One of the 2 former posts is typical "party diatribe"; you decide which!
The irony of no health care in our economy is that unless you
constantly replace people (who die, fail to make it in employment or
become homeless) [while also keeping the subset of "healthy"
individuals completely separate] you win.
The benefit of socialized health care includes research and
statistics, eradication of diseases like STD's, TB and childhood
illness, and control of the flu, and geratric survivial (which assists
our children's children socially). The system can support it, and in
20 years the benefits in advances in technology, industry and spcial
stability are incredible.
It's humane, and it's required to eradicate smoking, drug and alcohol
abuse (often self medication for physical and emotional illness)
alone.
All systems in our society are inefficient - that doesn't mean we
don't need IT systems for instance, it means we need EFFICIENCY
(Canada as an example).
My father would turn over in his grave, since he also wanted a free
economy, but would agree that people are worth health care.
Now, border control is another issue entirely!
On 8/2/09, Craig White <
craigwhite@azapple.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 19:16 -0700, Vaughn Treude wrote:
>> Lisa Kachold wrote:
>> > On 7/30/09, JD Austin <jd@twingeckos.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> The 'other' model isn't working any better. My wife works in an Urgent
>> >> Care; tons of Canadians come here to get the health care they need. I
>> >> think
>> >> the whole industry needs to be more competitive; most things in health
>> >> care
>> >> shouldn't cost what they do.
>> >>
>> >>
>> > Inefficiency in preventative care, diagnostics, errors in surgery, the
>> > truth is incredibly expensive.
>> >
>> > But just because Canadians come here for care doesn't mean it's not
>> > working.
>> >
>> <rant>
>> If by "working", you mean the majority of Canadians people accept it,
>> and even think it's a good thing, I suppose it is. They're just very
>> lucky they have a "safety valve", that is, a large semi-free country
>> whose borders are within 100 miles of 90% of their population.
>> Single-payer is, IMHO, the biggest piece of economic foolishness ever
>> devised. Let's give an absolute monopoly to the most inefficient,
>> corrupt organization ever invented by humans (government.) As for the
>> notion that socialized medicine is cheaper, I don't believe it for a
>> second. Governments can shift their costs to other agencies; the
>> Pentagon does it all the time. I assume, for example, the cost of having
>> "premiums" collected by the CRA doesn't get counted in the balance
>> sheet. Not to mention the fact that a huge portion of the overhead costs
>> of private insurers in the US is red tape imposed by government
>> bureaucracies.
>> Not that I'm necessarily endorsing the current system. There were a lot
>> of good not-for-profit medical insurers in this country until Richard
>> Nixon changed the tax laws, causing a massive takeover by greedy HMO's.
>> I'd like to see a system of decentralized medical cooperatives with
>> for-profit companies as a supplement.
>> BTW, I don't blame the immigrants, but I do blame the lawyers. :-)
>> </rant>
>>
>> No offense, just my two cents. :-)
>> There, I feel so much better.
>> Vaughn
> ----
> seeing as how the political discussions do not die off, I am going to
> sound off here.
>
> The entire premise of the Canadian health care system was to provide a
> single tier of medical coverage for all and no amount of wealth would
> provide a better level of health care. You cannot devise a system that
> is more fundamentally fair to everyone.
>
> The people who come here from Canada are doing elective surgeries either
> not covered by the health care system in Canada or prioritized in a
> manner that does not suit the person with money to pay elsewhere.
>
> The language that you use Vaughn is loaded and inaccurate...
> - we are not a safety valve, we provide elective medical care to those
> who want to pay and go elsewhere.
>
> - the issue of a monopolized health care run by the government happens
> to be that which is practiced in all other western nations. We spend
> more per capita on health care than any other industrialized nation and
> yet approximately 25% of our citizens do not have coverage.
>
> - the insurance companies do worse managing the health care than
> government could ever do. They practice murder by spreadsheet. They
> invent rules for exclusions. Someone in this country WITH health
> insurance goes bankrupt in this country every 30 seconds because of
> exclusions, deductibles, etc.
>
> - blaming the government red tape for the profits of insurers is absurd
> to its core.
>
> An American citizen visiting Canada can get free health care if needed.
>
> Any solution short of single-payer will fail and we will be back here
> again, with more people excluded from coverage by insurance companies,
> more people bankrupted by illness only because the companies with
> profits at stake...insurance companies and drug companies will spend
> unreasonable amounts of money to influence public opinion and elected
> candidates.
>
> Craig
>
>
> --
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