Has Canada Got the Cure?

[RedEarth]

Has Canada Got the Cure?
by Holly Dressel



Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That's a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn't already have a fundamentally public--that is, tax-supported--health care system.

That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high.

Different paths

Beginning in the 1930s, both the Americans and the Canadians tried to alleviate health care gaps by increasing use of employment-based insurance plans. Both countries encouraged nonprofit private insurance plans like Blue Cross, as well as for-profit insurance plans. The difference between the United States and Canada is that Americans are still doing this, ignoring decades of international statistics that show that this type of funding inevitably leads to poorer public health.


Meanwhile, according to author Terry Boychuk, the rest of the industrialized world, including many developing countries like Mexico, Korea, and India, viscerally understood that private insurance would cover all necessary hospital procedures and services; and that even minimal protection beyond the reach of the poor, the working poor, and those with the most serious health problems. 1 Today, over half the family bankruptcies filed every year in the United States are directly related to medical expenses, and a recent study shows that 75 percent of those are filed by people with health insurance


http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1503

[unpossibles]

1. that graph says so much

and shows that we do already spend more than Canada, despite claims the RW tries to make. good article. thanks!

[marmar]

2. Thanks for posting this...

I'm going to send it to every single-payer health care opponent I know, including several who call themselves liberals. It's the health care racket in the United States that's the problem - universal single-payer works in every other Western country.

[SutaUvaca]

3. Damnation!

I'm printing this out and taping up on the wall. I'll show it to every customer who comes in my shop. My fiance and I are both uninsured at this point, and both with health care needs. My late wife and I tried to move to Scotland in the late 80's but her cancer short-circuited that plan. She was treated for ten years before she died. She died one year after we went bankrupt, and that was with good health insurance.

Health care in this "richest" nation is such a sad joke. Many lives are measured by that graph. Thanks.

[ovidsen]

4. US health care. It's broke. Fix it. n/t (Thanks for posting)

[achtung_circus]

5. Your snippet seems to have not included a couple of words

from the original, that are in brackets in the original. The omission changes the meaning.

Meanwhile, according to author Terry Boychuk, the rest of the industrialized world, including many developing countries like Mexico, Korea, and India, viscerally understood that private insurance would (never be able to) cover all necessary hospital procedures and services;

It's an HTML thing with square brackets in the original.

[RedEarth]

8. That's interesting... I never knew anything about square brackets...

Thanks for pointing that out...not having what's in the brackets certainly changes the meaning of least that paragraph.

[Joanne98]

6. Put it on a billboard.

[immoderate]

7. Outrageous! But one small point.

Note that the graph for life expectancy does not start at zero, and so is misleading visually. In any case, the data is quite damning.

Thanks for posting this.

--IMM

[Czolgosz]

9. Were you really mislead by that? It never occurred to me that Canadians

live nearly twice as long as citizens of the USA.

[immoderate]

10. What's the point of a graph if you have to look at the numbers?

It's the disparity you mention that made me go back and read it more carefully. This technique is used frequently to mislead. I know. I used to teach this stuff.

Was I misled? Well, I caught it. Is it misleading? Sure is.

--IMM

[Canuckistanian]

11. Not twice as long

Just 3 years longer on average. Look at the graph more closely.

[immoderate]

12. Yes. The graph is misleading.

You must read the numbers to get the true picture. So why have the picture except to mislead people?

--IMM

[Czolgosz]

16. I was being sarcastic. I can't imagine anyone would actually believe that

Canadians nearly live twice as long people in the US.

[Canuckistanian]

17. My apologies

I should know better. :banghead:

[Czolgosz]

22. I should apologize if my sarcasm was not evident (perhaps there are people

who think Canadians live twice as long as people in the USA -- I have certainly read posts dumber than that at freerepublic.com).

[IronLionZion]

19. Yep, but we really do spend twice as much!

Statistics is the art of misleading. You simply have to look at the numbers. If the graph started at 0, you wouldn't notice much disparity at all since it's only 3 years.

I'm more concerned with spending twice as much per capita. $6000 for each person? :wtf:

[Surya Gayatri]

13. Thanks so much for spotting & posting

this article, RedEarth. I've just sent it off to my neo-con MD brother who has been railing against "socialized medicine" (as he still insists on calling it) for years. He's been even more adamant since he started having major health issues himself 2 years ago (with a $250,OOO+ hospital stay last year covered by his very substantial insurance scheme).

He persists in claiming that the US health care system is the best in the world, bar none. But, as I said in my e-mail to him today:

(**Thought this article might be of interest to you as a professional provider. Compared to the US, Canada seems to have the edge on an effective health care system. Sure, and as your personal experience confirms, the US system works nicely for the well-heeled patient. But, the comparison is stark--Canadians as a people are much healthier. But then again, if your philosophy is one of "every man for himself & the devil take the hindmost", I guess the US scheme is just fine. Social solidarity is not a "Compassionate Conservative" forté, I fear, no matter what rubbish GWB & his right-wing cabal try to sell to their ever-diminishing base. Surya)

[RedEarth]

15. Surya, you might have an interest in looking at these sites as well......

Like many, I feel the only viable plan for health-care in the US is a Single-Payer plan. However, until the politicians have the guts to speak up, it's unlikely anything of substance will emerge. It will just be more of the same....patchwork on a completely broken system.

Physicians Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Executive Summary
The United States spends more than twice as much on health care as the average of other developed nations, all of which boast universal coverage. Yet over 39 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever, and most others are underinsured, in the sense that they lack adequate coverage for all contingencies (e.g., long-term care and prescription drug costs).

Why is the U. S. so different? The short answer is that we alone treat health care as a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, rather than as a social service to be distributed according to medical need. In our market-driven system, investor-owned firms compete not so much by increasing quality or lowering costs, but by avoiding unprofitable patients and shifting costs back to patients or to other payers. This creates the paradox of a health care system based on avoiding the sick. It generates huge administrative costs, which, along with profits, divert resources from clinical care to the demands of business. In addition, burgeoning satellite businesses, such as consulting firms and marketing companies, consume an increasing fraction of the health care dollar.

We endorse a fundamental change in America's health care - the creation of a comprehensive National Health Insurance (NHI) Program. Such a program - which in essence would be an expanded and improved version of Medicare - would cover every American for all necessary medical care. Most hospitals and clinics would remain privately owned and operated, receiving a budget from the NHI to cover all operating costs. Investor-owned facilities would be converted to not-for-profit status, and their former owners compensated for past investments. Physicians could continue to practice on a fee-for-service basis, or receive salaries from group practices, hospitals or clinics.

A National Health Insurance Program would save at least $150 billion annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private, investor-owned insurance industry and reducing spending for marketing and other satellite services. Doctors and hospitals would be freed from the concomitant burdens and expenses of paperwork created by having to deal with multiple insurers with different rules - often rules designed to avoid payment. During the transition to an NHI, the savings on administration and profits would fully offset the costs of expanded and improved coverage. NHI would make it possible to set and enforce overall spending limits for the health care system, slowing cost growth over the long run.

A National Health Insurance Program is the only affordable option for universal, comprehensive coverage. Under the current system, expanding access to health care inevitably means increasing costs, and reducing costs inevitably means limiting access. But an NHI could both expand access and reduce costs. It would squeeze out bureaucratic waste and eliminate the perverse incentives that threaten the quality of care and the ethical foundations of medicine.

http://www.physiciansproposal.org


here are several more articles from you might have an interest in...

http://www.yesmagazine.org/default.asp

[Surya Gayatri]

20. Again, thanks for the additional sources...

I wonder if my brother will even bother to read beyond the titles...He's got a true neo-con mind-set.

Once when I dared to say that, due to family obligations & financial pressures, etc., not everybody could afford the kind of comprehensive, watertight coverage he has, he replied: "They should have thought of that before they had kids (he has none from choice)". What to do in the face of this mentality? SG

[rman]

14. Numbers on the well-being of people are so rarely cited by the MSM

Typical lies of omission.

[IronLionZion]

18. The US already has tax-supported health care

And I don't mean medicaid and medicare. I'm talking about all those government employees from our politicians to our military and postal workers. There are tax-supported employees at the federal, state, and local levels that have health insurance and it's good. Senator John Kerry has Blue Cross Blue Shield and what's good enough for US Senators is good enough for every American.

Now the US population is about 300 million strong. There are 45 million without health insurance. ONLY 15% of our population doesn't have health insurance and that is criminally negligent and a successful nation that values the safety and security of its people can not allow these people to fall though the cracks anymore. Do you know how much 15% of something is? 5% of Americans unemployed is considered full employment. Around 10% of Americans are employed but uninsured. Something is NOT working here in the American dream. We can and should cover these people today. Considering that we spend $300 million every day on Iraq, where do our priorities lie?

We have to help these 15% because we can't afford NOT to. When the uninsured's health deterioriates to emergency level, they will get tax-supported treatment from their local emergency room or public hospital which is really not staffed, equipped, or funded enough to handle this massive volume. Go to any city ER and YOU MAY BLEED TO DEATH WAITING FOR TREATMENT!. Preventative care and regular checkups are the only way we can reduce the incredible tax burden on all Americans.

Never forget that the US already has publicly funded health care and everyone who pays any kind of tax is already paying for it. We're already putting the money into the system, but what exactly are we getting out of it?

This issue is very dear to my heart. I look at websites for most competitive political candidates running in 2006 and the first issue position I look at is health care. Let me tell you that every Democrat worth his/her salt supports this in some way. The trick is getting them elected and then holding them accountable.

What kills me most about this problem is that we can cover every man woman and child in this country without taking even 1 penny from the profits of the corporate fat cats in the insurance industry but we still don't do it because of our subconscious conditioning that government helping everyone is socialism and is bad. It's not enough that we succeed, others have to fail. We are not upper class unless there is a lower class. We have to be better than the next guy, and it's a pity that this occurs on an individual basis rather than as a patriotic/nationalist basis.

[Surya Gayatri]

21. What you said, IronLion!

Great psycho-socio analysis of the phenomenon.

"Let me tell you that every Democrat worth his/her salt supports this in some way. The trick is getting them elected and then holding them accountable."

True indeed, but don't forget the power of the BIG PHARMA & HEALTH CARE PROVIDER lobbies. They throw more money around up there on Capitol Hill than any other corporate interest.

First order of business of the new Dem-controlled Congress will have to be to de-fang these vampires and curb their "consulting/lobbying" operations. Even in our worst imaginings, I don't think we have any idea of how nefarious their influence is.

[IronLionZion]

23. Damn straight Surya!

Control the lobbying and money, then our progressive leaders can get things accomplished instead of worrying about re-election. We can do it. Where there is a will there is a way.

[progressoid]

24. Excellent article. Thanks!

[skyblue]

25. People lose their homes when they have no health insurance and get sick or

they just die instead of receiving treatment. It's too bad that this hasn't received the attention that it does.

[skyblue]

26. Health Insurance Does Not Cover Everything! Check your Health Insurance!!

See if you are covered for the need of a new kidney or something else... Many insurance companies probably cover less than they used to, and you may need supplemental insurance.