RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events A right to Health Care

for every hack story like that you post there is Canada and lots of other countries where everyone is more than glad for universal coverage. also i'd say this doctor is damned liar...

Other parts of this thread would seem to contradict your assertion:

my parents are friends with a local doctor who only accepts Medicaid/Medicare patients. she has 2 bmw's and a cadillac escalade. she has a huge mansion like home on over 30 acres. she has often said she could make more from insurance companies, but she has more money than she could possibly spend in her lifetime anyways from taking care of these patients. she does this because there are greedy doctors who take insurance only patients. so the doctor in the story can boo hoo about not being filthy rich, but obviouslythe doctor is well off...

as far as you other article, i know people on insurance that cant get bypass, or leukemia treatments because they cant afford the copay, and i know people on medicaid that have no problems getting treatments...

these are actual people not wall street journal one in a million cases...

That's anecdotal evidence. As noted here, "[i]t is objectively demonstrable that anecdotal evidence is very unreliable when compared to controlled studies."

You might argue that the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are also using anecdotal evidence. However, in those articles, the "anecdotal evidence" often appears simply as an illustration of a broader trend or study which is described elsewhere in the article (for example: a study by the Frasier Institute).

If anything, stories you've "heard" of "people" are more likely to be the exception than the accounts in the press, for the reasons noted above.

the wall street journal is a business paper, do you think theyre gunna have stories supporting the common person?


its a fact medicaid will pay for leukemia treatments, it's a fact some people cant afford copay on their insurance and are denied treatment...

At least one of the articles you're attacking is from the New York Times, which is generally recognized as a "liberal" paper.

Either way, however, you're only attacking the source, not disproving my point, to wit, that socialized medicine doesn't work very well.

Speaking of that point, your original argument appeared to be that Canadian health care was better. You later brought forth your anecdotal story about leukemia treatments and co-pays in your state.

However, it appears that, "[i]n Canada, expensive chemotherapies are not commonly covered by the national health plan."

Therefore, even if we accept your premise vis a vis the US and a chemotherapy for leukemia, your apparent solution, embracing the Canadian model, would not solve the problem.

Oh, like you're on any legit ground to complain about that.

From the McCain thread (un-cut and un-edited), in response to my posting something by David Brock about McCain's record.



You never did address what he said, BTW, even when I invited you to show evidence that would prove him wrong. You attacked the source without disproving the source's point.

So don't try to frighten us with your source-erous ways, G-Man.

David 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. Writing in Investor's Business Daily, he reports that the architect of Canada's health care system now says that system "lies in ruins":

• Back in the 1960s, (Claude) 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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?

i would expect an investor magazine to post an anti-universal healthcare article. healthcare companies are an investor's dream...

Suuuuree, BSAMS, the the "investor's paper" fabricated an entire story about the Canadian official claiming the system he created had failed. That's likely...



Again, any time you want to post a credible, non-anecdotal, source to refute anything I've posted here over the past several years, feel free.

to oppose your non credible anecdotal article?

Are you sure you don't want to post an Olbermann video and few "dancing nanners" while you're at it? You're starting to sound a bit like whomod on this topic.

you posted an anecdotal article didnt you? it's okay man, whomod will be back, dont you start wanking and crying on us.....

Actually, in this case, no. We discussed what "anecdotal" meant several months ago.



To date, the best you've come up with to justify government conscription of sixteen percent of our nation's economy is little more than your belief that some doctors you know make a lot of money and some friends of yours can't afford a level of health care that you think is necessary and appropriate.

If that's your basis for the government taking over a business (personal knowledge of successful providers and some people who can't afford the service), then you might as well nationalize every business in the country.

Which is a very whomodian position.

You're right, we shouldn't socialize medicine in the United States. We should just let it be known that we're going to start shooting executives every time an HMO fucks an American citizen.

g-man is wanking and crying over his anecdotal article

Hurt feelings, yet something else HMO's won't cover.

BSAMS couldn't address a single point I made and resorted to an attack that only works on whomod and Halo.

I win.

Sorry, BSAMS, even the greats lose once in a while. Let's chalk it up to you having a bad day.

You've still yet to address the point that HMOs and other health insurance schemes have been prosecuted for defrauding their members when they require actual service.

That's what competitive pricing is for.

Fraud is wrong and should be prosecuted, either civilly or criminally, depending on the nature of the fraud and the law broken.

However, just because certain individuals or companies might break a law it doesn't follow that we should nationalize an industry or take away other peoples' right to practice their trade honestly, their right to go the doctor of their choice or any of the other deterimental results that would naturally flow (and, in the case of Canada often did flow) from socialized medicine.

Indeed, if the realization that certain businesses in an industry break the law were to serve as the basis for conscripting that entire industry, we might as well nationalize every business in the United States.

You are functioning under a misconception. That misconception being that Socialized Medicine means that private health insurance is automaticly defunct, and it isn't.

There's still a viable option for private hospitals and private health coverage. Having national health insurance doesn't preclude these options. What it does do is establish a level of care and service against which to compete.

If a person knew that they may have to wait for an operation under national coverage but are guaranteed to get it and get it "for free," while seeking private care. Then I'm pretty that the odds of that private care actually following through on their obligation increases dramaticly.

They can be as corrupt as they want to be because there's no other place to go ... change that dynamic and watch corruption drop dramaticly.

Competitive pricing for Ammo or Health Care? Because, between you and me, ammo could be a hell of a lot cheaper.

However, in the case of Canada, private health insurance was, in fact, banned until 2005. And, even then, the only reason it became legal was because Canada's high court struck down the law that prohibited private medical insurance.

We were discussing the Canadian model and whether it was a viable option for the U.S. This is another example of what it wasn't and, in my opinion, still isn't.



I would like to see someone provide an example of government involvement in an industry (at least as a provider or subsidizer) that results in helping to foster competition or better service. Typically, the opposite is the case (see, e.g., Federal Express vs the U.S. Postal Service).

Certainly the government has a place reasonably regulating businesses for purposes of safety and public order. And the poor should continue to have a safety net.

However, the Canadian system, and similar socialized systems, go far beyond either of those appropriate goals and, like most other attempts at socialism, are crumbling under the weight of their own bureaucracises, inefficiences and failed business models.

It's one thing to believe the U.S. system can be improved. It's quite another, and dangerous, to automatically assume that the socialized systems would be better.

While stationed overseas, in England via the DOD, I was treated to the NHS. Honestly, I couldn't have gotten that level of service on-base.

I have sampled two forms of socialized health care, the US military and England's NHS. I've found neither to be dangerous or lacking in any reguard, quite the opposite, actually.

How many have you sampled? Where is your proof that it's "dangerous?" If your position is that anything that's mishandled is dangerous, then I have an equally strong case against the private dynamic as you do against the socialized dynamic.

EDIT: If it's currently overturned; ie (canada 2005) you can't toss it up as if it's still some sort of point. Canada at one time completely privatized the health care of the country, but no longer. I said that "Socialism doesn't preclude private health care .."

Your point here is invalid. The fact that Canada changed only serves my position on the matter, instead of weakening it.

Maybe you and I have different standards, but I had to deal with socialist healthcare in France and Japan when I went to the Istres Air Base and Camp Zama. In both instances, the service was sluggish and intolerable. The queues were enormous and I didn't get to pick the specialists I needed or wanted to see. There was a huge wait period just for me to see a doctor who had to confirm my condition so he could allow me to see a specialist (not to mention they forced me to register for a medical card). Even after that, I wasn't even allowed to pick the specialist.

England may be different, but I've heard that their system isn't so dissimilar from France.



I would disagree with the idea the US military's medical policy qualifies as socialist. It seems more analogous to an occupational health-plan.



Honestly, I don't see how it can be reasoned either way. China brought back the execution of newborn baby girls, does that mean we should follow suit just because they feel that's more enlightened?

Pariah turned down more money from his employer, take what he says with a grain of salt.

by this logic i won first, hope you dont get in such a hissy you call in to traffic court monday....

how would you improve it? How would you help people that can't get care get it? How about middle class america that has insurance and yet still has to pay a big chunk of change on top of what is "covered".

You've just described to a "T" the exact same process my mother went through with her HMO when she had a bout of "woman cancer." But you left out the part where the HMO left her holding half the bills during a $150,000 two year treatment cycle and lost her house.

I don't know if you've been in an American hospital lately, but the lines for emergency room visits and urgent care are intolerably long already. Rarely do you get to pick the specialist, or get to see a specialist without first seeing a GP. Doesn't matter if it's socialist or not. Unless you're paying a private doctor, you get who they give you or you wait even longer.

Socialism doesn't create long lines or extended waits. I don't know where this myth came from, but the truth is that hospitals across the entire spectrum of funding schemes face this problem. It's due to population increasing disproportionately to the number of health care professionals and health care institutions.

Been noticing a huge number of "become a nurse" commercials lately? Ever wonder why that is?

Now, waiting for surgery does take longer in Britain, but that's because many doctors there choose not to become specialists or surgeons.

We still lead the world in specialists, of course it's because they make a grossly inflated sum of money over nonspecialists, but what good does it do us when over half the population can't get access to them?



Except for the fact that I've not come across a single other occupational health plan that pays 100% of hospital\dental\psychiatric costs and pharmaceutical expenses, nor I have I come across another one that's funded with tax-payer money. However, I have come across more than one national health plan that sounds exactly like that. If society pitches in and pays for it, by definition it's socialist.



Again, a non point. Let's review;
ME: "Socialized health care does not exclude private care."
Retort: "Well until 2005 in Canada it did."

You can't go cherry picking through history looking for scenarios that you think prove your point while ignoring current facts.

Currently, in Canada ( as well as other countries with socialized medicine ), national health care does not automatically preclude private care. If you have the money, you can get whatever you want. But if you don't, at least you're not completely ruined by a largely inevitable major illness or medical need.

G-man has government insurance, yet he doesnt want others to have it.

Making a new reply
Forum: Politics and Current Events
Thread: Re: Socialized Medicine: Canada System in Ruins

The exchange between Pariah and Westley is a pretty good example of why anecdotal stories are essentially useless in defining an issue.

You have two people in similar circumstances who, despite that fact, had vastly different experiences with the system at hand. From an evidentiary, scientific and/or statistical standpoint that more or less renders their experiences meaningless in this debate.

In terms of my own experiences, they aren't any more dispositive than anyone else's anecdotal stories. However, to the extent that one might wonder about my own experiences with government-run health care, I would offer the following.

First off, it should be noted that I don't currently have government insurance. I'm retired from the government and, further, have always been covered by private insurance from my wife's employer.

However, even if I did have "government" insurance, such insurance (at least where I worked) was not-and never was-part of a government run program. It was simply a benefit of employment, like any other employer might offer...and offered through Blue Cross and Blue Shield and/or other private insurance programs. So, basically, that put me in the same boat as any private industry employee whose employer offered the program.

Conversely, at one point in my job with the government, I did work in an agency that investigated and prosecuted welfare fraud, including fraud in medicare, medicaid and other government-run healthcare programs. In that position I was able to observe how, at least based on what I saw, poorly run and mismanaged most government-run healthcare is. While such healthcare is necessary to provide a "safety net" I wouldn't want to see the rest of us have to submit to it, any more than I'd want the rest of us to have to buy groceries through "food stamps."

Again, that's simply my own personal experience, and no more valid than Pariah's, Westley's and/or BSAMS'. However, it does tend to confirm what I've read about government programs in general, cited at several points in the thread.

This issue isn't purely about statistical or empirical data. In fact, social issues can rarely be broken down in such a way. If they could, there would be no ground for Christian activist to stand on when trying to inject Christian morality into American politics.

However, taking personal stories and putting them aside, we're still left with the currently accepted statistical fact that 1/5th of legal American citizens are completely without health coverage of any kind. Many more are estimated to have insufficient coverage for anything more than a minor injury or illness.

These aren't the poor and jobless, ironically, they can be covered under a number of charities and schemes. No, these are hard working middle class and lower-middle class citizens either not getting insurance through their job or receiving insufficient benefits.


I know you choose to look at military health care as a perk of the job, but it's level of coverage outstrips any other job related health perk ... and it's paid for with American tax dollars. Given that the United States military is the #1 socialized expense in this country, and was responsible for income tax in the first place, one can reasonably label any benefit derived from participation as a socialized expense.

If you want to look at it as no more than a perk of the job, fine. I'll choose to look at national health care as no more than a perk of citizenship.