Canada’s health care system

[Meister]

Remind me again, which country did ailing multimillionaire Ted Kennedy go to for treatment? Was it Canada?

He supposedly dedicated his live to health care so his choice when it came to his own treatment speaks volumes, no?

Kennedy paid for the best and he got the best but what about those who do not have the money he did?

But wait, our healthcare system is broken. We have infant mortality, and age issues. Certainly he could have found better than our broken down system with all of his money.

 

[MaggieMae]

Is there a record for the number of limp talking points and logical fallacies in one post??

At your leisure, you might listen to Canada's former health care administrator confirm all of the points made and debunk some of the myths voiced by the callers to this program.

C-SPAN Video Player - Dr. Robert Ouelett, Frm. Pres., Canadian Medical Ass'n.

 

[Yukon]

Americans believe everything fed to them by the Insurance Companies - they would never mislead people.............would they ?

 

[gcomeau]

Rather than respond to the original post of the thread, which I'll just say is... less than accurate in it's details despite getting the very general big picture about right, I'm going to begin with responding to this:

I shall reference, again:

Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.

Yes, by all means let's quote a couple studies of a few isolated cancer mortality statistics and then pretend it's representative of overall health care system performance.

Or... not (apparently posting functioning urls isn't permitted to me yet, so anyone who wants to look at the below, get rid of the spaces):

http ://www .openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1

That is a systematic review of DOZENS of scientific studies of comparative treatment outcomes in Canada and the United States. It looks at everything from cancer to coronary artery disease to chronic illnesses to surgical procedures.

And Canada achieves superior results in the clear majority of them.

Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.

...

Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.

Even if true, much good it appears to be doing. See first point.

Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."

Oh boy...

1. "Self reporting" a subjective "level" of personal health is incredibly unreliable. It depends completely on what every single individual respondent's personal definition of "good" or "poor" or "excellent" is.

2. American seniors? You mean... THOSE PEOPLE ON MEDICARE? You seriously want to go there for a talking point on why universal government run Canadian style insurance is scary? The high level of self reported health of people in the US on... government provided universal insurance coverage????

The author of that particular talking point either wasn't thinking things through when he wrote that, or was betting on his readers not thinking. Probably not a bad bet on average really...

Fact No.6.: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K.

Kindly show me REAL wait time data for the US, then we'll talk.

And that means no pretending all the people in the US effectively *indefinitely* wait listed by being priced out of the system (or at least wait listed until they turn 65 and qualify for medicare) don't exist so you can celebrate how short "average" wait times are for everyone else are, which is what every single wait time statistic I've ever seen published for the United States does.

If Canada and Britain just didn't count all the people in their systems waiting the longest they'd come up with much better wait time stats too you know.

Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."

Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent)

People in other countries want to improve their health care systems? Good god, I'm floored.

Oh, btw:

http : //www .harrisdecima.com/en/downloads/pdf/news_releases/071009E.pdf

You were saying? (Question 2 is particularly fun)

Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.

While having lots of MRIs is nice... having them is only beneficial to people who can actually use them. A rather large chunk of the American population would need to place themselves in significant financial distress or bankrupt themselves to do that in the current system.

Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13]

Which of course is all because of the insurance companies... those breeding grounds of groundbreaking medical research! Why, I've simply lost track of how many amazing medical breakthroughs the insurance companies have brought us!

No, seriously, totally lost track. Ummm, can you maybe share an example with me? Just to job my memory you understand.

Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

http : //www .commonwealthfund.org/Content/Charts/Testimony/Insurance-Design-Matters-Underinsured-Trends-Health-and-Financial-Risks-and-Principles-for-Reform/Mortality-Amenable-to-Health-Care.aspx

http : // graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/07/09/business/econgraphic2.jpg

http : // graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/07/09/business/econgraphic3.jpg

http : // puck.sourceoecd.org/vl=2895417/cl=23/nw=1/rpsv/factbook2009/images/graphics/10-02-01-g1.gif

Ummm, no. No it doesn't.

BTW, would everyone do me a favor and pay close attention to that last chart? Particularly the red part of the bars? That's TAX spending on health care.

Look at how high the US is.

Now look at how high Canada is.

Then don't let me hear anything about how Canadian style health care means super high taxes please. It's stunning how many Americans don't know the facts on that one.

 

[MaggieMae]

Then don't let me hear anything about how Canadian style health care means super high taxes please. It's stunning how many Americans don't know the facts on that one.

Too bad your lengthy research won't get read by the people who SHOULD read it on this board. Any more than two paragraphs is exhausting for them. As for the top income tax rate in Canada, I believe the Canadian health administrator who was interviewed in the C-Span video I posted earlier said that the top rate was 46% on the highest earners, far lower than it has been in the past in the US in the 70's and 80's, ultimately reduced then raised again by Clinton to 39%, reduced again by Bush to 34%, and Obama wishing to raise it back up to 39%.

 

[gcomeau]

Then don't let me hear anything about how Canadian style health care means super high taxes please. It's stunning how many Americans don't know the facts on that one.

Too bad your lengthy research won't get read by the people who SHOULD read it on this board. Any more than two paragraphs is exhausting for them. As for the top income tax rate in Canada, I believe the Canadian health administrator who was interviewed in the C-Span video I posted earlier said that the top rate was 46% on the highest earners, far lower than it has been in the past in the US in the 70's and 80's, ultimately reduced then raised again by Clinton to 39%, reduced again by Bush to 34%, and Obama wishing to raise it back up to 39%.

Well, the top federal income tax bracket in Canada, which takes effect over $126,000 a year for a single filer, is 29%.

After that it depends heavily on where in the country you live since provincial income tax rates vary a lot. If you live in Nova Scotia you have it worst, they have a top rate of 17.5% that kinks in at the 93,000 mark. Of course, only like 2% of the country lives in Nova Scotia.

About 40% of the country lives in Ontario, and their top rate is 11.5% and kicks in at about $74,000.

And then you have to factor in the effect of sales taxes and whatnot...

But that was all kind of beside the point. The point I was trying to make was any difference in the tax rates of Canada and the US have absolutely nothing to do with the differences in their health care systems. They both pay almost identical percentages of their GDPs in tax dollars towards those systems. (Of course Canadians get universal major medical for that money, and thus have relatively small out of pocket costs on top of that. Americans, unless they qualify for medicare or the VA, get pretty much squat for their tax dollars since certain segments of society absolutely refuse to allow the government to run a nice, cost effective universal insurance program, so they have HUGE out of pocket costs on top of that.)

What difference there is in tax rates between Canada and the US (and the difference is nowhere near what most Americans seem to think it is) is due to other social programs and of course the fact that for the last 12 straight years before the recession hit the Canadians were running federal budget *surpluses* and paying down their national debt, as opposed to what was going on south of their border which was... something very different. At least for the last 8 years.

 

[Oddball]

Is there a record for the number of limp talking points and logical fallacies in one post??

At your leisure, you might listen to Canada's former health care administrator confirm all of the points made and debunk some of the myths voiced by the callers to this program.

C-SPAN Video Player - Dr. Robert Ouelett, Frm. Pres., Canadian Medical Ass'n.

Because if anyone just oooooooozes credibility, it's a gubmint politician and/or bureaucrat!!

 

[JFK_USA]

I shall reference, again:


Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:

Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."[5]
Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]

Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."[9]

Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]

Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]

Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.]

Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

Scott W. Atlas, M.D., is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Stanford University Medical Center. A version of this article appeared previously in the February 18, 2009, Washington Times.

Again where does it say in the Healthcare bill that the quality of care must be decreased?

Yes all doctors come here to get training, but if a person can't afford to use all those MRI machines we have, what the point of having them?

This is about getting healthcare access to everyone. It is a right and it needs to be taken care of.

 

[Oddball]

Again where does it say in the Healthcare bill that the quality of care must be decreased?

Yes all doctors come here to get training, but if a person can't afford to use all those MRI machines we have, what the point of having them?

This is about getting healthcare access to everyone. It is a right and it needs to be taken care of.

Really?....A RIGHT??

Since when do you have a right to the services of another and at the expense of everyone else??

 

[gcomeau]

Since when do you have a right to the services of another and at the expense of everyone else??

Since about the time the first government taxed it's first citizens to provide services for the collective society.

So...since a really, really long time ago if we're going to be that general.

I'd suggest being more specific if you want to start arguing what rights do and do not, or should and should not, exist.

 

[Cecilie1200]

CANADA’S HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

The poorest run system of all countries, still better than ours and most Canadians are satisfied with the care they receive even though Canada’s President of the Medical Association say it need improvement. If we had a HC system comparable to Canada it would be better than what we now have.
Germany’s people pay 7.5% of their income for HC and it works to their satisfaction.
All of the HC systems do not work the same and we should not lump then into one system. Certainly not use the poorest run system as an example. Which turns out better than what we have.
Again, as usual, right wingers falsely use Canada’s HC system as a scare tactic to control people into opposing any healthcare plan by the present administration.
There are not waits in Canada any longer than we have here with private HC.
Services are not limited or spread thin.
The rich, poor and elderly get the same quality of medical care. No death panels.
Radical anti-Obama right wingers will use any means to get the people, even the uninsured, to oppose what they refer to as “Obamacare” as if Obama wrote the rules of the HC plan along with a few senators so know nothing of the medical system.
Right wingers and their supporter will oppose anything the Obama administration attempt to do and want to take the country back hundreds of years. “Ain’t happening” We are moving forward with or without the radical white right wing racist. Town hall meeting, no matter were they are, are predominantly white.
Even if we had a HC system comparable to Canada’s, the poorest run of all systems, it would still be better than what we, the greatest nation in the world, have now.

Most of you cannot wait to put your parents in government rest homes and your mentally disabled into government run mental institutions or halfway houses.
Those who oppose of Socialized medicine the strongest are on Welfare, Social Security, SSI, Medicare and Medicaid. "Thou doest protest to loudly"

Wow, you're just all over the board with your, "My position is more moral than yours, you suck for not agreeing with me, I can't explain why I'm better but I AM" bullshit, aren'tcha?

In response to your last paragraph, which strangely was the most linear thing you said, may I just cordially invite you to kiss my ass?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Is there a record for the number of limp talking points and logical fallacies in one post??

There is now.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Allie.....more GOP propaganda ?

Yeah, the New England Journal of Medicine is known for being an unreliable rightwing political rag.

Dumbass.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Many go to fee-for-service clinics, too....Not everyone who is uninsured is a potential deadbeat.

Besides that, insurance shouldn't be for basic care in the first place. How many auto insurance policies cover oil changes and new tires?

That's not even a remotely apt comparison.

Sure it is. Regular check-ups, mammograms, vaccinations, etc. like that are basic machine maintenance and upkeep, just like oil changes and tire replacement. The only difference is that the machine in question is a human body, rather than a car.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Again, the both of you are presuming everyone who goes to the ER for care are deadbeats-in-waiting.

Good thing leftists aren't cynical or suspicious of their fellow man.

No, I didn't say all are unable to pay, but it gives me a lot of pleasure to know that you pay for those who are unable to pay for themselves.

Well, since you're admitting to enjoying watching people you don't like getting robbed by deadbeat scumbags, may I just say that it gives ME a lot of pleasure to watch anti-gun leftists getting mugged?

 

[Meister]

Perhaps we should be debating healthcare vs health treatment.

 

[Cecilie1200]

It's a totally apt and relevant comparison.

Insurance should be for the exceptions, not the mundane.

Except that with the exception of rare cases, not changing your oil or replacing the tires on your car isn't going to be what triggers the situations which your automotive insurance does cover. That's not even remotely true with the body. Leave even something relatively minor untreated and it can balloon into a huge problem.

Actually, mechanical failure such as a bald tire blowing out can cause an accident, which your insurance DOES have to cover. If you have comprehensive insurance, then I believe it gets to cover the tow truck when you burn up your engine from not changing the oil. I'm not sure, since I keep mine in repair.

 

[Oddball]

Perhaps we should be debating healthcare vs health treatment.

Hard to keep track....The scoialized medical services croud keeps shifting the smeantics, which is no accident.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Remind me again, which country did ailing multimillionaire Ted Kennedy go to for treatment? Was it Canada?

He supposedly dedicated his live to health care so his choice when it came to his own treatment speaks volumes, no?

Kennedy paid for the best and he got the best but what about those who do not have the money he did?

Not every hospital in the country is the Mayo Clinic, that's true, but that doesn't mean all the ones that aren't are crap. I honestly can't imagine where you twits got the idea that all poor people in America are forced to go the equivalent of Guadalajara General Hospital.

 

[Vast LWC]

Remind me again, which country did ailing multimillionaire Ted Kennedy go to for treatment? Was it Canada?

He supposedly dedicated his live to health care so his choice when it came to his own treatment speaks volumes, no?

That would be the state of Massachusetts, which unlike the rest of the US has public health insurance.