I lived for ten years in Manhattan and never got over the shock of seeing visa and mastercard symbols displayed in medical offices. The belief that health care is a commodity like any other leads to much needless suffering and death. Canadians live longer than Americans. Infant mortality rates are also lower. That’s the bottom line — and no amount of obfuscation with many other meaningless stats can obscure that.

Health care is a public good.

Health care is a service like any other and should be paid for by the consumer. We have no food insurance or government car service, so why health? Too many murderous leftists who view it as a pathway to marxism.

When the government employs your doctor, they’ll make decisions based on the cheapest thing for the budget, rather than on your health and well being. Logan’s run is a picnic compared to the plans of “bioethicists”. A British Baroness and authority on medical ethics came out last week on the duty to die. Maoism with a smiling face, but still marching millions off to death.

If you want to know what Canadians really feel about their healthcare, ask Paul Krugman. He got an abject lesson last week because he believed Maoist shills like D Freedman rather than real people who suffer horribly in Canada.

The same test is billed to the Ontario government universal, single-payer health plan at the rate of $2.12.

The few people who aren’t covered (eg. recent immigrants during a 90 day waiting period) would have to pay $6.67 out of pocket.

And don’t believe the all the anti-medicare propaganda from right-wing US think tanks. Last week, I got a same day ultrasound for mysterious symptoms. That turned up nothing, so I’ll have to wait for a CT scan — all of two weeks. My total out-of-pocket cost: zero. And my family doctor (affiliated with a University of Toronto teaching hospital) authorized the tests on the spot on her own authority. She didn’t have to check with an insurance company or even her own supervisor.

Back to the google angle. My doctor decided on the CT scan after consulting a medical data base in my presence.

In fairness, Canadian taxes are higher than those in the US. Is that bad?

If you regard health care as a basic human right (along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) then a communal approach to providing it is required. This is the EU model, in general. Once the framing has been agreed on, the actual implementation is just a matter of historical and cultural expectations. One can have socialized medicine as was the case in the USSR, where doctors were government employees. One can have universal quasi-private insurance as in German, or one can have public insurance as in the UK (and with Medicare).

If you regard health care as a private affair, like making a living, or deciding how much education you want then you tend to put the onus on the individual to obtain it. This leads to a system based upon private insurance to individuals or their proxies (employers). The problem with this framing is that sick people in general aren’t earning any money. In addition those who are too low on the economic ladder can’t afford insurance. And then there are those who had insurance, got sick, lost their jobs and insurance and can’t obtain it again.

Since most civilized societies aren’t willing to put up with the most extreme consequences of laissez faire health coverage they add some communal elements as a corrective. This is what we have in the US: Medicare, Medicaid, Schip, VA and additional patches and bandaids at the state level. The result is higher costs, inefficiencies in administration and still 40 million people without coverage.

No for-profit system can work if they are required to cover everyone at an adequate level unless their excess costs are covered by the government. That’s what has happened in other insurance areas, assigned risk auto insurance, federal flood insurance and so on.

That free-marketeers chose to ignore the fact that there are no actual free market health systems in operation anywhere in the world is just another indication of using an impossible ideology as a cover for making profits at the government teat.

Lockbourne-you’re going to have to expand on this:

For the minority who truly cannot pay their own medical costs, direct assistance should be provided by fellow citizens.

Correct.

But more precisely — it is our corrupt ‘political system’ that blocks your choice & control.

Purchase-decisions on health products & services items should be like any other consumer decision.

However, foolish government policies over many decades imposed an absurd “3rd Party Insurance” economic & regulatory structure on the entire American health industry. This mindless bureaucratic legal structure prohibits normal, efficient interaction among buyers & sellers… imposing huge costs and waste.

One should pay their own medical expenses in the same manner they pay any other personal expense.

Private actuarial-based ‘medical’ insurance or loans is the answer to catastrophic medical needs.

For the minority who truly cannot pay their own medical costs, direct assistance should be provided by fellow citizens.

Government politicians and bureaucrats (…especially Federal) have NO legitimate role in the medical system their wholesale interference in the past 50+ years caused the disaster we all endure nowadays.

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[P.S.] … the Potomac politicians are so good at managing our health care — just wait ’til you see how they do taking control of our financial system this week !

Determining a course of treatment is something where an individual should be involved when it comes to risks vs rewards, but evaluating the efficacy of treatments is putting too much reliance on an untrained individual (oneself).

The old saying: “A lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client” seems to apply in spades to medicine.

If your doctor tells you that A has a 10% chance of harm and a 30% chance of helping and B has a 20% chance of harm and a 50% chance of helping then you should be able to decide your level of risk. But for you to read the medical literature and determine that the risk is 10 or 20% isn’t wise.

As for the silly paperwork, most of that is caused by the need to document things to private insurance companies and the absence of a national computerized database. Ask around and find out how things are done in rational countries like Canada.

If you think the blood tests happen too frequently then you might be right, but it is a small inconvenience which practitioners feel is worth it because insufficient monitoring can have such dire consequence. Another example where the patient can’t evaluate the entire history of treatment and goes by anecdotal observations.

If you would like some of your health prejudices cleared up, or if you just want to rant in a different forum I suggest visiting:

http://www.healthbeatblog.org/