Things are going from bad to worse. How the richest country in the world can serve its citizens so poorly ought to be a cause for national shame.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080108/heal...rance_mortality

 

LOL, don't troll us canuck!

I've been through the craptastic ohcanadia "system" and the US system is better. Not good, definitely not great, but equivalent and usually better.

 

Consider the source and their agenda.

The Comon Wealth Fund - The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that aims to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.

 

Well, INTJ, I guess that you know better than the organization that did this survey, and have made a closer study of it than the World Health Organization. The World Health Organization ranks the U.S. health care system first in expenditure, but 37th in overall performance and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). The CIA World Factbook ranks the United States 41st in the world for lowest infant mortality rate and 45th for highest total life expectancy. But then, what do the WHO and the CIA know compared to your wisdom on the subject? And perhaps you could tell me on what basis your opinion outweighs that of the Economic Policy Institute, who in a comparative study of the U.S. and Canadian health care system found that the Canadian system has much better health outcomes at half the price of the American system? Here's a link to the study summary -- I look forward to reading your explanation of how they got it wrong. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm?id=2834

Zeiss

 

is the description of the Common Wealth Fund a bad thing?

in the next years suspect we will hear how companies like Medtronic, Anthem BlueCross, Merck, etc are all our friends.


would be good for a US health care system where i could get my broken arm fixed w/o paperwork at lo or no cost.

 

Yep, we're dead last on the socialist agenda and that's just about the way it should be. We don't provide milk and cookies for our citizens either.

You can keep your Canadian misadventuous medical system. And the French? Sh'yea, we really want to be like the French or other Euros (where's my Summer vacation?!). Do we need to make changes here? You bet. We do need to control costs, probably by adding competition into HMO services.

 

I work in the consulting field and deal with insurance, healthcare and doctors all day long. Here is my take on how all of this got out of hand:

In the 80's and early 90's insurance companies were paying for every claim that doctors made. This led to greedy doctors taking advantage of insurance companies.

Since then insurance reimbursement rates have took a serious downfall and to compensate for that, providers have raised rates.

These higher rates have made it nearly impossible for the non-insured to afford any decent care.

Drug, hospital & surgical costs are astronomical and insurance companies have to raise their rates in order to continue making these tremendous payouts.

 

We prefer Big Brother over the Nanny State.

 

That article's premise is that the USA improved the least. One could argue that when you're good, making improvements is more difficult. Just a thought...

Your later comments seem to disagree with that. However, I'd rather be in the USA when I need open heart surgery, a transplant, or to see a specialist. I was born and raised in Canada. They might treat you well once you get in to see the people you need to see but getting in there is a LOT of trouble for seriously ill people.

There's always room for improvement. I'll take the ability to pay and get immediate slightly inferior service over not paying and waiting years (!!) to see a specialist in Canada for the same thing.

I had surgery in June here in the USA. I was examined on a Monday by a GP, sent to a surgeon and examined on Tuesday, and was operated on by the same surgeon on Friday morning. Total time? Four days from initial exam to completed surgery. I couldn't do that in Canada if my life depended on it (literally).

Think about it. You win some and you lose some. I've been in the waiting lines in Canadian hospitals - not fun!

 

http://www.pnhp.org/single_payer_resources...rison_Sheet.pdf sheds further light on the topic of who provides better health care to its citizens.

I don't mean to trample on nationalistic sensibilities, but I would appreciate it if the other side in this debate actually had some information other than anecdotal (I don't like Canadian health care) or ad hominem (ranting about socialism). What system provides the best health care to its citizens, and prove your assertion with actual data. What system has the best health outcomes? If anyone disputes what the study in this link presents (or what the CIA and WHO, etc. say), let them back it up with actual studies and data. Otherwise, I'll have to continue regarding their positions as just a bunch of hot air.

Zeiss