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And there are millions of Canadian stories that will contradict this.

MWG,

Maybe you shouldn't have started your topic with a story that had a link to this:

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Excerpt:

"More than 100,000 Americans die each year from lack of timely, effective medical care, according to a study that found the U.S. has the highest rate of preventable deaths among 19 industrialized nations. "

Kinda fucks up your entire premise, doesn't it?

Until next time,

Zif.

Exactly my point.

Wahbooz,

and for every canadian story like this there are hundreds of such stories in the U.S. on a daily basis. On average there are thousands of such stories regarding healthcare in the U.S. for every story coming from Canada. And we haven't even started talking about the people that have died in emergency waiting rooms in the U.S.

Until next time,

Zif.

Or the thousands of people who have been misdiagnosed by an emergency physician in an American ER.

"from one who knows"..? Knows what? Nice sized "contributions" from pharma and insurance? About PRi Where have we heard these "interests" before? Pirates like freedom and liberty too, to go about their piracy unchecked. About AWB

AWB represents patients or those in the business of profiting from human suffering?

Here's a Canadian who does not agree with PRi and AWB's assessments of the Canadian system, but appears to have their number.

A Canadian (not Americans on the pharma and insurance industry lobby dole) speaks about Canadian health care.

Who to believe, who do believe?

Prefer your health care in the hands of the Bernie Madoffs and AIG execs of the world?

Or

Would you prefer your care in the hands of those closer to the the Clara Bartons and Florence Nightingales of the world.

Do you prefer to be thought of as a human being looking for care or a dollar figure on a profit and loss sheet. When it comes to a decision between treating you and profit, in a profit driven industry, what do you think is going to win out in the decision making process?

Denial of coverage

It would seem naive to believe any system in the world is perfect, but when weighing the basic structures and motivations for the variety of systems in the world, one might look for what majorities of populations are looking for opting totally out of their system's existing structure versus those looking to keep their basic structures, but tweek and correct them to keep them sustainable?

I believe people will find that Canadians as a whole are not looking to reject their existing health care structure, for as much as they would like to improve it.

A paper on wait lists (NOTE what types of procedures go on wait lists and what types do not have wait lists (see definitions))

Its easy to pick n mix medical horror stories but it does give the oppertunity for people who should know better to put their foot in it.

Apparently a US politician (whose name I have forgotten) claimed that had Stephen Hawking been British and had to use the British NHS then he would be dead now.

I might be wrong but I always thought that Stephen Hawking was British and had gone on record for praising the medial care that he has received from the British NHS.

We Brits know that our NHS is far from perfect but then again whose health service is?

Apparently health provision costs the British tax payer less per head than in the US and statisically we live longer.

We do feel that it is our patriotic duty to defend the British NHS from criticism from across the pond whilst reserving the right to pour scorn on it ourselves.

Not only that but also we can also pour scorn on other country's health services.

See below:

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Wahbooz:

Or the thousands of people who have been misdiagnosed by an emergency physician in an American ER.

Nationalized Health Care will not render better trained doctors. Typically ER´s are staffed with some of the best in the community. If I were critically injured in Houston, I would prefer to be taken to Ban Taub than the very nice Methodist Hospital. Both have good doctors, but Ben Taub is the public hospital and receives 100 times the number of real emergencies than private hospitals.

......I suppose my time will come at some point that I will be the one needing the care instead of accompanying those that have and I'm grateful for the time I've been given to be an accompanyment instead of a patient, I was one long ago though before some seemed to have discovered how profitable an endless supply of human suffering could be and turned it into an industry.

In any case, I have had the not so wonderful privilege of visitng a fair number of medical institution' s emergency wards (here in the U.S) unfortunately as a result of the misfortune in health of aging relatives from causes that range from massive stroke, to that of a swollen leg, after a hip replacement could be dangerous , and other various cuts and bruises that looked a lot worse than they ended up being. Because some of the occurences of need to be checked out were not during regular business hours, the assistants were told to direct the patient to the emergency room.

Not only the variety and level of care different from hosptial to hospital, but wait times for the varioius afflictions and/or injuries varied greatly. I wouldn't call a 9:00 PM to 4:00 AM wait to be particularly speedy for someone waiting to be checked out for heart problems related to congenital heart failure, known to their doctor at that hospital and in the patient records or a similar length of wait for someone with blood clotting problems. On the other end, waiting for a relative who had had outpatient surgery after a long delay (I realize medicine is not an exacting process with regard to set time for procedures and every procedure going without complications) and getting back the out-patient recovery room late in the day. Twice with this person and several times with others, I was sitting by their bedside when lights in the ward began to be turned out and an insistance it was time to go, the ward was closing for the day was related, ready or not a wheelchair came and assistance in getting the still heavily sedated patient into the chair to be wheeled out was enacted. Last few times I accompanied a relative for outpatient surgery, I noted they made sure the patient was not only just coherent enough to sign a waiver for their release, but that their pain level and general feeling was monitored, perhaps because too many had been whisked out previously before they were ready or before there was some assurance there were no lingering ill effects or complications from the surgery.

Of a purpose, emergency rooms employ triage and while we often might feel neglected, there are times when they are working on a just flown in, critical care patient and our care as important as it is, placed on a priority list based on a mix of weight of need in terms of available staff, seriousness of illness or injury and seriousness of need for immediate attention and care. That is why emergency room care is so expensive and in many cases the waits are long.

I imagine there are similar stories by people from any nation under their own systems or the systems of nations they have visited.

I suppose like the experiences we have with eating out, the value of the sum or recommendation of the concept of eating out could be defined in part by the number of times we experienced a bad meal and/or service versus a good meal and/or service and if rating the experience of eating out in someone else's nation aside feom our own, the number of times we ate out. If one eats out once in someone else's nation and has a bad (or a good) experience, is that necessarily indicative of that nation's eating out experience? If one eats out 150 times in someone's nation (or city or county, region, etc.) and has a good (or bad) meal or experience 150 times and and a bad one 25 times, might there be a somewhat better ability, even if not the optimal to come to some conclusions?

Whether a patient or a patient's advocate, how often or regularly have we or do we experience our health care systems or the systems of other nations and out of those experiences, where it most of the weight in terms of good or bad experiences or even ease of access to such experiences.

Is there truly a health care system in any industrialized nation of the world who is going to suggest if someone wants to and can pay for care beyond a basic level, they should feel free? The problem might arise where someone is offering a fair sum to lure someone away from working on one patient to come and work on them instead. I don't see as I've never had the choice of trying another emergency room, but for the risk of an emergency deepening while in transport to another emergency room, thus in many ways no matter what the overall system of delivery of pay for services, we are trapped by the issues of weighing health risks.

If I'm sounding like I am preaching here to you or anyone, I would guess I am preaching mostly to the choir with a few well identified exceptions.

Take good care Steelbucket.

Ask people anywhere in the world for horror stories about their own country's healthcare system, and you'll get them. Even the best of systems have their failings, and given that we tend to deal with medical systems, in particular, at a time when we are most vulnerable, it makes sense that we'll remember negative situations pretty vividly, regardless of whether we live in a first-class system like France's, a second-class system like Canada's, or a third-class system like the one in the United States.

But, individual bitching aside, the numbers are quite clear. Every other wealthy nation's healthcare system produces better public health results than ours, covers a greater share of the population, does a better job at preventing catastrophic economic results for unlucky individuals, costs much less (usually about half as much per capita), and has done a better job of controlling escalating costs in recent years.

Now, of course, with every system having its downside, and the super-wealthy healthcare profiteers in this country opening their wallets wide to generate propaganda to kill reform efforts, we'll hear a lot about the failings of other countries' systems, in coming weeks. And the credulous among us will parrot that propaganda like gospel. But you can pile up the anecdotes as high as you like, and it does nothing to change the very simple reality: As bad as these other systems might be, ours is much worse. It is more expensive and less effective. That is the simple fact that proponents of our obsolete system need to get their heads around. They can cower under their pile of anecdotes, but the big picture doesn't change.

Exactly. I have no doubt that sometimes the Canadian system is terrible, and that some Canadians have really been screwed by it. But when you consider that our system costs nearly twice as much and produces markedly worse results, there's no honest question about which is better. Whatever share of Canadians are getting screwed by their system, a much higher share of Americans are getting screwed by ours.

People who have no honest interest in this issue, but instead are merely trying to champion an unexamined premise they started with, will look at anecdotes. But people who genuinely care about how to fix our system will look at the big picture. In the big picture, the US ranks very poorly in the World Health Organization's rankings, and has decidedly sub-standard public health stats compared to other wealthy nations, even if you use our own CIA's figures. In the big picture, economists agree that the US spends far more, per capita, than typical wealthy nations on its health care system. In the big picture, our system covers a smaller portion of our population with standard care. And in the big picture a lot more Americans suffer devestating financial setbacks thanks to the bad luck of having a medical problem.

America boasts about being the most wealthy country in the world - yet, in Kuwait, for example, do you know what health care costs a Kuwaitii? Zero, nothing, they don't pay a penny, it's all paid for out of oil revenues - so much for grotty little third world countries - eh?

Take a criminal, in a US jail/prison, how much are they charged for health care Vs how much a non-criminal is charged? Fair?

The only argument that I can see, against a universal health care scheme, in the US, is that no-one trusts the Govt, regardless of which party is running it, to run their health care. It's distrust of Govt that is the big scare.

Doncha think?