Just Saw Sicko, Now Have Question

[kyleb]

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However I would encourage you to investigate economics before making that decision.

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lol @ investigate economics.

<--- Econ/GT graduate.

[destro]

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Also, does anyone have any info on the quality of healthcare compared to other industrialized countries? And dont use Cuba as a response, that is a joke, Im talking Canada etc. Ive heard nothing but horror stories about long waits etc, and would like to know if it is true.

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I'm from Toronto Canada. Horror stories of long waits are NOT TRUE or at the least exaggerated. Also if differs from province to province. Generally I think our health care is great. Heres the low down ( these are all based on true stories that happened to me or people close to me):

Go to the emergency room for a bad hemmeroid ( my ex ). We waited about an hour maybe an hour and a half. Of course this wasn't very critical. Doctor cut it open told her to keep soaking it /keep it clean. No cost.

2. My friend dislocates his shoulder. He first went to emergency to get it relocated , got some painkillers , and was scheduled for MRI's/scans. Cost was about $20 for the pain killers. There was about a 12 month period where he was in betweeen scans. After 12 months of diagnosis he waited about 3-4 months for surgery. He could and did hold a bartending job during the time. He just couldn't really pick up heavy things and could not play sports during this time. After his surgery, of course that was free , he was fine. He did complain about how long it took but I think he missed some appointments and it really wasn't that bad an injury..ie he could still work /party/ function. Since his parents had a med plan with work ( most people with a 9-5 job do) he paid 20% of the drugs - and you dont have to pay 100% and get back 80% later. You just pay the 20% when you pick up the drugs.

Friend of my father is suffering from chest pains. Goes to emergency - they wait about 5 min. Chest pains gets bumped up on the list and I would not think anyone in Toronto would wait more than 30 min to see a doctor in a similar condition.

Friends mother has terminal cancer - she was given the choice for chemotherapy. She has a hospitable bed for as long as she needs/wants. She opts for no chemo ( an extra 6 months of life spent vomitting) . My friend makes it point to tell me how great the doctors and nurses were at the hospital - one of the biggest in ontario.

Drunken friend gets runover by another drunken friend while in a parking lot. He suffers some pretty serious leg damage. He waits in emerg for about 5 min and is given pain killers. This was 3 years ago and hes had about 3-4 opertations and countless physiotherapy treatments. He has no plan so he is burdened by having to cover the cost of his painkillers. He pays about 100 a month for all that he needs. If he was living in America its my understanding that he would be screwed.

We pay about 39-45% income tax.

Although Moore can make me cringe from his bias' I think its clear that Americas health care system needs some retuning.
Bottom line for me is that a country has a duty to take care of its people. It appears unjust if a working class family could be bankrupt by an illess. Im a fierce supporter of Capitlism but as Moore points out in Sicko, health care should be seen as a public service like the police. Its not free , you pay in taxes. I have no problem shelling out thousands of dollars a year to the health care pool.
On a separate note - Insurance companies are pure, pure evil. After 9-11 and Katrina - they are pulling record profits. Thats the funny thing - I think america as a whole pays enough in taxes and insurance to have a universal heath care plan. Its the way your people just take it up the ass and do nothing to stop them. If someone in Canadian politics mentions anything about revamping the heath care system they are crucified. In america its the opposite ..if you mention a universal heath care system you are crucified. At least in canada when we say "we don't want to end up having an american type health system" its for good reason. If American politicians are saying that we don't want to end up like canada in terms of health care ..you can know tell them with confidence that they have been mislead.

CLIFF NOTES = In Ontario if your really sick you don't wait ; if your condition is not that serious you may have to wait a few months for MRI's and surgery. You may have to pay for your drugs. It could be better ..but its still great.

[bdk3clash]

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Also, does anyone have any info on the quality of healthcare compared to other industrialized countries? And dont use Cuba as a response, that is a joke, Im talking Canada etc. Ive heard nothing but horror stories about long waits etc, and would like to know if it is true.

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As to the "long waits etc" part, an article in the lefty rag BusinessWeek states:

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One of the most repeated truisms about the U.S. health-care system is that, for all its other problems, American patients at least don't have to endure the long waits for medical care that are considered endemic under single-payer systems such as those in Canada and Britain. But as several surveys and numerous anecdotes show, waiting times in the U.S. are often as bad or worse as those in other industrialized nations—despite the fact that the U.S. spends considerably more per capita on health care than any other country.

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As to Emperor's statement:

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This is a good point, EVERYONE wants to complain about how expensive health insurance is to purchase, but hardly anyone complains about how expensive malpractice insurance is.

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The similarly liberally-biased Congressional Budget Office reports:

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Evidence from the states indicates that premiums for malpractice insurance are lower when tort liability is restricted than they would be otherwise. But even large savings in premiums can have only a small direct impact on health care spending--private or governmental--because malpractice costs account for less than 2 percent of that spending.

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[NoRiverRats]

As an American living in Canada I can tell you that the stories about wait times are hugely exaggerated. They are usually made by people defending the US system's many problems or by domestic right wing think tanks.

Jamougha has made the most intelligent comments in this thread, also the most accurate.

To a certain extent the challenges in Canadian health care vary from province to province, there are indeed waits for non-critical procedures but they certainly aren't as bad as most suggest. Indeed, most provincial governments now have programs in place to reduce their five biggest wait time challenges(joint replacement etc..it varies. Overall, things are improving nicely.

Bottom line is that I would choose the Canadian system over the US system. So would all the Americans in my family, mother, brother, aunts and uncles(who still live in the US, one is a doctor and tried to come here to practice, had immigration issues.)

[Jamougha]

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However I would encourage you to investigate economics before making that decision.

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lol @ investigate economics.

<--- Econ/GT graduate.

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Fair enough, but then lol @ asking me to define market failure?

[amplify]

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However I would encourage you to investigate economics before making that decision.

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lol @ investigate economics.

<--- Econ/GT graduate.

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Fair enough, but then lol @ asking me to define market failure?

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Socratic method.

[renodoc]

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Be realisitic - a five hour wait occurs for urgencies, not emergencies. If for no other reason than med mal, we want you back NOW if you're seriously ill. (Actually, we want you back because we want to help and take care of sick people - but I don't want to go all liberal/humanitarian on you)
Your point about long waits for general care is valid - my specialty is becoming the default general care provider for a big portion of the population.
Where you should be concerned is that in some parts of the country, mine included, you can't get emergency care for deadly serious illness no matter what your insurance status is. In the last year, my group has transferred out two vascular disasters, and sent a complex hand injury home to Texas from Nevada because we had no vascular or plastic coverage in our city. One of the vascular cases died en route. All three were insured - so that wasn't the issue. This scares the crap out of me.....

MM MD

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dang Hobbes, why can't your hospital just hire some more vascular guys? what if they just offered some of the other guys in town some money to take cases from the ER? novel idea, huh?

[John Spartan]

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If more and more things start becoming human rights then people will pay 100% of their money to taxes and the goverment can give us each a stipend to live on.

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Yeah, because that totally happened in countries like the Netherlands and Sweden with generous social support systems. People pay 100% of their income to the government and receive a stipend. Give me a break. Your slippery slope argument is not valid. Even the most socialist democratic countries(Netherlands, Sweden, France, etc) still leave plenty of economic freedom for the individual.

And for people who said that the US only rations health care based on means, that is not true. We have waiting lists here too. It took me 3 months to get in to see a urologist, and 5 months to get in to see a dermatologist. I can usually get in to see my primary care doc within a day or so, but so can people in Canada.

Bottom line, even if private health insurance companies are not banned in the US, they need to be heavily regulated at least. A lot of private insurance companies will routinely deny valid claims just to make a few extra bucks on the bottom line. These companies need to be investigated and heavily fined. We need more proactive federal and state justice systems.

And I am by no means a huge liberal. I am a registered Republican who sees the value of a single payer system. I do not believe that everything is a right, for example, I don't believe that education is a human right. But health care certainly is because it is the central to the right to life.

[shakermaker3]

I live in a city just north of toronto called Barrie. pop about 150k ... wait times are very exaggerated and i have never waited more too long at the emergency room to see a doctor.

the point isn't hey why should i have to help some poor sap. But the point is when the nation is better off , everyone is better off. Overall productivity rates increase, people feel better about themselves and your not widening that gap which leads to serious social problems. MM just uses these kinda exaggerated samples to prove that a bit of a social safety net is good for not just the ones using it but for everyone in general. Seems like the most basic of any capitalistic ideas , increased efficiency ... eh ?

[John Spartan]

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It's worth bearing in mind hat the US government spends more on healthcare per capita than any other nation on the planet.

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The U.S. also has socialized medicine. Your point?

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The main role of government is to intervene in cases of market failure like this. I can't see why you would not want to do it.

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I don't want to do it because I reject your premise that you base that accusation on. The main role of government is to protect the citizens from fraud and coercion, not "intervene in cases of market failure."

Also, please define "market failure."

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Medicare has much lower administrative costs when compared to any private health insurance company like BCBS or Cigna. And doctors almost always get paid on time with Medicare, whereas with the other companies, they will often try to screw the doctor to save a buck