Why Canada and other countries can afford free health care - Page 3

pcuthbert · #13 (**permalink**) 02-24-2008, 07:34 PM

Jeff;You may well be right, but if you don't stir up a hornets nest, you won't get stung.

Canada is a member of the mutual protection society NATO.

As such, It has obligations to fulfill. It is also a member of the UN.

Canada has met, and continues to meet these obligations.

We have only been invaded by one country. We beat that country, and destroyed their capitol buildings.

We are a peace oriented people, but we do stand up for ourselves when needed. Canada has never needed conscription to meet the needs of Its' military. When needed, the Citizens of Canada stand up for the common good.

On the other hand, we are known as a people who keep the peace in the world.

Afghanistan is the first conflict in which we are aggressors since the end of the second world war.

You talk about protecting democracy in the world. I suggest that The United States is promoting Its' style of democracy. Not all countries wish to have a republic.

You are correct in saying that Health care is NOT FREE in Canada. In most jurisdictions, it is completely paid for by taxes.

But, the important part of health care in Canada, and many other countries, is that it is universal. One need not fear losing everything due to illness.

We will see a doctor earlier than many folk in the United States. This can prevent an illness becoming very serious, and taxing the medical system to its' limits.

Many folk in the US will delay seeking medical attention until an illness has reached the point that hospitalization is needed.

Eliminating the profit oriented insurance companies reduces the actual cost of medical care. Having a single payor reduces the cost to the medical services providers.

bubba74 · #14 (**permalink**) 02-24-2008, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Bulk buying of drugs also eliminates the Big Pharma problem.

Its also a lot cheaper when you ignore patents and basically steal the R @ D that goes into manufacturing drugs.

$18 B military budget, that is really nothing and what is the size of Canada's navy. Plus, the overall tax rate is higher.

egambino · #15 (**permalink**) 02-24-2008, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bubba74

Its also a lot cheaper when you ignore patents and basically steal the R @ D that goes into manufacturing drugs.

$18 B military budget, that is really nothing and what is the size of Canada's navy. Plus, the overall tax rate is higher.

What makes you think that the R & D is being stolen? These drugs are being sold to them by the very same companies that sell them to our doctors and hospitals. They buy in bulk, same as ours could do if it were allowed here. The savings would be phenominal. You know bubba, Canada isn't a 3rd World country.

Jeff · #16 (**permalink**) 02-24-2008, 09:06 PM

Quote:

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people. My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.
Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.

I guess this is all lies on this site

Jeff · #17 (**permalink**) 02-24-2008, 09:07 PM

Quote:

Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province's population) can't find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who'd get a doctor's appointment. These problems are not unique to Canada -- they characterize all government-run health care systems.
Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled -- 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave -- when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity -- 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren't available. And so on.
Single-payer systems -- confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists and substandard treatment -- are starting to crack, however. Canadian newspapers are filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care. Many Canadians, determined to get the care they need, have begun looking not to lotteries -- but to markets.

More.....................?

Jeff · #18 (**permalink**) 02-24-2008, 09:08 PM

How bout some survival rates

Quote:

And if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50%; the European rate is just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma: 12% in the U.S., 6% in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England -- a striking variation. Like many critics of American health care, though, Krugman argues that the costs are just too high: health care spending in Canada and Britain, he notes, is a small fraction of what Americans pay. Again, the picture isn't quite as clear as he suggests. Because the U.S. is so much wealthier than other countries, it isn't unreasonable for it to spend more on health care. Take America's high spending on research and development. M.D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.