Quote: To say nothing of the enormous and numerous side benefits of universal health care to the health/welfare of the populationGotta love those Canadian Health Care benefits.
Quote:Uh huh. They're "guaranteed" care, but - oops oops oopsie - couldn't get it under their system. Which, of course, onlyQuote: A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility
and transferred across the border without her parents, who don't have passports.
Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph's Hospital, 14 weeks premature.
A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to
Buffalo.
Her parents Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson couldn't follow their child because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into
the United States.
They're having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.
proves that our system - y'know, the one these people actually did get care under - is the "inferior" system.
This sort of situation is precisely the correct time to get into the "relative merits" of the two systems - in fact, it's crucial we do,
lest we fail to understand that government health care isn't a means for delivery of care to all, but the establishment of a bureaucracy to oversee
rationing of it.
And it damned sure does mean that the US system is better - otherwise, there wouldn't have been any need to ship the kid here for care in the
first place. Despite the fondness of disingenuous or foolish "progressive" types who shriek otherwise, critical care is never denied to
anyone in the US because of lack of ability to pay - unlike in Canada or other nations with socialized medicine.
Quote: Incidentally, it's probably worth noting that a public health care system would probably cost you less than the current mess you have. Canada, for
instance, pays less per capita for their universal health care system (hardly ideal, but better than the US by a wide margin) than Americans pay for theirs.
Oh yes. So very much more cheaper. Why wasn't there a NICU bed for the child in the entire nation of
Canada? The government of Canada won't pay for more. They don't exist to expand supply to meet demand; the
single-payer system exists to ration care as a cost-saving mechanism (but it's FREE HEALTH CARE!). In a
free-market system, supply expands to meet demand, which is why Canada could subcontract out to a US hospital for capacity. These parents are separated from
their child at the moment through the fault of Canada's government and not the US.
Under a government health system, even the mediocre health care you're guaranteed by your government may not be available to you at all. And once the US
goes down this dark road, there'll be no place left to go when your failed system fails you - as it inevitably must.
Quote:The Wait Time AssociationQuote: "The study showed that for many of the medical specialities in Canada examined, we don't even come close to meeting that target," said
Bellan. "There remains a great deal of unfinished business when it comes to addressing wait times in Canada."
For cancer patients, the study found that the median wait time for radiation therapy was almost seven weeks,
exceeding the benchmark of four weeks.
...
"Right now, patients receive excellent care, but too often it is in spite of the system, rather than because of it," said Ouellet.
report (.PDF link) found the following wait time in days for the following specialties:
Corneal transplant: 636 days
Adult strabismus surgery: 450 days
Total knee arthroplasty: 312 days
Chronic diarrhea or chronic constipation: 260 days
Pelvic prolapse: 250 days
Urinary incontinence: 247 days
Total hip arthroplasty: 247 days
Oh but it gets better, still! Canadians have higher incidents of cancer because that national health
system rations screening. So not only will you have to wait to be screened to see if you might have
cancer, but once you're diagnosed, you may have to wait for treatment for weeks or months! Time
you do not have!
But the American system is inferior to the Canadian. Yeah. Right.
When the United States health care system is as regulated and as rationed as the Canadian model, where will you go when you can't afford to wait? Will
there be anyplace left on the planet that you even CAN go?