Tea Party Questions

Yes we have some great technology and great doctors and lousy service and lousy doctors and lousy technology and far too often even the lousy doctors and lousy service and lousy technology is not available to those that need it.

This is a myth shown time and time again not to be true.
The latest.

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1) First, they surveyed United States border facilities in Michigan, New York, and Washington. It makes sense that Canadians crossing the border for care would favor sites close by, right? It turns out that about 80% of such facilities saw fewer than one Canadian per month. About 40% saw none in the prior year. And when looking at the reasons for visits, more than 80% were emergencies or urgent visits (ie tourists who had to go to the ER). Only about 19% of those already few visits were for elective purposes.

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2) Next, they surveyed America’s Best Hospitals, because if Canadians were going to travel for care, they would be more likely to go to the most well-known and highest quality facilities, right? Only one of the surveyed hospitals saw more than 60 Canadians in one year. And, again, that included both emergencies and elective care.

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3) Finally, they examined data from the 18,000 Canadians who participated in the National Population Health Survey. In the previous year, only 90 of those 18,000 Canadians had received care in the United States; only 20 of them had done so electively.

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Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United StatesCommentaries on this study
HugeDomains.com
Phantoms in the SnowOther looks at Canadian healthcare system
Mythbusting Canadian Health Care -- Part I | OurFuture.org by People's Action
http://www.ourfuture.org/node/21641It is seemingly obvious that reality has a liberal bias. This whole meme is propaganda with no basis in reality or facts.Wait for it...

Canadians don't just go to border states. I have a friend who flew to California for treatment.It is true that doctors have their own clinics but the hospitals that they work out of are, with just a handful of exceptions, publicly owned. I think that the biggest saving that our doctors have is they don't have to pay the prohibitive costs of legal protection. We just don't sue our doctors very much in this country.As I say are system works pretty well except long waiting lists are a problem. The concern is that the status quo isn't sustainable. I definitely agree with having one health insurer provider and I'm fine with it being the state.

As they are in numerous places in the US.What did your friend fly to California to get treatment for?

She went because of her MS. I had another friend who took his daughter to the Mayo clinic for migranes. The people who use the US system are generally those who are going to fly to whewre they want to go for treatment as opposed to the closest state.I don't know how wide spread it is but it isn't uncommon. I recently heard a US company advertising for US healthcare insurance for Canadians.I also think that there is a perception that the quality of care that they pay for in the US is superior to what they get here. Frankly I'm not sure that is the case.I do know that I was in Mexico with my grandson when he badly separated his shoulder. I think the care he got in PLaya Del Carmen was better than what he would have received here. Once the funding was cleared up, they had great facilities and very competent doctors and nurses.The Canadian system is great but it's certainly not without its problems.

There are a number of US citizens that go to foreign countries for medical services too. This can easily be researched on the net.So I think it is safe to say the whole Canadians going to US for medical services is just a right wing propaganda scheme.ABEPeople from all over the world go to the Mayo Clinic. That a Canadian goes to Mayo has no bearing on the quality of Medical Care in Canada.Edited by Theodoric, : Another pointEdited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

To be fair, there may be better specialists in the US than in Canada in some cases. I wouldn't be surprised if the waiting list is much shorter to non-existent for US doctors. Both of these would be draws for Canadian patients who have the money to afford it.The US healthcare system is pretty good if you can afford the top doctors. Of that I have no doubt. The hang up is "if you can afford it". To use an analogy, if every home in the US was a multi-million dollar mansion could we still claim that the US hase the best housing even if 90% of the population was homeless? I wouldn't think so.To get back to the topic, how bad does the healthcare system have to get before people fight back? How many more people have to die prematurely because they can not afford healthcare, or choose to die instead of bankrupting their families. When politicians claim that we can't afford universal health coverage it really pisses me off. How do they think we are paying for it right now? Do they think that everyone is getting free care or something? Or are they admitting that healthcare is so overpriced that our country could not afford to make healthcare available to everyone, universal or not? Either way, it is a very sad state of affairs.There is some silver lining though. Whenever a conservative says that we can not do universal health coverage remind them that the French are able to do it. That usually ruffles their feathers.

It is obviously the Canadians that can afford it who go there. I think the last comment is a fair analogy. Frankly I know very little about the US health care system. One question I would have though is how do you go about implementing a universal health plan. It would require putting many legitimate companies out of business which doesn't seem exactly fair either. That isn't to say that it shouldn't be done but it does seem to me that there would have to be some way of treating the current private insurers fairly. Brilliant. I pretty much consider myself a conservative here but that probably puts me closer to US Democrats than Republicans. I do think though that the US should look at the European models which have a mix of private and public which seems to provide care for all without the high costs that are associated with our system. (I do recognize that your costs are higher than ours but I believe that would be largely due to legal insurance and the inefficiencies of having so many health insurers.I really want to point out that I am no expert in this field and it is just my perception of things as your run-of-the-mill Canadian.

Yes, if you can pay for it.And Albanians aren't poor if they're millionaires, so why would anyone say that Albanians are poor?

We have among the highest rates of medical malpractice and medical errors in the Western world.

If it were up to me, I would expand on the current programs. For example, the VA system treats veterans, but only if they are low income. I say that we get rid of the income requirements and open up the VA system to all vets for life. The VA system could serve as a model for broader reforms, such as VA run medical schools that do not charge tuition but require a specific term of service after graduation. This would allow the VA to pay out less for salaries while also lowering the debt burden for medical students.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

That makes sense as it phases a program in which hopefully would allow the health insurance companies time to adjust.One suggestion I would have is to revamp the laws around the whole system. Doctor's aren’t perfect and if it can be shown that a doctor did his/her best with no egregious mistakes then the case should be thrown out. It is my understanding that legal insurance is a huge drain on the system.

AND....only if you get an honorable discharge. I got a general and lost ALL my benefits. I may as well not have served at all. Hell, I didn't even qualify for unemployment when I got out.Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

That doesn't reduce the insurance drain on the system, it just shifts the burden to patients. Now they're the ones who need to be insured against expensive medical issues arising from medical malpractice.

Other drains include:1) no collective price bargaining for medication. Since everyone gets their meds as individuals, you don't get group discount pricing. A government-run healthcare provider can actually negotiate prices and buy in bulk at a lower price than individuals.2) paperwork. Claims processing (and erroneous claim processing) costs billions.

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In fact, the AMA estimates that health insurer claims-processing errors are costing the healthcare industry an estimated $17 billion in unnecessary administrative costs per year.

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One health insurer (WellPoint Inc, formed from the merger of two companies that were once known as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana and Blue Cross of California)
spent 14.7% of its total revenue on marketing and administration, money that will never ever go toward offering medical care to anyone.A publicly run healthcare provider doesn't need to worry about billing and denied claims. The doctor approves treatment, and funds are paid out of the healthcare provider's budget, funded by taxes.

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The firm’s total marketing (selling) expenses for 2008 were $1,778.4 million. General administrative expenses were $7,242.1 million. The sum of these two items ... amounted to 14.7 percent of total revenue in 2008.

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In other words, medical claims billing and marketing cost 14.7% of revenue from the insurance company...and then, after that, the errors in the claims billing cost the actual doctors around $17 billion.That's an awful lot of money not being used for x-rays or MRIs or surgeries or medicine.A public provider doesn't need to advertise, or spend billions on approving and denying claims from individual doctors.3) profit.

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WellPoint’s net income (profits) after all expenses and the provision for income taxes in 2008 was 4.07 percent of total revenue.

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Their revenue total was $61,579.2 million, so their profit was $2.506 billion.That's another $2.506 billion dollars that doesn't buy medicine, or put a cast on a broken limb, or transplant a kidney.