Sally Pipes on what Sicko left out:
When the government pays for healthcare, saving money is more important than saving lives. So bureaucrats have an incentive to delay – or deny – the introduction of new, costly drugs.It’s not just limited access to drugs that hastens the deaths of the ill and the elderly. Diminished access to physicians, surgeries, and other procedures harm ordinary Canadians, but such rationing is necessary for the Canadian government to keep costs down.
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{ 9 comments }
When insurance companies pay for healthcare, saving money is more important than saving lives.
- There, all fixed.
Canada /= the best healthcare system, but Canada > US healthcare.
Went in for a checkup the other day, presented my card, and got to see the doc. No hassle, no bills, no payment and we still pay less per capita for our healthcare. Sure there’s rationing, but not to the extent that some people would like to have you believe (Kevin I’m looking in your direction).
Compare the health stats, patient satisfaction stats, or is that too much to ask? Ignorance is bliss, eh?
Hmmmm, consider who is funding the source…
Sally C. Pipes is the president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute http://www.pacificresearch.org), a free-market think tank funded in part by the health-care and pharmaceutical industry.
Shocking, Simply shocking.
Of course life expectancy in Canada is **rising** while life expectancy in the US is slipping.
HMMMMM….
Monsieur Kevin, you seem to turn your brain off when ever the subject of socialized medicine comes up You believe everything negative and dismiss anything positive with a predictable reflexiveness that doesn’t seem to involve higher brain functions. I hope you are more rational about your work than you are in your critique of socialized medicine.
You tend to gloss over the fact that private insurance companies are about one thing: making money. Is unbridled capitalism the superior and more caring system? I would say no.
I’ve looked at the stats and Canada, as well as other western Europe, have much lower 5-year survival rates for various types of cancers and heart disease. Socialized medicine also has an incentive to put lots of money into things like routine checkups: inexpensive and used by many people to get the most amount of votes. Getting an expensive procedure or test is a whole other story and why many Canadians come to the US for health care.
Also, life expectancy is rising in the US just like the rest of the developed world; not sure where you heard that it’s “slipping.”
When private insurers[ especially medicare part D ] give their executives,hundreds of millions and in some cases billions of dollars in bonuses,
I find it difficult to believe a significant amount of legitimate care isn’t being denied. My patient’shave been screwed over,many times by these companies who clearly have no interest other than their bottom line.
I recently had a major medicard D insurer send an 80 year old a letter stating the only sleep med they covered was chloral hyrate. This is an example of our glorius “free marketsystem” at work.
anon 5:18
Medicare part D isn’t free market. It is socialism with a non-government intermdiary. A free market is the one where the patient buys insurance with their own money if they deem it a priority, picking the plan or no plan at all–and then either using the benefits with whatever restrictions they contractually agreed to or paying out of pocket for their care.
Note that the 80 year old can still see doctors not covered by Medicare, seek care not covered by Medicare, and buy drugs not under their part D plan if they so choose. All of those freedoms are much more restricted in Canada.
85% of the people are happy with any healthcare system–as 85% of the people are healthy at any given time and have no pressing need. The measure of the system is how the other 15% do. Life expectancy is irrelevant as it is primarily determined by lifestyle. Healthcare systems don’t substantially improve the outcome of people who get 00 buckshot to their heads while arguing with their homies. Nor do they save 300 pound twinkie hounds from themselves.
In a democracy the path of least resistance for a socialized system is to keep the 85% happy with available well baby care and cough and cold visits, and pay for it throwing the expensively sick overboard. That is precisely what Canada does and politically, it works. In an election, 85% beats 15% every time.
Which is pricisely why we shouldn’t socialize a private personal good when ones personal interests are diametrically opposed to the public interests. If you are near the end of your working years and get a serious illness, you may deem it in your private interest to get treatment and survive to enjoy retirement and see your grandchildren grow up. It is in the public interest for you do die now rather than get expensive treatment just as you are going to be sucking off the public teat the next 15 years and will then live to get other enchanting expensive diseases. I don’t want to turn the funding of my care over to those with an interest in my death.
“Also, life expectancy is rising in the US just like the rest of the developed world; not sure where you heard that it’s “slipping.”
Oh, I don’t know, I probably read it in this AP article here:
U.S. Lags Behind 41 Nations in Life Span
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/11/ap4010790.html
Anon 7:37.. the article ALSO says:
“But “it’s not as simple as saying we don’t have national health insurance,” said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s not that easy.”
Anon 7:37.. the article ALSO says:
“But “it’s not as simple as saying we don’t have national health insurance,” said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s not that easy.”
Who ever said trying to solve the health care problem is easy? What the answer is not is dismissing out of hand the socialized medicine that every other industrialized nation uses. Kevin is rabidly against socialized medicine in a way that is all out of proportion to reason, sort of the way some children are afraid of clowns…
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