More on healthcare

[velvetpage]

http://www.pogge.ca/archives/001279.shtml
Canadians - we're being lied to, in the name of dismantling a system we overwhelmingly support. Time to email a few MPs, I think.

Comments

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

Great. The bastards are on the march again. *wanders off grumbling under his breath*

L o L,
public healthcare advocate

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Before you canucks get rid of you what you call, you should call your long lost US boyfriends and see how things work down this side of the border. Since every tweenaged geeky American male had a Canadian girlfriend when anyone asked in 1970s and 1980s, every Canadian woman between the ages of 25 and 40 should have several nearly middle aged US men to ask healthcare questions of. Unless we're Republican, Rapture waiting nutcases, we'll tell you the alternative to state supported medicine stinks, even we're too stupid to realize it. Ask what kind of premiums we pay for our families. Ask what chunk of urban budgets are eaten up with charity cases in the ER. Ask how much of %*$&ing pain it is to file a claim and to keep refiling it and refiling it until you or the insurance company buckles.

Even if the budget figures mentioned are accurate, at least you pay it in one lump sum and you don't waste your life trying to get some crooked insurance company to fulfill their contractual duties.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I posted it precisely because I don't want to lose it.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Just helping to bolster the arguement for keeping and improving what you have. Just want to point out that the oft lamented wait for the doctor is universal here as well. We just pay way more than Canadians do for the wait. Single payer healthcare keeps getting defeated in the US by a strange mix of John Birch anti-communism, religous nuttery, and a pervasive myth that the British and Canadian healthcare systems are falling apart at the seams.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Man, the health care system is the third greatest thing about Canada! Hard to believe any Canucks would be so utterly shortsighted as to push for privatized health care, especially when they have us Americans just across the border as such a stellar example. Guess rightwingers are the same shortsighted and destructive everywhere, really.

Hmmm

[neosis.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, there's some factors in there that need to be addressed.

1) Short-term (20-30) years, healthcare costs are definitely going to continnue rising faster than GDP. The Baby Boomers are getting old, and old people require more health care and attention than young people.

2) The BC government has overstated the problem, by stating healthcare as a percentage of provincial revenue. It appears they have failed to account for the variability within the revenue stream.

3) As I understand it, Canada is actually one of a few countries that has a purely private health care system.

Personally, I would like to learn a lot more about the health care systems of Japan, France, and Norway. Japan's seems to be the most effective, France seems to be the best value, and Norway is a kind of middle of the road for developed nations.

Actually, that's not quite true, I'd like the people who are interested in health care to spend a lot more time studying the health care systems of every industrialized nation and comparing and contrasting how they work, so I don't have to. I want them to summarize the systems for me, and show how those countries with dual private/public systems have faired in comparison to the U.S. (the only "pure" private system) and Canada (and other "pure" public systems).

I want to know what challenges they've had to face, what problems they have right now, and what problems they predict for the future. I want to know what they've found that works and what doesn't work.

And I want it summarized in plain english with appendices that explain the nitty-gritty details on each.

Re: Hmmm

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, time to email some MPs, because that's exactly what I'd like too. The Romonov report did a good job at telling Canadians what we're doing well and what it is we actually want. Now we need to figure out the best way to do it, without giving in to propaganda or American big business interested in a share of our pie.