Health Care Reform: Health Care For Everyone
In the debate that is heating up in the United States over universal health care - a proposal that has many Americans searching for extreme Canadian examples to use against the idea - it's important to consider two things. One, that there are good and bad situations with the current Canadian system. Two, that there are good and bad situations with the current American system.
Ask any Canadian and they will tell you that that they wouldn't trade Canadian-style universal health care for anything. But that doesn't mean there aren't issues. As with any aspect of public life, whether government funded or not, there will always be aspects that people don't like or that don't work out as well as we would hope and, in light of those issues, sometimes change is difficult to initiate.
For example, the main issue Canadians have with American-style health care is that the whole system is based on whether or not you can pay for the health care. Just as Americans have heard some horror stories about the Canadian system, the main thing that makes Canadians cringe at our way are the stories we hear about someone being turned away from treatment by an American hospital because they don't have insurance.
Many Canadians feel that is simply unacceptable. Everyone deserves to be treated, and that treatment should be the same whether you're a multi-millionaire or a single mother struggling to make it in the Bronx. Your financial status should not determine whether or not you receive health care, and if you do receive health care, should not determine the quality of that health care.
Another issue Canadians see is the monstrous medical bills that come from just going to see a family doctor, which in many cases prevent people from seeking timely medical attention. Treating certain conditions early means that they won't turn into potentially more serious - and more expensive -situations down the road. Just the cost of having a baby can be over $10,000 and that's just for a normal delivery. Never mind if your baby is born prematurely and requires hospital care for months. Those Americans with good health care plans are fine, but what about those who don't.
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Add a Comment41 Comments
I support this idea entirely. Mainly because I don't have health care and neither do millions of my fellow American's. And I'm not interested in jumping through our own social security 3 ring circus. I pay in but when it's time will the money be there for me when I need it? I don't think so.
July 24, 2009 - 10:36amThis Comment
When Theodore Roosevelt was president he tried to inaugurate universal health care in 1902, long before the NHS. The AMA was founded for the express purpose of opposing it. So this issue has been around well over a century. It is a political and not an economic issue, since health care costs are going to be syndicated one way or the other - rationally or irrationally.
What I am not clear on is whether socialized medicine works and how well. When I was in England they told us there is a thriving private health care industry because the rich would not consider going to the NHS facilities set up for the poor. Apparently before Margaret Thatcher took over they were on about the level one would expect from reading a Dickens novel, but they have improved immeasurably since then. Even post-Thatcher no one will use them who can afford an alternative. I have also read in the British press about people routinely dying (again post-Thatcher) after waiting years for needed surgeries and treatments. The Soviet Union had a socialized health care system before it collapsed, but it was very much two tier, with the elite getting world class care and the poor having to do with essentially third world standards. In Canada, according to the Canadian press, health care in some areas is allocated by lottery, with the winners getting "free" health care and the losers being left essentially to die or treat themselves. The elite in Canada of course get special treatment everywhere at government expense that the ordinary folk cannot even dream about. I know a woman who is Italian and who broke her arm while in Italy. She went to the socialized doc and was told she would have to wait three months (!) to have her arm set or else pay a bribe of $10,000. Nobody wants to sit around for three months with a broken arm, so she paid the bribe and they screwed the job up horribly, leaving the arm useless and a constant source of pain. On returning to Texas she could have had it fixed, but by then the bones had knitted, so the docs would have had to break the arm a second time and re-set it, which would have required about a month of recuperation in bed. Any Boy Scout knows how to set a broken arm, so the fact that socialized medicine in Italy is that bad astonishes this observer. I believe the story is true, though, because her arm is in a cast and has been for quite some time. She has nothing good to say about socialized medicine and will not hear anyone who praises it.
There is in fact socialized medicine in the US, with county hospitals for the poor and Veterans Administration hospitals for veterans. It is a sorry story, but nobody wants to go to these places unless they have no choice. One concern that some have is that the whole health care system will start to resemble those parts that are currently socialized, with no one getting good care but the rich. I believe there is already general socialized health care in some states, such as Massachusetts and Oregon. When I had my cataracts removed I was told that people fly in from all over the world to have the work done in Texas because the care in other places is so bad. The clinic is set up to have a driver meet patients at the airport and ferry them to local hotels, then pick them up and take them in for surgery, returning them to the hotel when the job is done.
So those are the stories I have heard. I have no insurance and will be ruined if I ever get much more than a cold, but it is not clear whether I or others like me would benefit from the socialization of health care. Bear in mind I am trying to sift and weigh evidence here and not make a politically charged statement.
July 25, 2009 - 9:36amCanada is not Britain. We have our own way of doing things. We have very good doctors because the ones that are here want to be here. If complaints are lodged, it's usually because they've had to wait to be seen.
Perhaps this is a societal issue more than it is anything else, and by that I mean, in my freelance work I don't care what someone pays me. They've hired me to do a job and no matter that one person can't afford to pay what someone else can, they always get my best attention and effort. Unfortunately not everyone works that way. I guess doctors are no exception. There is nothing a government can do to "legislate" doctors to provide the best care possible like doctors should. The Hippocratic Oath to some may be just guidelines.
In Canada, we have a health care hierarchy, too, and that's our clinics. Those who don't have a family doctor and need medical attention go to a walk-in clinic. I would never go there. I would prefer to go to the ER and wait a couple of hours. But, at least in Canada, wherever you choose to go, it's paid for.
For the record, the hospitals, medical clinics and doctors offices are not "run by the government" they are funded by it through the taxes we pay (supposedly). For the most part, you won't hear very many complaints about the doctors here in Canada. Most patients are quite satisfied with the care they are provided by their family doctors and by the specialists. We have world-class medical facilities particularly in cancer care, children's needs and heart issues. And these are all available to every Canadian regardless of social status.
Canada's issues of wait times and not enough family doctors is not directly associated with the fact the funding comes from the government. These issues probably would have happened anyway because of other underlying factors that no one could have possibly predicted.
The kinds of issues you have raised need to be presented to your government representative. It's no good to be an armchair politician and not let those who can make difference know what you would like to see in the bill. Democracy means you get a say in that government--even if your party isn't currently in power. Speak up make your concerns heard. Let your representatives know these are the issues you would like to see addressed.
To sit back and do nothing will still leave 50 million Americans without access to basic medical care (according to a radio report I heard, yesterday). In the richest nation in the world this is unconscionable. Y'all deserve so much better than that from your government and from your medical professionals.
July 25, 2009 - 10:17amWho told you that when you were in England? And where do you get your crazy ideas about Thatcher from?! I'm not able to comment on US health care, because I'm not from the US. You're not from the UK, so don't presume to judge our healthcare system.
The fact is that there are competent and incompetent medical staff everywhere, whether publicly funded or paid for privately or by insurance. The issue here is how health care should be managed and paid for. We have socialized medicine. The quality of care is just fine thank you. Our biggest problem here is waiting lists. I will admit that sometimes the wait times for consultancies and non-emergency surgeries seem rather long.
However, my family live in France where they also have socialized health care. They organize it differently to the UK and waiting times don't seem to be a problem there. In fact, the French health care system is widely acknowledged to be one of the best in the world. So obviously, quality socialized medicine is possible.
Check your facts before you post and stop relying on one-off anecdotal stories that you 'believe' are true based on the fact that somebody said so. Contrary to popular American belief, people in Europe are not all snaggle-toothed tax slaves with terrible plumbing.
August 6, 2009 - 10:21amExactly. There are horror stories everywhere, and the American rich who have no problem paying for their care have been having a ball digging them up. The NHS does have it's faults with waiting lists, but our care is free and effective.
Interestingly, I've been living in Taiwan for a few years now, and it surprised me when I arrived that Taiwan has a national health care service that is run in a similar fashion to the NHS, and very likely to the French system too. I pay a monthly inexpensive sum, and my employer is expected to contribute too - similar to national insurance payments that would come out of my pay in the UK. This covers visits to the doctor and the hospital, and all I'm expected to pay is a prescription fee. This fee is the same cover charge regardless of what is wrong with me, much like the prescription fee charged in the UK.
What I do find scary is stories of people who've moved to America and have found that the 'insurance' they thought would cover them, only covers them up until the point they actually get sick. In the end, they've had to rely on charities and other such institutions in order to pay the bill they get sent in the post. We get nothing like that in the UK. The prescription fee is the only time money will change hands, and is currently about £7.70 (they don't pay it in Wales) and, as always, I find it horrific that America is a country that is determined to make it easier to kill people - the sheer lack of gun laws, Iraq, Afghanistan - than to keep them alive.
October 9, 2009 - 12:48pmAs an RN I can give you horror stories about any MD and any hospital. Analagous info is fickle.
November 14, 2009 - 4:50pmWhat you need to do is look at the big picture and compiled data of outcomes. Using that info the US has some of the worst quality care at the highest price. And the VA is head & shoulders above most for profit health care providers. Look at the data.
I have to posit the possibility that American's developments and high-profile achievements in this industry has everything to do, like it or not, with the fact that money makes their world go round.
The more money that is pushed to research, the better the research. Cancer research, though not classified as basic, should be just as important as the common flu. If we were to even modify the system, this same profit-centered research (assuming replaced with public funds) could lose its muster or its value altogether.
Capitalism by its very nature yields better results.
July 27, 2009 - 1:41pmI don't believe that is true. The quality of research doesn't change with more money thrown at it. The continuation of that research does, however, change with more money.
Unfortunately, many governments and hospital administrations don't realize that throwing money at a problem will not solve the innate problems plaguing it. They can have all the money in the world at their disposal but unless it's managed wisely any change will likely only be cosmetic and temporary - because no one likes to change their way of doing things even if that way has been proven ineffective.
Research is one of those aspects of health care that is sadly underappreciated and underrated by most people. I wrote speeches for a Canadian politician who had a distinguished medical career and believed wholeheartedly in the role research played in medicine. I learned that from him.
This is another thing Americans should educate themselves on as far as health care dollars being spent.
July 27, 2009 - 2:12pmyou miss the point entirely. No one is arguing that "throwing money" at research will somehow cause that research to be more effective. However, in the United States, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies have a profit motive. Every other developed country in the world has socialized health care, where pharmaceutical and medical technology companies don't have any profit motive, therefore they don't create new drugs and new technologies. Nearly all innovation in medical and pharmaceutical research comes from the United States.
This is what kills me about Canadian health care. An American company will spend years and billions of dollars developing a new drug with hopes of turning a profit, and some Canadian company will simply reverse engineer the drug, aka pirate it, and sell it in Canada at a vastly reduced price. Then Canadians act all smug and superior as if they simply have cheaper drugs. Yeah, you do, only because its much cheaper to reverse engineer a drug than it is to develop a drug, and your pirating country has no copyright laws to protect the intellectual property of a pharmaceutical company. Canada, in terms of health care, is essentially a parasite of the United States. Of course Canadians pay less per capita on health care than Americans, because AMERICANS ARE ESSENTIALLY SUBSIDIZING CANADIAN HEALTH CARE.
I don't really mind that I am subsidizing your health care, any more than I mind that I am subsidizing your national defense (ever wonder why you don't need a military? no, its not because you're so friendly and everyone loves you. they dont. Its because your next door neighbor/protector has the biggest baddest military in the world) what i do mind is the complete lack of gratefulness for all this subsidizing and the smugness we get from when you act as if you paid for all of this by yourself.
August 14, 2009 - 12:50amThis is BS. The US does research but no more or less than Canada or Europe. As far as drug research only 5-15% of their expense is research, for which they get favorable tax treatment. 80% is marketing and administration.
November 14, 2009 - 4:55pm