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Hope everything works out

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+1.  Hope everything works out.  



All I can say is, this was probably 8 or 9 years ago, now.  So maybe things have gotten better since then.  I'm just relaying what she said she was told.  Not having been there to see it myself, that's the best I can do.  Maybe it was a local situation or something.  

 

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Not really because in my other dealings with people they're overwhelmingly positive in favor of their socialized systems. Obviously it isn't perfect and given that maybe 10 people Go be i have weighed in, it is hardly a representative sample. Go be insulting elsewhere. There is a middle of the road somewhere.

Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
By DAVID GRATZER | Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:30 PM PT

As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few.

But no one will mention Claude Castonguay — perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades.

Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however, should weigh heavily on how the candidates think about the issue in this country.

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.

In America, these ideas may not sound shocking. But in Canada, where the private sector has been shunned for decades, these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It's as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced.

What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.

Years ago, Canadians touted their health care system as the best in the world; today, Canadian health care stands in ruinous shape.

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form. At death's door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better.

De Vires is far from unusual in seeking medical treatment in the U.S. Even Canadian government officials send patients across the border, increasingly looking to American medicine to deal with their overload of patients and chronic shortage of care.

Since the spring of 2006, Ontario's government has sent at least 164 patients to New York and Michigan for neurosurgery emergencies — defined by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain." Other provinces have followed Ontario's example.

Canada isn't the only country facing a government health care crisis. Britain's system, once the postwar inspiration for many Western countries, is similarly plagued. Both countries trail the U.S. in five-year cancer survival rates, transplantation outcomes and other measures.

The problem is that government bureaucrats simply can't centrally plan their way to better health care.

A typical example: The Ministry of Health declared that British patients should get ER care within four hours. The result? At some hospitals, seriously ill patients are kept in ambulances for hours so as not to run afoul of the regulation; at other hospitals, patients are admitted to inappropriate wards.

Declarations can't solve staffing shortages and the other rationing of care that occurs in government-run systems.

Polls show Americans are desperately unhappy with their system and a government solution grows in popularity. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain is explicitly pushing for single-payer health care, as the Canadian system is known in America.

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program," Obama said back in the 1990s. Last year, Obama told the New Yorker that "if you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system probably makes sense."

As for the Republicans, simply criticizing Democratic health care proposals will not suffice — it's not 1994 anymore. And, while McCain's health care proposals hold promise of putting families in charge of their health care and perhaps even taming costs, McCain, at least so far, doesn't seem terribly interested in discussing health care on the campaign trail.

However the candidates choose to proceed, Americans should know that one of the founding fathers of Canada's government-run health care system has turned against his own creation. If Claude Castonguay is abandoning ship, why should Americans bother climbing on board?

Gratzer is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a physician licensed in both the U.S. and Canada, where he received his medical training. His newest book, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care," is now available in paperback.

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Forget all that bullshit, lets just go by an easy factor that im sure anyone can agree on to determine health care and that is life expectancy.
I found two cool web sites ranking life expectancy. Seems the USA is ranked #45 in the world behind Jordan, Bosnia and Bermuda. Hazaah?
The only western countries we out rank but its a virtual tie anyway is Ireland and Portugal.
Wiki country by rank
Life expectancy

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Out of curiosity, how do you peoples with socialized medicine feel about your nation's respective healthcare systems? Those who respond, please share any personal experiences, what country you're from, etc. With the commonly parroted line of "XXX hate their national healthcare", I want to see how ARFCOM's admittedly small sample population feels.

My fellow Americans: Please stay out unless you have first hand experience dealing with such systems unless you're going to have meaningful and respectful discussion.

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Standing in the middle of the road is a damn good way to get run over.  

There is no middle of the road.  Either you support armed robbery or you don't.  No matter how noble your intentions are, the moment you advocate taking the fruit of one persons labor by force you are no more noble than a common armed robber.  In fact you are promoting slavery by proxy.

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+1

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There is no Canadian "socialized" medicine as alluded to by many people. Each province runs their own program, with drastically different benefit structures. Alberta, rich on oil even without income or sales tax, includes dental and vision in the plan.

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Dloken will only listen to the data that supports his view. It does not matter if that data is irrelevent.

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Out of curiosity, how do you peoples with socialized medicine feel about your nation's respective healthcare systems? Those who respond, please share any personal experiences, what country you're from, etc. With the commonly parroted line of "XXX hate their national healthcare", I want to see how ARFCOM's admittedly small sample population feels.

My fellow Americans: Please stay out unless you have first hand experience dealing with such systems unless you're going to have meaningful and respectful discussion.

Airman loses legs after gallbladder surgery

The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jul 23, 2009 11:38:31 EDT
 
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An airman lost parts of both legs and was in critical condition after routine gallbladder surgery at Travis Air Force Base went terribly wrong, his family said.

Airman 1st Class Colton Read was supposed to get his gallbladder removed laparoscopically — via a small incision — at Travis’ David Grant Medical Center on July 9.

During the procedure, surgeons nicked or punctured his aorta, a large artery that carries blood from the heart throughout the body, according to his wife, Jessica Read. The surgeons repaired the breach enough to save his life, but the repair began leaking and disrupted the blood supply to his legs, she said.

Read was flown to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where doctors told the family that damage from the lack of blood required amputation. Family members say he’s undergone 10 surgeries to remove dead tissue from his legs, leaving him without much of his right leg and the lower portion of his left.

And Read still hasn’t had his gallbladder removed because of the surgery complications, relatives said.

Travis officials would not comment on specifics, only saying a “serious medical incident” occurred at the hospital. The case is under investigation by the base, a national hospital accrediting commission and the U.S. surgeon general.

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My fellow Americans: Please stay out unless you have first hand experience dealing with such systems unless you're going to have meaningful and respectful discussion.

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First off, if the gov't is running the insurance scheme, it's "socialized".  It doesn't matter if it's the federal gov't or the provincial gov't.

Second, for the 25 years I lived in Alberta, Rx, dental and vision were NEVER covered under Alberta Health.  Maybe if you are a low income person you can get it covered as a part of being on welfare, but everyone I knew HAD to have private insurance to cover all of those.

I remember being a university student and having to cover my own vision checks.  Dental was included with the university plan, but it was never covered under the gov't plan.  I had to pay extra for the coverage and it was pretty shitty coverage.  There were only a handful of dentists who participated and most had a limit on the number they would accept.  I had to call 2 or 3 dentists before I could get an appointment.

RF

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If you mean by the dictionary definition "adapted to the needs of the people," you're a pretty optimistic person. ETA: The systems in Canada exist because of a federal law, but they are by no means the same from province to province, so "the Canadian" system everyone speaks of does not really exist.

My dad was retired, and since he died, I have copies of his paperwork, and yes, his vision and dental were covered, at least for seniors. Most of Canada requires separate dental and "extended health", which is a private insurance add on, and selected a la carte by employers or people through other associations they belong to.

You may be eligible to begin receiving dental benefits:

   * on the day of your 65th birthday, OR
   * if you are new to Alberta, after you have permanently resided in the province for three months, whichever is later.

Total household income will determine how much coverage you are eligible to receive.

Single Senior  

$0 to $24,000  Maximum coverage1
$24,001 to $31,675 Partial coverage2
over $31,675 Not eligible