To a degree you are correct. But fortunately in the US, even the poor are able to get several of the above mentioned medical problems covered. Many Counties offer low income insurance to those who otherwise cannot affort insurance, sometimes at no cost.
The problem is that your system is county-by-county. The rich counties do not pay for the poor counties. And those insurance schemes will insure that before they pay a cent, they will thoroughly rip you off of your life savings and house.
I have seen this as I have worked in the ER and the OR. I have seen knee replacements performed on people who will never pay for it and never could. I have seen people receive X-rays and MRI's even though they have no insurance and will never pay the bill. ...
In my county, only approximately 30% of patients who enter a hospital by ambulance will actually pay the bill. The rest are written off. Money doesn't always determine access to care.
Well, up here, no hospital ever writes-off a patient because every medical act performed is covered by the universal insurance system. This does not works only for the patients, it works for the hospitals, clinics, doctors, filthy-rich pharmaceutical companies and nurses too. With an universal government-run system, NO ONE IS LEFT BEHIND.
Pig Hogger, you don't know shit about healthcare in the United States. Why don't you go queue in line for your free tongue depresser and leave us all alone?
I'll gladly do that when you yankes stop telling us how we should run our country (and other countries in the world, too). Meanwhile, you can carry-on displaying your typical yankee ignorance to the delight of us, enlightened non-yankee slashdot readers.
Health care is like roads. You can't have competition there; there isn't any real competition in the US.
Bullshit. Let me repeat, BULLSHIT.
Ah! An expert on the matter! At least, we will be enlightened!
I can check into any number of clinics, make appointments with any number of doctors. If I have the money to pay for a therapy, and can find a doctor who agrees it will be beneficial, I can get said therapy.
But m e too, if I feel icky, I can go to ANY OF FIVE clinics and hospital within walking distance of my house, all FOR FREE. And I can always choose my doctor, too, which is quite unlike those americans who are unfortunate enough to pay through the nose to be part of an HMO...
And ME TOO, I can fly to the US and get any medical treatment I want and pay for it out of my own pocket!
In the US, not everybody has access to health care. This access is conditionned by how much dough each one has.
So the choice is either low-quality healthcare for everybody, as in Canada, or high-quality healthcare for those who can afford it -- as approx. 240 million of the 280 million do in America? (remember, we have some 40m without healthcare, but that is 1/7 of the population -- how about the other 6/7???)
Low-quality health care? Where do you get that notion. Please entertain us. Up here, everybody gets the same quality health-care.
Gosh, let's take the low-quality healthcare. What a smart answer that would be; I'd love to have to wait for the government to ration out my knee surgery to me years after the condition has gotten so bad it can't be fixed.
Real urgent cases are processed right away. And if you're in a hurry, you're still free to go to the US and have the operation performed on you (at your expense, of course).
It's a classic case of socialism vs. capitalism:
* under socialism, everybody suffers and is miserable, but at least everybody is equally-miserable and suffers equally
* under capitalism, only a small portion of the population suffers, but they suffer worse than those in the socialist system. But the majority under the capitalist system are better off than both groups
It's a classic case of ignorance about what socialism is all about, social justice. But, of course, one cannot expect shrub-voters to understand what is social justice...
Many good doctors have left to the US because being paid for private service is more $$$. We're quite shortstaffed on both doctors and at times qualified nurses. While immediate dangers are quickly dealt with and covered, staff are often less competent due to being worked over hours (severely overworked) due to shortages. A new heart/lungs may be free, but surgery may involve very long waits, whilst private involves more $$$ but possibly better care, less wait, and not being discharged prematurely because of a space shortage for new patients.
The US system pays more, but in reality, it's a non-issue, simply because life is much more expensive there; many things provided by the government have to be paid for at an inflated price (those profits are expensive, you know, and are ALWAYS borne on the back of the customers). But this does not mean that Canada will not have to improve working conditions in the health-care system, and this can be very simply effected by raising taxes.
The best solution would be to make Canada a commonwealth of the U.S., like Puerto Rico. That way Canadians could retain their own independant goverment and reduce the red tape that is creating market inefficiencies between the two countries.
I suppose that you will howl "ANTI-AMERICAN" if I point out the above as definite proof of american imperialism?
Besides, there are many other things besides the "market" in life, something yankees fail to understand.
No matter how much bells and whistles are deployed in an antispam "solution", anything else than pre-emptive blocking of spam-spewing networks is just an automated press-delete system.
Even though you don't SEE the spam, you STILL HAVE TO PAY FOR THE RESSOURCES THE SPAMMERS ARE STEALING FROM YOU!!!!
Unless ALL the spammy networks are PUNISHED FOR HARBORING SPAMMERS, spammers will always find connectivity
We are at war, at war against spammers and their spammy-networks accomplices, and until the spammy-networks are thoroughly eradicated, there will always be ressource-stealing spammers.
"Canada" hasent purchased any trains. CN is a publicly traded comapny, and has significant investements in US rail systems. Via Rail, a crown coporation , which has some new cars, purchased them from Alstrom, which is headquarters in France.
The new cars I am referring to are the Renaissance (dubbed Déplaisance - displeasure by employees) cars, which were to be the Nightstar trains that were to run between England and the continent. They might have been built by Alsthom, but they have been built by the old Metro-Cammel works in England, which were bought by Alsthom. Now, what else a colonial attitude would make one buy unsuitable stuff from the mother-land???
Britshit loading-gauge (the size of the trains themselves) is the smallest in the world, so those trains are cramped inside (there is no way they can fit four seats abreast in there) and were designed to run on european manucured tracks. They are a disaster on the poorly-maintained tracks we have here.
Alright. Good points and I respect your views. But when you keep saying "free" it confuses me. Aren't your income taxes much higher than in the US to pay for all of this? I think what the people of the US want is a system similar to Canada's that gets the same quality of health care through private health care providers at a cheaper rate. Cheaper by competition, of course.
There are things that can be have cheaper by competition, like peanuts or memory chips. But there are other things that CANNOT have competition. How many private roads operators do you see? How many private highways there are? Not much, I reckon...
Health care is like roads. You can't have competition there; there isn't any real competition in the US. If there were, people would not lose their houses to hospitals, because everyone could afford medical care. Er, sorry, insurance. Health care isn't significantly cheaper in Canada than in the US. It is the HEALTH INSURANCE that is FREE, because it's provided by the government. This insures that every hospital and every doctor and every nurse is PAID for the work performed on a patient, so they don't have to go out and run after patients.
By doing away with the competition, you eliminate all the duplicate employees who do the same job in every private insurance company. With no competition, everyone is on the same footing; everyone has the same coverage, so you do not need any employees to check whether some patient treatment is covered or not by his insurance plan. With the government providing the insurance to every citizen, you do not need to check whether they are insured or not or check their credit record.
And, lastly, when the government runs the insurance, it doesn't have to make a profit. Not having to make a profit is the best recipe to keep it cheap, without competition.
Basically, this is why the canadian universal health-care system works, because it entirely did away with the corporate bullshit (credit checks, varying coverage and, most importantly, PROFITS) that is so prevalent in the US system.
Maybe it's just a difference between Canada and the US, but when the US tries to make huge government programs, the politicians end up screwing it up and it ends up costing us a lot more than it should.
This is a preconceived notion that make americans say the government is bad. And it makes bright people not want to work for the government. And if politicians believe that government is bad, they will damn well make sure that government is bad.
When you vote, do not vote for the one who sounds the sweetest. The guy is a whore whoring for your vote so he can get his power fix (and don't worry, once you voted for him, he'll discard your concerns like an used tampon). Instead, vote for the one who believes that government can be good.
An anonymous coward, so sure about the strength of his opinions that he did not dare sign said:
Nice idea, but we all know in the US as soon as the government gets involved in the health care there are going to be lawsuits.
<irony>That's true. That's the beauty of the U.S. private health sector, there are no malpractice suits, and doctors enjoy free malpractice insurance</irony>.
You just wait until a white guy and a black guy are in need of the same liver transplant. The doctors decide the white guy is a better candidate. Solution, the black guy will sue under the Equal Protection Clause and demand that giving the liver to the white guy isnt fair. Ideally they would get an injunction preventing the liver from being transplanted until the judge can hold a trial on the fairness of whether or not the liver is being allocated based on medical need or racial bias.
Surely a doctor's opinion would have more weight in front of the Court than some ambulance-chaser catering to an hysterical redneck chick???
Then you have the politics of what morally should be covered. Contraception? Abortions? Sex changes? Where does an elective survey end and a human right begin? I can make a case for damn near anything being a human right, (especially in Canada but that is another story).
We have the very same debates here. Actually, Québec was funding abortions even though they were illegal and doctors performing them could have been criminally prosecuted (however, since the criminal code prosecutions are under provincial jurisdiction, Québec could damn well chose not to prosecute abortionists)...
Also, just wait till I sue the government because of the wrongful death of my loved one. You thought the lawyers were hungry when we had easy malpractice cases from insurance companies? Aint nobody got deep pockets like the government! Because you mean to tell me with all the resources of the Federal Government, we arent able to beat death? To quote The Onion World Death Rate Holding Steady At 100 Percent despite doctors efforts and centuries of trying.
Well, it's up to you to decide whether every Tom, Dick & Harry could sue the Government, then you have to pay the price. <irony>And it is so unfortunate that the US governments are crumbling under the weight of all those lawsuits following all those car accidents happenning on all those public roads</irony>... There are plenty of cases for the government to be sued for all sorts of situations, yet it doesn't happen as much as it could. Why would healthcare be any different?
We are all going to want to live forever, and anytime we dont the government is going to be sued.
And shouldnt I be able to pay just a little bit more and get better health care than the basic government service? How much longer till the little bit more is deemed something that should be in the general health care, and were back to the same belly aching over coverage we have now? Or, how quickly until everyone has that extra coverage that we cant do without plus the tax paid coverage and were paying twice.
You cannot do that. As soon as you allow paying a little bit more, the system is irremediably doomed. Witness the pityful state of the US public education system... Universal precisely means that everyone is covered equally.
Lets take that a bit further. Right now we have a horribly Fed up public school system. (I know your school is great but the people in the next county are Fed.) What do you think a government run health care is going to look like? They cant even keep teachers, reasonable class sizes, and a full school year. How long till you think the government is going to run health care into the ground too? Our elite are curr
Canada can afford that because they have wisely decided that America will never let Canada be invaded. So, why waste money on a military? Instead they buy used submarines on the cheap that get their people killed.
More importantly, Canada has decided that it would not have an imperialistic foreign policy that insures that many countries HATE it, like the US does... As for the submarines, Canada being a british colony, it has to buy the old britshit junk; this is not limited to submarines, Canada has been busy buying totally inadapted trains from Britain...But the main reason why Canada bought the britshit subs is that in reality, it needed nuclear subs, but the best deal with no strings attached was from France, and there was no way a british colony would buy arms from France (the only other nuclear subs available were british or american, and both were encumbered with extremely restrictive licenses, whereas the french subs were not - and had much cheaper operating costs).
Plus, Canadians have very high taxes. I remember an article in the National Post last year entitled I am Canadian, tax me.
Oh, the National Post is a right-wingnut rag that would only love that Canada becomes part of the US...
The US doesnt have the luxury of some other country subsidizing our sovereignty. We have to pay for our own military (and Canadas, and )
Who's the sucker, then? Who's stuck with an extremely expensive foreign policy? The US DELIBERATELY CHOSE to have a foreign policy that needs a very big military...
But do not get fooled. If Canada ever gets invaded (who the fuck would be stupid enough to want that barren cold land???) and the US has to kick-out the invader, the price Canada will have to pay to the US will be so high that the original invasion will look much better.
Nothing is free. They pay for all of that with very high taxes.
Which is better than very high private insurance premiums to a company that will dump you when you're no longer profitable, and then you lose your house to the hostpital. At least, the very high taxes benefit everyone instead a few insurance company directors (they don't pay dividents to shareholders anymore)...
An anonymous coward, so sure about the strength of his opinions that he did not dare sign said:
Free? What the FUCK are you smoking? Where is your stat comparing Canadian taxes to American ones you fucking dumbass? My dad pays over %50 of his income back to the government just to pay for bullshit like this. What a stupid fuckwad. meanwhile, the system is still shit. People are still waiting on benches outside hospitals because there are NO BEDS! What a fucking retard.
Yup, we pay 50% taxes. Which beats paying $400 to a private insurance plan that will DUMP YOU as soon as you're sick... Or you don't pay $400 per month and gamble you won't lose your house when you become sick...
Yeah, Halliburton getting billions for the Iraq reconstruction is bullshit. But I think the government taking over healthcare costing the taxpayers "more" billions would be just as bad.
Now here is true bullshit.
You have to take each example and judge it on it's own merits.
Indeed, let's take each example and judge it on it's own merits.
Case: the canadian universal health-care system:
In Canada, health-care costs the same per-capita as in the US.
In Canada, 100% of the population is covered (compared to 60% of the US population).
In Canada, if you need heart bypass surgery, it is FREE.
In Canada, nobody is prevented from getting employment because he would be too expensive for the employer's insurer.
In Canada, nobody loses his job because he suddenly has an expensive debilitating medical condition.
In Canada, if you need a new hip or a new knww, it is FREE.
In Canada, administrative overhead is 3% compared to 35% in the US. That's because in Canada, everyone has the same coverage, and you don't have to check the patient's credit record.
In Canada, there is no money WASTED on insurance companies PROFITS.
In Canada, professionals don't have to pay $400 per month for medical insurance.
In Canada, if you get whiplashed by a drunk driver, you don't have to hunt for the fucker's insurance because the needed medical treatment is FREE.
In Canada, nobody will lose his life savings and his house to an hospital.
In Canada, drug prices are controlled and pharmaceutical companies do not spend twice as much on marketing as they spend on R&D.
In Canada, if you need a new heart and new lungs, it is FREE.
If you yankees would get rid of your tired government is bad mantra, you would see that there are many things that just cannot be done by the private sector at all.
This is fine and well, but how does one meanwhile solves the most pressing problem, that is, providing CHEAP and RELIABLE means to get into earth orbit???
Now, any country that wants to piss-off the USA because it's not happy with it has to do is simply stop enforcing it's laws protecting US intellectual property...
Say, for example, if France is unhappy with the US invading Biaffrogalistan, all it has to do is not prosecute people who pirate Jerry Lewis movies!!!
So, get rid of the crime factor, make it legal to smoke pot and stick yourself with heroin, and put those DEA agents to work providing social care programs, not enforcing an untenable Police State.
This would not be liked at all by the turkey-loving numb-minded, intolerant bigot puritans that run the US.
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And ME TOO, I can fly to the US and get any medical treatment I want and pay for it out of my own pocket! Well, then, educate me. I'm all ears.
Besides, there are many other things besides the "market" in life, something yankees fail to understand.
Even though you don't SEE the spam, you STILL HAVE TO PAY FOR THE RESSOURCES THE SPAMMERS ARE STEALING FROM YOU!!!!
Unless ALL the spammy networks are PUNISHED FOR HARBORING SPAMMERS, spammers will always find connectivity
We are at war, at war against spammers and their spammy-networks accomplices, and until the spammy-networks are thoroughly eradicated, there will always be ressource-stealing spammers.
The new cars I am referring to are the Renaissance (dubbed Déplaisance - displeasure by employees) cars, which were to be the Nightstar trains that were to run between England and the continent. They might have been built by Alsthom, but they have been built by the old Metro-Cammel works in England, which were bought by Alsthom. Now, what else a colonial attitude would make one buy unsuitable stuff from the mother-land???
Britshit loading-gauge (the size of the trains themselves) is the smallest in the world, so those trains are cramped inside (there is no way they can fit four seats abreast in there) and were designed to run on european manucured tracks. They are a disaster on the poorly-maintained tracks we have here.Health care is like roads. You can't have competition there; there isn't any real competition in the US. If there were, people would not lose their houses to hospitals, because everyone could afford medical care. Er, sorry, insurance. Health care isn't significantly cheaper in Canada than in the US. It is the HEALTH INSURANCE that is FREE, because it's provided by the government. This insures that every hospital and every doctor and every nurse is PAID for the work performed on a patient, so they don't have to go out and run after patients.
By doing away with the competition, you eliminate all the duplicate employees who do the same job in every private insurance company. With no competition, everyone is on the same footing; everyone has the same coverage, so you do not need any employees to check whether some patient treatment is covered or not by his insurance plan. With the government providing the insurance to every citizen, you do not need to check whether they are insured or not or check their credit record.
And, lastly, when the government runs the insurance, it doesn't have to make a profit. Not having to make a profit is the best recipe to keep it cheap, without competition.
Basically, this is why the canadian universal health-care system works, because it entirely did away with the corporate bullshit (credit checks, varying coverage and, most importantly, PROFITS) that is so prevalent in the US system.This is a preconceived notion that make americans say the government is bad. And it makes bright people not want to work for the government. And if politicians believe that government is bad, they will damn well make sure that government is bad.
When you vote, do not vote for the one who sounds the sweetest. The guy is a whore whoring for your vote so he can get his power fix (and don't worry, once you voted for him, he'll discard your concerns like an used tampon). Instead, vote for the one who believes that government can be good.<irony>That's true. That's the beauty of the U.S. private health sector, there are no malpractice suits, and doctors enjoy free malpractice insurance</irony>.
Surely a doctor's opinion would have more weight in front of the Court than some ambulance-chaser catering to an hysterical redneck chick???
We have the very same debates here. Actually, Québec was funding abortions even though they were illegal and doctors performing them could have been criminally prosecuted (however, since the criminal code prosecutions are under provincial jurisdiction, Québec could damn well chose not to prosecute abortionists)...
Well, it's up to you to decide whether every Tom, Dick & Harry could sue the Government, then you have to pay the price. <irony>And it is so unfortunate that the US governments are crumbling under the weight of all those lawsuits following all those car accidents happenning on all those public roads</irony>... There are plenty of cases for the government to be sued for all sorts of situations, yet it doesn't happen as much as it could. Why would healthcare be any different?
You cannot do that. As soon as you allow paying a little bit more, the system is irremediably doomed. Witness the pityful state of the US public education system... Universal precisely means that everyone is covered equally.
Who's the sucker, then? Who's stuck with an extremely expensive foreign policy? The US DELIBERATELY CHOSE to have a foreign policy that needs a very big military...
But do not get fooled. If Canada ever gets invaded (who the fuck would be stupid enough to want that barren cold land???) and the US has to kick-out the invader, the price Canada will have to pay to the US will be so high that the original invasion will look much better.Yup, we pay 50% taxes. Which beats paying $400 to a private insurance plan that will DUMP YOU as soon as you're sick... Or you don't pay $400 per month and gamble you won't lose your house when you become sick...
I think the retards are you yanks...Case: the canadian universal health-care system:
- In Canada, health-care costs the same per-capita as in the US.
- In Canada, 100% of the population is covered (compared to 60% of the US population).
- In Canada, if you need heart bypass surgery, it is FREE.
- In Canada, nobody is prevented from getting employment because he would be too expensive for the employer's insurer.
- In Canada, nobody loses his job because he suddenly has an expensive debilitating medical condition.
- In Canada, if you need a new hip or a new knww, it is FREE.
- In Canada, administrative overhead is 3% compared to 35% in the US. That's because in Canada, everyone has the same coverage, and you don't have to check the patient's credit record.
- In Canada, there is no money WASTED on insurance companies PROFITS.
- In Canada, professionals don't have to pay $400 per month for medical insurance.
- In Canada, if you get whiplashed by a drunk driver, you don't have to hunt for the fucker's insurance because the needed medical treatment is FREE.
- In Canada, employers aren't struggling to cover their employees.
- In Canada, nobody will lose his life savings and his house to an hospital.
- In Canada, drug prices are controlled and pharmaceutical companies do not spend twice as much on marketing as they spend on R&D.
- In Canada, if you need a new heart and new lungs, it is FREE.
If you yankees would get rid of your tired government is bad mantra, you would see that there are many things that just cannot be done by the private sector at all.Winamp or iTunes. Good speakers.
This is fine and well, but how does one meanwhile solves the most pressing problem, that is, providing CHEAP and RELIABLE means to get into earth orbit???
Well, as it is today, the US is far from being a nation-builder, but rather a nation-destroyer...
Say, for example, if France is unhappy with the US invading Biaffrogalistan, all it has to do is not prosecute people who pirate Jerry Lewis movies!!!
Like if the US cared about woman being oppressed. (If so, they would invade most muslim countries and India and everywhere else women are oppressed).