Tuesday, June 9, 2009

DON'T LET OBAMA AND HIS CHEERLEADERS RUIN OUR HEALTHCARE DELIVERY SYSTEM

ON THE SUBJECT OF HEALTHCARE, THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

"Congressional Democrats will soon put forward their legislative proposals for reforming health care. Should they succeed, tens of millions of Americans will potentially be joining a new public insurance program and the federal government will increasingly be involved in treatment decisions.

Not long ago, I would have applauded this type of government expansion. Born and raised in Canada, I once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither.

My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.
[Canada's ObamaCare Precedent] Martin Kozlowski

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself.

Such stories are common. For example, Sylvia de Vries, an Ontario woman, had a 40-pound fluid-filled tumor removed from her abdomen by an American surgeon in 2006. Her Michigan doctor estimated that she was within weeks of dying, but she was still on a wait list for a Canadian specialist.

Indeed, Canada's provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

Overall, according to a study published in Lancet Oncology last year, five-year cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than those in Canada. Based on data from the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health (done by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics), Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses. No wonder: To limit the growth in health spending, governments restrict the supply of health care by rationing it through waiting. The same survey data show, as June and Paul O'Neill note in a paper published in 2007 in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy, that the poor under socialized medicine seem to be less healthy relative to the nonpoor than their American counterparts.

Ironically, as the U.S. is on the verge of rushing toward government health care, Canada is reforming its system in the opposite direction. In 2005, Canada's supreme court struck down key laws in Quebec that established a government monopoly of health services. Claude Castonguay, who headed the Quebec government commission that recommended the creation of its public health-care system in the 1960s, also has second thoughts. Last year, after completing another review, he declared the system in "crisis" and suggested a massive expansion of private services -- even advocating that public hospitals rent facilities to physicians in off-hours.

And the medical establishment? Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon, grew increasingly frustrated by government cutbacks that reduced his access to an operating room and increased the number of patients on his hospital waiting list. He built a private hospital in Vancouver in the 1990s. Last year, he completed a term as the president of the Canadian Medical Association and was succeeded by a Quebec radiologist who owns several private clinics.

In Canada, private-sector health care is growing. Dr. Day estimates that 50,000 people are seen at private clinics every year in British Columbia. According to the New York Times, a private clinic opens at a rate of about one a week across the country. Public-private partnerships, once a taboo topic, are embraced by provincial governments.

In the United Kingdom, where socialized medicine was established after World War II through the National Health Service, the present Labour government has introduced a choice in surgeries by allowing patients to choose among facilities, often including private ones. Even in Sweden, the government has turned over services to the private sector.

Americans need to ask a basic question: Why are they rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?"

Dr. Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

3 comments:

spotted-dick said...

The whole healthcare debate in the U.S. is largely missing the point. It is not about whether the private or state system is better run it is about affordability.

Sorry, but whether it be private or public, your premium should be linked to your ability to pay. In essence it is a poll tax on your health. Instead, it should like a progressive tax be linked to income.

In the UK your premium National Insurance is around 11 per cent of your salary before deductions.

Alternatively in the UK you can still go private. It is not a case of either or, you can still have both.

The ironic thing is, the single payer option was taken off the table before the negotiations even began. There are no single payer representatives or advocates there. So why people keep going on about it is beyond me.

The simple solution is to link your premium to what you earn. That way you can choose what ever insurance plan you want to go with.

Alternatively if Government run medicine is so bad, than shut down Medicare and Medicaid and hand it over to the private sector. The same goes for the VA Hospitals.

I am so tired of being told about the evils of socialized medicine and Government run healthcare. Yet I see it here in the United States and it appears that Government healthcare is not socialized medicine but any new competent is.

The hypocrisy is mindblowing.

Barbara LeBey said...

You spotted-dick have now given voice to what I have suspected about you for a very long time: you're a Communist. The Communist Manifesto hold to the same premise you hold to--from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. This whole notion of redistributing the wealth is just what communist societies are built on...confiscate the property of the haves and give to the have nots even if the haves accumulated their wealth by innovation and hard work. There is a consequence. When there's no more to take, everybody loses. Zimbabwe comes to mind.

spotted-dick said...

I have no idea where you get the idea that I am a Communist from. I actually find that very offensive.

I don't see how ability to pay, equates to Communism!!!! How is that even possible.

Nowhere in my response did I say that only the Government should run healthcare. I merely stated that each plan should be linked to a percentage of someone's salary.

I do think like Thomas Paine, that the Government does have a duty to look over both the old and young, but you can still do that with the involvement of the private sector.

So, advocating a policy, where people have the ability to pay for something rather than go without, and where choice is upheld, rather than people being regarded as second class citizens, because they have pre-existing conditions?

To be honest, I see that more as being Nazism, where the young, old and frail are banned from attaining a level of care, due to the arbitrary nature of a pen pusher deciding what premium they should be paying, or being excluded altogether.

That my friend is not Communism, that is rather a sense of community, which I believe is found in all the major religions and yes even amongst atheists. Communism it is not.

 
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