Canadian Top Doc " Healthcare Imploding"

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Originally Posted By: Kruse
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan


I want everyone to fall into the situation where they cannot afford "care" (non-emergency) just for enough time where they need it. Leverage whatever they've managed to eek out of life ...no problem there. Pay your way.



Well, if you want to lower the cost of health care dramatically, do away with insurance all together. Is this what you are saying?
You hear stories of the total doctor maternity bill in the '30s was about $25 dollars. Yea, infant mortality was higher and, of course, our life expectancy would fall also. Where do you draw the line? That question has about 1000 different answers.


I don't think I said that, but insurance is a prime reason for high medical costs. IF you're going to let true market forces prevail on a supply and demand basis, you have to eliminate the endless cash cow that insurance provides. Producers pay everything. EVERYTHING.

The medical community has some assumed flat or advancing level of immunity. No one can tell me that I can't slash the $$ figures in half and that those systems cannot function. Is the doctor half as intelligent? Is the machine half as functional? Does the $9.95 Tylenol less potent?

Most medical costs are filled with vapor "fluff". The people who say that the standards are necessary are also the recipients of the benefits of the standards.

You can set standard as high as you please if it makes you money and no one is there to stop you.

Imagine if I was of an association of oil changers. There is no DIY oil changers. I want checkered tile like the guy on Speed (I think) ..and I want 25 porters to clean the thing up after every oil change. I use an exclusive SAE/API/ILSAC/ACEA proprietary fluid that's been analyzed and certified as suitable for your vehicle UNDER STANDARDS THAT I SET.

Oh, yeah ..and I say that all oil changers ..that manage to make it through oil change school, deserve to make $250k/200k deferred income.

Now you won't object to a $1200 oil change will you? You can opt not to do it ..but ..pay me now ..or pay me later.
 
With insurance, everyone who makes it to really old gets subsidized by those who keel over early. The last few years always tend to let the system suck a couple hundred grand if you let them. Make every heart attack or stroke fatal, and you save brazillions. No lingering on.
 
Gary Allen is right, a true free market would bring costs down. The market today is not really a free market.

However, as I recall from my first year university econmics class, the free market can acomplish most things very well and in an efficient manner, but not everything. Examples: Puplic education, national defense, public highways.

I deal with insurnace companies on a daily basis, (not health insurance) and I can tell you they will do whatever they can to not have to pay a claim. In fact the very first life policy ever written had to be settled in court before the insurer would pay:

The first life insurance policy on record was written in London on June 18, 1536, a one-year policy on the life of William Gybbons. Gybbons died on May 29, 1537, run over by a hit-and-run bullock cart. In a telling beginning to the industry and a comment on insurance in general, the company refused to pay the widow and children of Gybbons, insisting that a year consisted of twelve months of four weeks each, making Gybbons’ unfortunate death a few days outside of the policy period. The widow took the insurers to court and won, as the insurers’ logic was rejected.
 
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I live in a Canadian border town, directly across a bridge and a tunnel to Detroit, MI. From here, some of the differences in health care systems are very, very striking:

- Of the handful of nurses I know, and the larger handful I know of, a large majority of them work in the U.S. for better pay and less work. Those that work in Canada are unhappy.

- Canada experiences, in far more fields than medicine, a "brain drain", where the top persons of a given field flee Canada (and any and every other county on earth except the U.S.) destined for the U.S., for more money.

- The most prime, basic difference between our systems is this: Our system is mediocre, but is available to all, and yours, driven by Big Money and the exploitation thereof, is far and away for most sophisticated on the planet *if you can afford it*. Everyone keeps arguing about which one "works" and they're not realizing they have different definitions of "works". Personally, I regard both the free market and the gov't as inherently counterproductive, according to my definition of "works".

- My wife and I (mostly my wife) have had two babies in Canada in the last few years. Apparently, this would have cost a mint to have them in the U.S., while I don't remember whipping out my wallet at all in Canada.

- My wife wanted to make an appointment with our family doctor recently to ask a marginally important question. The soonest they were able to fit her in was 6 weeks in the future. (She ended up going to a walk-in clinic, waiting for 2 hours and got the answers she needed.)

- Most Canadians know of someone who was forced to go to the U.S. for some major treatment because our system could not accommodate them. Stories of folks dying in Canada because they could not get adequate treatment in time are sensationalized and overblown in the U.S. media, but it does happen. (Our media portrays the U.S. health care system with a pretty horrific slant, too.)

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I have thought my whole life that the best practical, viable solution would be to have a hybrid system, which would unburden the public system and at the same time allow for novel concepts like free will, innovation and enterprise to flourish. People in Canada cannot stand that idea because those who can afford to would receive superior care (and they have no retort to "So we're all better off being legislatively forced to burden an overworked, underfunded system? Wouldn't the public system be better off if free citizens who WANT TO were able to purchase private insurance or use facilities of their own choosing?") and people in the states seem to be deathly afraid of government forcing them to share.
 
It's as broad as it is long in the laundry list of defects/deficiencies.

I would wager that the Canadian system is not fully up to snuff since the Canadian population would rather endure the inconveniences of the current system rather than having to pay for the advantages of a fully functional system (nebulous in definition depending who you are). Here we have an inverted opinion. Producers would rather pay through the nose for everyone anyway ..as long as they have distinction for their dollar in terms of privilege
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uc50ic4more, well written post, and for the most part very true.

With my family doctor, if we have a serious problem, we will get in that day. If, it's not real important, it may take a week, or 10 days.

The "Brain Drain" has been the big problem and has an effect on our system. If we were not so close to the US, or if they had a simialr system to ours, then no Doctors/Nurses would have ever left, and I expect we would have an even better system here.

My daughter is having her tonsills out on Sept 1st of this year. The surgeon is a young American, so maybe the drain goes both ways?
 
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