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

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.