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Post by RS Davis on Oct 22, 2003 19:10:49 GMT -5
A FEE Timely Classic....
- Rick
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Post by emilysrevolution on Oct 25, 2003 1:57:37 GMT -5
I suppose you think this is a bad idea?
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 25, 2003 6:22:23 GMT -5
I suppose you think this is a bad idea? Oh, horrible. Rationing. Long waits for essential healthcare. I pray for the health of our nation that we don't ever attempt this. - Rick |
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Jodi
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Post by Jodi on Oct 26, 2003 13:04:40 GMT -5
Oh, horrible. Rationing. Long waits for essential healthcare. I pray for the health of our nation that we don't ever attempt this. - Rick Actually, the "long waits" thing is mostly myth, but even if it weren't- that's a convenience issue, not a health issue. The crux of the matter is this: does the Canadian healthcare system do a better job of keeping its citizens healthy than the American system, and the answer is an overwhelming YES. The Canadian system is also more fiscally efficient- with about half being spent per patient as compared to the US. |
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 26, 2003 14:38:10 GMT -5
Actually, the "long waits" thing is mostly myth, but even if it weren't- that's a convenience issue, not a health issue. Prove it. The crux of the matter is this: does the Canadian healthcare system do a better job of keeping its citizens healthy than the American system, and the answer is an overwhelming YES. On what planet is this true? The Canadian system is also more fiscally efficient- with about half being spent per patient as compared to the US. That's called "rationing." - Rick |
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Jodi
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Post by Jodi on Oct 27, 2003 3:51:06 GMT -5
Aside from the fact that it's impossible to prove a negative, this has already been slam dunked on the other board a few months ago. The other issue, of course, is that criticism of Canadian waiting lists implies that there's no problem with getting prompt, adequate care in the US- which simply isn't true for the 40 million Americans who aren't insured, or for many who ARE insured. The insistence that our system is better because Canadians are put on waiting lists is especially silly, because in the USA even the insured can find getting coverage for "pre-existing conditions" damn near impossible. In Canada, that's not the case. But, here are a few of the particulars- Where there are significant accessibility problems in Canada, it's because of geography. Canada has a population smaller than California's, but it's spread out over an area considerably greater than the USA's. In the cities, healthcare options are greater than in the remote villages- just as in this country. A resident of LA, St. Louis, or Louisville will have more access to most healthcare than a resident of Sleetmute, Alaska. Same thing in Canada. The very notion that Americans have "choice" is disproven by the prevalence of HMOs, and employee health plans which restrict choice of doctors. In theory, yes, American's can go wherever they want for medical care. In theory, of course, so can Canadians. In reality, most Americans have very little choice as to which doctor they use, when they can get an appointment, etc. Over the past couple of years there have been some "bed shortages". One of the reasons is that during the recent restructuring of health care, new calculations on the number of beds needed were made using US-based data. It turns out that US for-profit hospitals have cut to the bone the numbers of beds needed, and that same number of beds appears to be too few for Canadians.
In the USA: FEWER DOCTORS, HIGHER COSTS
U.S. patients also had fewer doctors to see than those in other countries — with 2.7 practicing physicians per 1,000 people, slightly lower than the average of 2.9 among developed nations. Despite fears of a nursing shortage, the United States had as many nurses as other nations: 8.1 per 1,000 people. U.S. patients usually have shorter hospital stays than in other nations, just two days after childbirth and 5.7 days after a heart attack. The shorter stays are a sign of efficiency, though they tend to raise costs.
U.S. hospitals, meantime, have 2.9 beds per 1,000 people — below the average for developed nations.Ummm, on this one. I'm surprised you're not aware of it- it's not exactly a secret. There are about half as many deaths from malnutrition in this country as in Canada. Average life expectancy in Canada is about 2 years longer. Infant mortality rate in the USA is about 33% higher than Canada's (10.4 vs 7.9 per 100 thousand births) www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htmAnd- By and large, Canadian cancer patients fare better than their American counterparts. Studies by both the US General Accounting Office (Keller, 1997), and Canadian researchers (Gorey, 1997) have shown that Canadian survival rates are superior for most cancers, and that Canadians get more bone marrow transplants than in the US.No, it's called efficiency. If you want to talk about "rationing", let's talk about the American "free market" system: According to Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt, those costs come from certain fundamental imbalances in the health care system between providers and patients. "We have a carefully structured health care system where the demand side has almost no power," he says. "The supply side has been unbelievably clever always to make sure that the demand side is weak."
Reinhardt notes the proliferation of insurance companies and health plans force doctors and hospitals to spend heavily on administrative costs that most other nations don’t have. In countries such as Canada, the government’s buying power as a sole purchaser drives down prices.According to an executive summary by the General Accounting Office - the watchdog arm of Congress - "If the universal coverage and single-payer features of the Canadian system were applied to the United States, the savings in administrative costs alone would be more than enough to finance insurance coverage for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsuredThere are more than 40 million uninsured people in the United States. There are no uninsured in Canada, and they spend considerably less to achieve that- because they're not at the mercy of the market, because they're not at the mercy of the insurance industry, and because they're not as bloated with overhead and administrative costs. Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per person in l998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring only 84 percent of our citizens. This oversight was convenient. One would look rather foolish asserting that Canada's medical care costs half what ours does and insures everyone, but is, nonetheless, "inefficient." ---- Myth: Private hospitals are cheaper to run.
Fact: A recent study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (March 13, 1997) by S. Woolhandler and D.U. Himmelstein, found that private for-profit hospitals in the United States spend more on administration than public hospitals and spend twice as much on administration as do Canadian public hospitals.
Myth: A private hospital system will result in overall savings for the economy as a whole.
Fact: Evidence provided by a Canadian study of the healthcare system for the National Forum on Health in 1998 found that increasing reliance on the private medical sector leads to an increase in overall costs. |
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 27, 2003 22:54:47 GMT -5
Aside from the fact that it's impossible to prove a negative, this has already been slam dunked on the other board a few months ago. Well, there are people over here who've never been to STLToday, you know. Also, that's not proving a negative. There are plenty of studies out there showing that there are indeed waiting lists, so one would think there might be at least one out there that refutes that assertion. The other issue, of course, is that criticism of Canadian waiting lists implies that there's no problem with getting prompt, adequate care in the US- which simply isn't true for the 40 million Americans who aren't insured, or for many who ARE insured. The insistence that our system is better because Canadians are put on waiting lists is especially silly, because in the USA even the insured can find getting coverage for "pre-existing conditions" damn near impossible. In Canada, that's not the case. So, they don't have waiting lists because many insurance companies in America don't cover pre-existing conditions? Where there are significant accessibility problems in Canada, it's because of geography. Canada has a population smaller than California's, but it's spread out over an area considerably greater than the USA's. In the cities, healthcare options are greater than in the remote villages- just as in this country. A resident of LA, St. Louis, or Louisville will have more access to most healthcare than a resident of Sleetmute, Alaska. Same thing in Canada. The study was about Quebec, not some backwoods province in the middle of nowhere. Furthermore, in Doctor Jane Orient's book Your Doctor is Not In[/url], we learn that socialized medicine always leads to shortages and long waiting lists for even the most urgent medical care, as in Canada, where "the average number of weeks waiting for hand surgery was 12.4; for hysterectomy, 16.3; for colonoscopy (a diagnostic procedure that might find a cancer), 6.2; for hernia repair, 24.6; for cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal), 31.7; coronary artery bypass, 23.7; other open heart surgery, 21.4; prostatectomy (which relieves difficulty in urination and often finds treatable cancer), 30.9; cytoscopy (often done to diagnose cancer), 23.6." People die waiting for many of those. The very notion that Americans have "choice" is disproven by the prevalence of HMOs, and employee health plans which restrict choice of doctors. In theory, yes, American's can go wherever they want for medical care. In theory, of course, so can Canadians. In reality, most Americans have very little choice as to which doctor they use, when they can get an appointment, etc. We have many choices, and not just in theory. We can choose between many of the discounted plans employers offer, or even private plans (these would be easier if Congress would stop giving only a business breaks on insurance expenditures), or no plan at all. In Canada, they can choose between government doctor A and government doctor B. Well, that would make sense, because at zero cost, demand for service goes through the roof. Of course their demand is greated. It's just like our Medicare, which was projected to come in at around $8 billion its first year, but came in at $66 billion. It has only grown since. FEWER DOCTORS, HIGHER COSTS
U.S. patients also had fewer doctors to see than those in other countries — with 2.7 practicing physicians per 1,000 people, slightly lower than the average of 2.9 among developed nations. Despite fears of a nursing shortage, the United States had as many nurses as other nations: 8.1 per 1,000 people. U.S. patients usually have shorter hospital stays than in other nations, just two days after childbirth and 5.7 days after a heart attack. The shorter stays are a sign of efficiency, though they tend to raise costs.
U.S. hospitals, meantime, have 2.9 beds per 1,000 people — below the average for developed nations. And yet they have waiting lists, and we don't. Hmmm... There are about half as many deaths from malnutrition in this country as in Canada. One would hope... Average life expectancy in Canada is about 2 years longer. This could be because Canadians live a healthier lifestyle. We have 60% of our people overweight. I wonder how their numbers pan out. Infant mortality rate in the USA is about 33% higher than Canada's (10.4 vs 7.9 per 100 thousand births) That's less than a tenth of a percent difference between two incredibly small figures. (0.01 USA, 0.00007 CAN)Jesus, that could be a statistical anomoly. Bone marrow transplants? Are we stretching? More people in Canada volunteer to donate bone marrow, and that's a failing of free market medicine? As far as the cancer stuff goes, we have to again if there are certain behaviors that lead Americans to have a worse shot at surviving cancer. In September 2002, The Fraser Institute came out with it's twelfth report on the median wait time for procedures in Canada, and "there are no comprehensive measures other than those produced by The Fraser Institute by which to measure the length of waiting lists in Canada."What they found was that, as David Frum said: Altogether, “the total number of procedures for which people [in Canada] are waiting was 1,094,420 in 2001-2002, an increase of 15% from the estimated 953,420 procedures in 2000-2001.” Assuming each person is waiting for only one procedure, that means that 3.52% of the entire population of Canada was waiting for care in 2001-2002....For the patient waiting for cancer treatment, waits mean the difference between life and death. Canada’s Cancer Advocacy Coalition reports that in Canada’s Atlantic provinces, two cancer patients die of colon cancer for every one patient in Utah, Idaho, or Colorado, three states with ethnic makeups similar to those of eastern Canada. Again comparing like with like, while only 6.8 of every 100,000 men in the U.S. wheat belt die of prostate cancer, 9.8 of every 100,000 men die of that disease in Canadian Saskatchewan. These are studies that take into account your regional theories, arriving to the same conclusion - Canadian healthcare is substandard, it is getting worse, and it is killing people. But, also, equipment is old and outdated, much like the equipment at our own government-run VA hospitals: Canadian doctors are highly skilled and conscientious, if sometimes demoralized, and they do the best they can under difficult circumstances. Every Canadian can tell amazing stories of medical achievement under adverse circumstances. But the circumstances are adverse. A decade ago, the Canadian-American science writer Malcolm Gladwell noted that there were then more CAT scanners in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area than in all of Canada, and since then the technology gap has only grown. Because Canadian doctors earn so much less than their American counterparts, they cannot afford to invest in equipment for their offices. The ultrasounds that every American obstetrician has are seldom found outside of hospitals in Canada. A woman I know – a highly intelligent, well-informed woman with access to the best medicine that Canada offers – got through nine months of pregnancy without her doctor ever discovering that her baby was in breach position. In the United States, the problem would have been discovered early and the baby safely removed by caesarian section; in Canada, it took hours of heroic effort at the very final hour to save the baby’s life.I'm glad my wife and I didn't have to go through something like that when Connor came into the world, and I hope we don't go down this miserable road that Canada seems too far down to turn back. - Rick |
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Post by penguin on Oct 27, 2003 23:38:27 GMT -5
Well, there are people over here who've never been to STLToday, you know. Also, that's not proving a negative. There are plenty of studies out there showing that there are indeed waiting lists, so one would think there might be at least one out there that refutes that assertion. Also, FYI and those who haven't been there, it wasn't "slam dunked" or anything approaching it. There have been many discussions on the topic there over the years, with copious links both supporting and rebutting the contention that Canadian medical care is causing problems up there (queues, brain-drain, shortages in specialized care), and the issue wasn't even close to settled, although simply declaring oneself the champeen seems to be a popular tactic lately. |
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Jodi
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Post by Jodi on Oct 28, 2003 4:46:56 GMT -5
This will be in 2 parts, because of the 10,000 character limit... Maybe, but I was responding to YOU. I don't know if you're deliberately being obtuse, or if you really missed the point of that paragraph- (summed up in the sentence which began: "The insistence that our system is better because Canadians are put on waiting lists is especially silly") but I was demonstrating that the American system is actually a horrible system- because it leaves tens of millions uncovered for needed procedures and basic care. As I pointed out, there are several reasons for this- including insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and the fact that over 40 million don't have coverage. Therefore, as I explained, the "waiting list" issue is a moot point, because in the USA wait times aren't just a matter of bureaucracy, they're a matter of economic status- which is no less horrible. The article to which you linked wasn't based on a particular study, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I was speaking about the Canadian system, as I thought you were. In fact, possibly the biggest flaw in this particular opinion piece is that the author's most "damning" arguments are either purely ideological (such as the horrified comment that ambulance drivers have protested for more centralization in their service), or completely unquantified (such his commentary about wait times, flight from Canada of personel, and patients dying in droves while waiting for care) and therefore unverified. He claims these things are happening, but offers only anecdotes. Yes, the infamous Jane Orient- non-practicing physician, mediocre novelist, and free market activist- who's made a cottage industry out of arguing for physicians' and insurance companies right to economically rape their patients and customers. She was also taken to task by the AMA for spreading mistruths about Medicare documentation supposedly violating patient privilege. She also once claimed, falsely, that vaccination programs have lead to large numbers of parents being coerced into accepting unnecessary immunizations for their children. She's also argued in favor of simply putting pediatric medicines on the market without testing. So, it should be no surprise that much of what you quote is less than indisputable. I'll get to that in a moment. She does, however, agree with me that the American system has many flaws, not the least of which the managed care horror- which denies much needed coverage to patients routinely. I suppose that's not a concern for you, since at least somebody's making a profit. Of course, we can compare that to small town America, where many of those procedures simply aren't available without travelling elsewhere (one of the knocks against Canada, isn't it?). We can also compare that to un-insured America (all 40 million of them), for whom preventative measures such as colonoscopy, MRIs, etc. aren't usually available. The real problem with numbers like those you quote from Orient are- they're not necessarily accurate. In the same way that a sticker price on a car is rarely the actual price, those "wait periods" vary depending on urgency. Urgent needs tend to receive urgent treatment, less urgent needs can wait longer. The real killer when it comes to figures like those offered by Orient is that they falsely suggest that the waiting list "problem" is because of socialized medicine- a symptom of bureaucracy. That's simply untrue. Except for cardiac care and a handful of urgent procedures, wait times are determined by individual doctors and hospitals. In Ontario, for example, their centralized CardiacCare Network is extremely efficient- and it's centralized. And, as to the horrors of waiting for surgery, my dad had knee surgery 2 years ago. It was 8 weeks from his decision to have the procedure until the surgery could actually be performed, because of the doctor's schedule and arrangments at the hospital. This isn't at all uncommon for less than urgent procedures, but for some reason it only bothers you guys when it's in Canada. Yes. Much like in this country. I do always get a kick, though, out of statements like "People die waiting for many of those", because those statments are never accompanied by any actual numbers... Again, and even the article you linked in your first post admitted this- most problems with "waiting lists" occur in remote areas. Those willing to travel to the cities can find their wait time reduced, drastically. That's no different than in this country. (Continued...) |
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Jodi
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Post by Jodi on Oct 28, 2003 4:47:35 GMT -5
Part 2...
No, those "choices" pretty much only exist in theory for many Americans. Certainly those who can't afford insurance at all have no choice. Those whose only affordable option is their employer-supplied plan have no choice. Those with pre-existing conditions often have no choice, unless they are wealthy enough to pay for all their serious care out of pocket.
Sorry, but simply putting the word "government" in there isn't enough to make that a bad thing.
What does that have to do with the fact that American hospitals have (like most private businesses) slashed costs by cutting service?
It's cool if you simply want to dismiss data in such an offhanded fashion, but it doesn't make your argument any more sound.
There ARE people waiting for care in America- more than the entire population of Canada, in fact. The difference is, in the USA, they likely won't ever get that care, until they're carried into the emergency room.
Whoops. My bad. It was late. I meant to write that there are twice as many deaths from malnutrion in this country than in Canada per 1000 people.
Hmmm. Earlier you reacted in a condescending fashion when I pointed out to you that Canadians are healthier, responding as if it were a ridiculous statement. Now you accept that fact as a given. I'm glad to see you've changed your mind.
What? A 33% higher rate isn't an insignificant amount. In fact, the US infant mortality rate is the HIGHEST among all developed nations.
Abject denial isn't a good color on you, Rick.
The link actually says "Canadian survival rates are superior for most cancers,[/u[ and that Canadians get more bone marrow transplants than in the US."
This is from the GAO, by the way.
Cleverly worded and constructed, but false at it's basic premise.
Ethnic makeup isn't a valid comparison. The comparison should be beteen relative population and the proximity to urban centers- which even Colorado (with Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs), Utah (with Salt Lake City) and Idaho (with Boise) have in spades over the relative wilderness of that part of Canada.
That's not comparing like with like- because it relates to per 100,000 of the population, not per 100,000 who actually HAVE prostate cancer.
These are studies that take into account your regional theories, arriving to the same conclusion - Canadian healthcare is substandard, it is getting worse, and it is killing people.
There are several fallacies in those articles, particularly in the NRO piece, but here are just a couple:
That sounds shocking, shocking, I tell you! Until one asks: how many CAT scanners are there in Alabama or Kentucky, as compared to Montreal? My guess is Montreal's got more. Washington DC is an enormous metropolitan area, with an unusually high (by any standard) number of top flight medical facilities.
Canada's population is just about 30 million, and most of that is spread out over an enormous area. There are literally thousands of small towns in this country without any CAT scanners, MRIs, etc. Unless you're going to hold the USA to the same standard as you're holding Canada, it's a bogus argument.
Because Canadian doctors earn so much less than their American counterparts, they cannot afford to invest in equipment for their offices
The problems with that are: Physicians are the 2nd highest earning profession in Canada, and they operate at considerably lower overhead than American doctors. They waste much less money on administrative tasks and personnel.
In Canada, the government ensures that tests are done much less often and that the results are processed much more slowly.
Actually, that's not true. The biggest knock against the Canadian system by Canadian doctors is that patients get MUCH MORE preventive and diagnostic care than is often necessary.
Imagine waiting three weeks for the results of an AIDS test. Or for an analysis of that dark spot on your check.
Or, imagine being one of the 40 million uninsured Americans who likely wouldn't get the AIDs test or cancer screening at all.
Given that the USA has the highest infant mortality rate among developed nations, it seems what you should instead be thankful for is the fact that you are lucky enough to have better health coverage than tens of millions of other Americans.
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 28, 2003 21:51:14 GMT -5
Jodi -
Well, this is going nowhere unless you can open your eyes to the fact that there are, indeed, waiting lists in Canada. It is a well-established fact that Canada admits to, and the Fraser Institute studies. Geography has nothing to do with them, though, because they are not determined by when the customer can get to the doctor, but by when the doctor will be available to see the patient. You can stomp your feet, hold your breath, decry profits, and try to discredit my sources, but the fact remains that there are waiting lists, sometimes months long, for even the most urgent medical procedures, like hysterectomies, bypass surgery, and the like. Geography only makes it more difficult to rearrange your life once you are finally given an appointment - if you're still alive, of course.
This is a matter of simple economics, which is, of course, why it is posted in the Economics Folder. When the cost of any product reaches zero, there is immedeately a huge jump in demand, because individuals are no longer weighing the cost of a service against the costs of other things they desire. There is no thought - they just go. This is why, as you mentioned above, there is a lot of talk about the great amount of preventative and wellness care. No cost. You can go in and have it checked out if your leg falls asleep.
Here, on the other hand, when you decide whether or not to go to the doctor, that price competes with other wants and needs you may have. You may, heaven forbid, decide you want the new Matchbox 20 album more than you want to know why your nose is running. So, many people - especially young, reasonably healthy people - don't go to the doctor with every little change in their bodies. In Canada, you don't have those competing interests, so everyone goes whenever they go, and it creates a shortage.
This is called The Law of Supply and Demand, and it is the one inescapable economic law that well-meaning politicians try in vain to break constantly. No matter how many times they fail, they keep trying to circumvent it. This was the fundamental flaw of Communism, and it is the fundamental flaw of most of our socialistic programs. Like I said before, when they first started Medicare, which is, after all, merely a smaller version of Canada's universal healthcare, they projected the cost, based on then-current demand, at $8 billion for that first year.
Their folly was in ignoring the law of Supply and Demand, because, as the cost to the patient hit zero, demand went through the roof. As a result, Medicare came in at $66 billion that first year, which was 825% above projections. Since then, as more people come in, and the means tests for eligibility become less strict, Medicare has become more and more expensive.
Add a huge prescription drug benefit and expand the whole thing to cover everyone, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
- Rick
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Jodi
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Post by Jodi on Oct 29, 2003 10:18:00 GMT -5
I'll agree that the discussion is going nowhere, and will likely continue to do so, but that's because of your unwillingness to look at the vast horror that exists as a result of the American system.
As to the issue of the waiting lists, there's not much more that can be said, as it's a bogus issue. The Fraser Institute's numbers are a median, rather than a mean, which is inherently misleading. They also, as pointed out, fail to account for the very real fact that urgency decreases the wait time significantly. You simply choose to pretend that this is not the case, but that doesn't make you correct.
I noticed that at no pint have you actually been willing to address the tremendous flaws in the American system. The Canadian system, while imperfect, is vastly superior.
You can try to couch this as me "decrying profits", which is a ridiculous comment. The only time I mentioned profit was to point out that your concern isn't at all about whether patients receive the care they need or not. If it were, you'd rail against the American system, where patients being denied care is a matter of routine- much more so than in Canada. You're more concerned with ideology than the reality of the issue, which is that the American system is horrible.
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 29, 2003 11:45:24 GMT -5
I'll agree that the discussion is going nowhere, and will likely continue to do so, but that's because of your unwillingness to look at the vast horror that exists as a result of the American system. As to the issue of the waiting lists, there's not much more that can be said, as it's a bogus issue. The Fraser Institute's numbers are a median, rather than a mean, which is inherently misleading. They also, as pointed out, fail to account for the very real fact that urgency decreases the wait time significantly. You simply choose to pretend that this is not the case, but that doesn't make you correct. I noticed that at no pint have you actually been willing to address the tremendous flaws in the American system. The Canadian system, while imperfect, is vastly superior. You can try to couch this as me "decrying profits", which is a ridiculous comment. The only time I mentioned profit was to point out that your concern isn't at all about whether patients receive the care they need or not. If it were, you'd rail against the American system, where patients being denied care is a matter of routine- much more so than in Canada. You're more concerned with ideology than the reality of the issue, which is that the American system is horrible. No one can be turned away in America for needed services. It's just not free. But then again, it's not free in Canada, either. I only care about the priofits insofar as they propell industries into providing more and better services, including the medical industry. What I am concerned about is people living and dying. When someone here has trouble, they get helped. Case in point: my mother. She had no insurance when she got lung cancer. She was not turned away. She didn't have to wait 12 weeks for her chemo. We paid out the ass for everything, but they didn't turn her away. The problems you have with the American system simply don't exist, and when they do - such as HMOs - you can look to the government as the source (HMO's were their idea). We don't need more government involvement in our medicine, but less. - Rick |
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Jodi
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Post by Jodi on Oct 29, 2003 11:57:03 GMT -5
No one can be turned away in America for needed services. It's just not free. Well, yes, if one can't pay one CAN and will be turned away for needed services. Emergency rooms tend to treat anybody who comes in, but that's a last resort situation and doesn't account for people who can't afford well care, women who have to do without prenatal care for their children, transplant patients whose insurance companies won't pay for the drugs to keep their body from rejecting the organs, etc. Your argument that "everybody who gets care if they can pay for it" is EXACTLY my point- in this country, healthcare is rationed- it's just that rather than being rationed by urgency, it's rationed by wealth. Yes. For those who can afford them. What if she couldn't have "paid out the ass"? What if she didn't have money? Can I assume you'd have just shrugged your shoulders and said "Oh well, in Canada they would have made you wait until next week, so we're about even. It's your own fault for not having enough money." Wait. Do they, or don't they exist? In other words, it's all about ideology. You're fine with people being denied coverage by insurance companies, just not by the government. You're fine with people not getting needed services if they don't have money to pay for it, but it's a horror if they have to wait 12 weeks for an elective surgery. |
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 30, 2003 3:22:05 GMT -5
What if she couldn't have "paid out the ass"? What if she didn't have money? Can I assume you'd have just shrugged your shoulders and said "Oh well, in Canada they would have made you wait until next week, so we're about even. It's your own fault for not having enough money." She didn't have any money, as a matter of fact. My brother has spent the last two years living like a monk and paying a bit at a time. He's almost done, and I am completely impressed. In other words, it's all about ideology. You're fine with people being denied coverage by insurance companies, just not by the government. You're fine with people not getting needed services if they don't have money to pay for it, but it's a horror if they have to wait 12 weeks for an elective surgery. Well, that's just a bunch of reactionary bullshit. I have posted numbers on how long the wait is for extremely un-elective surgeries, including bypass surgery and hysterectomies. And you think my ideology is tainting my opinion?  - Rick |
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