THANK YOU GTREX!!!!!

I'm book marking this article and plan to use it often. This is the best explanation of the Canadian Health Care System I've seen.

 

The government health care program in Britain does work. Okay, there are long waiting lists, but on the whole everyone is in the same boat. Things are also getting better, we now have a choice as to which hospitals we can be treated in, so the worst hospitals aren't guaranteed the patients any longer. And this means that the health care trusts have to up their game, provide better services, cleaner hospitals and ongoing care to patients in order to retain the government funding.

Of course, one way to avoid the waiting lists is to pay extra for a private hospital bed which is an option not available to everyone. But even those with private health care, if in an accident, will be taken to the nearest emergency treatment facility. Once there, they aren't expected to produce evidence of their payments. No matter if your a high-ranking exec or a homeless person, you get the same life-saving treatment. So I think that our program works quite well.

 

Hey gtrex, thought I'd point a few "slight" errors in your link:

I'm out of time, if anyone wants more "mythbuster" bustings, I'll be back tonight.

 

Yeah I want the link to where your actually getting this stuff from because it looks cherry picked for a specific purpose to me.

But for one example you say: "The total tax bill paid by Canadians is much more than income tax. The reality is, the total tax bill assessed by all levels of government requires almost 43 per cent of an average family's annual income."

Like the guy said that's really not too far off the amount US citizens end up paying.

http://www.babeled.com/2009/04/22/how-much-do-you-really-pay-in-taxes/

Let me see how many more of your supposed busted myths I can bust.;

 

The US healthcare system can never be fixed unless you get the elephant out of the system.

HMO's are nothing but rackets, I knew that from the beginning. They take money that should go for healthcare to enrich the pockets of the entrepeneurs who created the concept and their support staff.

Medicare is NOT operated by the government but by for profit companies like cigna as contractors. Therefore my premiums are only going according to the OP's interview video for about 80% for healthcare and 20% to enrich the contractor.

And Medicare is not FREE either. I pay over $100 per month premium for at best mediocre attention to what I need also with LONG waiting periods to have procedures or see doctors, or even getting them to fill out the annual forms medicare requires before I can get my medications for diabetes for the next year.

I am so mad about the situation I have quit doing any of the "routine" checks since 6 months ago. If it kills me, fine, the sooner the better, this country has become maybe even worse than Nazi Germany or the Stalin Soviet Union. And it is sheer corporate GREED that has ruined it.

 

Last year Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for economics. He is also a New York Times columnist, and an economics professor at Princeton.

 

I also found this little blurb but that's about all I have time for.

https://transgriot.blogspot.com/2009/06/10-busted-myths-about-canadian.html

 

I had a pretty good idea thato none of this would persuade you, prtndr...probably nothing would. Others, though, might approach the matter with more of an open mind, and ask themselves if they've noticed what's happened to the health care delivery system in this country in just the past 20 years. As Stumbler said, it's not sustainable, and even if it was, I have no idea why anyone would prefer that outcome.

As for the cost, a public health care option, in and of itself, need not cost anything. It pays for itself, since it's competing on a level playing field. What costs money is the insuring of the uninsured, which is a problem regardless of which way we choose to deal with it. Right now, we're paying for it in the escalation of hospital costs, in order to cover the cost of millions of people getting their health care via the emergency room.

 

You probably don't want to go down this road, Stumbler...Krauthammer has a Pulitzer Prize and quite a few other awards in his pocket to beat you over the head with.

The trouble is, he's a right-wing idealogue who has spent the past eight years cheerleading for the discredited and disgraced Bush Administration. Now, prtndr can accuse Bill Moyers of being a LEFT-wing idealogue if he likes, but Moyers wasn't the person doing most of the talking in that interview. And calling HIM a left-wing idealogue is without foundation -- prtndr should, as you suggest, concentrate on trying to find something in his statements that isn't true.

 

Wow Kimiko this was a great find and it even had a transcript. They are so fucking busted. Man, I've heard all those words, all those phrases and you can see it unfolding on the news right now.

Bet you dimes to donuts the stuff tenguy put up is being passed off as a package deal to specifically target the myths they're trying to dispel about the Canadian system.

I hope everybody watches this because if they do they will recognize what's happening to them. They will recognize their own politicians and they will recognize the game.

Thanks Kimi. Its time to start writing letters to my representatives and the people on these committees and tell them I know who they are speaking for and its not the American people.

 

Man if people will only watch or read this interview. They don't need to figure ideology. They don't need to figure out all the complicated things. Its right there and they will recognize it for themselves.

They've also got to be able to recognize what's happening to their insurance. What's happening to their company when they try to provide it and they'll notice the connector between what Wendell Potter is saying and what is happening to them.

I want to go back one step to what the guy said he saw down in Tennessee: The Human cost. That just pisses me off and I see the same thing up here.

Here's an example. When I ran on our ambulance we had a problem with people that were suffering congestive heart failure. They'd wake up feeling like they were dying and they were because their lungs were filling up with blood. But by the time we got there they'd be sitting propped up in bed and they'd be feeling better, so they didn't want to go to the hospital because they didn't have insurance or even if they did they didn't think they could afford the other costs. So they'd refuse to be transported and then a lot of times end up dying that night or the next day when their heart finally gave out.

That really bothered us and kind of blemished our record. So one of the EMT's that as also a pharmacologist figured out a little secret protocol. We'd tell them Ok if they were feeling better they didn't have to go but we wanted to take one more set of vital signs before we left but we had to take them while they were laying flat on their backs. Then as soon as they laid down flat the sensation of drowing in their own blood would return and we'd take our time and they would finally get scared enough to let us transport them. But the point is that's exactly how people die for lack of insurance or being under insured.

Thanks Kimi. You're a sweetheart.

HEY PRTNDR!!! Man did you miss an easy shot.:excited:

Its a lot easier than that guys like prtndr won't even answer the simpliest questions. Like do you think we have a health care problem and if so what should we do about it?

Can't even get them to answer that and see if they have an alternative.

 

I was just in a conference call with Senator Reid, D Senate majority leader, and other people from Nevada. I couldn't help but notice that one of the conferees said nothing but stop the greed and avarice of the insurance companies.

Unfortunately Reid is just saying what the Ins co's want him to. He repeated the idiotic statement that medicare's overhead is only 3%. Sure it only counts the govt handing the whole thing over to cigna and others, it doesn't include THEIR overhead and profit. He totally sidesteps that the govt is NOT administering medicare, the insurance companies are at a fat profit and overhead.

 

I figured you'd rather get it from me than from prtndr.

 

Baby I'd rather have a spanking from you than a kiss from prtndr any day.

 

One thing I'm kind of excited about with the Moyers interview you posted is that like it Potter said the real action won't start until a bill actually comes out. The house version I heard today still has the public option and you can see the anti PR already starting to roll out. I've heard two interviews just today about there not being anyway to create a level playing field if their is a public option.

But the alternative is not to fix health care at all. I'm a much stronger proponent of a single payer health care program than ever.

 

Here's something else that really struck me about the interview. Man, did they do a good job on demonizing and discrediting Micheal Moor's Sicko. I hate to admit it but I also looked at Sicko as a bit of an exaggeration. Now I need to go back and watch it again.

 

Hey tenguy

I got to wondering about this one:

If we've got enough MRI machines and other facilities to provide medical services without waiting times now why would we suddenly not have enough to go around if we went to a single payer government sponsored insurance program? Seems to me with out the exorbitant salaries and profits of the private insurance companies we'd actually have more money available for equipment, facilities and medical training.

 

After watching the interview I have an easier time understanding why the America health care system is the most expensive in the world, and gets worse results than socialized medicine in other industrial democracies. Too much money goes to insurance executives and stock holders, and not enough to help people with medical problems.

 

While that may be true, we have more technologically advanced equipment at the ready than any other country. This is not cheap, but it is fortunate for those who need it. This is why so many Canadians and others, come to the US when they need the big guns.

 

But I haven't seen any evidence that great hordes of Canadians or anyone else for that matter is flocking to the US for health care. And when you consider the myth that Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the US that's kind of surprising. If the Canadian Health Care System was really that bad but their Health Care System would pay for treatment in the US anyway it looks like there would be a stampede down here. What the heck they still wouldn't have to pay for it.