Agree, and let me add....

If our corrupt government actually gave a crap about you and your health, they would tell you the truth about drugs, medical institutions and stop the push for vaccines (which have been proven to not work and are harmful)

Vitamin C and keep your Vitamin D levels at 50-70 ng/ml and you don't need to worry about most diseases and cancers.

Big pharma disagrees, but hey, they don't make money off you being sick do they!! Oh, wait a second.....

Patrick, just wondering, have you gotten Small Pox, how about Polio? What actual SCIENTIFIC studies can you quote that show that vaccines and medicine don't work? Same for the cancer and diseases being prevented by Vitamin C and D?

Jack and Patrick, I was wondering the same thing. I guess I am a fool for surviving prostate cancer because I used medicine that didn't work???

Well, I am glad you survived your cancer. I don't think he is going to refute because there is no evidence supporting his side, yet there is much to support the medicine that helped you.

I have been in the medical business for over 18 years and have dealt with Canadian distributors for the past 9. I can tell you that there are provinces trying to start private insurance companies because there is a market for people who do not want to wait eons for diagnostic and surgical services. In addition, one of my close friends was a top head and neck cancer surgeon and once he performed a 16 hour surgery to try and give a father of two young children an extra year of life without the patient looking like a monster. He was paid $400 which he had to split with a Neurosurgeon who assisted in the case. After that he enrolled in a Plastic Surgery program and is now one of the top Plastic surgeons in Canada, if not the world. The point is that the brightest and most talented surgeons are not going to settle for being an employee of the state. Smart people know they are smart and expect to be paid well and enjoy a higher standard of living. Canadian HC is OK if you have a common cold but if you have a real problem many affluent Canadians fly south to the US to get their care.

Have you ever spent any time in Canada and participated in their health care system?

When I got sent up there in 2002 for work I discovered two things, at least at that time:

1) Canada has protectionism and infrastructure against outsourcing Canadian jobs to US companies but the US did not have any for Canada.

You aught to see the grief they gave us!

2) On every block in the strip malls in Ottawa, at night you could see scores of people sitting in chairs through glass windows as you drove by. No curtains or privacy. The places were mobbed! After about four nights of this I asked "What is it? Some sort of town meeting or waiting area for restaurants? They look kind of dismal and bland. What are they? Why are they on every corner?"

I got laughed at by the folks from the Canadian Company we had a contract and was working with:

Answer: They were Health Care Clinics. Some government run, others independent taking advantage of the government healthcare money.

True stories, experienced by myself.

They did not compare the United States because there is no comparable source of data. Since the country has no unified records system, all data about the U.S. is only estimates except for vital statistics (births & deaths.) And were there a unified reporting system of some sort, it would be dragged down by the estimated 40% of Americans who are uninsured or underinsured. That's why we place waaaaaaay behind these countries in health care.

And for @Glen --- Canada and Mexico are both signers of NAFTA. "protectionism and infrastructure against outsourcing" are prohibited and all three countries essentially play by the same rules. Canadian companies tend to be much more nationalistic than American companies, so they just don't sell out their country as quickly. That Canada has quietly become the leading supplier of oil to the U.S. and supplier of diamonds to the world has helped their economy a great deal and the loonie is near par with the dollar. Their national health care has actually made their companies much more competitive with American companies and has helped keep outsourcing down.

And as for the drop-in health care clinics --- Ontario has been experimenting with 24-hour-walk-in clinics (it started in Ottawa) as a way of "deloading" unnecessary emergency room visits by working people. The independent for-profit ones will probably be absorbed because they are around 15% more expensive to the government. What you don't see is the thousands of health clinics that have been opened in rural areas. This was what forced Canada to adopt nationalized health care --- all the medical care was centralized in a few cities and the death rates in rural areas were going through the roof.

I buy about 1/3 of my prescriptions from Canada --- all brand name drugs --- because even with shipping, the same prescription costs less in Canada than the co-pay alone costs me here. (I also do the $4 thing at Walmart and tell them that I don't have insurance and still buy a few prescriptions from the local drug store.)

If you want to read some about it, here is a good starting place:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_%28Canada%29

If I ever became seriously ill, I would consider legal residency in Canada as a viable health care option. The premiums would be far cheaper than Medicare here (only about $300USD a year for medical+dental+vision+drugs.) And the quality of care is much, much better.

The polling numbers show that Canadians like their Medicare (Assurance Maladie) to the tune of over 80% favorable nationwide. In rural areas, it usually is over 90%.

So that was nationalistic fervor I experienced working in Canada?

Good to know. We need some of that nationalistic ferver here in the US, that's for sure!

I agree with you entirely on the stats that people throw around here in the US. I have found any of them touted by either the GOP or the DEMS in favor or against tort reform or nationalistic healthcare or taxes to be totally biased and not anything close to the truth.

Here's a stat that we can all relate to: The government never tells you the real unemployment numbers, and says it cannot (or will not??) after someone stops collecting, but yet the IRS requires quarterly (that's four times a year folks) filings from any business and person on a W2 or 1099.

If you buy a house, the lender needs to supply your bank statements to the government for the patriots act, and they want to see where every buck came from on those papers. So they know everything about you.

So neither the unemployment office nor white house ever thought of calling the IRS for an up to the minute report on the filings?

Yes, I believe that! But it's still amazing!

Also

Chris-74939...

Those are nice numbers you have given for the Canadian Healthcare. If they are that good then we surely we must take a serious look at it and how they managed to get the base cost down. What I want to know is do they need malpractice liability insurance and can you sue the government healthcare system like you can private medical professionals here in the US?

My business is international. I travel a lot. One partner is in Holland. His salary is appx $100K . He pays 50% in taxes - a fixed rate for him. Most tax money goes to health costs. My partner is joining with many to pay for health services (in addition to his taxes) from private doctors and hospitals so that they can get care when they walk in with an emergency.

I did not see this quoted during the Health Care debate.

According to their OWN studies, big pharma admits that only 1 in 100 benefit from the flu vaccine. Google it, I won't do your work for you.

I won't even go into what's in the vaccines (hint: Mercury for one) and how Bill Gates told people that if they do vaccines correctly, they can reduce the world population. We can discuss this another time....

As for Vitamin C and D, again, there is plenty of independent studies out there to back up my claims. But, as always, you can just believe the big pharma backed studies that say both of these Vitamins are dangerous and don't need to be taken.

Did it even dawn on some of you that big pharma makes money off YOU being sick? Taking advice from them is like asking a known pedophile who the best babysitters are for your kids.

Ignorance is bliss, keep listening to the #1 killer of people per year, the medical community. More people die each year from drug complications, medical mistakes and poor medical advice than all the other diseases and cancers combined. However, 2 people get sick from a supplement from Japan and the FDA is all over it. Funny.....

you can find a study to support any side of any issue. A "good" scientist is one who can "extrapolate" data into whatever conclusion the study sponsor wants and thats how the get the next grant. That's what makes them "good."

I am in favor of the Canadian way of healthcare. Want to know why? They pay the same, or lower taxes than we do. No one has to go with out healthcare too. Keep in mind, I am neither democrat or republican. And Navy vet, thanks for your service, I too am Navy.

Navyvet - You may do well to look up naysayer in the dictionary. Its essential meaning is someone who's gonna say no about an idea regardless whether they have any basis for the position.

About Canadians "abandoning" ... You didn't say what they're abandoning but I'm guessing you were referring to the worn out saw that Canadians come to the USA for med treatment whenever they can. That just ain't so.

It is not rare for Canadians with the financial ability to come the the US for some kinds of med treatment but that's got nada to do with how good the treatment is - it's because in a single-payer system like Canada has, there is almost always a triage system at work that provides care that is needed the most first.

Most of the ones who come to the US for med care just didn't want to wait their turn and could afford to pop for it themselves - pretty much the same as happens right here in the US, those who can afford it tend to get faster and, unfortunately but too often true, better treatment.

You ask why didn't they compare US standards. Probably because you're reading a newspaper article, not a medical journal, and the article was about a medical study by Brits comparing the countries which they chose to look at. I'm sure they didn't intend to affront you by not considering your preferences. But, and I hope you don't come unglued at this, if they had tried to compare the US, they couldn't have - they would of necessity contrasted them because the US system if so much worse - worse in death rates, worse in cost, worse in availability.

And, while we're at it, didn't you notice that Australia was found to be at the high end of their conclusions? Australia which shares, along with Canada and the UK and most other modern nations except the US, the notion that health care is a basic right, as basic as police protection, and has public policies in place to assure that everyone gets it.

Australia's health system is, to be sure, different than either the UK or Canada has because they have chosen to fund it differently but it is still a guaranteed universally available health care system. And the percentage of the national economy that is consumed by health care is far higher in the US than anywhere else in the world.

America has the most inefficient health care system of any industrial nation because we have burdened it with so many layers of profit taking.

But universal health care isn't a political issue and it is shameful that so many politicians will prostitute themselves by using it as a political tool.

Don't you know that every Republican president since Hoover has publicly acknowledged that they wanted it? The reason they couldn't get it was only because too many members of Congress, mostly of their own party, preferred to make political hay by stirring up their constituents with misinformation about how such a thing would bring financial ruin to America. And ignoring that most nations that have it manage to provide better general health care at lower national expense than we can.

And I'm like Jack-2681120 - I'm not really of either major party. And I too am a veteran - four years Air Force, one of them under frequent fire. Never hit but always scared.

Curious, when you were in the Air Force, were the Doctors, Dentists, and Medical personal required to have the same malpractice liability insurance that the private healthcare system does in the US, or have they immunity from liability? Don't think you can sue a government employee.

I'd just like to know this for contrast, since my bigger question is related to what the insurance and tort liability burden is in the countries that they compare and do these studies like this article in, and how it effects the cost and quality of coverage.

I don't want to hear an ignorant quote like "The Congressional Budget Board has said" or "The Federal Committee on XXX has determined" because these are the same guys that got us in this mess. I want some real numbers backed by real logic.

Glen

Law suits are a lawyer's ticket to get on the gravy train. Over 95% of Congress and the Senate are Lawyers. Tort reform? Just what ARE you on?

Canada is not "abandoning" their Medicare (Assurance Maladie), they are continuing to expand it (and expect to continue to expand it for at least another 40 years) especially in rural and predominantly Inuit areas.

In Canada, is is a felony for a physician to charge a patient for preferential treatment of for a treatment that is covered by Medicare. This has caused a number of physicians to move to areas not covered by Medicare, such as cosmetic plastic surgery. The "insurance companies" that people keep trying (unsuccessfully) to form in Canada are for cosmetic or non-covered medical treatment (such as holistic medicine.) unfortunately there are not enough patients interested in these areas to want insurance coverage. In general, Canadian physicians net more money than their American counterparts.

ALL national health systems introduce a system of "rationing" which they usually refer to as "triage." In ANY medical system there is finite money available to treat illnesses. In this country we "ration" it to the wealthy. Where this is not an option and healthcare must be divided among everyone, the most urgent cases are treated first. So, in Canada, to get bypass surgery, the wait is considerably less than in the U.S., but to get a knee replacement, the wait is about the same (the majority of knee replacement patients wait until they are on Medicare to get it.) To get hammer toes (which comes from ill-fitting shoes) corrected, the wait in Canada may be as long as three years.

Drugs are much cheaper in Canada and medical premiums are low ($300USD to $900 annually for those making over $20,000.) This really helps businesses. Small businesses don't lose the best and brightest to large corporations because they can't afford health care benefits and large corporations don't have that expense coming out of their bottom line.

Because their healthcare system became so whocky-jawed with most physicians and hospitals in a few large cities and nothing in rural areas, it will take another 40 years to get it where they want it. But Canadians like their system, would never go back to the American way, do not come to this country for medical care (except for scam services and cosmetic surgery and other non-covered treatments.) The Canadian government strongly advises any Canadian traveling to the U.S. to get travel insurance to cover the possibility of huge medical bills in case of an accident or illness. An American traveling in Canada gets treated automatically since he is legally there and the Canadian governments tries to recover what it can.

The whole concept of triage is so unfamiliar to Americans (except for the military) but is considered sane and sensible to Europeans. Medical care goes to those who can benefit from it the most. A good example is Aricept, a drug for Alzheimers'. In this country, "good" medical insurance and Medicare cover the drug. It is very expensive. In Europe, it is not covered. Aricept delays the progress of Alzheimer's for about 6 months. But when it quits working, there is a sudden progression of the disease and it advances much more quickly for the next year for a net loss of about 1 month or more. This is typical of the money-oriented care that is given here. Remember the old M*A*S*H episodes in which Sweet Lips would check each incoming patient and sort them into three groups --- one to be rushed into surgery, one who could wait until after the first group were operated on, and one group that could not be saved? That is triage and it is a "normal" way to run a medical system. What would it have been like if Sweet Lips had checked their insurance instead --- one group went right in regardless of the severity of their injuries, another group got less care, but were often saved because they had less coverage and a last group was allowed to die because they had no insurance.

Luckily my wife is a gerontologist and will stand between me and the for-profit medical system.

Darthdon...

You mean that no one will really give me the real numbers on tort reform and that the biggest special interests/conflict of interest running our government is not the nameless "Rich people" or "Big Business?"

No. This is America! Say it ain't so!

No wonder the IRS will not tell us what the real unemployment numbers are or those effected by the various taxes are. My expectations are way too high. : (

>>>>

Glen

Law suits are a lawyer's ticket to get on the gravy train. Over 95% of Congress and the Senate are Lawyers. Tort reform? Just what ARE you on?

I just heard something about the governor of novascotia (something in the NE) coming to the US for treatment. When pounded about why, he said his life was too important to trust to the canadian system. He wanted the best. ;)

@ Glenn -- My understanding is military doctors don't carry the same malpractice insurance the civilian doctors carry. Military members cannot file a malpractice lawsuit against their military doctors; however, their dependents can file lawsuits (on the member's behalf) because of the impact of the negligence on the family. I'm sure the cost is deducted from the O&M budget or maybe some other pot of money for that particular service or unit.

Jack, Americans can't go to Canada for healthcare. Why? Because only Canadian residents can receive the free healthcare. If Americans could get treated in Canada, trust me, millions of Americans that cannot afford healthcare in the US will head north to Canada (faster than the speed of light) In respect to health, the only thing Americans can get in Canada without being carded is medical drugs and other pharmaceutical products. And believe me when I say there are a lot of Americans currently getting their drugs way cheaper from Canada.

Are you trying to be a @!$%#-stirrer Jack, or are you just that ill-informed?!? If your statement was correct about cancer treatment in the UK, then my father-in-law would have died from testicular cancer 6years ago. As it was, he saw his doctor a few days after he noticed the abnormality, and within a few weeks started receiving the treatments he needed.

Are you drinking the koolaid that the US is still the best in everything, including healthcare?? How many facts/figures do we need to present to you so you'll take your head out of the sand and realize we aren't the best anymore...we are just the most expensive. <insert rolling eye smiley here>

KY, testicular cancer is highly treatable and often cured, especially in early stages. Lance Armstrong would have probably been denied treatment there because his testicular cancer was far advanced. Try getting treated for breast cancer and, as the title of this post states, see the difference in outcome. I thought "de nial" was in Africa, have they changed the name of the Thames? Wink wink, nod nod, LOL LOL. Roll your eyes all you want, then read this article again. When heads of state from OPEC, etc. look for quality care they don't stop in the UK, they come to the US.

Name calling is really unnecessary and certainly rude, did your mother teach you to do that?

I'm sorry, I did not see a single figure or fact that you presented. Try that instead of insults.

KYEng, If believing your country is the best at everything is the mark of a Kool-aid drinker, then I would bet a dollar to a donut that most citizens feel that way about their country. I am from Texas, and you how we are.... back up that Kool-aid tanker at my house! America is the best in the world, and we provide the best opportunity of any country in the world. If you don't believe that... well, I feel sorry for ya!

The UK just doubled their NHS expenses in the last 10 years. Its the biggest fiasco their new govt is dealing with. Not even close to the great recession effects. Welcome to obamacare.

I'd like to see your source. A real source with numbers, not a blog or a political website.

I suspect that the sentence was poorly worded. Perhaps MSNBC should have said 'By the end of the study period (2007), about 82% of women in the UK and Denmark with breast cancer were alive five years after being diagnosed' or something like that.

Just poor wording.

*eyeroll* Let's apply this to having children, too. Abortions all around!
Seriously, are you comparing the health and well-being of a HUMAN BEING to a luxury item?!?

cg68doc, I hope you always remain wealthy and always work at a large company that provides excellent benefits with low or no coinsurance (different from copays). May you never be laid off and find yourself without coverage and unable to purchase on the 'free market' because of some ridiculous pre-existing coverage. May you never be diagnosed with a catastrophic illness whilst uninsured.

Wait. Following your logic, you'd just up and accept a death sentence if you happen to have crappy or no health insurance...

Heather, I hope I always remain health and wealthy too! Thanks for the well wishes. I doubt that I will ever be uninsured.

I am sure that many who are sick and without insurance thought they would never be uninsured too.

Actually, no, it is not. Cancer can be cured using scientifically approved methods. Eating fresh vegetables and "magic powder" cannot help you if you have cancer.

Homeopathy is nothing but water. Homeopathic compounds are so diluted that the original substance does not remain. Sorry, water does not have memory.

I'd like to see your source. A real source with numbers, not a blog or a political website.

How about a Speech from the past President of the Canadian Medical Assoc.?

(if you will bother to take the time to read it?)

http://www.brianday.ca/cma-speech-2007.html

How about Facts that a Canadian Premier Chose to come to America for Heart surgery?

(Candaian Press) An unapologetic, Canadian Premier, Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a “minimally invasive” surgery based on the advice of his doctors.
“This was my heart, my choice and my health,” Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.
“I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics.”

Wants some more FACTS?

How about a British Parliament Member begging the U.S. NOT to copy UK healthcare.......will you bother to watch this? Doubt it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5VMX4AWwTU

and a cspan interview with the governor of novascotia (I think) saying his health was too important to risk it on the canadian system. Its in their archive but I'm not going to bother looking it up for you since your retort is obvious cut and paste. You dont actually care about facts.

Accountant, your experiences are your own and I would not think of calling you a liar. Have the same respect for me. My experiences are first-hand ones and not "third hand B.S." You can make your point without personal attacks.

See comment # 15 below.