Dying for lack of health insurance... CNN Story

[SMCengineer]

“Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
-Barry Goldwater

[SMCengineer]

Debunking Micheal Moores claim that Cuban Health care is better than the US: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9pqv5ABQP5U&feature=related

[SMCengineer]

Can anybody name something that the government does more efficient than the private sector?

[Act of God]

Can anybody name something that the government does more efficient than the private sector?

Uh....I got nothin'

[SMCengineer]

One last thing, is socialized medicine constitutional and if not, why?

[SMCengineer]

Patient stacking sounds wonderful in the UK(waiting in ambulances for up to 5 hours then being admitted into the A&E for another wait time of 4 hours max): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...nhealth218.xml

Just in case you didn't understand this. Patient stacking is done to meet government quotas, which they wouldn't be able to meet if they just admitted patients into the waiting rooms of the A&E.

Private health care in Canada is thriving (even though it's illegal): http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/in...gewanted=print

Again, in case you didn't understand, private for-profit health care is thriving in Canada because there is a huge demand for efficient and quality health care. People want to pay for their health services because they know the'll get better service when they need it.

[Kärnfysikern]

Can anybody name something that the government does more efficient than the private sector?

Well there are of course the things that simply are to large for the private sector to touch or that doesnt give a imiediet profit. CERN, NASA, the manhattan project, the national labs, the hubble telescope, the laying of the major railroads.

[Kärnfysikern]

And when people from those countries need the latest and most advanced surgeries and treatments, where do they go? The United States. Our country has the most technologically advanced healthcare system for a reason. You can only have such innovation and advancements in a capitalist setting. The innovation that the free market encourages, drives, pushes, and fuels is unmatched in any socialist country.

Not sure I would agree 100% . Many (most?) inovations start at the universities and thats not a capitalist setting thank god. A capitalist setting is important to develop the inovations further and bring it out into the real world, but the acctual birth of the innovation is usually not motivated by monetary gains.

I dont se it as a nessecity that something funded by taxes must be worse off than a free market solution. A middle ground could exist where taxes do pay for hospitals and healthcare is free, but the hospitals are privately run. No pork because the hospitals want to keep a lean buisness and they also need to keep service good since the money they recieve depends on how many patients they treat. Thats how many schools are handled in sweden and they are excellent.

[gixxerboy1]

I'm sorry i feel bad this guy is dying but he is a dumbass. He works for himself and makes 30k and has no insurance. That was his choice. Its really not that hard to find a job that offers insurance. At its like he owned a company and was making 100k and couldnt afford to work for someone else. A 30k job with benefits isnt that hard to find. Yet he chose to work for himself and have none. Its his fault. I have health issues and i know i need insurance. I make sure what ever job i take offers them. I thought of opening my own business or donig other things. But dont because of insurance. I'm responsible for myself. This guy should have used his head its his own fault.

[BgMc31]

Can anybody name something that the government does more efficient than the private sector?

Prisons! Privatized prisons pay lower wages, provide less training and equipment for their guards. Having work in both, government run prison facilities are much better to work for than privatized prisons.

Never deal in absolutes...

[SMCengineer]

Prisons! Privatized prisons pay lower wages, provide less training and equipment for their guards. Having work in both, government run prison facilities are much better to work for than privatized prisons.

Never deal in absolutes...

You may want to check your premises. If we had any truly privatized prisons do you think people would be willing to pay to incarcerate offenders for crimes that don't infringe on other individual's rights (ie drug users, gamblers, prostitution)? I would have to guess no because we would see how that money is being used. We would realize that it has no direct effect on our individual lives and, infact, only hurts us economically to do so. Our current legal system artificially props up demand for prisons by creating criminals where there otherwise wouldn't be. Indeed, "private" prisons are no more subject to the principles of the free market than are public prisons.

[thegodfather]

You may want to check your premises. If we had any truly privatized prisons do you think people would be willing to pay to incarcerate offenders for crimes that don't infringe on other individual's rights (ie drug users, gamblers, prostitution)? I would have to guess no because we would see how that money is being used. We would realize that it has no direct effect on our individual lives and, infact, only hurts us economically to do so. Our current legal system artificially props up demand for prisons by creating criminals where there otherwise wouldn't be. Indeed, "private" prisons are no more subject to the principles of the free market than are public prisons.

Man Blome...you literally took the words right out of my mouth...I'm glad theres someone else to carry the torch in my absence...I can't always be the "crazy libertarian" around here, people get tired of hearing me rant.

[SMCengineer]

Well there are of course the things that simply are to large for the private sector to touch or that doesnt give a imiediet profit. CERN, NASA, the manhattan project, the national labs, the hubble telescope, the laying of the major railroads.

The operative word here is efficiency. Do you really think the private sector wouldn't handle all of these better? NASA is horribly inefficient. The only time it was efficient was during the cold war and the ensuing space race. What was the motivating factor? Competition. Same for the manhattan project. All these things would be handled better in the private market, but entry into such a market is nearly impossible with a government owned monopoly that can't go bankrupt and with the majority of money going into malinvestments.

This is a pretty good article about how private enterprise would be beneficial for space exploration: http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=229.
This is one about NASA's inefficiency: http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=362...e,+State+Truth

As for CERN, I don't know enough about it to be able to refute or discuss it with you. However, if I'm correct, America is not very involved with it. As for railroads, in America, I believe, the rail industry was always handled by the private sector except during WWI when it was temporarily nationalized.

[SMCengineer]

I dont se it as a nessecity that something funded by taxes must be worse off than a free market solution. A middle ground could exist where taxes do pay for hospitals and healthcare is free, but the hospitals are privately run. No pork because the hospitals want to keep a lean buisness and they also need to keep service good since the money they recieve depends on how many patients they treat. Thats how many schools are handled in sweden and they are excellent.

How could hospitals be privately run if they're funded by taxes?

[Kärnfysikern]

The operative word here is efficiency. Do you really think the private sector wouldn't handle all of these better? NASA is horribly inefficient. The only time it was efficient was during the cold war and the ensuing space race. What was the motivating factor? Competition. Same for the manhattan project. All these things would be handled better in the private market, but entry into such a market is nearly impossible with a government owned monopoly that can't go bankrupt and with the majority of money going into malinvestments..

Well it was mostly apollo era NASA I was talking about, today NASA is semi crap I agree with that. But my main point is those things would NOT be handled better by the private market simply because there exist no market for those things. Any profit that can be made is so far into the future and speculative that no sane economist would recomend the project.

The manhattan project is probably the ultimate example of how efficient and sucessfull a goverment runt project can be. The things acomplished during those 5 years are unmatched by any project before or after.

This is a pretty good article about how private enterprise would be beneficial for space exploration: http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=229.

Hmm I have to say I find that article a bit naive. Everything can not be valued in money and private investors wont put billions into pure science projects no matter how intellectualy intersting you make them look. Hubble is the ultimate example of this, it cost 4-6 billion dollars and has not produced anything of monetary value. But it has revolutionised our view of the universe more than any other piece of instrument ever. What is the value of fidning out the origin and faith of the universe?

Lets take another example, a manned mission to mars ro a unmanned mission to jupiters moons. Lets say it cost 100 billion, but life is found during the mission and thus answering the question if we are alone in the universe. Would that not be worth every penny?

This article presents imo a better view on the funding for mega huge projects
http://www.jetpress.org/volume4/space.htm

As for CERN, I don't know enough about it to be able to refute or discuss it with you. However, if I'm correct, America is not very involved with it. As for railroads, in America, I believe, the rail industry was always handled by the private sector except during WWI when it was temporarily nationalized.

Yepp CERN is a mostly european project funded by the european countries. But its yet another example of a pure science project with a early budget of one billion dollars. It would never have been built if it was not for tax payer money. Not to mention that most of the instruments etc for the acctual experiments are custom made by research groups at universities all over europe and the world.

Everything is motivated by pure curiosity alone and thats the way fundamental science should be done. Fundamental science can not be about trying to portray your idea as the most fun to investors that doesnt understand science. That would be a nightmare for science beyond belife. Who could have know that Heisenberg and Schrödingers theories in the 1920's would lead to semi conducturs and computers or that Einsteins theories would make GPS possible. The discoveries at CERN today might lead to technological leaps in 50-100 years, we simply do not know. Thats why those projects need to be keept alive, they advance the fundamental knoweledge of humanity and without the foundation there can be no applied science. Leave it up to the free market and only applied science will be funded.

Il take the nuclear industry as a prime example since thats my field. In sweden because of all the anti nukes the goverment stopped funding any research into nuclear technology. The few nuclear engineering departments left at swedish universities had to survive only on funds by the swedish nuclear industry. That meant all research they do is extremely applied, basicly just on optimising the existing swedish reactors that was built in the 70's.

The problem with this is that the new reactor technology thats is perhaps 15-20 years into the future is so superior to todays technology that its silly. We are talking 100 fold decrease in resource consumption and waste production, inherent safety depending on physics and not man made systems, the promise of much lower capital costs etc. But the nuclear industry wont fund research into those technologies with more than a penny here and there because they deem it to be to far into the future. If they where to decide we would be stuck with current techn forever.

The situation is basiclly the same in the US, the goverment has taken its hands off nuclear tech. Sure the national labs still do alot of research but nothing new or exciting. In Japan, Russia, France, China and India however the technology of tomorrow is beeing developed and in big part funded by the goverment or goverment owned companies.

When we start to speak of time spans longer than 10 years the private industry is usualy not interested. Thats where the goverments have to step in.

About the railroads, I know the transcontinental railroad was heavy suported by the federal goverment. But you probably know better than me who built it.

How could hospitals be privately run if they're funded by taxes?

The hospital in that scenario would be privatly owned but they are not allowed to charge patients anything, instead they get money for each patient treated. The most successfull schools in sweden are like that, the school get money based on how many kids they have. But they cant charge anything, everything else is up to the owners of the school. Those schools are run like clockwork, both kids and teachers love them and they beat all other schools on the national tests.

[39+1]

we already have socialized medicine it called medicaid and the insurance companies along with the pharm compainies lobbiest will NEVER allow true socialized med they would looose toooooooooooooooooooooo much money

[39+1]

“Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
-Barry Goldwater

Nice quote. Very nice

[Hoggage_54]

The hospital in that scenario would be privatly owned but they are not allowed to charge patients anything, instead they get money for each patient treated.

Thats sort of how it works in Canada. We have our base funding, and then if we don't meet our benchmarks for the number of patients we should be treating, we lose funding. People seem to think that the government runs everything in regards to Healthcare, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In a political science textbook it will say that the government runs everything, but we don't live in a poli-sci textbook. I love reading these threads, they always give me a chuckle I'll tell you how it is in Ontario and you guys can take whatever you want from it. I will only say how it is and not give my opinion, so take what you want from it.

All of the purchases we make at our hospital (like I said earlier, I work in Purchasing) are from the PRIVATE SECTOR. In fact, we have more options because of generic drugs, which have lead to MORE COMPETITION. There is a reason drug companies in the USA are trying hard to prevent generic drugs coming in from Canada and why Americans are demanding them so much. They are cheaper and provide the same result, and this is just one reason why Canadians are paying about 55% of what Americans do for health care. Yes thats right, Canadians pay LESS for health care. "But Hoggage, your taxes are so high, it MUST be health care!" Nope sorry. I posted the numbers in another thread a while back about health care and everyone ignored them. A couple reasons our taxes are higher are 1) We cover 1/9 of the Earth's land mass. Infrastructure is not cheap, especially when a) we don't have toll highways and b) the ground in the north is frozen for a third of the year so construction is not cheap and c) trying to find people who will work out in the middle of nowhere is not easy, so we have to pay them more to encourage workers to do the job.. we don't have the (economical) advantage of cheap Mexican labour.. 2) Our schools are more subsidized (I paid $2800/year in tuition for college, university is around $6000/year).

As for wait times. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I can speak for the province of Ontario. I work two part time jobs in the hospital I work at, and the other is inputing wait time date (it's boring as ****, but eye opening). We had an elected Conservative premier named Mike Harris who brought his "Common Sense" revolution to the province. The common sense part was less taxes=more money for people=more tax revenue for the government (sound familiar?). In order to pay for these tax cuts, they took money from the health care system. When your hospital has less money, its harder to provide services. After 8 horribly wasted years under the Harris government, most of which was during the internet boom, our province was left with billions of dollars in deficits. We are mainly a manufacturing economy in Ontario, so we should have benefited greatly from this. Nope. "But Hoggage, the common sense revolution should have lead to more government money! I read it in a political science textbook!" Nope sorry, it didn't happen. That CAN happen, but not always. We are now paying the price (literally) for these provincial tax cuts (not the federal ones). We now have to pay a healthcare "Premium" which goes from $30 if you make $20,000 or more a year up to $900 if you make more than $250,000. Only now are we seeing wait times go down because we finally have the money again to cover the costs of these health services. The previous two provincial elections has seen the former Conservative government CRUSHED by the Liberal party who are finally producing budget surpluses with higher taxes. "But Hoggage, higher taxes lead to less money for the government! I read it in a political science textbook!" Nope sorry, thats not happening here. Sure you could provide examples to the contrary, as I am providing examples now, but there are so many variables that it's not as simple as higher taxes=less government money and lower taxes=more government money. A friend of mine will be graduating from Harvard's business school this June and his degree is in economics. He can't help but laugh when he hears those simple economic theories as the solution to all of the world's problems.

As for doctors being controlled by the government... FALSE.

All practices are PRIVATE. If I were a doctor, I could open my own practice today anywhere I wanted and run it however I see fit. My funding, however, would be from the government, which prevents doctors from charging as much as they want. As a doctor, the more patients I see, the more money I make. A doctor gets paid for how much he or she works. There was a cap on how much a specialist could make in a year, which resulted in higher wait times since some doctors were leaving to the USA for more money. The cap was lifted a while ago and a specialist is free to see as many patients as they want. You could easily make a seven figure salary being a Opthamologist. Thats right, I could be making hundreds of thousands, if not in the seven figure range being a doctor here. I've heard how Canadian doctors make teacher salaries because of our "socialist" health care system

Insurance premiums...

Insurance costs less in Canada since many of the costs are covered by the government. Did you know that Ontario is the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world? It's no longer Michigan. Why is this? The big three, as well as Japanese companies are setting up shop here because of the lower insurance costs. I read a number that said by moving here, the Big Three automobile companies are saving about $5/hour directly because of our health care system and the savings in insurance. Do the math and you will see that this results in millions of dollars in savings, which helps them become MORE COMPETITIVE. These are not shit jobs either. These are $26/hour jobs that are great for the economy. There have been layoffs lately, but thats due to the state of the global economy which is an entirely different topic.

As for people dying waiting for procedures in Canada...

The government will actually pay for you to get treatment outside of Canada if you can't get it in time here. It doesn't happen often, but the government will pay.

Canadians are flocking to the USA and other countries for treatment...

Of course some are going to USA for treatments. Like mentioned above, some are being payed for by the government, others are having their insurance pay for it, and others are just rich people who have the means to pay for it. We also have Americans come to Canada for treatment. No where near as often as Canadians going south, but it does happen. I had a temp job in my hospital where I processed insurance information and we had a few Americans come to our hospital for treatment.

The Canadian government determines when you get your treatment... FALSE.

In that video that Blome posted, a woman said that the government said her condition was elective and didn't need treatment and she went to the USA for treatment and that she was near death. The government, in fact, does not say if your procedure is elective and they don't need to treat you any time soon. This is entirely up to the doctor. The doctor places a priority level on your condition and this determines when you get your procedure. In Ontario, it goes from 1-4. 1 being emergency, and 4 being elective. If the story was in fact true and the doctor said her condition was elective when it was really something that needed to be treated right away, thats the doctor being incompetent. The government has no say in who gets what treatment. It is entirely up to the doctors.

Take what you want from all of this, and ask any questions if you want to learn more about how the Canadian health system actually works (and not the theories you read in textbooks). If you ask a good question, you might hear me talk shit about our system. I am just telling you guys how things really are here, so I don't want to hear "you're wrong you evil socialist you and your ideas will be the downfall of society blah blah blah." I'm not giving ideas, I'm just saying how it is here.



EDIT: I took out the story about my dad and his messed up back and our insurance claim because I don't want to use one horror story to represent the whole of American insurance companies.

[Kratos]

Where do these generic medicines come from? Who is paying for the clinical studies and development? Oh yeah, Americans are...you're welcome.

[Kärnfysikern]

Where do these generic medicines come from? Who is paying for the clinical studies and development? Oh yeah, Americans are...you're welcome.

Out of the 10 largest pharmacutical companies 6 are not american. There is a region in the world called europe belive it or not and there is acctualy research going on there aswell

[Kratos]

Out of the 10 largest pharmacutical companies 6 are not american. There is a region in the world called europe belive it or not and there is acctualy research going on there aswell

I know Karn, what I mean is if everybody in the world only uses generic drugs no develpment happens. Generic drug companies do nothing but copy a molecule and sell it at a mark-up related to their production costs. We use a lot of name brand drugs in America...a lot, people exclusivly demand the latest drug and manufacurers market directly to the public. Turn on the T.V. in America and it won't be long until you see a drug add. In turn we overpay for the cure, even though it could be done cheaper, pharma gets the money and uses a % for new drug development. Inefficent as it may be it's how new drugs come about.

I worked in pharmacy's durring college...Brand name Prozac may cost $300 per hundred pills, generic fluoxitine (same as prozac) cost about $3 per hundred pills. Still some people demand brand name, and insurance pays if their doctor says it's nessicary.

[Kärnfysikern]

I know Karn, what I mean is if everybody in the world only uses generic drugs no develpment happens. We use a lot of name brand drugs in America...a lot, people exclusivly demand the latest drug and manufacurers market directly to the public. Turn on the T.V. in America and it won't be long until you see a drug add. In turn we overpay for the cure, even though it could be done cheaper, pharma gets the money and uses a % for new drug development. Inefficent as it may be it's how new drugs come about.

The developes do have the patent for the drug for a number of years though(not sure how many?) to ensure they will be able to make profit from the r&d. Seems like its a pretty good system, I dont se why everyone else should be keept away forever from producing the particular medication? Time restricted patents seems like the best middle ground. Big Pharm makes profit and after a few years generics makes sure everyone can afford it.

[Kratos]

Yup, agree...Canadians pay a lot less for the same name brand prescriptions (more than 50% less than Americans) because the pressure to use generics is getting high and pharma companies want a peice. Generic use went up like 14 percent in 07, and name brand script use declined by 0.2%.

[kfrost06]

Out of the 10 largest pharmacutical companies 6 are not american. There is a region in the world called europe belive it or not and there is acctualy research going on there aswell

very true however not nearly as much research as the US pharmas. Out of the top 3 pharmas, 1 and 2 are in the USA J & J, and Pfizer. They spend 7.1 and 7.6 billion/year on R&D where the #3 Bayer in Deutshland spends only 1.8 billion/yr. <<<thats less then 1/4 of what the #9 largest Merck spends. That is Bayer in Germany with twice the revenue of Merck in the USA spends less then 1/4 what Merck does on R&D.

Future medicines come from R&D today, if revenue is taken away from R&D then the future generations suffer and thats likely why Armerica is leading the entire world combined in drug discovery.

[Kratos]

btw generic drugs aren't coming to America from Canada, you guys pay more than 2x what we do for generics. It's name brand, we pay a lot more to the companies doing the research.

[Kratos]

I blame the unions for driving american auto makes elsewhere. Jap auto makers refuse to meet with the unions and pay much less than $26 per hour in the US.

[Kratos]

I see people fall down the stairs, fall off roofs, ATV accidents, car accidents, slip and fall, everything you could imagine on the OR table to have their spine fixed. Not sure the insurance companies ever use fault to determine medical necessity in this country.

[Kärnfysikern]

very true however not nearly as much research as the US pharmas. Out of the top 3 pharmas, 1 and 2 are in the USA J & J, and Pfizer. They spend 7.1 and 7.6 billion/year on R&D where the #3 Bayer in Deutshland spends only 1.8 billion/yr. <<<thats less then 1/4 of what the #9 largest Merck spends. That is Bayer in Germany with twice the revenue of Merck in the USA spends less then 1/4 what Merck does on R&D.

Future medicines come from R&D today, if revenue is taken away from R&D then the future generations suffer and thats likely why Armerica is leading the entire world combined in drug discovery.

but GlaxoSmithKline spend 6 billion, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and Hoffmann–La Roche spend 5 billion each, AstraZeneca 4 billions. So the combined r&d spending of the non america top ten pharm companies are a bit larger than the american ones. Seems like european and american companies are more or less equal in other words. List from wikipedia gives this for r&d spending and size. Bayer seems like a odd exception.

1 Johnson & Johnson USA 7,125
2 Pfizer USA 7,599
3 Bayer Germany 1,791
4 GlaxoSmithKline United Kingdom 6,373
5 Novartis Switzerland 5,349
6 Sanofi-Aventis France 5,565
7 Hoffmann–La Roche Switzerland 5,258
8 AstraZeneca United Kingdom 3,902
9 Merck & Co. USA 4,783
10 Abbott Laboratories USA 2,255

[kfrost06]

I see people fall down the stairs, fall off roofs, ATV accidents, car accidents, slip and fall, everything you could imagine on the OR table to have their spine fixed. Not sure the insurance companies ever use fault to determine medical necessity in this country.

what is your job? if you don't mind saying on the board.

[Kärnfysikern]

I blame the unions for driving american auto makes elsewhere. Jap auto makers refuse to meet with the unions and pay much less than $26 per hour in the US.

I think a very large blame is also because the american auto makers simply arent making cars that anyone wants anymore, especialy when it comes to fuel efficiency.

[Kratos]

what is your job? if you don't mind saying on the board.

I work for a very large ortho implant company, I spend a lot of time in surgery meeting with surgeons and engineers, finding solutions to problems and bringing them to the attention of engineers, education of sales reps and surgeons on new products. Surgeons love me cause they get paid a consult fee every time I come into surgery along with their normal rep. I work exclusively in spine implants.

[Kratos]

I think a very large blame is also because the american auto makers simply arent making cars that anyone wants anymore, especialy when it comes to fuel efficiency.

That may be why they aren't selling well but UAW workers make like 2x what Toyota-America workers make, add in health care costs and pensions and it translates to thousands per car. Health care costs are about 1800 per American car and Toyota is like 200. Toyota-America workers retire without defined benefit pensions and totally dependent on Medicare, who foots the bill? Unions are defiantly hurting the competitiveness of American cars built in America.

[Hoggage_54]

We use a lot of name brand drugs in America...a lot, people exclusivly demand the latest drug and manufacurers market directly to the public. Turn on the T.V. in America and it won't be long until you see a drug add.

This is an excellent point and I am glad you brought it up. There is a huge legal battle going on now in Canada between drug companies and the courts about advertising of prescription drugs. It's illegal in most of the world to advertise prescription drugs in any form. I think it was in the early 90s when drug advertising was allowed in the USA and when this happened, the costs of health care in the USA sky rocketed because people were demanding all the latest drugs because if you see any sort of advertisement, the way they market it makes it seem that anyone could have those symptoms that they advertise.

I remember in another thread a while back about anti-depressants and Godfather said something about doctors giving them out way to frequently because people were demanding them so much. This is directly caused by the advertising of prescription drugs. People see the commercial, apply any sort of symptom that they hear, and run to the doctor and demand it and get insurance to pay for it, and since they are so damn expensive, its caused insurance companies to raise the price of premiums dramatically and lead to the problems you are seeing today.

[Hoggage_54]

I work for a very large ortho implant company, I spend a lot of time in surgery meeting with surgeons and engineers, finding solutions to problems and bringing them to the attention of engineers, education of sales reps and surgeons on new products. Surgeons love me cause they get paid a consult fee every time I come into surgery along with their normal rep. I work exclusively in spine implants.

Stryker? You don't have to say if you don't want to

[Hoggage_54]

That may be why they aren't selling well but UAW workers make like 2x what Toyota-America workers make, add in health care costs and pensions and it translates to thousands per car. Health care costs are about 1800 per American car and Toyota is like 200. Toyota-America workers retire without defined benefit pensions and totally dependent on Medicare, who foots the bill? Unions are defiantly hurting the competitiveness of American cars built in America.

Just today the CAW at Ford agreed to take a pay cut and some other cuts as well to their new contract.

http://www.wheels.ca/article/229616

"Ford and the Canadian Auto Workers have bargained a surprise three-year deal which would freeze wages for current workers but reduce pay temporarily for new employees in a deal that could pave the way for early contract settlements at General Motors and Chrysler this year."

[SMCengineer]

Thats sort of how it works in Canada. We have our base funding, and then if we don't meet our benchmarks for the number of patients we should be treating, we lose funding. People seem to think that the government runs everything in regards to Healthcare, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

You say the hospital's will loose their funding if they don't meet their quotas, but than in the next sentence you say it's not government controlled. That's a complete contradiction. If it truly wasn't government controlled it would be controlled by the market or the people. There wouldn't be any quota's to meet. There would just be the law of supply and demand to contend with.

In a political science textbook it will say that the government runs everything, but we don't live in a poli-sci textbook.

Just for the record, I would call it economic theory not political science.

All of the purchases we make at our hospital (like I said earlier, I work in Purchasing) are from the PRIVATE SECTOR. In fact, we have more options because of generic drugs, which have lead to MORE COMPETITION. There is a reason drug companies in the USA are trying hard to prevent generic drugs coming in from Canada and why Americans are demanding them so much. They are cheaper and provide the same result, ).

So you agree that US federal regulations are increasing the costs of prescription drugs not making them cheaper as some people who support government intervention would have you believe? Prescription drug lobbyists' and health insurance lobbyists' in washington are the biggest advocates for the nationalization of our healthcare industry. They have the most to gain out of this, therefore the also have the most to loose so you can bet they're persuading those politicians with everything they have.

and this is just one reason why Canadians are paying about 55% of what Americans do for health care. Yes thats right, Canadians pay LESS for health care. "But Hoggage, your taxes are so high, it MUST be health care!" Nope sorry. I posted the numbers in another thread a while back about health care and everyone ignored them.

Of course you pay less for healthcare and it's for the exact reason you posted above. Not because your health care system is efficient, but because our's is horrible inefficient.

As for wait times. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I can speak for the province of Ontario. I work two part time jobs in the hospital I work at, and the other is inputing wait time date (it's boring as ****, but eye opening). We had an elected Conservative premier named Mike Harris who brought his "Common Sense" revolution to the province. The common sense part was less taxes=more money for people=more tax revenue for the government (sound familiar?). In order to pay for these tax cuts, they took money from the health care system. When your hospital has less money, its harder to provide services. After 8 horribly wasted years under the Harris government, most of which was during the internet boom, our province was left with billions of dollars in deficits. We are mainly a manufacturing economy in Ontario, so we should have benefited greatly from this. Nope. "But Hoggage, the common sense revolution should have lead to more government money! I read it in a political science textbook!" Nope sorry, it didn't happen. That CAN happen, but not always. We are now paying the price (literally) for these provincial tax cuts (not the federal ones). We now have to pay a healthcare "Premium" which goes from $30 if you make $20,000 or more a year up to $900 if you make more than $250,000. Only now are we seeing wait times go down because we finally have the money again to cover the costs of these health services. The previous two provincial elections has seen the former Conservative government CRUSHED by the Liberal party who are finally producing budget surpluses with higher taxes. "But Hoggage, higher taxes lead to less money for the government! I read it in a political science textbook!" Nope sorry, thats not happening here. Sure you could provide examples to the contrary, as I am providing examples now, but there are so many variables that it's not as simple as higher taxes=less government money and lower taxes=more government money. A friend of mine will be graduating from Harvard's business school this June and his degree is in economics. He can't help but laugh when he hears those simple economic theories as the solution to all of the world's problems.

It seems to me like that past administration was similar to what we've had here for the past 8 years. Lowering taxes does work, but there's a caveat. The government must decrease federal spending! Obviously, if you lower taxes, but increase spending you're only pushing off the inevitable tax increase for a later date (or in our situation a later generation). It's an absolutely ridiculous policy. I'm willing to bet your friend agrees with that.

As for doctors being controlled by the government... FALSE.

All practices are PRIVATE. If I were a doctor, I could open my own practice today anywhere I wanted and run it however I see fit. My funding, however, would be from the government, which prevents doctors from charging as much as they want. As a doctor, the more patients I see, the more money I make. A doctor gets paid for how much he or she works. There was a cap on how much a specialist could make in a year, which resulted in higher wait times since some doctors were leaving to the USA for more money. The cap was lifted a while ago and a specialist is free to see as many patients as they want. You could easily make a seven figure salary being a Opthamologist. Thats right, I could be making hundreds of thousands, if not in the seven figure range being a doctor here. I've heard how Canadian doctors make teacher salaries because of our "socialist" health care system .

So, the government went overboard on the regulations and realized its mistake than slighty deregulated it and it proved to be more efficient and profitable? That's very interesting.

Insurance premiums...

Insurance costs less in Canada since many of the costs are covered by the government. Did you know that Ontario is the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world? It's no longer Michigan. Why is this? The big three, as well as Japanese companies are setting up shop here because of the lower insurance costs. I read a number that said by moving here, the Big Three automobile companies are saving about $5/hour directly because of our health care system and the savings in insurance. Do the math and you will see that this results in millions of dollars in savings, which helps them become MORE COMPETITIVE. These are not shit jobs either. These are $26/hour jobs that are great for the economy. There have been layoffs lately, but thats due to the state of the global economy which is an entirely different topic.

You won't hear an arguemnet from me on this because the very reason we have such high premiums is because of our quasi-socialized health care system. So, in a sense I agree, our system is royal messed up, but that's not due to free market forces.

Take what you want from all of this, and ask any questions if you want to learn more about how the Canadian health system actually works (and not the theories you read in textbooks). If you ask a good question, you might hear me talk shit about our system. I am just telling you guys how things really are here, so I don't want to hear "you're wrong you evil socialist you and your ideas will be the downfall of society blah blah blah." I'm not giving ideas, I'm just saying how it is here.

By no means am I saying that you have an evil socialized health care industry or economy. I'm saying that a health care industry that's handled entirely in the private sector would be better than our quasi-socialized system and most likely better than any other fully socialized system.

I'm also not defending the current health care system that we have in place today as it's terrible, but it can still be fixed without nationalizing it. In fact, I'm saying the only way to truly fix it would be to deregulate it almost entirely.

[Hoggage_54]

You say the hospital's will loose their funding if they don't meet their quotas, but than in the next sentence you say it's not government controlled. That's a complete contradiction. If it truly wasn't government controlled it would be controlled by the market or the people. There wouldn't be any quota's to meet. There would just be the law of supply and demand to contend with.

If we don't need the money, the government wont give it to us and spend it where it really needs it (other hospitals that have high demand). In regards to the quota thing, those are based on statistics we gather in regards to the demand in the "market" if you want to put it that way. If doctors are sending us lots of patients, the quota goes up, if not, the quota goes down. Your right my sentence is a contradiction, I just woke up when I wrote this whole thing.


Just for the record, I would call it economic theory not political science.

I always say poli-sci out of habit because I talk to a friend of mine who's in political science at a near by university and talks about this a lot

So you agree that US federal regulations are increasing the costs of prescription drugs not making them cheaper as some people who support government intervention would have you believe? Prescription drug lobbyists' and health insurance lobbyists' in washington are the biggest advocates for the nationalization of our healthcare industry. They have the most to gain out of this, therefore the also have the most to loose so you can bet they're persuading those politicians with everything they have.

I agree whole heartedly that the regulations you have in place in regards to lobbyists' are killing you guys (literally). We don't have any lobbyists' trying to get our government to do what they want them to do. Our federal government sets certain guidelines that we follow but we have choices in how we follow the guidelines. For example, Health Canada recently said that we have to switch to a needleless system in regards to IV's. Based on statistics, it would prevent needle sticks in nurses for their own safety. We (hospitals) were free to switch over to the new system however way we wanted to. Since our hospital has a contract with Baxter, we had some of their sales reps come in and show us the best way to have it done. Public and private sectors at work

Of course you pay less for healthcare and it's for the exact reason you posted above. Not because your health care system is efficient, but because our's is horrible inefficient.

If prescription drug advertising comes into effect in Canada, our costs as a whole will go through the roof. Check my post about the legal battle.


It seems to me like that past administration was similar to what we've had here for the past 8 years. Lowering taxes does work, but there's a caveat. The government must decrease federal spending! Obviously, if you lower taxes, but increase spending you're only pushing off the inevitable tax increase for a later date (or in our situation a later generation). It's an absolutely ridiculous policy. I'm willing to bet your friend agrees with that.

Yep, we call governments like that in Canada "Bush Lovers" or "Bush Ass Kissers". As for my friend, I'll talk to him in the summer more about this when he comes home.

So, the government went overboard on the regulations and realized its mistake than slighty deregulated it and it proved to be more efficient and profitable? That's very interesting.

It was never regulated in the first place (as far as I know) so it always worked that way.

You won't hear an arguemnet from me on this because the very reason we have such high premiums is because of our quasi-socialized health care system. So, in a sense I agree, our system is royal messed up, but that's not due to free market forces.

Those regulations have to go!


By no means am I saying that you have an evil socialized health care industry or economy. I'm saying that a health care industry that's handled entirely in the private sector would be better than our quasi-socialized system and most likely better than any other fully socialized system.

I would say a mix of private and public, taking the best practices from both would be the best but I don't want to argue opinions. I just came on here to explain how our system works because many people don't really know how it works exactly and I wanted to share as much as I knew about our system so people would have a better idea of how things work here..

I'm also not defending the current health care system that we have in place today as it's terrible, but it can still be fixed without nationalizing it. In fact, I'm saying the only way to truly fix it would be to deregulate it almost entirely.

I think the biggest problem is so much is left to insurance companies and since they are their to make a profit, the costs go waaaay up.

PS can you take out the story about my old man? He doesn't like it being talked about and I changed my mind about posting it because I didn't want to use one story to represent a whole system because many Americans do get high quality health care through insurance.

[Hoggage_54]

The only thing I want is to prevent rich people from being able to skip ahead in the line and pay for their own health care and have less non-emergency procedures be dealt with in hospitals, which should be for emergencies, and have them done in smaller clinics.

[SMCengineer]

I agree whole heartedly that the regulations you have in place in regards to lobbyists' are killing you guys (literally). We don't have any lobbyists' trying to get our government to do what they want them to do. Our federal government sets certain guidelines that we follow but we have choices in how we follow the guidelines. For example, Health Canada recently said that we have to switch to a needleless system in regards to IV's. Based on statistics, it would prevent needle sticks in nurses for their own safety. We (hospitals) were free to switch over to the new system however way we wanted to. Since our hospital has a contract with Baxter, we had some of their sales reps come in and show us the best way to have it done. Public and private sectors at work

It wouldn't be necessary for big pharma companies to spend money lobbying for something that's already in place and works in their favor.

So, the government went overboard on the regulations and realized its mistake than slighty deregulated it and it proved to be more efficient and profitable? That's very interesting.

It was never regulated in the first place (as far as I know) so it always worked that way.

A cap on the number of patients is a regulation and quotas are also regulations.

I would say a mix of private and public, taking the best practices from both would be the best but I don't want to argue opinions. I just came on here to explain how our system works because many people don't really know how it works exactly and I wanted to share as much as I knew about our system so people would have a better idea of how things work here.

That's just about exactly what we have here, hence quasi-socilized healthcare and it's extremely inefficient.

I think the biggest problem is so much is left to insurance companies and since they are their to make a profit, the costs go waaaay up.

So much is left up to the insurance companies because of the the HMO act and the ERISA law that forced employers to give insurance to their employees, which had an adverse effect on the market of sending all healthcare costs sky rocketting. Thus, individuals could no longer afford to supply their own insurance nor could they afford the simpliest of procedures such as routine check-ups.

[SMCengineer]

PS can you take out the story about my old man? He doesn't like it being talked about and I changed my mind about posting it because I didn't want to use one story to represent a whole system because many Americans do get high quality health care through insurance.

Done homie.