I have the...unfortunate luck to be friends with a pair of hard core right wingers from the States and they have the notion that our system is socialist and thus, evil. Their views have been irritating me as of late and one friend starting saying we have "death panels" up here. Don't ask me where she got that idea from because I have no clue.
So I gotta ask this: What are some truly negative aspects about our system? And would rather have ours or the American system?
The canadian system has its flaws there is no question about that the biggest is wait time which can be weeks in some cases.As with the american system no its not better the sad thing with it is if you don't have money you don't get care which in some cases that can be just a check up or getting surgery.No we don't have death panels this is just a myth that some americans have for what every reason it has no truth to it.
One of the staples of a free world, and leading nation in the era we live in, is entitlement to life and liberty.
Everyone is to be guaranteed essentials, (food, water etc.) at least, and health care is one of those things a first world nation should guarantee its people. Canada does...not without some kinks, but we do. The U.S. does not. If you don't have their cash, you don't have your entitlement to life.
The real reason for the failing healthcare system in Canada is a fundamental lack of education.
It's a cycle that's been perpetuating itself for decades now.
Patient visits doctor. Doctor has tendency to prescribe medicine for every scenario. Patient gets better (almost exclusively despite medicine). Every time patient gets a cough or has to blow their nose, they clog family practices and emergency rooms with a case of a 24-hour head cold because they know the doctor will prescribe them some kind of medicine.
It's literally astounding how easy it is to be a family doctor because of how little education most have on prevention of sickness, rather than their standard pitch meetings with pharma reps where they sell reactionary measures.
And don't even get me started on the, frankly, gargantuan number of senior citizens who claim a huge percentage of hospital beds.
The system is being bogged down by the "turn no one away" approach that doesn't seem to have an ounce of common sense to it. There's a premium on doing right rather than doing it right.
There is more money in the treatment than there is in a cure. Take Polio or small pocks for example, now that it has been irradicated from NA there is no more money to be made here. If they keep prescribing medicine then the doctor keeps billing for visits, the pharmacy keeps making money from selling prescriptions & the pharmaceutical companies are laughing all the way to the bank. I may have become synical with the whole process.
There is more money in the treatment than there is in a cure. Take Polio or small pocks for example, now that it has been irradicated from NA there is no more money to be made here. If they keep prescribing medicine then the doctor keeps billing for visits, the pharmacy keeps making money from selling prescriptions & the pharmaceutical companies are laughing all the way to the bank. I may have become synical with the whole process.
There's plenty to be cynical about but somehow I don't think we're at a point where national health care policy is governed by bayer and pfiser. Where's a good tin foil hat smilie when you need one?
We live in a capitalist society, where people are raised with the ideals that the only path to success, or mark of success rather, is money. More money is better. More money is happy. Work for your raises, not for your status promotions. The system is designed like this on purpose where we are inundated with information on how to get better paying work, or easy paying work. That's how a capitalist society runs.
THAT SAID: for this particular scenario, people may be a bit too cynical. It's a very small percentage of people in say, the drug and pharmaceutical community that would be pushing for ways of making money.
For example, I believe the number of pharmacists prescribing drugs not unlike Oxycontin to people in VAST amounts, to make money off the black market is something like 1%,
So I wouldn't bring out the "not-eliminating-illnesses-so-we-can-make-money" argument just yet
We live in a capitalist society, where people are raised with the ideals that the only path to success, or mark of success rather, is money. More money is better. More money is happy. Work for your raises, not for your status promotions. The system is designed like this on purpose where we are inundated with information on how to get better paying work, or easy paying work. That's how a capitalist society runs.
THAT SAID: for this particular scenario, people may be a bit too cynical. It's a very small percentage of people in say, the drug and pharmaceutical community that would be pushing for ways of making money.
For example, I believe the number of pharmacists prescribing drugs not unlike Oxycontin to people in VAST amounts, to make money off the black market is something like 1%,
So I wouldn't bring out the "not-eliminating-illnesses-so-we-can-make-money" argument just yet
I'm not so sure about that.
Name a drug (other than an antibiotic) that cures something. There is a difference between curing something and supressing the symptoms of a condition.
When the pharmaceutical industry makes a billion dollars a year in profits on a drug that supresses the symptoms of a disease - I believe they will do everything they can to ensure a real cure is supressed from public knowledge.
I recently read an article about the shoratge of the drugs necessary for capital punishment in the states. It described delays in the executions due to the fact that hospitals get priority. The reason for the shortages ... the patent on the drug has exopired and the pharmaceutical company no longer makes as much of it becasue it no longer has the same profit margin. There's corruption for you.
Let me put it this way, I just had a freak accident related to poor ice clearing near where I go to school. The accident required surgery that would have cost upwards of $60,000USD. It was done for free, and done well in Canada.
The US system is truly terrible, but Canadian health care is underfunded. The US spends ~16% of their GDP on health care and gets a ****** product for it. Canada pinches pennies with ~10% of their GDP and get a better, but flawed, product. In some ways (e.g. waiting times) the Americans have a point that Canada's system is flawed, but it is only because Canada has denied its system the necessary funding.
Yet we have a higher life expectancy and a lower infant mortality rate than the US.
That's like bragging that you're smarter than the special ed student.
Canada's system could be much better, but too many Canadians prefer to pat themselves on the back as superior to the US instead of realizing that in the international scheme of things Canada's performance on a number of metrics is far from stellar.
You mention infant mortality... Canada is 36th in the world, nearly twice as high as Sweden and Japan... far from bragging rights.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrEasy
I don't know all the intricacies, but don't drugs also cost less in Canada because we have a single buyer who can get things in bulk?
The US also has large buyers (e.g. Medicare), but the problem is that they refuse to negotiate lower prices. The reason for this is a combination of ideology (free markets vs. collective bargaining) and the fact that the US government is bought and paid for by corporate interests.
Ask them what they call a 1 trillion dollar Government bail out?? If that is not socialism - government sponsoring private business - then they can go get their guns and shoot me dead...
The US also has large buyers (e.g. Medicare), but the problem is that they refuse to negotiate lower prices. The reason for this is a combination of ideology (free markets vs. collective bargaining) and the fact that the US government is bought and paid for by corporate interests.
The Medicare Reform Act of 2004 prohibits them from negotiating as a single entity for pharmaceuticals, unlike virtually every other Western industrialized nation.
I'm assuming passed because the US government is bought and paid for by corporate interests.
I still think that we spend too much time comparing ourselves with the US, when there are other mixed systems out there with great health outcomes and cheaper health care costs than Canada.
Hell, even Sweden, socialist paradise that it is, charges user fees.
Interestingly, the Munk debates had one on the two health care systems, with one American and one Canadian on both sides. It's a good read if you're interested. I bought the book but there's also a website.
I have the...unfortunate luck to be friends with a pair of hard core right wingers from the States and they have the notion that our system is socialist and thus, evil. Their views have been irritating me as of late and one friend starting saying we have "death panels" up here. Don't ask me where she got that idea from because I have no clue.
So I gotta ask this: What are some truly negative aspects about our system? And would rather have ours or the American system?
You know. There are many countries around the world who have a combination of both.
It's absurd that the US is so opposed to publicly provided health care, and it's equally absurd that politicians can't even discuss the notion of providing a private option to Canadians.
A death panel is a system that dictates that people die because they don't have enough money to pay for their medication or medical treatment. There's only one 1st world country that uses that system, and it sure as hell isn't Canada.
wrote a paper on this in public policy class last year. my thesis was this:
61%^ of the people who seek medical treatment in this province are (1) aged persons [beyond age 64], (2) persons who have lifestyle disease, and (3) persons with injuries resulting from negligence. To reduce the burden on Ontarian therapeutic institutions, each must be reasonably addressed with a legislated policy,
(i) If you are over 65 you shouldn't receive medical treatment unless it can be found that you will likely live at least 3 more years (plus 18 months if female),
(ii) Lifestyle disease sufferers should have to pay out of pocket for treatment,
(iii) negligence resulting in medical necessity should be paid out of pocket by the persons liable.
wrote a paper on this in public policy class last year. my thesis was this:
61%^ of the people who seek medical treatment in this province are (1) aged persons [beyond age 64], (2) persons who have lifestyle disease, and (3) persons with injuries resulting from negligence. To reduce the burden on Ontarian therapeutic institutions, each must be reasonably addressed with a legislated policy,
(i) If you are over 65 you shouldn't receive medical treatment unless it can be found that you will likely live at least 3 more years (plus 18 months if female),
(ii) Lifestyle disease sufferers should have to pay out of pocket for treatment,
(iii) negligence resulting in medical necessity should be paid out of pocket by the persons liable.
^CMAJ September, 2002
Yikes. That must have been an impossible thesis to defend. Holes so big you could drive a truck through them.
No medical treatment if over 65? So people pay their entire lives into the health care system, rarely making use of it, then when they get old and need it, we cut them off...all with no real legal alternative? That makes sense.
I would take your guys healthcare over ours in a heartbeat, Im not an overly political person, but healthcare actually gets me fired up in this country, its a joke pretty much. It hits close to home I suppose since when I was younger our family lost pretty much everything, home, etc and declared bankruptcy due to health care issues and "pre-existing" conditions and such. Ill save the sob story though and just say that ours is the worst out of any advanced country in the world.
