youtube.com/watch?v=HQ4McUQs8yQ

Additionally, thousands more of you are driven into financial ruin, and bankruptcy just because you, or one of your loved ones got sick or injured. And all of this is happening at a time when America spends twice as much of it’s GDP (Gross Domestic Productivity) on health care than any other country in the developed world. Individual Americans spend about ten times as much on health care as any other people in the developed world. This is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. AND IT MUST END!

But before we can truly fix this healthcare crisis and disgrace, everyone needs to clearly understand what the problem is. And everyone needs to clearly understand the real enormity of the problem. The problem is that HEALTHCARE AND MEDICAL DELIVERY IN AMERICA IS SEVERELY CORRUPTED AND COMPROMISED BY GREED! AND THE PRIVATE FOR PROFIT MOTIVE. And it is corrupted, and compromised IN EVERY ASPECT, AND EVERY PLACE OF HEALTHCARE AND MEDICAL DELIVERY. Unfortunately for all Americans, compromised healthcare ALWAYS results in needless suffering, injury, disability, and or death. Which is exactly what is happening now in America in shocking numbers.

Health care is NOT! a private for profit business. Healthcare is an essential public service. Like police, and fire. And healthcare is also a human right! PRIVATE FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE IS AN OXYMORON, AND AN IMMORAL AND UNETHICAL PERVERSION OF HEALTHCARE AND HUMAN RIGHTS.

So how do we fix this healthcare disgrace? I believe the fix for Americas healthcare disaster is essentially the same thing that every other developed country in the World has essentially done. “NOT FOR PROFIT, TAX PAYER SUPPORTED, SINGLE PAYER, AUTOMATIC, FREE UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE FOR ALL”. Essentially HR676 (enhanced, and improved medicare for all). Just like every other CIVILIZED! country in the developed World has. There is no other way to truly fix and reform our current disastrous healthcare delivery system.

All Universal health care systems work best when everyone participates. But I know that the healthcare lobby, and some politicians will try and undermine “Not For Profit, Tax payer supported, Single payer, Automatic, Free Universal Healthcare for all” by falsely claiming that it will limit your choice, and require you to participate.

So, I propose that everyone be included in the national plan unless they choose to opt out. If you opt out and need medical care the national plan will insure your provider that they will be reimbursed under the rules for members in the national plan. But those who opted out, and their insurer will be responsible for the FULL! cost to the national plan for providing your care if you or your private insurer fails to reimburse the provider or the national plan in a timely manor to at least the standards of the national plan.

Including reporting you to credit agencies, withholding of taxes, leans, and garnishment of wages for unpaid medical bills. Just like you have now under private for profit healthcare, and private for profit health insurance.

Further, people who opted out will be required to provide proof of financial responsibility for future illness or be required to participate in the national plan. And everyone with children will be required to participate in the national plan. Or provide proof of insurance coverage on each child to the standards of the national plan. It will be against the law to report anyone in the national plan to a credit agency for unpaid medical bills.

Frankly, only a dope would want to opt out of the national plan and opt to keep our current disastrous private for profit medical, and insurance plans. But they will be free to choose. The most important thing is that the vast majority of Americans that want the protection, benefits, and higher quality of a universal national plan have that choice.

You see, one of the most important aspects of a universal healthcare system is easy access, and patient protection. This is accomplished by having a single payer without a conflict of interest in patient care. And by having a payer who has the power to enforce minimum standards of excellence in healthcare delivery for everyone in the plan. This is much of what Medicare does now for senors. “Aeger Primo” (The patient comes first). Unfortunately in our healthcare system the patient comes last. We are just a peace of meat to them. Cash cows to be slaughtered for profit.

So this is IT! my fellow Americans, My fellow human beings, My fellow World Citizens. And my fellow Cyber Warriors. The time has come. D day. H hour. HEALTHCARE REFORM THIS YEAR! Let no one stand in our way. Contact your representative and tell them you want “Not For Profit, Tax Payer Supported, Single Payer, Automatic, Free Universal healthcare for all. And tell them you want that choice now. Tell them you want President Obama’s budget passed without delay. President Obama’s budget is brilliant. And exactly what is needed now.

President Obama, and his allies will need all the support you can give them. The healthcare lobby will try to take out his people if they can, like they did with Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer. And they will try to neutralize President Obama’s popularity, and political power. Or they will try to take him down someway. Don’t stand for it. If they attack him. Go after them ten times harder and remove them from office. We had an election. And you the people chose President Obama’s leadership, and change agenda. Let no one in government disrespect the will of the American people and remain in office.

SPREAD THE WORD! And talk it up with your families, friends, and coworkers. Keep ratcheting up the pressure until there is a ROAR! across America for “NOT FOR PROFIT, TAX PAYER SUPPORTED, SINGLE PAYER, AUTOMATIC, FREE UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE FOR ALL”.

Let’s get this healthcare reform done now my fellow Americans. This year. Take no prisoners.

God Bless All Of You

Jack Smith — Working Class

http://jacksmithworkingclass.blogspot.com/
(http://jacksmithworkingclass.blogspot.com/)

I agree completely with a lot of what you say and think that Canada isn’t the top national health care system to emulate. There are elements that seem pretty good though. I would hope that when the US adopts a public health care system it would spurn Canada to improve it’s system.

That’s because you don’t realize that I’m replying to a post that’s a reply to a post I posted about my mother-in-law. I wasn’t talking about Richardson at all.

“I would like to point out in Canada these decisions are base on the question, ‘How can we save the most lives with limited resources.’ In the States it is based on the question, ‘How can we make the most money.’”

That’s not particularly charitable or realistic. Statements like these don’t really paint a good picture of your ability to not look at this as a black and white problem. Please be realistic in your assessments of both countries health care systems, and don’t pitch them as this false dichotomy.

“I think this is why the wait times for MRIs are so low, because diagnostics is a easy way to pad the bill. Doing two or three tests rarely improves the patients care over doing one test. But doing two or three tests increases the bill, a lot.”

I guess my mother in law is a counterexample. She went in to her doctor sometime early last year with her back problem. She has a surgical consult this April, with surgery likely a week later. Her MRI, which was necessary for determining her diagnosis, happened last fall. These delays are intolerable, and would likely not happen in the States.

I was suggesting that part of it is because the Canadian health care systems are designed around increasing lifespans and lowering incidents of disease to a fault, and don’t take into consideration harm that is hard to generate statistics about. You can’t easily quantify her pain, the loss of quality of life she’s suffered, or her increased nerve damage (clinically tested and diagnosed) that these delays have brought her. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be considered in a system and avoided.

I personally am all for single-payer health care in the States, but to assume that the Canadian system is prototypical or that it’s a good idea to copy the Canadian system wholesale is a huge mistake.

Exactly so. The sooner we take the “for profit” out of the health care equation the better.

I would like to point out in Canada these decisions are base on the question, ‘How can we save the most lives with limited resources.’ In the States it is based on the question, ‘How can we make the most money.’

I think this is why the wait times for MRIs are so low, because diagnostics is a easy way to pad the bill. Doing two or three tests rarely improves the patients care over doing one test. But doing two or three tests increases the bill, a lot.

Although I agree with quite a bit of what you wrote, mdpdb, I think this is wrong. Taking Ms. Richardson’s very particular circumstances and trying to draw out a lesson of the whole Canadian health care system, or even worse all Universal health care systems, is a mistake.

Richardson suffered an injury from falling in to soft snow. She was self-aware after the injury and refused treatment because no one assumes they can die from something like that. Finally, they were at a ski resort which, if it’s anything like any ski resort I’ve been to, was probably quite a long drive from the nearest hospital.

Looking at a single incident like this and saying that universal health care isn’t the answer (which is what the cons are trying to do) is like looking at one particularly cold winters day and saying that climate change isn’t occurring. When the United States moves to a public, universal health care system I would hope that they would take the good elements of many countries health care systems and build something new. Japan, Australia, France, Canada and Germany all have systems which the US could learn and synthesize from.

So, Jay, got any good explanation why my friend isn’t walking around today? After all, if all that was standing between Natasha Richardson and a full recovery was the incompetent Canadian health care system, one would think a patient who goes to an American hospital wouldn’t be sent home with an injury that would eventually kill him.

The wait for diagnostic imaging is definitely a result of there being less machines around. That’s probably mostly a funding issue. But there are other issues to think about as well… when you start to think of health care in the utilitarian way that having a single-payer system leads you to, you start looking at things in a weird macroeconomic way that Americans aren’t used to.

There’s a problem with how we spend money on health care that isn’t limited to inefficencies having to do with insurance companies wrangling with hospitals and doctors over every dollar spent. America also spends more money on say extending the last two years of one’s life than it does on preventative care.

In Canada, the governments and medical establishment is more likely to look at X amount of dollars in their budget and weigh how much spending that money on things like breast cancer scans improves overall public health statistics vs. something like spending that money on heroic measures like risky surgeries or rigging 90 year olds to costly machines.

The upshot of this is while Canadaians have better lifespan stats than Americans do, they also tend to make some decisions that would probably clash with American expectations of medicine. For example, doctors will readily admit taking the age of a paitent into consideration when recommending treatments. Someone with an ailment who is over 75 might not get the full breadth of of options presented to them as compared to say a 40 year old with kids.

And in the case of my mother in law, her back pain isn’t really quantifiable by any statistic and isn’t likely to kill her, it’s not surprising (to me anyway) that the health care system isn’t rushing to resolve her situation in a week. I think that’s probably why you hear stories of Canadians waiting months or years for things like hip replacements. There aren’t similar waits for more life-threatening illnesses.

Going forward, if the American government takes on paying for health care, I think it will be interesting to watch our cultural expectations for a health care system mould what our approach to solving the problem is, but also it will be interesting to watch the feedback look of taxation->spending->statistics reporting alter that over time. We will likely end up confronting some of our expectations of having access to treatments that end up costing a lot more than they benefit that our current system doesn’t make readily apparent.

Sean D. Martin: “Then shouldn’t it be a staple of British cuisine?”

Clearly the plan backfired. Although it is starting to become more popular outside of Quebec.

Then shouldn’t it be a staple of British cuisine?

Unless it’s an EMERGENCY, Jay.

Please stop talking now.

I swear that poutine is revenge against the British for the Plains of Abraham.

I don’t want to pry into personal medical matters, but I’m curious as to why the wait is so long. It’s been stated in earlier postings that Canada hasn’t got as many CT or MRI machines as the US and that it takes longer to get a scan in Canada. But is it just the lower number of machines that causes the delays? Are the machines that do exist in constant use? Do machines sit idle because there aren’t the people available to operate them? Or are machines and personnel available but it takes time to get approval to have a scan made?

That being said, claiming that the Canadian situation is what definitely will happen to medicine in America should we reform our health care is a total scare tactic. The Canadian healthcare system* is self-admittedly underfunded, and if we desire a higher level of care than they provide here, we can just decide to fund it to that level. Nobody’s suggesting that we copy the system here outright, down to making every allocation decision the same way.

In any case, by switching to a reformed system, we’d finally not be wasting our health care dollars on the bullshit administrative tug-of-war-with-ancillary-medical-care system we have in the US, and we could likely buy *more* diagnostic imaging machines and still pocket savings.

*Actually there’s not really one system. There’s a federal mandate and some funding, and it’s actually up to each province to decide what services to provide. So technically there’s 10 systems to choose from, and if you live somewhere and don’t like the system, you are free to relocate to somewhere you like better.

I’m not convinced it does. There are tons of other relevant variables: diet, economic status, lifestyle (do you spend three hours in traffic per day, smoke, get less time off, etc.), to name a few. I support single-payer, but I don’t think life expectancy ends the discussion.