To ration or not

[Nik]

Oh crap, I used the wrong name, therefore everything else must have been missed.
Whatever.

Nice strawman argument there.

You missed the point because it wasn't about government bureaucracies v. living wills. It was about how we have to ration, otherwise every death costs millions of dollars trying to keep people alive for those extra precious seconds.

Not because you couldn't read the name.

Yours was the strawman.
And you completely missed my point.
Here, I'll type it real slow for you,
Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding what gets rationed for your health care?

I'd rather a government bureaucrat than an insurance company bureaucrat.

 

[alan1]

Nice strawman argument there.

You missed the point because it wasn't about government bureaucracies v. living wills. It was about how we have to ration, otherwise every death costs millions of dollars trying to keep people alive for those extra precious seconds.

Not because you couldn't read the name.

Yours was the strawman.
And you completely missed my point.
Here, I'll type it real slow for you,
Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding what gets rationed for your health care?

I'd rather a government bureaucrat than an insurance company bureaucrat.

It's not an either or situation. It's not limited to either a government bureaucrat or an insurance company.
Nice try at another strawman, but you failed again.

 

[Political Junky]

Canucks come to America for health care
Filed under: Canucks, economic ignorance, socialism — crushliberalism @ 10:20 am

Just how good is that Canadian “universal health care”? It’s so good that…Canadians are coming here for private health care. From Buffalo News:
Canucks come to America for health care « Crush Liberalism

What a wingnut source that is. This is a paragraph from the article:

Let that sink in, folks. It is a crime for people in Canada for people to spend their own money (a) in any manner they see fit and (b) on their own health! And Edwards, Obama, Shrillary, et al on the left want that to come here? I don’t think so! Continuing:

Does seem like a strange source.

But are you saying that politicians wouldn't want this kind of care?

You don't think that the elites would be exposed to the same kind of nationalized care as the rest of us, do you?

From 'Animal Farm,' some animals are more equal than others.

I said nothing of the kind.

 

[Emma]

Healthcare resources are already rationed.

What they did to the man in the OP is despicable, IMO.

 

[Nik]

Yours was the strawman.
And you completely missed my point.
Here, I'll type it real slow for you,
Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding what gets rationed for your health care?

I'd rather a government bureaucrat than an insurance company bureaucrat.

It's not an either or situation. It's not limited to either a government bureaucrat or an insurance company.
Nice try at another strawman, but you failed again.

Really? Whats the third choice?

 

[Coyote]

Yours was the strawman.
And you completely missed my point.
Here, I'll type it real slow for you,
Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding what gets rationed for your health care?

I'd rather a government bureaucrat than an insurance company bureaucrat.

It's not an either or situation. It's not limited to either a government bureaucrat or an insurance company.
Nice try at another strawman, but you failed again.

Actually, I agree with that but, maybe not in the way you mean.

If it's not a government agent or an insurance company agent - who would decide what gets rationed?

In the current system rationing is controlled by: Insurance, what the individual can afford privately, and the government (for those eligable).

A fact of life - regardless of what system you are under is -if you can afford it, you can get any kind of medical care you want. Unrationed. Putting a public plan on the table in competition with private plans won't change that.

 

[AllieBaba]

Shared here is William Falk's experience with his aging father. Falk is Editor-in-Chief of THE WEEK magazine:

When my father went back to the hospital a year ago, he was clearly close to the end: His lungs and liver were barely functioning, his abdomen was filling with fluid, and he could no longer lift himself out of bed.

The hospital's doctors nonetheless treated him aggressively, punching a hole in his chest to insert a drainage tube, which quickly led to uncontrolled bleeding, an infection, and a plunge in blood pressure.

Within 12 hours, my father was in a coma, with no chance of recovery, sustained only by a ventilator and a tangle of multiple IV drips. He spent four days in the ICU, until I overcame the resistance of two doctors and had the machines turned off, as per my dad's living will.

Medicare paid upward of $20,000 for these last days of my father's life, during which he received little comfort, moments of agonizing pain and fear, and all the medical care in the world, and then some.

In the historic debate over health care reform now beginning in this country, we will hear much talk of "rationing." If health care is rationed, we'll be told, we may be denied drugs or surgeries or treatments based on cost, effectiveness, or the patient's condition of age. It sounds cold and heartless, except when you consider that the only real alternative to rationing is unlimited medical treatment--including a refusal to "lose" the battle with death even when death is near. Unlimited care, of course, requires unlimited spending, which is not viable.

Rationing in some form is inevitable; the only question is when we'll finally be able to admit to ourselves that even in America, there are limits to everything.

What a bunch of crap. No, rationing is not inevitable, and it is not all or nothing....

We have the world's best system now, where those who want to go to extreme measures to maintain the spark of life are free to do so, and those who don't want to are free to refuse treatment.

The whole article is nothing but justification for allowing old people and other vulnerable citizens to die without basic, normal treatment...and remove for them the option of deciding they would like to try something to prolong their lives.

And dying is dying. Boo hoo, his dad had a drainage tube. This is not an "extreme" or un-called for treatment. It's a common treatment that often saves people's lives. It didn't save this guy's life, that's the way the cookie crumbles. It was painful, sure, but so is getting hit by a car, or drowning to death in your own bodily fluids over a period of a week or so.

 

[toomuchtime_]

Shared here is William Falk's experience with his aging father. Falk is Editor-in-Chief of THE WEEK magazine:

When my father went back to the hospital a year ago, he was clearly close to the end: His lungs and liver were barely functioning, his abdomen was filling with fluid, and he could no longer lift himself out of bed.

The hospital's doctors nonetheless treated him aggressively, punching a hole in his chest to insert a drainage tube, which quickly led to uncontrolled bleeding, an infection, and a plunge in blood pressure.

Within 12 hours, my father was in a coma, with no chance of recovery, sustained only by a ventilator and a tangle of multiple IV drips. He spent four days in the ICU, until I overcame the resistance of two doctors and had the machines turned off, as per my dad's living will.

Medicare paid upward of $20,000 for these last days of my father's life, during which he received little comfort, moments of agonizing pain and fear, and all the medical care in the world, and then some.

In the historic debate over health care reform now beginning in this country, we will hear much talk of "rationing." If health care is rationed, we'll be told, we may be denied drugs or surgeries or treatments based on cost, effectiveness, or the patient's condition of age. It sounds cold and heartless, except when you consider that the only real alternative to rationing is unlimited medical treatment--including a refusal to "lose" the battle with death even when death is near. Unlimited care, of course, requires unlimited spending, which is not viable.

Rationing in some form is inevitable; the only question is when we'll finally be able to admit to ourselves that even in America, there are limits to everything.

What a bunch of crap. No, rationing is not inevitable, and it is not all or nothing....

We have the world's best system now, where those who want to go to extreme measures to maintain the spark of life are free to do so, and those who don't want to are free to refuse treatment.

The whole article is nothing but justification for allowing old people and other vulnerable citizens to die without basic, normal treatment...and remove for them the option of deciding they would like to try something to prolong their lives.

And dying is dying. Boo hoo, his dad had a drainage tube. This is not an "extreme" or un-called for treatment. It's a common treatment that often saves people's lives. It didn't save this guy's life, that's the way the cookie crumbles. It was painful, sure, but so is getting hit by a car, or drowning to death in your own bodily fluids over a period of a week or so.

Indeed, the story is not credible. If there was a living will, the doctors and hospital were legally bound to respect it, and it shouldn't have taken more than a call from a lawyer make them comply.

The fact is proponents of Obama's health care plans, most notably, Daschle, have already told us there will be rationing of services that does not exist now under our present plans. There are two proposed entities to implement the rationing, both within HHS. First there will be a group charged with rating the effectiveness of tests and procedures independent of medical organizations that now define "acceptable" protocols, and second, most alarming, there will be a group to decide if a test or procedure is cost effective, that is, even if it is better than anything else around, is your life or quality of life worth the price in the opinion of some HHS bureaucrats?

On Charlie Rose yesterday Daschle explained that while we now cover the cost of providing the world's best high end treatments for the desperately ill by not providing health insurance to everyone, under Obama's proposals, we will cover the cost of more universal coverage by providing fewer expensive high end treatments to the desperately ill. A good deal for healthy people, not so good, perhaps a death sentence, if you become very ill.

 

[Nik]

Shared here is William Falk's experience with his aging father. Falk is Editor-in-Chief of THE WEEK magazine:

When my father went back to the hospital a year ago, he was clearly close to the end: His lungs and liver were barely functioning, his abdomen was filling with fluid, and he could no longer lift himself out of bed.

The hospital's doctors nonetheless treated him aggressively, punching a hole in his chest to insert a drainage tube, which quickly led to uncontrolled bleeding, an infection, and a plunge in blood pressure.

Within 12 hours, my father was in a coma, with no chance of recovery, sustained only by a ventilator and a tangle of multiple IV drips. He spent four days in the ICU, until I overcame the resistance of two doctors and had the machines turned off, as per my dad's living will.

Medicare paid upward of $20,000 for these last days of my father's life, during which he received little comfort, moments of agonizing pain and fear, and all the medical care in the world, and then some.

In the historic debate over health care reform now beginning in this country, we will hear much talk of "rationing." If health care is rationed, we'll be told, we may be denied drugs or surgeries or treatments based on cost, effectiveness, or the patient's condition of age. It sounds cold and heartless, except when you consider that the only real alternative to rationing is unlimited medical treatment--including a refusal to "lose" the battle with death even when death is near. Unlimited care, of course, requires unlimited spending, which is not viable.

Rationing in some form is inevitable; the only question is when we'll finally be able to admit to ourselves that even in America, there are limits to everything.

What a bunch of crap. No, rationing is not inevitable, and it is not all or nothing....

We have the world's best system now, where those who want to go to extreme measures to maintain the spark of life are free to do so, and those who don't want to are free to refuse treatment.

The whole article is nothing but justification for allowing old people and other vulnerable citizens to die without basic, normal treatment...and remove for them the option of deciding they would like to try something to prolong their lives.

And dying is dying. Boo hoo, his dad had a drainage tube. This is not an "extreme" or un-called for treatment. It's a common treatment that often saves people's lives. It didn't save this guy's life, that's the way the cookie crumbles. It was painful, sure, but so is getting hit by a car, or drowning to death in your own bodily fluids over a period of a week or so.

This is simply not true. You must have the resources to do so, and many many people don't.

 

[auditor0007]

Health Care Stories for America | BarackObama.com

Thousands of them on that website.

Thanks for these examples of how America has failed its citizens.

How about putting your dinaro where you put your dinner, and tell me which country you'll be moving to.

Read and repent:


1. “…while the numbers clearly show that people are happier with their own health care than with the system as a whole, there is no dimension with which their happier than the quality of care they personally receive…a mere 15 percent complain about the quality of care they receive.”.(New England Journal of Medicine)
Health Beat: The Quality Question

2. “…when one digs deep enough, one finds that only 8 million folks can be classified as "chronically uninsured;" that's still a problem, of course, but a much more manageable one, and puts the lie to the canard that our system is irretrievably broken.”
InsureBlog: Vindicated!

“Once you whittle it down, you start to realize that the number of hard-core uninsured who are citizens is in fact fairly small — perhaps half the reported 47 million or less. (about 7.6%)”
IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The '47 Million Uninsured' Myth

3. “The biggest fallacy of the Obama healthcare plan is that it would cover every America. It wouldn’t. It would provide the option of health care, but it would still cost money and I suspect that lots of those uninsured adults between 18-34 would still rather spend the money on something else. It wouldn’t do any more to insure children than is already being done independently of his plan.”
The Myth of the Uninsured American : Conservative Blog: Urban Conservative 2.0 - Conservative News & Politics


4. "If I lived in New Zealand, I would be dead.
The American health-care system may be a crazy mess, but it is the prime mover in the global ecology of medical treatment, creating the world’s biggest market for new drugs and devices. Even as we argue about whether or how our health-care system should change, most Americans take for granted our access to the best available cancer treatments—including the one that arguably saved my life. "
My Drug Problem - The Atlantic (March 2009)

5. "However, 89 percent were satisfied with their own health care quality and 57 percent with their personal costs. Losing insurance is a concern for 56 percent of respondents with private care, and 60 percent of those with any form of health coverage worried about their ability to afford insurance over the next few years.
Support for universal government-provided coverage fell further when the survey suggested the possibility of higher costs or taxes (35 percent), waiting lists (33 percent), limited choice of doctors (28 percent), or loss of coverage for some treatments (18 percent). ABC News' coverage did not call any of these a "significant hurdle" for supporters of universal coverage to overcome.
News Media Misreport Health Survey - by Joseph Coletti - Health Care News


6. For instance, while 88 percent say their coverage overall is excellent or good, that includes just 33 percent who call it "excellent." While 57 percent are satisfied with their own costs, just 23 percent are very satisfied. And even on overall quality of care, while 89 percent are satisfied, fewer are very satisfied, 52 percent.
As Health Care Costs Take a Toll, Some Changes Win Broad Backing - ABC News

The problem of the uninsured is only the beginning. The bigger problem is the fact that we are now spending $7900 per person in the US for healthcare, and that rate will double in real dollars within the next 25 years. It is unsustainable, and every employer out there knows it.

Everyone who is happy with their health insurance is so because they don't directly pay the entire bill; their employers pay a huge percentage, and it is the employers who are coming to the conclusion that they can no longer afford this. What we have already begun to see, and what we will see much more of, is companies closing their doors because they cannot afford to stay in business due to health insurance costs. And what we will see much more of is these companies moving overseas so that they can operate from a country where they are not directly responsible for those costs.

 

[alan1]

I'd rather a government bureaucrat than an insurance company bureaucrat.

It's not an either or situation. It's not limited to either a government bureaucrat or an insurance company.
Nice try at another strawman, but you failed again.

Really? Whats the third choice?

First of all, there are well over 1000 companies that provide health insurance. As an individual, you can pick a company that meets your needs, it's not like there is one book of rules that all the insurance companies follow. Each insurance company also offers different types of plans.
That gives you 1000's of options.
Or, you could just pay for health care as you need it.

 

[alan1]

I'd rather a government bureaucrat than an insurance company bureaucrat.

It's not an either or situation. It's not limited to either a government bureaucrat or an insurance company.
Nice try at another strawman, but you failed again.

Actually, I agree with that but, maybe not in the way you mean.

If it's not a government agent or an insurance company agent - who would decide what gets rationed?

In the current system rationing is controlled by: Insurance, what the individual can afford privately, and the government (for those eligable).

A fact of life - regardless of what system you are under is -if you can afford it, you can get any kind of medical care you want. Unrationed. Putting a public plan on the table in competition with private plans won't change that.

So, other than me now having to pay for somebody else's insurance via a new tax, what changes?

 

[MaggieMae]

Shared here is William Falk's experience with his aging father. Falk is Editor-in-Chief of THE WEEK magazine:

When my father went back to the hospital a year ago, he was clearly close to the end: His lungs and liver were barely functioning, his abdomen was filling with fluid, and he could no longer lift himself out of bed.

The hospital's doctors nonetheless treated him aggressively, punching a hole in his chest to insert a drainage tube, which quickly led to uncontrolled bleeding, an infection, and a plunge in blood pressure.

Within 12 hours, my father was in a coma, with no chance of recovery, sustained only by a ventilator and a tangle of multiple IV drips. He spent four days in the ICU, until I overcame the resistance of two doctors and had the machines turned off, as per my dad's living will.

Medicare paid upward of $20,000 for these last days of my father's life, during which he received little comfort, moments of agonizing pain and fear, and all the medical care in the world, and then some.

In the historic debate over health care reform now beginning in this country, we will hear much talk of "rationing." If health care is rationed, we'll be told, we may be denied drugs or surgeries or treatments based on cost, effectiveness, or the patient's condition of age. It sounds cold and heartless, except when you consider that the only real alternative to rationing is unlimited medical treatment--including a refusal to "lose" the battle with death even when death is near. Unlimited care, of course, requires unlimited spending, which is not viable.

Rationing in some form is inevitable; the only question is when we'll finally be able to admit to ourselves that even in America, there are limits to everything.

What happened to your father is not unusual. I have a living will, as he did, to prevent this very thing from happening.
If you want to call denying dramatic efforts to save a person who is surely dying, rationing, then I approve of it.

The story was not my father's, but ironically my father clung to life until he died at home following a week in a coma. For six months he required constant care, refusing hospice care, even though none of us siblings lived within 2,000 miles and had to take turns traveling to Florida to take care of him. He accumulated huge medical bills that either the VA didn't cover or his private insurance had max'd, which were paid for out of his estate (amounting to a house worth about $60,000). So that's another problem: The cost involved for the children of a dying parent in addition to dealing with the death itself when adequate directives and/or insurance aren't there.

 

[MaggieMae]

i sure hope all of you with a living will etc realize that it dont mean shit.....first you aint gonna sue...live or die....when you are so close that the living will comes out...you are near the end...you can do all the dnr orders you want....next of kin will be the ones deciding...if the next of kin objects to unplugging you will stay plugged

That is so not true. Anyone serious about a living will makes sure that his/her doctor is aware of its contents by a copy to him, not just the designated overseers. And it's very easy to verify whether a copy is included as part of your medical records before any other doc/nurse touches you.

 

[MaggieMae]

Shared here is William Falk's experience with his aging father. Falk is Editor-in-Chief of THE WEEK magazine:

When my father went back to the hospital a year ago, he was clearly close to the end: His lungs and liver were barely functioning, his abdomen was filling with fluid, and he could no longer lift himself out of bed.

The hospital's doctors nonetheless treated him aggressively, punching a hole in his chest to insert a drainage tube, which quickly led to uncontrolled bleeding, an infection, and a plunge in blood pressure.

Within 12 hours, my father was in a coma, with no chance of recovery, sustained only by a ventilator and a tangle of multiple IV drips. He spent four days in the ICU, until I overcame the resistance of two doctors and had the machines turned off, as per my dad's living will.

Medicare paid upward of $20,000 for these last days of my father's life, during which he received little comfort, moments of agonizing pain and fear, and all the medical care in the world, and then some.

In the historic debate over health care reform now beginning in this country, we will hear much talk of "rationing." If health care is rationed, we'll be told, we may be denied drugs or surgeries or treatments based on cost, effectiveness, or the patient's condition of age. It sounds cold and heartless, except when you consider that the only real alternative to rationing is unlimited medical treatment--including a refusal to "lose" the battle with death even when death is near. Unlimited care, of course, requires unlimited spending, which is not viable.

Rationing in some form is inevitable; the only question is when we'll finally be able to admit to ourselves that even in America, there are limits to everything.

Once one is able to state the problem, it becomes so easy to prove the thesis.

This is not the kind of example of rationing that most are opposed to.
This is:
In the Province of Quebec, patients suffering from serious incontinence - ie, they have to aller aux toilettes jusqu’� 12 fois par nuit (that’s 12 times a night) - have to wait three years for a half-hour operation. That’s 3 years times 365 nights times 12 trips to the bathroom.
The central point about socialized medicine is that restricting access is the only means of controlling costs.
In Canada, Citizens Wait 3 Years For A Half Hour Surgery To Fix Incontinence | KXNet.com North Dakota News

Or this:
A woman of 61 was refused a routine heart operation by a hard-up NHS trust for being too old.
Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat and is at increased risk of a stroke. But health chiefs refused to allow the procedure which was recommended by her specialist.
The school secretary was stunned by the ruling.
"I can't believe that at 61 I'm too old for this operation
NHS chiefs tell grandmother, 61, she's 'too old' for £5,000 life-saving heart surgery | Mail Online

Or this:
"Nice refuses, on grounds of cost, to recommend some drugs for patients with advanced kidney cancer. The consultants, who include the directors of oncology at Britain’s two biggest cancer hospitals, the Royal Marsden in London and Christie hospital in Manchester, claim there is enough money in the NHS to pay for the drugs. "
Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing

Why do people keep ASSUMING that this country will do a carbon copy of what France or Great Britain or Canada do? Doesn't it stand to reason that in developing a health package that provides for better coverage, we would take those parts that work and leave the parts that don't as their problem, not ours?

You guys have this whole issue all sewn up again with your EGADS-YIKES-GONNA BANKRUPT ME scenarios. It's sickening (pun intended).

 

[MaggieMae]

Health Care Stories for America | BarackObama.com

Thousands of them on that website.

Thanks for these examples of how America has failed its citizens.

How about putting your dinaro where you put your dinner, and tell me which country you'll be moving to.

Read and repent:


1. “…while the numbers clearly show that people are happier with their own health care than with the system as a whole, there is no dimension with which their happier than the quality of care they personally receive…a mere 15 percent complain about the quality of care they receive.”.(New England Journal of Medicine)
Health Beat: The Quality Question

2. “…when one digs deep enough, one finds that only 8 million folks can be classified as "chronically uninsured;" that's still a problem, of course, but a much more manageable one, and puts the lie to the canard that our system is irretrievably broken.”
InsureBlog: Vindicated!

“Once you whittle it down, you start to realize that the number of hard-core uninsured who are citizens is in fact fairly small — perhaps half the reported 47 million or less. (about 7.6%)”
IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The '47 Million Uninsured' Myth

3. “The biggest fallacy of the Obama healthcare plan is that it would cover every America. It wouldn’t. It would provide the option of health care, but it would still cost money and I suspect that lots of those uninsured adults between 18-34 would still rather spend the money on something else. It wouldn’t do any more to insure children than is already being done independently of his plan.”
The Myth of the Uninsured American : Conservative Blog: Urban Conservative 2.0 - Conservative News & Politics


4. "If I lived in New Zealand, I would be dead.
The American health-care system may be a crazy mess, but it is the prime mover in the global ecology of medical treatment, creating the world’s biggest market for new drugs and devices. Even as we argue about whether or how our health-care system should change, most Americans take for granted our access to the best available cancer treatments—including the one that arguably saved my life. "
My Drug Problem - The Atlantic (March 2009)

5. "However, 89 percent were satisfied with their own health care quality and 57 percent with their personal costs. Losing insurance is a concern for 56 percent of respondents with private care, and 60 percent of those with any form of health coverage worried about their ability to afford insurance over the next few years.
Support for universal government-provided coverage fell further when the survey suggested the possibility of higher costs or taxes (35 percent), waiting lists (33 percent), limited choice of doctors (28 percent), or loss of coverage for some treatments (18 percent). ABC News' coverage did not call any of these a "significant hurdle" for supporters of universal coverage to overcome.
News Media Misreport Health Survey - by Joseph Coletti - Health Care News


6. For instance, while 88 percent say their coverage overall is excellent or good, that includes just 33 percent who call it "excellent." While 57 percent are satisfied with their own costs, just 23 percent are very satisfied. And even on overall quality of care, while 89 percent are satisfied, fewer are very satisfied, 52 percent.
As Health Care Costs Take a Toll, Some Changes Win Broad Backing - ABC News

For every "article" you quote from your favorite websites, there are an equal number of counterclaims from others.

 

[MaggieMae]

Shared here is William Falk's experience with his aging father. Falk is Editor-in-Chief of THE WEEK magazine:

When my father went back to the hospital a year ago, he was clearly close to the end: His lungs and liver were barely functioning, his abdomen was filling with fluid, and he could no longer lift himself out of bed.

The hospital's doctors nonetheless treated him aggressively, punching a hole in his chest to insert a drainage tube, which quickly led to uncontrolled bleeding, an infection, and a plunge in blood pressure.

Within 12 hours, my father was in a coma, with no chance of recovery, sustained only by a ventilator and a tangle of multiple IV drips. He spent four days in the ICU, until I overcame the resistance of two doctors and had the machines turned off, as per my dad's living will.

Medicare paid upward of $20,000 for these last days of my father's life, during which he received little comfort, moments of agonizing pain and fear, and all the medical care in the world, and then some.

In the historic debate over health care reform now beginning in this country, we will hear much talk of "rationing." If health care is rationed, we'll be told, we may be denied drugs or surgeries or treatments based on cost, effectiveness, or the patient's condition of age. It sounds cold and heartless, except when you consider that the only real alternative to rationing is unlimited medical treatment--including a refusal to "lose" the battle with death even when death is near. Unlimited care, of course, requires unlimited spending, which is not viable.

Rationing in some form is inevitable; the only question is when we'll finally be able to admit to ourselves that even in America, there are limits to everything.

Once one is able to state the problem, it becomes so easy to prove the thesis.

This is not the kind of example of rationing that most are opposed to.
This is:
In the Province of Quebec, patients suffering from serious incontinence - ie, they have to aller aux toilettes jusqu’� 12 fois par nuit (that’s 12 times a night) - have to wait three years for a half-hour operation. That’s 3 years times 365 nights times 12 trips to the bathroom.
The central point about socialized medicine is that restricting access is the only means of controlling costs.
In Canada, Citizens Wait 3 Years For A Half Hour Surgery To Fix Incontinence | KXNet.com North Dakota News

Or this:
A woman of 61 was refused a routine heart operation by a hard-up NHS trust for being too old.
Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat and is at increased risk of a stroke. But health chiefs refused to allow the procedure which was recommended by her specialist.
The school secretary was stunned by the ruling.
"I can't believe that at 61 I'm too old for this operation
NHS chiefs tell grandmother, 61, she's 'too old' for £5,000 life-saving heart surgery | Mail Online

Or this:
"Nice refuses, on grounds of cost, to recommend some drugs for patients with advanced kidney cancer. The consultants, who include the directors of oncology at Britain’s two biggest cancer hospitals, the Royal Marsden in London and Christie hospital in Manchester, claim there is enough money in the NHS to pay for the drugs. "
Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing

You can list catastrophe after catastrophe, but you ignore the fact that those are isolated incidences. Waiting rooms in doctors' offices are NOT full of people dying from heart disease waiting to be treated for the normal illnesses/accidents that most people are covered for there, but not here.

 

[MaggieMae]

Not that many Canadians come here for medical care. If you have other information, please share it here.

"Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.

She represents a dramatic new trend in Canadian health-care advocacy: finding the treatment you need in another country, and then fighting Canadian bureaucrats (and often suing) to get them to pick up the tab."

"Rick Baker helps people, and sometimes even saves lives. He describes a man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. Dissatisfied with the opinion—he had no family history of epilepsy, but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren’t usually seen in the disorder—the man requested an MRI. The government told him that the wait would be four and a half months. So he went to Baker, who arranged to have the MRI done within 24 hours—and who, after the test discovered a brain tumor, arranged surgery within a few weeks.

Baker isn’t a neurosurgeon or even a doctor. He’s a medical broker, one member of a private sector that is rushing in to address the inadequacies of Canada’s government care. Canadians pay him to set up surgical procedures, diagnostic tests, and specialist consultations, privately and quickly."
Timely Medical Alternatives, has helped—people like the elderly woman who needed vascular surgery for a major artery in her abdomen and was promised prompt care by one of the most senior bureaucrats in the government, who never called back. “Her doctor told her she’s going to die,” Baker remembers. So Timely got her surgery in a couple of days, in Washington State. "
The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care by David Gratzer, City Journal Summer 2007

While these may not represent a statistic, as you requested, the article is very informative vis-a-vis Canadians making arangements to get help outside of Canada, both in the United States.

I'd be interested in your perspective on the article.

My perspective is that it's really rather ignorant to assume that scary things don't happen in medical institutions right here in the good ol' USA. Remember this one? How many others like it get covered up by hospital administrators and don't get covered by MSM?

Caught on tape: Hospital patient left to die - Health care- msnbc.com

 

[MaggieMae]

How about putting your dinaro where you put your dinner, and tell me which country you'll be moving to.

Read and repent:


1. “…while the numbers clearly show that people are happier with their own health care than with the system as a whole, there is no dimension with which their happier than the quality of care they personally receive…a mere 15 percent complain about the quality of care they receive.”.(New England Journal of Medicine)
Health Beat: The Quality Question

2. “…when one digs deep enough, one finds that only 8 million folks can be classified as "chronically uninsured;" that's still a problem, of course, but a much more manageable one, and puts the lie to the canard that our system is irretrievably broken.”
InsureBlog: Vindicated!

“Once you whittle it down, you start to realize that the number of hard-core uninsured who are citizens is in fact fairly small — perhaps half the reported 47 million or less. (about 7.6%)”
IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The '47 Million Uninsured' Myth

3. “The biggest fallacy of the Obama healthcare plan is that it would cover every America. It wouldn’t. It would provide the option of health care, but it would still cost money and I suspect that lots of those uninsured adults between 18-34 would still rather spend the money on something else. It wouldn’t do any more to insure children than is already being done independently of his plan.”
The Myth of the Uninsured American : Conservative Blog: Urban Conservative 2.0 - Conservative News & Politics


4. "If I lived in New Zealand, I would be dead.
The American health-care system may be a crazy mess, but it is the prime mover in the global ecology of medical treatment, creating the world’s biggest market for new drugs and devices. Even as we argue about whether or how our health-care system should change, most Americans take for granted our access to the best available cancer treatments—including the one that arguably saved my life. "
My Drug Problem - The Atlantic (March 2009)

5. "However, 89 percent were satisfied with their own health care quality and 57 percent with their personal costs. Losing insurance is a concern for 56 percent of respondents with private care, and 60 percent of those with any form of health coverage worried about their ability to afford insurance over the next few years.
Support for universal government-provided coverage fell further when the survey suggested the possibility of higher costs or taxes (35 percent), waiting lists (33 percent), limited choice of doctors (28 percent), or loss of coverage for some treatments (18 percent). ABC News' coverage did not call any of these a "significant hurdle" for supporters of universal coverage to overcome.
News Media Misreport Health Survey - by Joseph Coletti - Health Care News


6. For instance, while 88 percent say their coverage overall is excellent or good, that includes just 33 percent who call it "excellent." While 57 percent are satisfied with their own costs, just 23 percent are very satisfied. And even on overall quality of care, while 89 percent are satisfied, fewer are very satisfied, 52 percent.
As Health Care Costs Take a Toll, Some Changes Win Broad Backing - ABC News

From one of your links:

Costs in the nation's health care system are ensnaring millions more Americans: One in four report problems paying their medical bills, and nearly three in 10 -- rising to nearly half of women with children -- have put off treatment because of the cost, often despite a serious illness or condition. Both are new highs in polls dating back a decade or more.

Sure is a ringing endorsement of the American system! Our system is so great 30% of our populace puts off treatments because of cost!

Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The great majority of Americans are very pleased with their medical care.

Until they get sick and realize they're undercovered or their premiums continue to rise at 7% annually.

Towering Medical Bills Leave Many Americans Bankrupt : NPR

 

[MaggieMae]

Shared here is William Falk's experience with his aging father. Falk is Editor-in-Chief of THE WEEK magazine:

When my father went back to the hospital a year ago, he was clearly close to the end: His lungs and liver were barely functioning, his abdomen was filling with fluid, and he could no longer lift himself out of bed.

The hospital's doctors nonetheless treated him aggressively, punching a hole in his chest to insert a drainage tube, which quickly led to uncontrolled bleeding, an infection, and a plunge in blood pressure.

Within 12 hours, my father was in a coma, with no chance of recovery, sustained only by a ventilator and a tangle of multiple IV drips. He spent four days in the ICU, until I overcame the resistance of two doctors and had the machines turned off, as per my dad's living will.

Medicare paid upward of $20,000 for these last days of my father's life, during which he received little comfort, moments of agonizing pain and fear, and all the medical care in the world, and then some.

In the historic debate over health care reform now beginning in this country, we will hear much talk of "rationing." If health care is rationed, we'll be told, we may be denied drugs or surgeries or treatments based on cost, effectiveness, or the patient's condition of age. It sounds cold and heartless, except when you consider that the only real alternative to rationing is unlimited medical treatment--including a refusal to "lose" the battle with death even when death is near. Unlimited care, of course, requires unlimited spending, which is not viable.

Rationing in some form is inevitable; the only question is when we'll finally be able to admit to ourselves that even in America, there are limits to everything.

William Faulkner's father made the decision with his living will, not some government bureaucrat counting pennies. That's not rationing.
Try again.

How about you try READING it again...

The fact that the old gent wanted to die if no hope existed is beside the point anyway. The editorial is meant to convey that if he had not made that choice by living will, he would have been kept alive. Why?