Dying for lack of health insurance... CNN Story

[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.