"universal healthcare"

[PL456]

TweetPlease note the site: www.waittimes.net--this is the canadian govt's official website to inform their beloved fellow citizens how long they will have to wait to have procedures performed in their "exemplary" healthcare system. This is what you will get with the dems in the white house (i.e. socialized medicine):

In Ontario province:

total hip replacement---------- 218 days

Brain, spine cancer surgery---- 61 days

total knee replacement-------- 297 days

MRI (presumably non-emergency)---- 111 days

CT scan (as above)----------- 58 days

heart bypass ----------------- 57 days

Angioplasty------------------- 13 days

breast cancer surgery -------- 38 days

radiation therapy for cancer--- 1 month after being "ready to treat"


If our system is "broken" as the dems scream....please, give my the adjective to describe this travesty to the north of our border...

[straydoglogic]

Tweetwell that sucks...im in the military and we have socialized healthcare and it work VERY well...but its such a smaller scale...i dont have to pay for any treatments whatsoever and thats great...but i dont think the healthcare system per se is messed up..but its the corporations charging way too much for drugs that are actually quite cheap...and the insurance companies that will look for any possible reason to deny a claim....money makes the world go round and our money isnt worth jack!!!! sad days....

[FUZO]

TweetI HAVE KICK ASS HEALTH INSURANCE IF NOT THE BEST OUT THERE.

[daved150]

Tweet

I HAVE KICK ASS HEALTH INSURANCE IF NOT THE BEST OUT THERE.

as of now, we have none, and i still wouldnt want national health care! i would like it fixed, but canada's program aint the answer!

[horsepwr]

TweetI saw something on the news a couple days ago about how Canada is having to send patients into the U.S. for surgery. I'll search around and see if I can find the report.

[PL456]

Tweetplease, remember this information and quote it to folks that like michael moore's film sicko..

[mandarb11]

TweetWell from personal experience (being a Canadian) the wait times are no where near that here in Canada. Recently I had a MRI done that took 3 weeks from the time it was scheduled to get done! This was just last month. Our health care system is far from perfect but at least when we go in for a medical procedure we do not walk out with a bill. I have so many friends in the US, one guy has gynocomastia for years but can't afford to get it removed because his insurance company deems it cosmetic. And PL456 are you saying that the information in SICKO was false and you guys really do experience wonderful healthcare? I am interested to hear. I would rather wait for awhile to get something done than to go bankrupt because I had to have something major done. The only instances of people having to go south for treatments are usually if a person is on the wait list for a life saving procedure but has the money to pay for it in the US so they go there. That is not to common I don't know about you but I don't have 100,000 sitting around to get a medical procedure.

[PL456]

TweetWell, mandarb, the statistics I quoted were from your country's national healthcare site (www.waittimes.net) and were from the toronto area. Remember, all, the is no "free" healthcare. Either you pay insurance or you pay taxes. Whats the gasoline price like up there in canada??

[mandarb11]

TweetTrue enough but compare paying more for everyday things to going broke to get a medical procedure done and I think we have it pretty good. And our health care is far from free, each province has its own system to pay for it, in BC we used to pay a premium based upon our income, where I live now in Ontario it is incorporated into our taxes alone. there is no perfect system for anything but I know I do not worry about me or my family getting sick here, hell with al the illness I have had over the last 10 years i would have been bankrupt 10 times over if I had to live in the US! No insurance company would cover me there!

[PL456]

TweetWell, youve been a lucky fella. Id stay right where you are.

[Klash]

Tweet

True enough but compare paying more for everyday things to going broke to get a medical procedure done and I think we have it pretty good. And our health care is far from free, each province has its own system to pay for it, in BC we used to pay a premium based upon our income, where I live now in Ontario it is incorporated into our taxes alone. there is no perfect system for anything but I know I do not worry about me or my family getting sick here, hell with al the illness I have had over the last 10 years i would have been bankrupt 10 times over if I had to live in the US! No insurance company would cover me there!

I've been thinking about the health care industry and since I'm a free market guy, I've been applying it to those ideas and the one thing I think is over looked in the American system is America's private insurance companies are privy to personal medical information, that they should have no rights to. Pre-existing conditions should be confidential and insurance companies should not be able to deny you benefits based on your medical history without being liable for invading your privacy. Of course, private insurance companies have to compete with the governments social programs (Medicade and Medicare) so their potential clients have been decreased significantly, increasing premiums to those who do not qualify for government assistance. Increasing premiums more is government regulations that require certain benefits to be offered to citizens who may or may not need them. Then there is also the cost of pharmaceuticals that are artificially inflated by lengthy clinical trials and research that government has legislated and oversees that also drives cost up for insurance companies.

So I suppose the government gives them this right to our medical history (our privacy) to compensate the bad hand they have dealt the insurance companies, to help them discriminate against those who will actually cost them something.