If state-run health care has more benefits than drawbacks, then why are countries with socialized medicine reforming with more privatization? European countries are starting to move away from socialized medicine as larger percentages of the population are losing faith in their government-run systems. The dissatisfaction is not only over longer waiting periods for elective procedures, but even for medically necessary surgeries - some life threatening.
In order to curtail the long waits for health care, many people are actively traveling to other countries for treatment. “Health tourism” is quickly becoming a popular alternative to socialized medicine. With competition from neighboring countries causing budgetary problems for European bureaucrats, more market-based solutions are being pursued.
Sweden and the Netherlands were the first two countries to recruit more private investment in health care. France and Italy are seeking ways to transfer some public health care to the private sector. Regions of Germany and Spain have already sold state-owned hospitals to for-profit companies to raise money and increase efficiency.
But for some strange reason the Democrats in this country are pushing America toward more government control over our health care system. They may not call it socialized medicine, but it is moving in that direction.
Even Canada is headed toward a market revolution as people become fed-up with bloated, inefficient government:
Single-payer systems-confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists and substandard treatment-are starting to crack, however. Canadian newspapers are filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care. Many Canadians, determined to get the care they need, have begun looking not to lotteries-but to markets.
Dr. Jacques Chaoulli is at the center of this changing health care scene. In the 1990s, he organized a private Quebec practice-patients called him, he made house calls and then he directly billed his patients. The local health board cried foul and began fining him. The legal status of private practice in Canada remained murky, but billing patients, rather than the government, was certainly illegal, and so was private insurance.
Eventually, Chaoulli took on the government in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Representing an elderly Montrealer who had waited almost a year for a hip replacement, Chaoulli maintained that the patient should have the right to pay for private health insurance and get treatment sooner. A majority of the court agreed that Quebec’s charter did implicitly recognize such a right.
The monumental ruling, which shocked the government, opened the way to more private medicine in Quebec. Though the prohibition against private insurance holds in the rest of Canada for now, at least two people outside Quebec, armed with Chaoulli’s case as precedent, are taking their demand for private insurance to court.
Other private-sector health options are blossoming across Canada, and the government is increasingly turning a blind eye to them, too, despite their often uncertain legal status. Private clinics are opening at a rate of about one a week.
Canadian doctors, long silent on the health care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. Day has become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center and challenging the government to shut him down.
It is often repeated by Obama and the quasi-state-run media that America has 46 million uninsured. However, that number is incorrect as CNSNews points out: “The claim made by the White House this month that 46 million “Americans” lack health insurance is false because that number includes almost 10 million people who are not “Americans” but in fact citizens of foreign countries who happen to be present in the United States, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.” Although the president, deceptive and sly as ever, is careful not to refer to the 46 million as “Americans”, but many media outlets are reporting it that way. ABC will be awarding an hour of primetime next Wednesday, June 24, to Obama as part of the White House’s push on health care. Among the participants: the network’s medical editor, Dr. Timothy Johnson, a big fan of universal health care.
Reforming health care should be done, but not by heading toward nationalization, where Obama and the Democrats want to take us. We should be reducing government intervention, promoting competition, allow consumers to purchase health insurance across state lines, tort reform (good luck, trial lawyers are BIG supporters of the Democrats), and reducing the high number of unnecessary tests and procedures that are routinely done by health care providers for the sole purposes of protecting themselves from lawsuits.
The mortgage giants Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were both government sponsored entities, and they crashed to the ground. The government has been running Social Security and Medicare, both of which are about to run out of money in the near future. Why should Americans trust the government to run our health care system?
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Your cynicism is evident the “facts” here are made up and the way you dismiss 35 million people shows the absolute pagan nature of your ideology.
Explain what ‘facts’ need to be corrected, and I’ll gladly do so.
35 million uninsured is not the same as 35 million not getting medical care. Those people without insurance are a mixture of unemployed who currently cannot afford it, and people who can afford it but choose not to have it. Poor people automatically qualify for Medicaid. And the reforms I mentioned would make insurance more affordable for all, so those 35 million are not being ‘dismissed’. If someone needs medical attention, they cannot be turned away for not being insured at any hospital, including non-citizens. Medical care is available to everyone, and America still has the best medical care in the world.
Please explain how advocating market-based reforms over government incompetence is somehow “pagen” ideology. If I appear cynical about government performing functions that the private sector ordinarily performs, it’s only because of the poor track record of government intervention. That type of cynicism is wholly justified.
SteveK,
I am guessing that what you portray as “fact” in your posting is the same heap of lies being told to the American people by erroneously and irresponsibly throwing the word “socialism” and “government control.” Neither claim could be further from the truth.
More importantly, Canadians have not, “become fed-up with bloated, inefficient government.” Should you wish to hear that from the mouths of Canadians, I have attached a link for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diegd-6ilj0
The facts I present are freely available for everyone to look up, and I included six links in that one post alone. No, it is not true socialized medicine, like I said, but is headed that way and has many of the same problems that are seen in countries with socialized medicine. Single-payer is government control, or are you suggesting that the Canadian government has no control over its medical system?
I watched your link with the video. So your ‘evidence’ for the superior medical care of Canada consists is one disgruntled man complaining about his experience at an American hospital? And over what – a simple cut finger.
He also complains about the cost, which I admit is high, but can be negotiated down, and I already addressed what can be done to reduce medical costs. His most ridiculous complaint is about the waiting time in an American emergency room. Of course he should have to wait, there isn’t anything life-threatening about a little cut on the finger requiring one stitch! Compare that to Canadians who have to wait for serious, sometimes life-threatening, conditions. I also have found videos with many people and doctors explaining serious conditions that don’t get proper and timely treatment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4u5×9XAsAs&feature=player_embedded
http://www.kewego.com/video/iLyROoafM9O7.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMooY7C02zw&feature=player_embedded
I have no doubt that there are some who are pleased with the Canadian heath care system, like those people who are relatively healthy, or only cut their finger. But where is the evidence that nationalized or single-payer medical care is superior to (partial) free market medical care? You offer no rational counter argument, just personal attacks, and a video of one disgruntled man.
As for your personal attacks… Please, don’t send childish emails accusing me of being a “hate monger” and then not offer a single example. Those on the political left “erroneously and irresponsibly” throw around the words “hate monger” at anyone who dares oppose their positions or policies. How ironic that you claim I am a danger to “not only our country but also the rest of the free world.” Historically, in the last century alone, it is precisely statists like you who caused the greatest amounts of suffering in the world, including the destruction of not just liberty, but lives. If you took the time to examine it, the rest of the so-called “free” world isn’t very free, because of people like you, not me. The next time you feel the urge to label someone a “hate monger”, perhaps you should first look in the mirror.
Seems like the author has been listening to Rush rather than reading what people in Canada actually think of their heathcare system
Here’s a Harris poll (unless you think Harris is a socialist. If so Google “Pew heath care poll” or “Gallup health care poll” and see if they don’t agree
It asks people in different countries if they liked their healthcare system.
Not surprisingly the US heathcare system came out dead last in a poll of American people
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fharrisinteractive.com%2Fnews%2Fnewsletters%2Fhealthnews%2FHI_HealthCareNews2008Vol8_Iss6.pdf&ei=B45MSqa7LIyysgP6vsHpBQ&usg=AFQjCNGM1zYK2DPagCQo8YL3pcxQ1BqVxA&sig2=LI7fTuwMzp51R-jbby39SQ
The problem with the Harris survey and others is that they survey mostly healthy adults. How can you draw any kind of meaningful conclusion about their medical care from people who receive little, if any, of the government-run medicine? Aside from minor ailments and the seasonal flu, I doubt many of the respondents needed a triple bypass or cancer surgery and treatment.
In the case of minor conditions, sure, government-run medicine can seem satisfactory or even good. But why is it those who need an MRI, surgery, and chemotherapy generally have bad things to say about those government-run systems?
The Harris poll respondents are those who agreed to participate in an online survey. I know many of the elderly are not good with computers, and the sample stops at age 64 only. Those over 60 are also more likely to have serious medical conditions, and so they would not be sampled enough compared to the younger age groups.
Bottom line is there are countless stories of people who were diagnosed with a serious condition, and the Canadian system called the required treatment “elective.” How do you explain Canada’s own Supreme Court saying that people are dying because of wait times? “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”
How do you explain the lower cancer survival rates in Canada and other countries with government-run systems? If state-run systems are superior, how do you explain longer wait times for serious conditions? How do you explain Canadians who cross the border into America for treatment, but not the other way around? Also, you and none of the other supporters of state-run medicine answer the other questions, such as why are countries with socialized medicine reforming with more privatization, etc?
And for the record, I have never heard even 5 minutes of Rush’s show.