Universal Health Coverage

[jamiebk]

It prompts the question: If the US adopts Obamacare, how will the Canadian health care system survive?

Survive???? Hell it will prosper. Half of the US will be going there for care!

[Mahlersfifth]

I'm ok up here thanks for asking.

[Haggis@wk]

Wall Street Journal op-ed, Another Obama Tax Hike: The Senate Health-Care Bill Would Raise Effective Marginal Tax Rates on Lower and Middle-Income Singles and Families up to 41%.

[Haggis@wk]

I'm ok up here thanks for asking.

'My heart, my choice,' Williams says, defending decision for U.S. heart surgery

This is the Canadian politician who touts the great health care in Canada but came to the U.S. for his own health care. Frankly, after reading his account, I would have done the same thing. The choice was a minimally invasive procedure to repair a heart valve, going in via an incision under his left arm or a full or partial sternotomy.

My father had the sternotomy when he had his bypass and was in the hospital for at least a week afterwards and in pain for months following the surgery

[jamiebk]

'My heart, my choice,' Williams says, defending decision for U.S. heart surgery

And the operative word here is CHOICE...he had a choice. Will we?

[Shapley]

And the operative word here is CHOICE...he had a choice. Will we?

Yep. Take it or leave it...

[Haggis@wk]

[Haggis@wk]

Here's an idea: let's turn our health care over to the government. What could possibly go wrong? The Telegraph reports: "Hundreds of NHS wards to be shut in secret plans."

Last year, the Government asked NHS authorities to come up with proposals to reorganise the service to save money as a result of the recession. Details have started to emerge of what is likely to be a rolling programme of cuts that contrasts sharply with assurances from Labour and the Tories that the NHS was "safe".
So far, only the plans for London have come to light. Campaigners claimed the proposals threatened services such as casualty and maternity units at 13 out of 36 hospitals in the capital.
The failure of health authorities in other areas to disclose their response has prompted allegations that proposed closures, which could be politically damaging to the Government, will not be published until after polling day.

One of the strangest things about the current health care debate is that many of the same people here (and you KNOW who I’m talking about!) who hate and fear insurance companies loves and trust the government; weird.

[dai bread]

The current American healthcare "reforms" seem to pivot around insurance companies. Therefore, everyone should be happy, since the Govt. and the Insurers are together. Aren't they?

[Shapley]

Traditionally, it has been accepted that the United States government does not have the constitutional authority to provide 'insurance'. When they defended the constitutionality of Medicare, they specifically stated that it was not 'insurance'. They do argue that they have the authority to provide 'care', and to subsidise insurance to certain segments via their regulatory and taxation powers. As a result of this, efforts at providing universal health care in America require jumping through hoops to comply with the constitutional provisions and established precedent. The results are rarely pretty.

[Haggis@wk]

GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: Neglected by ‘lazy’ nurses, man, 22, dying of thirst rang the police to beg for water.

“A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital. Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help. They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control. The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.”

[Shapley]

Pelosi Hatches Plan To Pass Senate Health Care Bill Without Vote

Apparently, she doesn't have the votes to pass the bill, so she's come up with a scheme whereby the bill can be passed without the representatives going on record as voting for it.

Is it any wonder the people don't trust their government?

[Haggis@wk]

New England Journal of Medicine

46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.

My personal doctor left his 5-partner practice and set up on his own. He takes no insurance, cash only. It’s been more expensive than I like but I like him a lot and we budget. The big things, like expensive surgery and tests, we have insurance for.

[Giant Communist Robot]

The New York Times quotes Dennis Kucinich as saying

“I believe health care is a civil right.”

A thought provoking statement

[dai bread]

Standard ideology everywhere except the U.S. and has been for decades.

[Haggis@wk]

Someone sent this to me. I wonder if Dai has seen similar situations in NZ.

Over the years watching on C-Span the British Prime Minister's Question Time, I've observed that a large portion of this exercise is devoted to specific questions about the quality care provided by The National Health Service in members' districts. A question on the terrorists threats to the UK will invariably be followed by a passionate query from a Member asking the PM if he's aware of nurses being re-assigned at a hospital in Sheffield. The PM seems to spend as much time on parochial health care issues as on national security.

The politics of deciding who gets what in the way of medical treatment doubtlessly will push aside traditional affairs of state. Every member of Congress will need to hire several staff members just to manage constituents' complaints about their care. Elections will be won and lost on the basis of who can get the most in the way of health care for their districts.

We will become the Gulliver of nations, a great power whose leaders are tied up in strings as they spend much of their time addressing the medical complaints, valid and imagined, of their electorate.

[dai bread]

No I haven't, Haggis. I won't say our heath-care system is left to its own devices, because it's not. It's subject to interference from politicians, and bureaucrats in the Ministry of Health, sometimes with reason; often without. "Restructuring" for instance. Still, we don't see anything like the level of meddling cited in that quote.

I can't think off-hand of the last time the health system was discussed in Parliament other than in terms of the on-going problem of paying for it. Yes, paying is a problem. Medical treatment gets more sophisticated and therefore expensive all the time. For instance, one unsung change concerns the collection of blood from donors. Once, it just went into a bag. Then samples were collected for testing, and now there are multiple bags per unit (3 or 4 it seems- I've never actually counted) along with several tubes of samples. The price per collection must be at least 4 times what it started at, and is almost certainly higher even without considering inflation.

[Haggis@wk]

[Haggis@wk]

[jamiebk]

That remains to be seen