BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 01:40 PM

There is a hungry tiger in the room, and Rig is complaining about a flea.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 01:56 PM

But the flea is foreign!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 01:56 PM

Sounds like Shona Holmes was a paranoid hysteric without a serious medical problem at all who unnecessarily spent $100,000 in the USA to get treatment for a non-emergency...and she's now looking for someone to blame it on other than herself!

I have a friend who was diagnosed recently with a brain tumour (type 4 cancer). He went into hospital immediately. He got operated on after 1 week's observation. The operation was successful in removing the tumor and he has undergone several weeks of chemo and radiation following that. He is recovering well. Cost to him of all this treatment: zero dollars!

And he's not anyone important...he works as a small-time contractor renovating houses in the greater Toronto area.

But who did the USA propagandists find from Canada to present their case? Shona Holmes!

Well, you can find a few fools in any country who are willing to represent a false viewpoint that doesn't have a leg to stand on...specially if someone puts money in their hand to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 04:35 PM

"There is a hungry tiger in the room, and Rig is complaining about a flea."

                That's it, Don. Deal with a tiger or deal with the plague.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 05:13 PM

Rig, if you don't deal with the tiger right away, you may not have a chance to deal with the plague, which may not even be there in the first place.

Every human being, no matter where they are from, deserves decent health care.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 05:28 PM

""Well, LH, so far it hasn't worked that way in the US, and that's what has people so nervous. In California, for instance, the state provided avenues for illegal aliens to receive public health care and it drove the state into insolvency. Americans are more prone to look at the California experience than the Canadian one.""

And the evidence for that is........?

Or is it another Private Health Insurers' propaganda snowjob, of the kind so many Americans swallow without question?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 05:44 PM

Some people are fixated on illegal immigration, some are fixated on abortion, some are fixated on the "red scare" terms like socialism... it all gets in the way of common sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 06:12 PM

the state provided avenues for illegal aliens to receive public health care and it drove the state into insolvency

No, mismanagement, greed, tax cuts, Reaganomics and NeoCon dogma drove California into insolvency.

They'll never learn about elcting actors to positions of responsibility, it appears.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:13 PM

Surely most people who get elected are actors.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:20 PM

And Tony Blair was one of the best! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:50 PM

Shona Holmes never HAD a life-threatening tumor.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 09:53 PM

My parents, like me, spent half their lives in the US and half in Canada. Now entitled to free care in either place, they choose Canada, even though some of the wait times, including multiple cancers, have made me a little edgy. There's not a big difference to support all of this drama on either side of the equation, and no reason to be calling Americans monkeys or mushrooms.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 10:20 PM

"Rig, if you don't deal with the tiger right away, you may not have a chance to deal with the plague, which may not even be there in the first place."

             You can shoot a tiger with a 375 H&H magnum. It'a a lot harder to hit a flea with a 375 H&H magnum.

             But I think it one stands back and analyzes the entire problem carefully, it's becoming more and more clear that the Obama administration would be having a much easier road on healthcare if they'd done something about immigration first. At least that way, the voters would know who was being covered, and who was not.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 12:39 AM

We know who's not being covered. People with pre-existing conditions, people who can't get insurance through their employer and who can't afford individual insurance, self-employed people who can't afford individual insurance, people whose insurance refuses to pay for needed care. And I am confident that the vast majority of those people, if not all of them, would like to get access to health care right now and deal with illegal immigration later.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: The Barden of England
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:08 AM

Strange - I keep reading Illegal as Ill Eagle, which seems to fit.

John Barden

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:11 AM

JtS was telling me why he thinks doctors in Canada are better than doctors in the US this morning. He said that doctors in the US are incentivized to want patients to keep coming back, so they don't have any real incentive to actually help patients get well.   He said they don't really do anything to help people get well because they get more money if people stay sick or unwell. He said that doctors in Canada work hard to help the patient get better because they want the patient to not keep coming back with the same problem.   This is based on his experiences with doctors in both countries.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 12:01 PM

There's probably something to that. Any profit-based medical service or system is indeed strongly motivated not to cure people of their ills, because it would lose customers if it did! That's why we have so many drugs that don't address the causes of illness...they merely suppress the symptoms. The cause remains, so does the illness, the symptoms return, and the customer keeps buying the drugs. That's a very lucrative setup. Why would a drug company want to tamper with such a cash cow by actually helping to cure the illness?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 12:58 PM

Surely most people who get elected are actors.

Too true, McGrath, but not ordinarily Hollywood types.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Ebbie
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 01:20 PM

I find it difficult, if not downright impossible, to believe that US doctors knowingly keep their patients ill. The main reason, of course, is that most doctors are ethical, caring people who pride themselves on their skills. The second reason is that most doctors are almost overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people who want to see them.

Has anyone here made an appointment recently? If you are in actual misery, they will try to work you in earlier; otherwise, most likely you will wait at least a week and a half. Tell me I'm wrong.

Doctors just recently out of medical school and setting up practice may try to hang on to their ill patients - but I don't think so. Freshly made doctors tend to be idealistic.

Man. The world some of you people live in is not the world I want.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 01:43 PM

I would agree, Ebbie, that most doctors are quite ethical, and that they try to do the best for their patients. I think that the main problem is that the present day health system is geared more to hastily prescribing a variety of drugs which deal with suppressing or ameliorating symptoms than it is to dealing with each individual case in a more creative way...in terms of counseling patients as to how to adjust their lifestyle, their diet, their exercise routines, and a variety of other such factors that are influencing their health.

That is exacerbated by the fact that many patients themselves would rather just get a quick fix...pop a pill in their mouths...than actually address the serious lifestyle problems they have and alter their habitual ways of indulging themselves!

So the public is partly to blame itself for the present situation. I've heard of many doctors who complain that their patients are unwilling to follow all kinds of good advice they give them about diet, exercise, and lifestyle...but the patients just want to be given "something" to make the pain go away without any effort.

So the problem is not just with the doctors.

The doctors, however, are greatly under the influence of the drug companies, and they are sent regular bulletins encouraging them to prescribe the latest expensive drugs. The reason drug companies do that is to make money.

The doctors are in between a profit-driven drug system that has become a bit ridiculous, in my opinion, and an often lazy public with bad lifestyle habits who don't wish to change them, plus they are overloaded in many cases to the point where they don't have enough time to deal with each individual case as thoroughly as would be best. So what are they to do?

It's a multi-faceted problem, in other words.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 01:59 PM

I've had doctors who basically told me that I would have to allow them to perform procedures I didn't want and that were medically optional or they would have a hard time justifying keeping me as a patient (for financial reasons). It's a fact that many doctors are more incentivized by their bottom line than by their patients' real needs. Whether or not the poster a couple of posts above likes living in such a world, it is, nevertheless, a reality for a lot of people whether they like it or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 02:05 PM

I can't recall ever having gone to a doctor who seemed more interested in his/her bottom line than in the care of his patient. I have been put through tests that didn't seem necessary to me, but I came away feeling that the doctor was doing the tests in order to protect himself from liability if some complaint were lodged later.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 02:16 PM

I've had a lot of really crappy doctors in my lifetime, all the way from ones who cared more about their bottom line than their patients to ones who like to molest their female patients (I had two of those). There's good doctors and there's bad doctors.

But our way of delivering health care incentivizes making decisions that are not always in the best interests of patients, which makes it more difficult even for the good doctors to always do what is in their patients' best interests.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 03:54 PM

Your concluding sentence sums up one of my main points, Carol.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:49 PM

""I find it difficult, if not downright impossible, to believe that US doctors knowingly keep their patients ill. The main reason, of course, is that most doctors are ethical, caring people who pride themselves on their skills.""

Thank you, Ebbie, for saving me the trouble.

Doctors are most certainly NOT the problem, in any civilised country.

There are of course the few who batten on the vanity of those who cannot bear to accept the ageing process, but the vast majority want nothing more than to work themselves out of a job, by eradicating disease.

The PROBLEM lies in the activities of those venal, corrupt, men who control the supply and the price of what is needed for doctors to successfully treat and cure their patients.

I refer of course to the drug company executives, and the health insurance moguls.

Private insurers will always bleat about making huge losses, when what they REALLY mean is a small percentage reduction in their obscene profit margins.

We have them in the UK too, and I assure you that 60+ years of national insurance funded, free at the point of use, healthcare, has failed so far to bankrupt even the smallest of them.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 06:24 PM

Michael Jackson's doctor comes to mind.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 06:48 PM

This video was posted earlier, but it's worth posting again. It shows how money and profits effect the decisions of doctors here in this country as well as the insurance providers...

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/watch.html

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 12:43 AM

Great video, Carol. I watched the whole thing.

This is why I go to a Naturopath. And you know what? I have found him to be considerably more efficient, more communicative, more helpful, more knowledgable, and more effective than ANY M.D. I have ever gone to.

I know I'm going to die anyway. In time. When I do, I don't want to die like a helpless guinea pig in a high tech lab somewhere in some hospital after many months of "heroic measures" to keep me miserably alive on machines and drugs. Not if I can possibly help it.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 01:35 AM

McGrath: you write in one of your August 28 posts, the importance of immigrants to the NHS in your country. Are you referring to legal, or illegal immigrants?

I think, Kevin, that you are the most anti-American I have ever encountered. Many, many, posters on this forum are critical of my country, but you, my friend, never seem to find anything positive to say about the United States. You're have a right to your opinion of course,but I wonder, have you ever spent much time in our country?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 09:09 AM

I think, Kevin, that you are the most anti-American I have ever encountered.

Ol'Douggie sure revels in his delusions, doesn't he?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 09:30 AM

So Doug:

You are perhaps the most smug, self-satisfied, misinformed and ignorant person I have ever encountered.

You have a right to your delusions, of course, how much time have you actually spent in Britain? Or, for that matter, any country other than the U.S. of A?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 01:38 PM

On the other hand, Doug, I find most of Kevin McGrath's critical comments about the United States--like them or not--to be spot on. Honest criticism isn't "anti-American." In fact, it can be very helpful, provided one doesn't get one's nose out of joint.

Sometimes the truth hurts. But turning your back on it is not a good route to improving things.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 02:23 PM

Only time I've been to the States I had a great time. A lot of the people I most admire, both in folk music, and outside it are American.

And I would challenge whether I am in any way anti-American. There are lots of things about America I dislike, but I think those are generally the same things that millions of Americans dislike even more.

In particular, in the context of this thread, the failure to provide equal access for all to the kind of excellent health care which is available to those with adquate resources, or adequate insurance with insurance company who don't cheat their customers.

I'd like to see America become what it could be.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 04:03 PM

Me too.

And as far as Canada goes, I'd like to see our present health care benefits extended to cover dental...a major expense for most people. Most places could use some improvements.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 07:43 PM

""I'd like to see our present health care benefits extended to cover dental...a major expense for most people. Most places could use some improvements.""

I'd agree with that, with one change LH.

ALL places could use some improvements.

Having said that, you cannot IMPROVE what you don't actually HAVE.

USA please note. The rest of the civilised world is forty to sixty years ahead of you.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 01:43 AM

Agreed, Don.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 03:48 PM

Earlier in this thread some Canadians spoke glowingly of Tommy
Douglas, the man most responsible for bringing universal healthcare to Canada. Last night Rachel Maddow showed a commercial made by his
grandson(now living in the US) in support of healthcare reform, mentioning his grandfather. That grandson was Kiefer Sutherland.
Rachel also said that Tommy Douglas had been rated in a poll as the most popular Canadian of all time.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 04:19 PM

He was that very rare thing...a true social idealist and a politician who works for the genuine good of the entire public rather than on behalf of some big entrenched financial interests.

Such men are about as rare as hen's teeth in today's political order, but I think Dennis Kucinich is such a man.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 08:16 PM

An article you might like, Neil.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 08:21 PM

"As stated in the Canada Health Act, the federal government is committed to maintaining Canada's world-renowned health insurance system. This system is universally available to permanent residents, comprehensive in the services it covers, accessible without income barriers, portable within the country, and publicly funded."

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Neil D
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 12:12 AM

Thanks for the link Bruce. He sounds like the kind of elected leader that we could use a lot more of. Of course he had to have the support of the people to get these things accomplished. There is something to be said for the theory that we, collectively if not individually, generally get the government we deserve.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: freda underhill
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 05:32 AM

We have a national free health care system in Australia, brought in by a very progressive government in 1975 - and it is GOOD.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 06:30 AM

Glad to hear it, freda!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 12:42 PM

Can any Australians verify whether or not the nutjob Glenn Beck was telling the truth when he said that a prime minister of Australia was forced to come to the US to receive important medical care that he couldn't get in Australia?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 12:46 PM

So called "Christian" Republicans at a town hall - heckle, boo and shout down a disable woman in a wheelchair trying to talk about health care and the disabled.
Wheelchair-Bound woman shouted down

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 03:44 PM

And these people have the vote! How scary is that!??

We are DOOMED!!!

Don Firth

P. S. What was that Thomas Jefferson said about democracy depending on an "informed electorate?"

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 03:52 PM

As demagogues throughout history have found, an informed electorate is the LAST thing you want! It would impede the usual processes of graft and corruption that are the hallmark of what they would term "good" government....ahem...(cough! cough!)

Can a well-orchestrated national mass media confuse, divide, delude, and control enough people to fool the general public into supporting something that's absolutely no good for them?

You bet it can. And it does. Over and over again. To be believed, a lie simply has to be repeated very frequently. It helps if the lie is the deliberate, truly blatant reverse of the actual truth. Bold and sweeping lies are far more easily believed than half-hearted ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 04:13 PM

"And these people have the vote! How scary is that!?? We are DOOMED!!!"

                  Yes, we must devise a way of keeping Christians from voting.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 04:16 PM

"Yes, we must devise a way of keeping Christians from voting."

Shouldn't be too difficult. It seems they've already learned how to stop thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 04:49 PM

Rig, who said these people are all Christians? Or that this has anything to do with religion? That's making one hell of an assumption.

Not unlike assuming that illegal immigration will ipso facto scupper single payer national health care.

Where do you get this stuff?

Don Firth