7 Wishes wrote:BlackhawksFan, don't you think legislation that will, largely, pay for itself over the next decade is far less likely to NOT collapse the economy than, say, two foreign wars (one of them illegal, both of them never "on the books" until the far-more-honest Obama Administration decided that a trillion dollars a year in defecit spending SHOULD factor into the equation?
The NEJM poll is faulty and also out-dated. The AMA supports the healthcare overhaul bill, because they know - unlike those of you who get your "news" from Fox and the lying Chickenhawk Five - that a) Americans will wind up paying LESS...yes, that's right...LESS!!! per person on healthcare than they currently are, and b) because they know the system is broken.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/73249-ama-endorses-senate-health-bill
And still, NO ONE ADDRESSES THE ISSUE OF THE FUCKING GOP DEBT- AND DEFECIT- SPENDING via strongarming and reconciliation for the first six years of the Dubbya Administration. No one. I didn't fucking think so.
In a Canadian National Population Health Survey of 17,276 Canadian residents, it was reported that only 0.5% sought medical care in the U.S. in the previous year. Of these, less than a quarter had traveled to the U.S. expressly to get that care.
http://dsp-psd.communication.gc.ca/Collection/Statcan/82F0068X/about_e.pdf
To a much greater extent, Americans purchase prescription drugs from Canada, either over the Internet or by traveling there to buy them in person, because prescription drug prices in Canada are substantially lower than prescription drug prices in the United States; this cross-border purchasing has been estimated at $1 billion annually.
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/170/6/945?etoc
Will this one finally get you all to STFU and stop cherry-picking factoids and lies?
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf
NOTE THE FOLLOWING: Canadians will, on average...
* Have 1.6 years longer life expectancy than Americans;
* Have a 1.7% LOWER infant mortality rate than Americans;
* Have approximately the same number of physicians per 100,000 population and 1.9 more nurses than Americans;
* Per capita, expend $3,395 LESS PER CAPITA in healthcare than Americans (the U.S. by the way, has more than TWICE the average cost per capita than ANY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION IN THE WORLD);
* Have only 10.1% OF THE CANADIAN GDP SPENT ON THEIR HEALTHCARE, VERSUS 16.0% FOR AMERICANS;
* Accomplish ALL THIS with the government only investing 1% more of the annual government revenue on healthcare;
* And yet, still have 35% MORE OF THEIR HEALTHCARE COSTS PAID FOR BY THE GOVERNMENT.
So, there you have it, Dave, and all you other dittohead / Furious Five tree-barkers. Enough already.
MORE AMERICANS go to Canada for healthcare than vise versa. Statistically, it's proven the Canadian system is better than the U.S. system.
So, STFU! Move along! YET ANOTHER issue the GOP is DEAD FUCKING WRONG on!
Here's a 2008 Canadian study of their own health care system... from the Frasier Institute in B.C.: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce ... Payer4.pdf
Executive summary
When comparing Canada’s single-payer health insurance system with the pluralistic system in the United States, many people mistakenly assume that Canadians enjoy universal coverage while receiving the same quality and quantity of medical goods and services as Americans, but at lower costs. The reality is that, on average, Americans spend more of their incomes on health care, but get faster access to more and better medical resources in return for the money spent.
In truth, the Canadian health insurance system is not cheap at all: it is actually among the most expensive in the world. Recent statistics show that only three other comparable countries (United States, Iceland, and Switzerland [1]) spend more of their national income on health care than Canada. More importantly, Canadians do not get good value for money from their health system. There are many hidden costs in Canadian health care that are ignored by advocates of single-payer systems.
On a comparable basis, Canadians have fewer doctors and less hightech equipment than Americans. Canadians also have older hospitals and have access to fewer advanced medicines than Americans. Health care appears to cost less in Canada than in the United States partly because Canadian government health insurance does not cover many advanced medical treatments and technologies that are commonly available to Americans. If Canadians had access to the same quality and quantity of health care resources that American patients enjoy, the government health insurance monopoly in Canada would cost a lot more than it currently does. Not only do Canadians have fewer health care resources than Americans, experience also shows that the Canadian health system is not financially sustainable in the long run. Ever since the single-payer system was established in Canada in the early 1970s, government spending on health care has grown faster than the ability of governments to pay for it. In Ontario, Canada’s largest and most populated province, health spending will soon consume close to half of all government revenues.
Another false economy of the Canadian health system is the money saved by delaying access to necessary medical care. Canadian patients wait much longer than Americans for access to medical care. In fact, Canadian patients wait much longer than what their own doctors say is clinically reasonable (Esmail and Walker, 2007b). Many Canadian patients wait so long for treatment that, in practical terms, they are no better off than uninsured Americans. In Canada, the government promises everyone that they have health insurance coverage for all medically necessary goods and services; but, in reality, access to treatment is often severely limited or restricted altogether. It is important to remember that having access to a waiting list is not the same thing as having access to health care.
Canadian patients who want to escape the delays in the public system are also prohibited from paying privately for health care services (in addition to what they already pay in taxes for the public system). In practical terms, Canadian patients are unable to buy quicker access or better care than what the government health insurance program provides. In this sense, Canadian patients on waiting lists are worse off than uninsured Americans who may legally use their own money or credit to buy health care if they lack insurance coverage. Canadian patients can only pay privately for health care if they leave their province of residence.
Therefore, the Canadian health care system encourages underserved patients to spend their money not only in other provinces, but also often in other countries, usually the United States. The absurdity of the policy is this: Canadian patients are not allowed to spend their own money on medical care provided at home, so the economic benefit of this spending is lost for their province, and sometimes for Canada altogether, as Canadians are left to purchase health care in foreign economies. Finally, Canadian courts have seen the evidence and ruled that Canada’s single-payer health insurance monopoly makes people wait too long to get medically necessary care. In a 2005 case challenging the province of Quebec’s government-run health insurance program, the Supreme Court of Canada struck own the single-payer system as a violation of a person’s right to preserve his or her own health. A similar case is currently underway in two other Canadian provinces where the plaintiffs are seeking to expand the Quebec precedent on the basis of nationally applicable constitutional rights. The Canadian single-payer system is an example of what not to do in health care. The fact is that single-payer systems are probably the worst way to achieve universal health insurance coverage. If Canada is currently witnessing the failure of its own single-payer health insurance system, why would Americans want to adopt such a system for themselves?
Some other interesting factoids from this study:
* Number of Canadians on waiting lists for referrals to specialists or for medical services -- 875,000.
* Average wait from time of referral to treatment by a specialist -- 17.8 weeks.
* Shortest waiting time -- oncology, 4.9 weeks.
* Longest waiting times -- orthopedic surgery, 40.3 weeks.
* Average wait to get an MRI -- 10.3 weeks nationally but 28 weeks in Newfoundland.
* Average wait time for a surgery considered "elective," like a hip replacement -- four or more months.
One more important thing to note... comparing health care in a country of 30 million... vs. health care in a country of 300 million might not be "apples to apples"...
and pissed at the source.
