with funding from the Fed, but NOT controlled by DC.

If one has a devastating illness, they can do what most others here do. Survive and get the millions of dollars of care, then file for bankruptcy and 7 years later ones credit is fine. I prefer that to the Canadian alternative. You know, dying.

[Zanchief]

Are you sure all the best doctors go to the US? Not just the greedy ones? You know for a fact that the quality of the doctors is worse here?

Since it's clear from just about anyone who isn't insured that they most certainly do not get the same treatment from these altruistic utopian hospitals, so all that charity seems to be nothing more the PR.

Life expectancy statistics seem to contradict your claim that Canadians are "dying", but again facts aren't what you're all about. You're more of a conjecture and rhetoric man.

[Tikker]

you're so full of shit Lyion that you must sneeze brown

[Arlos]

No waiting? Explain to me then why the last time I went to one of the local hospitals at 1am I spent THIRTEEN hours in the EMERGENCY room waiting to get seen? Was that just a figment of my imagination? Meanwhile I'm sitting there barely able to breathe and coughing continually cause I had a lovely bout of pneumonia?

-Arlos

[Evermore]

Canada's issue isnt one of quality it it one of resources.

[Lyion]

No waiting? Explain to me then why the last time I went to one of the local hospitals at 1am I spent THIRTEEN hours in the EMERGENCY room waiting to get seen? Was that just a figment of my imagination? Meanwhile I'm sitting there barely able to breathe and coughing continually cause I had a lovely bout of pneumonia?

I've never seen that, and forgive me if I would like to see ER room stats over first hand accounts, and I have a level of skepticism.

Ones mileage may vary, but again we're comparing the big picture, and not just ones personal experience. Most ER waits are not that long, but I'd guess if they have some drive by's, then the guy coughing has to wait for the dudes from the hood to be declared dead.

The Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, calculated in 2003 the average Canadian waited more than four months for treatment by a specialist once the referral was made by a general practitioner. According to the Fraser Institute's work, the shortest median wait was 6.1 weeks for oncology (cancer) treatment without radiation. In some provinces, neurosurgery patients waited more than a year. A simple MRI requires, on average, a three-month wait in Canada.

No thanks.

you're so full of shit Lyion that you must sneeze brown

Glad to see you're still a complete jerk. Sheesh, you complain about Harrison. You're ten times as bad as he ever was. I guess mental disorders also aren't covered in Canada's free health care, based on your posts. We have good shrinks here you can use.

Feel free not to post. Zanchief covers your angle pretty well, and actually makes points and doesn't have to resort to the third grade style...

[Zanchief]

The reason the waits are long is because everyone gets in the queue, Lyion. If we were able to just triage the meek right out of the waiting list things would be a lot easier.

[Lyion]

My point is the Canadian system covers a higher percent, but often times does it ineffectively. Ours has gaps, although much, much fewer than is indicated here, but covers a lot decently. Just not cost effectively or in a good manner.

Neither system is the answer. I don't want people who need coverage to be denied. I also do not want people to die from cancer because they can't get an MRI or into see a specialist. Canada also is a much, much smaller country so copying that system to ours would make the waits only that much larger, and create a tiered system.

The US government pays more per capita than Canada in Health insurance in our free market system. Moving directly to a socialized system with half of Mexico migrating here every year would bankrupt our government. Our current entitlement programs are already hurting the system, and with the imminent baby boomer retirement incoming it'll only get much, much higher.

[Snero]

Some states are implementing their own coverage, which I think is good. It should be handled at the state level, with funding from the Fed, but NOT controlled by DC.

I think I can sum up my feelings by saying I think you're full of it with most of everything else you wrote, especially that the best Canadian doctors are going down to the states. I just wanted to point out that this is exactly the way the Canadian system is currently working. People try to generalize the "canadian" system when it changes depending on the province you live in. Some things are covered in BC that aren't in Ontario, Quebec pays it's doctors less than in most other provinces, Alberta under Klein had slashed it's health care budget to the point where people died from wait times, but a portion of the budget has since been restored.

The Canadian system isn't perfect, but if Canadians put anywhere near the % of GDP into heath that the states does, we would have by far and away the best system out there.

I just don't get it, it really seems to simple to me. All the other countries have universal health care, all the other countries spend less, all the other countries have better health care (overall, the states does have less wait time for non life threatening procedures but there are a lot more factors to consider). It really seems to me like it would be a no brainer, it would save money.

[Lyion]

A lot of those countries are moving further away from the socialized model. Why is that, Snero, if it's so good as you think?

Anyways, don't take my word. Listen to a Canadian Doctor. Or their National Association. I guess they are 'full of it', too.

Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favors privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered the contracting out of some primary-care services--perhaps even to American companies.

Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.

Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.

Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real, and they represent a major trend in health care.

In regards to my other comment...

The Canadian health care system is hemorrhaging. We're losing doctors faster than we're gaining them. In fact, an estimated 30% of Ontario doctors are leaving within 2 years of completing their training. It is fairly safe to assume that the majority of these doctors end up in the U.S.

[Arlos]

The difference is, even with contracting out to private companies, people STILL HAVE UNIVERSAL COVERAGE. THAT is the important thing. Improving how it is delivered is one thing, lacking it entirely is another.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

The difference is, even with contracting out to private companies, people STILL HAVE UNIVERSAL COVERAGE. THAT is the important thing. Improving how it is delivered is one thing, lacking it entirely is another.

-Arlos

pretty much

I have zero issues with private doctors/clinics/hospitals that want to open and offer additional services, or pay services

the main difference is that here, you can get all coverage as a right of being a citizen, regardless of your salaray

in the States, this is not true, and that's the difference

[Evermore]

No waiting? Explain to me then why the last time I went to one of the local hospitals at 1am I spent THIRTEEN hours in the EMERGENCY room waiting to get seen? Was that just a figment of my imagination? Meanwhile I'm sitting there barely able to breathe and coughing continually cause I had a lovely bout of pneumonia?

-Arlos

Back on June 8th, I got rushed to the emergency room at 9 am. i could barely breathe, chest hurt and i was unable to sit up straight. I got taken straight in. this made some poor kid with a cut on his head wait to be seen. i was put on oxygen and amazingly enough the doc came right in and sent me for xrays an ultrasound and a CAT scan. the problem: multiple bi-lateral pulmonary emboli. One of which had broke off and lodged just outside the heart where the blood goes to the lungs. I had one in the main vein of my left leg as well. Needless to say i was admitted to a monitoring floor. fun shit. I was 9 hrs waiting for a room to open and be cleaned. I just wonder how many people had to wait because their issues were not as serious as mine, and how much of that time I had to wait because of the 2 car accident victums that were brought in, one i saw, covered in blood.

my long winded point. You wait due to the seriousness of your issue. I was classified as having a life threating issue yet there were still more peeps that were worse off.

Now, you think in canada i would have died?

[Snero]

A lot of those countries are moving further away from the socialized model. Why is that, Snero, if it's so good as you think?

Anyways, don't take my word. Listen to a Canadian Doctor. Or their National Association. I guess they are 'full of it', too.

Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favors privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered the contracting out of some primary-care services--perhaps even to American companies.

Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.

Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.

Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real, and they represent a major trend in health care.

In regards to my other comment...

The Canadian health care system is hemorrhaging. We're losing doctors faster than we're gaining them. In fact, an estimated 30% of Ontario doctors are leaving within 2 years of completing their training. It is fairly safe to assume that the majority of these doctors end up in the U.S.

of course a doctor association would be all for privatization, their basic function is to represent the doctors and their interests which are not the same as the interests of the general population and the health care system. The association sees partial privatization as a means to increase the amount of money doctors can make. This in no way means that access to health care would be any better, that it would be more efficient at all.

The reason why countries are slowly getting away from universal health care as you put it, is they've gotten complacent. You have a bunch of countries who have pretty much always had health care covered and are looking for ways of cutting budgets, this is what has happened in canada and why waiting periods are so long. Eventually there will be public outrage at how things are happening and funding will go back in. Again this is happening in Canada, governments have stated publicly that they will reduce wait times for many procedures and things have improved. This quote about dirty hospitals, poor standards are baseless and are at best unfounded speculation. The world health organization has graded every country's health care systems, and a good number of these crumbling, broken down hospitals with their doctors using witchcraft to patch up patients because they can't afford a bandaid are ranked better than your paragon of health care (for a hell of a lot less money)

That last quote prove absolutely nothing, it shows that many doctors trained in ontario will be practicing elsewhere, and they are assuming that the destination will be the states. I can speak from experience, my sister graduated med school last year and at the ceremony they had the name of the new doctor and also where the person was headed to the following year to do their residency. There were some going to the states, but it was a tiny minority, there were lots going out west to BC, some going east to halifax (my cousin trained in ontario is practicing there), some going to montreal and a fair bit staying in ottawa or going to toronto. There is also a MASSIVE difference between saying, a bunch of doctors are leaving canada for the states and saying the best and brightest are going to work there.

[Harrison]

No waiting? Explain to me then why the last time I went to one of the local hospitals at 1am I spent THIRTEEN hours in the EMERGENCY room waiting to get seen? Was that just a figment of my imagination? Meanwhile I'm sitting there barely able to breathe and coughing continually cause I had a lovely bout of pneumonia?

-Arlos

You don't understand how they operate at all, do you?

Edit: Evermore nailed it a bit up more. I hadn't read that far yet.

[Hylissa]

No waiting? Explain to me then why the last time I went to one of the local hospitals at 1am I spent THIRTEEN hours in the EMERGENCY room waiting to get seen? Was that just a figment of my imagination? Meanwhile I'm sitting there barely able to breathe and coughing continually cause I had a lovely bout of pneumonia?

-Arlos

Back on June 8th, I got rushed to the emergency room at 9 am. i could barely breathe, chest hurt and i was unable to sit up straight. I got taken straight in. this made some poor kid with a cut on his head wait to be seen. i was put on oxygen and amazingly enough the doc came right in and sent me for xrays an ultrasound and a CAT scan. the problem: multiple bi-lateral pulmonary emboli. One of which had broke off and lodged just outside the heart where the blood goes to the lungs. I had one in the main vein of my left leg as well. Needless to say i was admitted to a monitoring floor. fun shit. I was 9 hrs waiting for a room to open and be cleaned. I just wonder how many people had to wait because their issues were not as serious as mine, and how much of that time I had to wait because of the 2 car accident victums that were brought in, one i saw, covered in blood.

my long winded point. You wait due to the seriousness of your issue. I was classified as having a life threating issue yet there were still more peeps that were worse off.

Now, you think in canada i would have died?

Nope, you wouldn't have died .. this is exactly what would happen here.

Last year I went to emergency with abdominal pain ... I was only in the waiting room for about half hour. Within about 10 minutes of getting a bed in the ER, I was shot with morphine. I layed in the ER for about 9 hours for monitoring and tests. I went for an ultra sound the next morning, and when I went back for the results later that day, I was admitted immediately. This was all due to an infected gall bladder.

Gallbladder is normallly an out-patient surgery (and HERE is where the waiting list comes into play), but since they couldn't keep my temperature down, a few days later I had surgery. I was kept in for many more days after that, also due to my temperature.

Long and short of it ... no wait time, no complications, and no money involved. How much would that have cost an American for 13 days stay in the hospital, surgery, drugs, etc.?? Cost me about $45 total, and that was for antibiotics and pain killers when I got out. Can't be that bad, eh?

[Harrison]

So you get injected with morphine within 40 minutes of complaining about abdominal pain?

That's pretty fucked up.

[Hylissa]

So you get injected with morphine within 40 minutes of complaining about abdominal pain?

That's pretty fucked up.

Uh no ... Didn't go to the hospital for about 14 hours after the pain started. And, it's kinda hard to examine someone if they are curled up in a ball /shrug

The POINT was that there wasn't a crazy wait time ... EVEN for something that isn't life threatening, and is usually an outpatient surgery.

[Arlos]

Uh, I hate to break it to you, but advanced pneumonia on someone with asthma can be life threatening. My father has been within minutes (and forced oxygen intercession by paramedics) from dying twice for exactly that combination of issues. To be fair, his asthma is worse than mine, but that combination of factors can very easily lead to complete respiratory shutdown, and yes, the triage nurse was duly informed of my situation and could see the trouble I was having breathing.

In any case, it's neither here nor there. Waits can happen regardless of the medical system. Canadian friend of mine had gall bladder issues, and was scheduled for surgery a few months out, because it was not acute, just problematic. In the intervening time it flared up badly, became highly acute, and she got bumped up to have her surgery almost immediately. She had no complaints.

Again, I don't much care if the government subcontracts out the health care, though I of course believe that whoever it is subcontracted out to is a non-profit. (Lowest bid systems are not viable options for health care). the key element is universal coverage without requiring large out-of-pocket expenses that is the key factor.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

Better, newer facilities. Better, newer equipment. No wait. Better specialists. The best foreign doctors come here, including many of the best from Canada. Generally, there is no line here and the treatment and care is more advanced.

I missed this gem earlier


I'll have to ask the 5 american doctors at the clinic I go to if they still are happy they came to canada

I know mine came here because he didn't like having to turn away patients who couldn't afford his care

[Yamori]

No one asks the doctors what THEY think about their jobs being nationalized. As always.

[Ganzo]

No one asks the doctors what THEY think about their jobs being nationalized. As always.

I thought this was about nationalizing health insurance

[Darcler]

I got shot with morphine about 20 min after being admitted to the hospital when I had gallbladder complications. I was also 7 months pregnant. Hyl is right. You cant examine someone when they are too hurt to cooperate. I was on medicaid, so my 3 days observation time didnt cost me anything, however, Mediaid slapped my wrist for not going to the hospital 30 minutes away they cover, I went to the fancy hospital 3 minutes down the road. In my defense, I thought I was dying.

[Harrison]

Then again, do they put painkillers in IVs? I don't remember much of my visit, I was delirious with a fever.

I had two IVs hooked up to me when I got to the ER that last time. I know one of those was fluids because I was severely dehydrated and wasn't eating for days.

I had to stay overnight in monitoring. That's when they finally pinpointed the problem and I got treated properly. I've been fine since.

[Arlos]

Yeah, depending on the painkiller, they'll put it in IVs. The time a few years back I was in the hospital for 8 days with a staph infection in my leg, it swelled up so bad that it took morphine to keep the pain under control, and even then, I burned through it really fast. To be fair, they didn't give it to me first, they worked up to it, but they're definitely willing to give it if they need it. By the time they got past Vicodin for doing anything for the pain, all the stuff they used from then on went into the IV.

The only person I know personally who got morphine with 0 questions the instant they saw him was my little brother, who'd been in a small pickup that had had a head-on crash with a semi that was so violent, it broke the front axle of the semi. Pickup truck had a camper shell and the glass between the cab and the bed removed, and my brother had been kneeling in the bed behind the middle of the bench seat in the cab when the accident happened. He got catapulted forward, taking out the windshield with his head and breaking a bunch of bones in his face (and broke the shoulder of the girl in the passenger seat from behind), shattered both bones in one wrist, one of which actually crumbled into tiny fragments, and cracked his thigh bone completely down the length of it but from one side to the other. (like if you drew a diagonal the long way across a sheet of narrow paper) Apparently when they set the leg at the scene his screaming drowned out even the noise of the life-flight helicopter. Oh, and those were just the major injuries. So yeah, the paramedics and doctors took 1 glance at him and pumped him up with as much morphine as he could stand.

-Arlos