Thread: Canadian Alipacer's, please resond

jshhmr wrote:

Thanks to Canadian ALIPACer's for your responses. It sounds like there are good and bad experiences, but it is still 100 times better than what we have here. At least you can get care when needed, I can't.

Did I miss something? Only one person said the care offered by Canada was adequate - all other comments provided were negative. You're dead wrong, Canada's socialist health care system is not 100 times better than ours, actually I would be more inclined to say the opposite is true. Our health care may be more expensive, but it's definitely a hell of a lot better. Actually, Canada's health care program is probably not cheaper, overall. Someone somewhere is paying (indirectly) for the cost reductions enjoyed by a lot of Canadians.

bigpcanuck wrote:

As a Canadian living in Vancouver , i can tell you firsthand its a nightmare .

Excerpt from Hidden costs of Canadian healthcare system written by a Canadian:

In reality, Canada's health care system is not the paradise Moore presents.

I should know: I live there.

Consider Canada's notorious waiting lists. In 1993, Canadians referred by their doctors to specialists waited an average of 9.3 weeks for treatment. By 2006, it was 17.8 weeks -- almost twice what's considered clinically reasonable.

In the words of Canada's Supreme Court, ''Access to a waiting list is not the same thing as access to health care.'' The court used that phrase when it struck down the single-payer system in one Canadian province in 2005. Yet somehow Moore missed this, the biggest story in Canadian health policy in the last 40 years.

Canada's long waits are partially caused by a shortage of doctors. Whereas the United States had 2.4 practicing physicians per 1,000 residents in 2004, Canada had only 2.1. That's a difference of 300 fewer doctors in a city of 1 million residents. New York's population is more than 8 million. Imagine what health care would be like in the Big Apple with 2,400 fewer physicians and you have some idea what it's like in Canada.

Over the last 10 years, about 10 percent of doctors trained in Canada decided to practice medicine in the United States. This is the result of low physician salaries, which are paid by the state. The average Canadian physician earns only 42 percent of what the average U.S. doctor takes home each year. Simply put, single-payer systems exploit medical labor. Any U.S. state that adopts a single-payer approach is going to lose doctors to other states.

Canada's single-payer system is also letting its hospitals rot. While the average U.S. hospital is only nine years old, the average hospital in Ontario, Canada's largest province, has been around for 40 years.

And Canada's system limits the adoption of new technology. Among the 24 Western nations that guarantee access to health care, Canada ranks 13th in access to MRIs and 17th in access to CT scanners. The lack of access to medical technology contributes to longer waiting times for diagnostic tests.

The rationing of medical procedures and drugs is another harmful result of Canada's system. In 2003, twice as many in-patient surgical procedures were performed in the United States per 1,000 residents compared to Canada.

And Canada's ''universal'' healthcare system doesn't offer universal drug coverage. Only about one-third of the population is eligible for government drug programs in Canada -- the rest pay cash or have private insurance.

Canada's cost advantage is also an illusion.

Dianer wrote:

I work for a Canadian Company in the US. When workers from Canada come here they get health related issues resolved. Those I've spoken to say that your Canadian Doctor appointment or operation sometimes coincide with your funeral..explains a lot.

Wilma1 post excerpt:

I have a friend who worked in Canada. Sometimes people will a go to veterinarians if it is an emergency such as a cut hand etc. I'm serious. This person worked with a woman who could not get into an emergency room and tried her vet.

It's beyond me how you came to the conclusion that Canada's health care system is 100 times better than ours.


On another note........

Jshhmr wrote:

I am approaching this as if I were Michael Moore, except it will be about illegal immigration.

Michael Moore would be the last person I'd want to emulate. Just saying........

It's beyond me how you came to the conclusion that Canada's health care system is 100 times better than ours

The fact that if I were Canadian I could get my blood pressure taken care of. I CAN'T GET CARE HERE IN AMERICA! That isn't hard to understand. A system that would take care of me versus a system that doesn't.

So how is American health care better?

jshhmr, you might also want to look at big pharma. We pay a heck of lot for meds, while these companies buy expensive advertising on prime-time TV and major magazines touting their latest miracle cure for what ails ya. I love the ones that say, side effects could include permanent damage or even death (in rare cases, of course.)
My BP pills go up at least once or twice a year, and I have been on the same prescription for years. Meanwhile, I see the manufacturer advertising, although I hope that some of my money goes to support new research, rather than to pay out dividends to their stock holders.
There was a story years ago that one big pharma company produced pills for sheep (about 2 cents a pill for farmer) and the same formulation was sold at a few bucks a pill for humans. The only difference was humans got a smaller size. You may want to check with a vet about that--I think it may have been levamisole.
The only thing (besides illegals) that is wrong with our health care is the greed of big pharma.
When you get done, absolutely post your doc here.

jshhmr wrote:

The fact that if I were Canadian I could get my blood pressure taken care of. I CAN'T GET CARE HERE IN AMERICA!

Sure you can get your blood pressure problems taken care of here in America. However, you shouldn't expect everyone else to pay for it. Do you think the government (American people) owe you free or reduced long term medical care? If cost is a problem due to financial situation, perhaps you could qualify for assistance. If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is preventing you from getting the care you need?

A system that would take care of me versus a system that doesn't.

So you think free or reduced health care is an entitlement? Look, I know our current system has problems with costs being the #1 problem. However, I'm not convinced that a socialized medical care system is the answer. What makes you think our government can do it better than a free market system?

So how is American health care better?

Did you even bother to read the responses offered in the above posts? If so, perhaps you should read them again because some of the answers you seek are here.


Here's some more interesting reading for you:

The Pitfalls of Socialized Medicine
by Joel Himelfarb
inFocus
Summer 2008

For all the life-saving technology and drugs available to Americans, the U.S. health care system has serious problems. Many medications, especially prescription drugs, are prohibitively expensive. Quality of care varies widely from hospital to hospital and region to region. The cost of individual or family health insurance policies are on the rise (more than $4,000 per year for an individual and more than $12,000 for a family of four), and are usually not tax-deductible. Many working Americans are effectively locked into employer-provided health plans that provide little or no choice. Plans typically provide first-dollar coverage or affordable co-pays for routine medical examinations, but not the cost of prescription drugs or life-saving surgeries.

A common argument is that America needs a state-run health plan. Indeed, critics point to health care in other countries that appear to provide for citizens in ways that the U.S. system does not. These arguments do not stand the test of reason. Based on the track records of other countries with state-run health care, socializing medicine in the United States would likely be a tragic mistake.

Arguments for a ‘National Plan'

For the political left, along with some elements in the health care and business community, the solution is to create a government-run, single-payer system. Failing that, their aim is to solve our country's health care woes through further increases in federal and state spending. This could include new mandates requiring businesses to provide a government-dictated minimum amount of care to their employees.

A number of nonprofits, including a group called Physicians for a National Health Program, lament that the United States is the "only industrialized country without national health care." Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" points to problems with the American health care system and suggests it is inferior to those in Great Britain, France and Canada. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman prefers those three systems to the American one. Even some major U.S. corporations seek a national health care plan. Indeed, socialized medicine is their answer to soaring retiree health care burdens resulting from ill-considered union contracts.

Irredeemably Flawed?

In making the case that the American health care system is irredeemably flawed, advocates for a national plan sometimes play fast and loose with the facts. They overlook major difficulties in foreign systems while exaggerating the problems with our own.

In "Sicko," Moore cites a study released in 2000 by the World Health Organization that ranks the U.S. health care system 37th in the world — behind countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates and barely ahead of Slovenia. But the study has serious problems in evaluating the success of the American system. As Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute notes, the WHO report utilizes subjective criteria such as "fairness" which are not strictly related to a country's health care system. For example, one of the criteria is "tobacco control." Others include the lack of a sufficiently progressive tax system. Moreover, the WHO study penalizes the U.S. for adopting Health Savings Accounts and for the fact that patients pay out of pocket for health care. Other WHO criteria, such as life expectancy, are heavily distorted by factors such as violent crime, tobacco use, and obesity—factors resulting from behavior, individual choice, and other influences unrelated to the functioning of the health care system.

Advocates for a national plan also skew U.S. infant mortality data, which are often used in cross-country comparisons. For example, in the U.S., some high-risk pregnancies have a greater chance of being brought to term using the latest medical technologies. However, some of these infants die soon after birth, boosting the infant-mortality rate. But in European countries such as Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, fetuses must weigh at least one pound to count as a live birth; in Switzerland, the fetus must be at least a foot long to be counted.

In "Sicko," Moore cites low infant mortality rates in Cuba, suggesting that the Communist nation is a model for the U.S. to adopt. But Tanner notes that Cuba has "one of the world's highest abortion rates, meaning that many babies with health problems that could lead to early deaths are never brought to term.""

Better Care Abroad?

Moore, Krugman, and other advocates of more government control over the American health care system maintain that socialized medicine abroad results in higher quality health care and more access to new technologies. However, a large body of evidence calls these assertions into question.

In the 1970s, Great Britain invented the CT scanner, and for some period of time exported more than half the CT scanners used in the world. But today it has half the number of CT scanners per capita than we have in the United States. Canada faces similar problems with CT scanner shortages.

Canada and the UK suffer from other similar shortages compared to the U.S. "Among people with chronic renal failure, only half as many Canadians as Americans get dialysis, and only a third as many Britons on a per capita basis," writes John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, who spent more than two decades analyzing the performance of world health care systems. "The American rate of coronary bypass surgeries is three or four times what it is in Canada, and five times what it is in Britain."

Statistics compiled by the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development (OECD) in June 2007 show that the United States compares very well with 11 other industrialized countries in the numbers of MRI units and CT scanners per one million people: The United States, with 32 CT scanners and 26 MRI units, led virtually every other nation (with the exception of Japan) in almost every category.

An article published last year in the British medical journal The Lancet strongly suggests that the United States is also outperforming the world when it comes to surviving diseases such as AIDS, heart disease, cancer, and pneumonia. For example, approximately 63 percent of Americans diagnosed with cancer survive for at least five years. This tops the survival rates in countries with state-run national health care, including Italy, Spain and Great Britain.

It is often argued that countries with state-run health care outpace the U.S. when it comes to ensuring access to drugs. For example, Tanner points out that only 44 percent of Americans benefit from statins, drugs which reduce cholesterol and protects against heart disease. That's bad news—until you compare it to Germany, where just 26 percent have access to statins; or Great Britain, where 23 percent get them, or Italy, where just 17 percent do.

North of the Border

Some Americans believe that government-run health care is right for the U.S., based upon their limited experience with the Canadian system. Indeed, if one travels north of the border, flu shots and prescription drugs are wonderfully inexpensive. But again, this a skewed picture.

What most Americans don't know is that Canadian drug prices are kept artificially low through price controls. Moreover, the U.S. health care system is a safety net for many Canadians. Indeed, they flock south of the border to obtain care that their own system denies them. Thousands of anguished Canadians have had hellish experiences getting the proper care they desire in their country's affordable health system.

Consider the example of Jane Pelton of Ottawa, whose teenage daughter Emily was told she had to wait up to three years for a government-paid operation to repair her torn knee ligament. Rather than leave Emily in pain, the family decided to pay $3,300 for arthroscopic surgery at a private clinic with no help from the government.

"It's like somebody's telling you that you can buy this car, and you've paid for the car, but you can't have it right now," said Pelton. "Every day we're paying for health care, yet when we go to access it, it's just not there."

Shockingly, the average Canadian family pays nearly half of its income in taxes each year, much of it to the health system. In 2005, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimated that citizens in the Ontario province were spending about 40 percent of their tax dollars on health care. By 2035, that figure could reach 85 percent.

In Alberta, a nonprofit organization called Friends of Medicare (Canada's health care system for the elderly has the same name as the American one) emphasizes problems with the U.S. health system and defends Canada's as the "most moral and the most cost effective health care system in the world," adding: "Is your sick grandkid more deserving of help than your neighbor's grandchild?"

The answer to that question is "yes," replies arthroscopic surgeon Brian Day, if the child needs urgent care and cannot get it at a government-funded hospital. Day told the Associated Press that he became so frustrated with the long delays in getting authorization to perform surgery at public hospitals in Vancouver, he built his own private clinic.

Several years ago, Day testified before Canada's Supreme Court on the myriad failings of Canada's health system. The case involved 73-year-old George Zeliotis, who suffered excruciating pain and became addicted to painkillers during a year-long wait for hip replacement surgery. His doctor, Jacques Chaouli, claimed Zeliotis' constitutional rights were violated because Quebec failed to provide the care he desperately needed. On June 9, 2005, the court ruled 4-3 in favor of Zeliotis, noting that as a result of delays in obtaining tests and undergoing surgery, patients have suffered or even died. The case was one modest step for common sense. It underscored the reality that the Canadian system can place severe limits on access to care that most Americans wouldn't tolerate.

Prescription

To be sure, the U.S. health care system is far from perfect. But it provides the overwhelming majority of Americans access to the best care in the world. Moreover, many of the flaws in the U.S. system result not from a private marketplace, but from flawed tax and regulatory policies implemented by the federal and state governments.

It is telling that even as Moore and Krugman seek to push the United States in the direction of a government-run, single-payer model, European nations are trying to integrate market practices into their own health care systems. Indeed, they seek to emulate the American system. Adopting the Moore-Krugman approach would only guarantee massive tax increases, rationing, and even denial of care.

Joel Himelfarb is an editorial writer for The Washington Times and a columnist for FamilySecurityMatters.org.

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/226/t ... d-medicine

Glenn Beck interviews former Canadian citizen on Canadian health care:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d25_1241071351

Originally Posted by MW

However, I'm not convinced that a socialized medical care system is the answer.

It's the "answer" if you don't pay taxes in Canada. Otherwise, you end up paying through the nose for those "$2" prescriptions. I think the funniest thing about their healthcare system right now is how Canada is sending many women to the U.S. who have high risk pregnancies. Sounds great. You are in your third trimester with a high risk pregnancy. What better time to make a jaunt across the border?

Every once in a while political issues hit close to home and that happened to me this month when my Dad had rotator cuff surgery and my mom had neck surgery. Thank God they didn't have to wait in pain all summer long to get MRI's. Anyone who thinks socialized healthcare is great needs to fly from Europe to the U.S.. I've made that trip 11 times and I always just happened to sit next to people who were coming to the U.S. for top notch medical treatment because their countries' socialized healthcare is a joke. Coincidence? I think not.

SecureTheBorder wrote:

It's the "answer" if you don't pay taxes in Canada. Otherwise, you end up paying through the nose for those "$2" prescriptions.

Touche'

I read somewhere that 22% of Canadian taxes pay for the so-called free health care. So much for being free. Like SecureTheBorder basically said, the health care is only free to the poor. The burden of Canada's so-called free health care is carried by the folks that actually pay taxes.

So you think free or reduced health care is an entitlement? Look, I know our current system has problems with costs being the #1 problem. However, I'm not convinced that a socialized medical care system is the answer. What makes you think our government can do it better than a free market system?

Yes, it IS an entitlement! I think the government can do better than the current system. Insurance and drugs are way too expensive, and it is MADE to be that way to screw the American people for profit. You can't deny that.

Did you even bother to read the responses offered in the above posts? If so, perhaps you should read them again because some of the answers you seek are here. Wink

Of course I read the responses. I am a member of other forums with Canadian members. The conclusion after listening to many Canadians, not just a few is that sure, the system has it's flaws especially depending on where you live. I just think it is sad that an entire generation of Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that our current system of giving crap loads of money to insurance and pharma companies is the norm. Well you know what, it's NOT normal and it's NOT right.

Every once in a while political issues hit close to home and that happened to me this month when my Dad had rotator cuff surgery and my mom had neck surgery. Thank God they didn't have to wait in pain all summer long to get MRI's. Anyone who thinks socialized healthcare is great needs to fly from Europe to the U.S.. I've made that trip 11 times and I always just happened to sit next to people who were coming to the U.S. for top notch medical treatment because their countries' socialized healthcare is a joke. Coincidence? I think not.

Really? So why do the majority of those Europeans get excellent care? Who are these people that are coming to the US for treatment? Do they have hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for care up front? Why are they not getting care in their country while most people in their country are?

I read somewhere that 22% of Canadian taxes pay for the so-called free health care. So much for being free. Like SecureTheBorder basically said, the health care is only free to the poor. The burden of Canada's so-called free health care is carried by the folks that actually pay taxes

Well duh! Taxes are what pays for the healtcare. I pay my taxes. I would not expect health care for someone that does not pay taxes, like illegals. The money that we would save if we deported illegals would help pay for health care for tax paying American citizens.

All I know is the system we have here is flawed tremendously. Americans have been getting less and less healthcare but paying more and more for it. It is a system that was set up to take advantage of us, but too many of you are obviously very happy with that system.

I do have a question for the older generation. What did Americans do for healthcare BEFORE Nixon introduced the current system in 1971?

I heard on the news this morning Englands health care is costing Britains 61% of their pay...I'll bet Canada is real close, they have pretty mush the same system and remember they only have 60 million citizens! and none of them have 30 million illegals.

How in GODS name did they ever come up with the word FREE !!

Well duh! Taxes are what pays for the healthcare. I pay my taxes. I would not expect health care for someone that does not pay taxes, like illegals. The money that we would save if we deported illegals would help pay for health care for tax paying American citizens.

Actually, Americans pay for our own healthcare policies through our employer, who may or may not contribute a percentage to the cost of the plan. And yes, part of the responsibility for those who wish to do business in the USA is to provide these basic needs for their employees which allows them to subsist with a reasonable level of care and quality of life. That’s not to say they should bear the entire burden, but certainly some of it, as they can’t do business without a workforce. They import illegal immigrants only to defray the costs of a legal workforce. Keep in mind that they are passing the costs on to all of us. Shame, shame!

Those of us who don’t have a health plan are billed, and have the option to make payment arrangements to satisfy the debt. I’ve done this many times early in my marriage as I started my family, and we always managed to fit it into our budget. Personally, I don’t think it should be any other way.

In a nation of some 300+ million, and with only 40-50 million un-insured, the national healthcare issue is nothing but a red herring. Remember, this is one of big arguments we make in opposition to illegal immigration and amnesty, and the only purpose of national healthcare is to render that argument null and void.

As for the 40-50 million un-insured, if the options available to them weren’t being sucked up by the illegal immigrants, they would be there for Americans who need them.

It’s actually a pretty damn good system IMHO. Let’s not fall into this national healthcare trap, OK?

I think the one thing people are missing is that you have to look to natural health controls as well, and that is something that can be preventative of some basic issues that crop up in our lives.

For blood pressure, many people rely on Fish Oil and Garlic capsules, along with other supplements, and then also working on diet as well as activity levels. Sometimes blood pressure issues can be hereditary or from other health problems, but overall it can be reduced dramatically with simple inexpensive measures.

Diabetes is preventable to some degree (Type II). Although is does come with age often, it can be helped obviously (as everyone knows) with diet and exercise, but using one teaspoon of cinnamon (sans sugar) in tea, coffee or on some sort of hot cereal, at least once a day, has proven to reduce the need for insulin, and in some limited cases, might reduce the need for it altogether (when those are essentially a mild case).

I think we have to take matter into our own hands and do all we can in our own capacity to maintain better health without having to resort to socialistic health care. No one can fully prevent all health problems, but many are 100% preventable, simply by eating better, less and with less junk. As well as smoking and drinking.