Health-care spending grew 6.9 percent to about $1.99 trillion from about $1.86 trillion in 2004, a slower pace than the 7.9 percent increase a year earlier, the report by the National Health Statistics Group found. The increase outpaced a 3.4 percent rise in inflation in 2005.

The statistics group is part of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the single largest payer for U.S. health care.

http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/compare.php

This is just like when Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter started calling us Soviet Canuckistan.

An easier method is to require a simple fee-plus arrangement to elimminate un-nessessary Dr. visits…even $20, will keep every silly cough or sneeze from arriving at the dr.’s office. Welfare folks could be exempt if you are so soft hearted..but a Dr should be able to say to a patient who is there because he or she has a cold, should have to pay for stupid visits to the Dr.

On a different note…the 1+ billion dollars totally wasted on the gun registry could have bought MRI’s by the score to alleviate some of the waiting now experienced by legitimate medical needs. Too bad that money is gone. All those killed by guns in the last dozen years were either killed by registered or un-registered guns…didn’t matter one way or the other….they are dead, and the registry didn’t help them……..but how many lives could have been saved by spending that money on medicine? 100-1000 times more…

American-style healthcare is not perfect…but neither is Canadian-style. Somewhere in the middle is right. Two-tier medicine already exsists today. Those with money can easily get immeadiate treatment now. The precious dollars needed to fund our healthcare budget is being wasted by administrators and people who can already afford health insurance.

Time we draw a line in the sand and demand the people who can pay for health insurnace, do so.

What anon does not say is that needs up here are broadly defined by doctors, and that far too many people get stuff done that they don’t need because a) the one receiving the dough makes the calls about what is needed, and b) patients don’t care because they think that someone else is paying for it. They think “free” is better than nothing.

In the end, patients complain of long lines and crappy treatment, and doctors complain that they don’t make enough. It’s wonderfully Soviet, with one big difference. The Soviets knew well that what they had was crappy.

Our cath lab can handle three cazses but we have four waiting. Quick – call the government!

Anyway, he goes on to talk about rationing further down in the article. Complete nonsense.
Here’s a different way to look at rationing. From Health Canada (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss/index_e.html …admittedly not a completely unbiased site but that doesn’t seem to matter in this case anyway):
“The Basics: universal coverage for medically necessary health care services provided on the basis of need, rather than the ability to pay.”

So we can either ration healthcare services on the basis of medical necessity or we can ration them on the patient’s ability to pay.

Which one seems to make more sense?