CPAC: We lost Princess Diana because they have socialised medicine in France.

[2aguy]

Because specialists are the least important doctors in any socialised medical system, they don't have them......so, Princess Diana died because France doesn't have enough specialists to handle trauma victims...

Socialized Medicine Killed Princess Diana, Surgeon Tells CPAC

Author Dr. David Schneider, an orthopedic surgeon from Colorado, explained how with socialized medicine, wait times for care “are disastrous.” In Canada, the wait time to see a specialist is two years, and then another two years to get the procedure.

“People in this country would go crazy if you were told you had to wait four months,” he said.

Then he explained how Princess Diana would be alive today, if not for socialized medicine. “Princess Diana was in the car accident in France,” he explained. “They actually don’t have any trauma specialists in France.”

“For the first hour after that accident, she was still in that tunnel,” he continued. “And after an hour, they took her to a nearby hospital and she was alive for another three hours and they couldn’t control the bleeding from her pulmonary artery.”

Schneider explained that “there were no trauma-trained people there.”

He continued, “I really believe, knowing what I know about her care and comparing it to what Congressman Scalise had, Princess Diana would have lived had that accident happened here in America.”

Peter Pitts of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, moderated the discussion, and explain the ills of the socialized healthcare system that the Democratic Party is advocating for right now. “Price controls equal choice controls,” he said. “Socialized medicine stifles competition, stifles innovations,” he said, noting that there are two vaccines being developed for the coronavirus right here in the United States.

 

[g5000]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

 

[g5000]

The dinosaurs died out because of socialized medicine.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

Can not refute the claim so disparage it am I right?

 

[g5000]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

Can not refute the claim so disparage it am I right?

Global warming is caused by socialized medicine.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

Can not refute the claim so disparage it am I right?

Global warming is caused by socialized medicine.

Like I said can not refute so make stupid comments in hopes others don't listen.

 

[g5000]

Princess Diana.

How...timely. How... "Current Events"!

I wonder what other 20th century events CPAC will obsess about next!

"Feminazis forced New Coke on us!"

 

[g5000]

I'm guessing the fake news doctor was watching too much TV. The Crown.

"I haz a sad about this episode. I must speak!"

 

[colfax_m]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

Can not refute the claim so disparage it am I right?

Global warming is caused by socialized medicine.

Like I said can not refute so make stupid comments in hopes others don't listen.

The French have a different philosophy when it comes to treating trauma. They bring two MDs in the field to stabilize the patient and then transport to hospital. We do the opposite in the US.

Has nothing to do with socialized medicine.

The idea that there aren’t trauma surgeons in France is stupid.

 

[g5000]

Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom all provide universal health care.

So it isn't impossible. And none of them have turned into Venezuela.

Life expectancy USA: 78.69 years.

Life expectancy Australia: 82.50 years.

Life expectancy Canada: 82.30 years.

Life expectancy Finland: 81.78 years.

Life expectancy France: 82.27 years.

Life expectancy Germany: 80.64 years.

Life expectancy Hungary: 75.57 years.

Life expectancy Iceland: 82.47 years.

Life expectancy Israel: 82.41 years.

Life expectancy Ireland: 81.61 years.

Life expectancy the Netherlands: 81.51 years.

Life expectancy New Zealand: 81.61 years.

Life expectancy Norway: 82.51 years.

Life expectancy Portugal: 81.13 years.

Life expectancy the Slovak Republic: 76.56 years.

Life expectancy Slovenia: 80.78 years.

Life expectancy Sweden: 82.20 years.

Life expectancy Switzerland: 82.90 years.

Life expectancy United Kingdom: 80.96 years.

 

[g5000]

As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland." - Donald J. Trump, 2015.


Donald Trump in his book The America We Deserve:

We must have universal healthcare...I'm a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses...

Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork..

The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees. If the program were in place in Massachusetts in 1999 it would have reduced administrative costs by $2.5 million. We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.




Donald Trump on Larry King the first time he ran for President:

I'm quite liberal, and getting much more liberal, on health care and other things. What's the purpose of a country if you're not gonna have defense and health care? If you can’t take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it’s all over. So I'm very liberal when it comes to health care. I believe in universal healthcare.

 

[WillowTree]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

what are your credentials?

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

Can not refute the claim so disparage it am I right?

It's one man's speculation and nothing more.

 

[WillowTree]

As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland." - Donald J. Trump, 2015.


Donald Trump in his book The America We Deserve:

We must have universal healthcare...I'm a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses...

Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork..

The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees. If the program were in place in Massachusetts in 1999 it would have reduced administrative costs by $2.5 million. We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.




Donald Trump on Larry King the first time he ran for President:

I'm quite liberal, and getting much more liberal, on health care and other things. What's the purpose of a country if you're not gonna have defense and health care? If you can’t take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it’s all over. So I'm very liberal when it comes to health care. I believe in universal healthcare.

Why don’t you compare us to a country of 350 million people and unfettered illegal immigration?

 

[WinterBorn]

Because specialists are the least important doctors in any socialised medical system, they don't have them......so, Princess Diana died because France doesn't have enough specialists to handle trauma victims...

Socialized Medicine Killed Princess Diana, Surgeon Tells CPAC

Author Dr. David Schneider, an orthopedic surgeon from Colorado, explained how with socialized medicine, wait times for care “are disastrous.” In Canada, the wait time to see a specialist is two years, and then another two years to get the procedure.

“People in this country would go crazy if you were told you had to wait four months,” he said.

Then he explained how Princess Diana would be alive today, if not for socialized medicine. “Princess Diana was in the car accident in France,” he explained. “They actually don’t have any trauma specialists in France.”

“For the first hour after that accident, she was still in that tunnel,” he continued. “And after an hour, they took her to a nearby hospital and she was alive for another three hours and they couldn’t control the bleeding from her pulmonary artery.”

Schneider explained that “there were no trauma-trained people there.”

He continued, “I really believe, knowing what I know about her care and comparing it to what Congressman Scalise had, Princess Diana would have lived had that accident happened here in America.”

Peter Pitts of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, moderated the discussion, and explain the ills of the socialized healthcare system that the Democratic Party is advocating for right now. “Price controls equal choice controls,” he said. “Socialized medicine stifles competition, stifles innovations,” he said, noting that there are two vaccines being developed for the coronavirus right here in the United States.

Whether or not the availability if specialists would have saved Princess Diana's life can be debated.

What cannot be debated is that despite having world class security, the Princess of Wales would have very likely survived the wreck if the people responsible for her security had made sure she buckled her seatbelt.

The seat belt theory that could have saved Princess Diana

 

[colfax_m]

I think most doctors (not orthopedists probably) have met a lot of patients who’d been unable to afford medical care for one reason or another whose lives would have been saved by socialized medicine.

The fact that they single out a wealthy elitist as someone whose life could have been saved is telling.

 

[Eric Arthur Blair]

Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom all provide universal health care.

Wow! After a string of absurd trolling in which you refuse to address the issues you come out with a list of nations in which the life expectancy is greater than the US (let's for the sake of argument assume the list is correct) and supposedly we are supposed to infer that is all due to socialized medicine.

No other factors at work here? You are quite the debate king.

 

[Andylusion]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

I don't know how you people can see the facts over and over, and then just ignore them. It's always funny how the left-wing claims that right-wingers are all stupid anti-science people... and then turn right around and utterly dismiss all scientific data presented to them.

The fact that France does not have dedicated trauma care staff, isn't opinion. It's established fact, that you can look up, if you have any interest is not being an ignorant fool.

Trauma care systems in France - ScienceDirect

There is no specialisation in trauma in France. All specialist surgeons treat those aspects of trauma pathology that concern them. All surgeons operate on trauma patients and with regard to the organ concerned: digestive, orthopaedic,…. The challenge nervertheless remains that of maintaining facilities at a sufficient level to deal with everyday pathology, known for the seriousness of its consequences in both human and financial terms, within an increasingly sparse hospital infrastructure.​

What this means is that, for a trauma patient, the required staff that can handle multiple injuries typical of an accident, may not be there, and you may die.

This is also true in the UK as well.

Death rate 'much higher' in English than US hospitals
NHS patients dying in hospital corridors, A&E doctors tell Theresa May

Conditions in many A&E units are so appalling that they could kill patients, claim the signatories, who work at both major teaching hospitals and smaller district general hospitals. They include Frimley health trust in Surrey, which May visited last week in an attempt to reassure the public that the NHS was coping well this winter.​

NHS death rates four times higher than US | Daily Mail Online

Patients having major surgery in NHS hospitals face a much higher risk of dying than those in America, research has revealed.

Doctors found that people who have treatment here are four times more likely to die than US citizens undergoing similar operations.

The most seriously ill NHS patients were seven times more likely to die than their American counterparts.

Experts blame the British fatality figures on a shortage of specialists and lack of intensive care beds for post-operative recovery.
​

Let me ask you, can I recover from bankruptcy? Yes. Can I recover from death?

Based on the above answers, which system is better for me? Pay-for-care, or Socialism?

Now let's get to why. Why is all that?

Because the amount of resources in a socialized system are static. The amount of resources in a Capitalist system are dynamic.

This is why every socialist system will start, at the very beginning, to work well. Then over time, the suck takes over.
Because as needs change, the resources to provide those needs, does not.

In a Capitalist system as more people use the ER, or any aspect of care, the amount of money going into the system changes with the number of customers.

Thus, more people get into an accident, then there is more money at the hospital, and thus you have profits from which you can.... hire more specialists, open another ER room, purchase more beds.... and so on, so that you can serve more customers.

But in a socialist system, if more people show up, that just means.... that more people show up. Doesn't matter if 1,000 people show up, you still don't have money.

Additionally you have Union contracts because these are government workers. French doctors strike constantly.
French doctors join nationwide protests, say 'ready to quit' over hospital crisis

The last doctor threatened to strike, was just last year. These happen constantly. And these Unions have generous benefits. You might remember the heat wave that hit in 2003, where you had patients inside the French hospitals, dying of heat stroke.
Unprecedented heat-related deaths during the 2003 heat wave in Paris: consequences on emergency departments

One of the several Socialist related reasons (like not having Air Conditioning), was that by Union contract, much of the Hospital staff was off on vacation in August when the heat wave hit, and of course government workers are not coming back to work during their contract negotiated vacation. (sounds a bit like government unions here).

This is why the left-wings decrying that the US spends more on health, doesn't really float with right-wing people.
Everything you see above, is why their system is cheaper. It's cheaper, because it sucks. You want cheap? You can get cheap in the US. There are vast networks of free, or low-cost clinics all across this country.

But you left-wingers never go to those places, because they suck, just like European health care generally sucks.

You want the quality of for-profit health care, but you don't want to pay for it. That's impossible. You can't have both. You either walk in, and get full treatment in a week at for-profit care, or you spend years, and die on a VA waiting list. Just like the UK had multi-year waiting lists, and Canada still has multi-year wait lists.

Those are your options. You can't have both.

 

[Godboy]

Wow. Retroactive mental retardation at CPAC. Who knew?

Your counter argument isnt compelling. Do you have anything else?

 

[2aguy]

Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom all provide universal health care.

So it isn't impossible. And none of them have turned into Venezuela.

Life expectancy USA: 78.69 years.

Life expectancy Australia: 82.50 years.

Life expectancy Canada: 82.30 years.

Life expectancy Finland: 81.78 years.

Life expectancy France: 82.27 years.

Life expectancy Germany: 80.64 years.

Life expectancy Hungary: 75.57 years.

Life expectancy Iceland: 82.47 years.

Life expectancy Israel: 82.41 years.

Life expectancy Ireland: 81.61 years.

Life expectancy the Netherlands: 81.51 years.

Life expectancy New Zealand: 81.61 years.

Life expectancy Norway: 82.51 years.

Life expectancy Portugal: 81.13 years.

Life expectancy the Slovak Republic: 76.56 years.

Life expectancy Slovenia: 80.78 years.

Life expectancy Sweden: 82.20 years.

Life expectancy Switzerland: 82.90 years.

Life expectancy United Kingdom: 80.96 years.

1)....all of those countries can spend the money they spend on their crappy, socialised medicine because the United States pays for their national defense with our money, and the sacrifice of our men and women.

2) The United States provides all of the medical innovation and all of the new drugs they ration to their people...without us, they would still be using leaches....and bleeding people....

3) All of those systems? Are failing...running out of money...

Britain....

Single-Payer in Crisis: Britain's NHS Cancels 50,000 Surgeries Amid Long Waits For Care, 'Third World' Conditions

Read every word of this story:

Every hospital in the country has been ordered to cancel all non-urgent surgery until at least February in an unprecedented step by NHS officials. The instructions on Tuesday night - which will see result in around 50,000 operations being axed - followed claims by senior doctors that patients were being treated in “third world” conditions, as hospital chief executives warned of the worst winter crisis for three decades. Hospitals are reporting growing chaos, with a spike in winter flu leaving frail patients facing 12-hour waits, and some units running out of corridor space. Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, on Tuesday ordered NHS trusts to stop taking all but the most urgent cases, closing outpatients clinics for weeks as well as cancelling around 50,000 planned operations. Trusts have also been told they can abandon efforts to house male and female patients in separate wards, in an effort to protect basic safety, as services become overwhelmed...By Tuesday night 12 NHS trusts - including two ambulance services covering almost nine million people - had declared they had reached the maximum state of emergency...

East of England Ambulance Service, also at maximum capacity, said some patients were being sent taxis to get them to hospital, with paramedics stuck in ambulances queuing at hospitals for more than 500 hours in the last four days...A number of NHS trust chief executives described the pressure as “relentless” with several on Tuesday saying they had never seen such pressure during 30 years in the health service. Dr Nick Scriven, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: "The position at the moment is as bad as I've ever known. We are simply not coping, we were at full capacity before the sorts of pressures that we should be able to manage - like a rise in flu - is pushing us over the edge. “Things are terrible now, but I am fearful the next few weeks will be horrendous."

A blanket, nationwide ban on all "non-urgent" until at least next month, with overcrowded state hospitals leaving sick and elderly patients in hallways, and treatment in some areas deteriorating to "third world" levels. Wait times for care have hit 12 hours, with ambulances forming long lines outside hospitals (hardly unprecedented over there) lasting hundreds of combined hours, forcing vulnerable citizens to travel to emergency in taxis and private vehicles, due to a chronic ambulance backlog. This is single-payer healthcare, operating in an advanced Western nation that has had their system in place for decades. A fundamentally flawed system, insufficient resources and an aging population are proving to be a recipe for disaster.

And that disaster is exactly what Bernie Sanders and a bevy of Democratic presidential hopefuls have in mind for the American people -- this, despite the stunning fiscal realities that have blocked far-left states like Vermont and Californiafrom implementing "universal healthcare" fantasies.

=========

10/26/17
Single-Payer Health Care Is A Terrible Option

What has been the response to the public outcry about unacceptable waits for care in virtually all single-payer systems? First, a growing list of European governments—including Denmark, England, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden—have issued dozens of decrees and “guarantees” of timely care with notably lax targets, even as those guarantees continue to be unmet. Second, many single-payer systems now funnel taxpayer money to private care to solve their systems’ inadequacies, just as we now do in our own VA system, and use taxpayer money for care in other countries, as codified in Section 3A of the NHS Constitution, as well. In one year alone, £901 million targeted for medical services by the UK government was used to buy care from private and other non-NHS providers, according to research by the Financial Times in March 2017.



========

Sweden...
Crisis situation at Swedish hospitals | eurotopics.net



Expressen is dismayed by the conditions in a country that calls itself a welfare state:
“Not even children are spared in this crisis. At Stockholm's new Karolinska Hospital a third of the beds are empty and one in ten of the operations on children has been cancelled this year. ... The acute problem is the shortage of nurses. It is forcing hospitals to leave beds unused. ... Never before has so much money been allocated to the healthcare system, but it is being misused. The Social Democrats in Stockholm want people to come to the polyclinics for regular health checks.
In other words completely healthy people use up resources that can barely cover the needs of the sick.
The chronic crisis is undermining trust in the politicians. The question is whether Sweden can continue calling itself a social welfare state when children are dying unnecessarily.”
--------
In Aftonbladet's view the situation is above all the result of poor decisions at the political level:

“Sweden has the fewest hospital beds per capita in Europe. So it's no wonder voters always put healthcare at the top of the list when asked what topics they see as most important. ... It's the politicians who have pushed health into the shadows. There was a time when the minister for social affairs was just as important as the finance minister. ... Then along came [the conservative government] and gave the smallest party [the Christian Democrats] the responsibility for healthcare. And this trend has continued under the Social Democrats. ... Sweden's public healthcare needs a crisis committee and a minister who can overhaul the entire system.”
=========
Britain....

NHS problems worst 'since 1990s'


Services in the NHS in England are deteriorating in a way not seen since the early 1990s, according to a leading health think tank.

The King's Fund review said waiting times for A&E, cancer care and routine operations had all started getting worse, while deficits were growing.

It said such drops in performance had not been seen for 20 years.

But the think tank acknowledged the NHS had done as well as could be expected, given the financial climate.

Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund, which specialises in health care policy, said: "The next government will inherit a health service that has run out of money and is operating at the very edge of its limits.

================



Iceland...


Iceland's Universal Healthcare (Still) On Thin Ice - The Reykjavik Grapevine

One year ago, Iceland’s lauded universal healthcare system seemed to be teetering off the edge. Doctors’ wages had stagnated after the economic crash, and following a bout of failed negotiations, they went on strike for the first time ever. While they coordinated their actions to avoid endangering patients’ lives, the doctors’ message was clear: if demands were not met, they would seek employment elsewhere.

Coupled with years of tough austerity measures, faltering morale, and an infrastructure in dire disrepair, there was not much slack to give. In an in-depth analysis, we at the Grapevine tried to figure out what, exactly, was going on, and where we were headed.
=========

New Zealand...


WHO | New Zealand cuts health spending to control costs
New Zealand cuts health spending to control costs
New Zealand’s health-care system is undergoing a series of cutbacks to reduce costs, but critics are concerned that the health of people on low incomes and in some population groups may suffer. Rebecca Lancashire reports in our series on health financing.
When Robyn Pope was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 she was told that she would have to wait two months for a mastectomy if she wanted breast reconstruction as part of her treatment in the public health system. “Two months may not seem like a long time,” says Pope, a mother of three, who lives on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand, “but a day lived knowing that you have cancer in your body is like an eternity”.

The underlying reason for the delay was a familiar one – funding. Like other countries offering universal health care, New Zealand struggles to meet the steadily growing demand for a full range of high-quality health services offered largely for free to everyone, while remaining cost efficient. In the past eight years, New Zealand’s total health expenditure has doubled to 3.6 billion New Zealand dollars (NZ$) (US$ 10 billion). In the face of economic slow down, the government is calling for reform to rein in this expenditure.

===========


Sweden


http://www.thelocal.se/20150127/swedens-health-care-is-a-shame-to-the-country



Swedish was once a health care model for the world. But that is hardly the case anymore.

This is not primarily due to the fact Sweden has become worse - rather it is the case that other countries have improved faster.

That Sweden no longer keeps up with those countries is largely due to its inability to reduce its patient waiting times, which are some of the worst in Europe, as the latest edition of the Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI) revealed in Brussels on Monday.

The 2014 EHCI also confirms other big problems within Swedish healthcare.
===============

France....

France's Health-Care System Is Going Broke

Yet France’s looming recession and a steady increase in chronic diseases including diabetes threaten to change that, says Willy Hodin, who heads Groupe PHR, an umbrella organization for 2,200 French pharmacies. The health system exceeds its budget by billions of euros each year, and in the face of rising costs, taxpayer-funded benefits such as spa treatments, which the French have long justified as preventive care, now look more like expendable luxuries.
“Reform is needed fast,” Hodin says. “The most optimistic believe this system can survive another five to six years. The less optimistic don’t think it will last more than three.”
===========

Finland...

Why is Finland’s healthcare system failing my family? | Ed Dutton

Finland’s health service has been in a parlous state for decades and it is getting worse.
According to an OECD report published in 2013, the Finnish health system is chronically underfunded. The Nordic nation of five million people spent only 7% of GDP on its public health system in 2012, compared with 8% in the UK. In 2012, the report found, 80% of the Finnish population had to wait more than two weeks to see a GP. Finland’s high taxes go on education and daycare.
Finland has more doctors per capita than the UK but, at the level of primary care, a far higher proportion of these are private than is the case in Britain. And the Finnish equivalent of the NHS is far from free at the point of use.
A GP appointment costs €16.10 (£12.52), though you pay for only the first three visits in a given year. A hospital consultation costs about €38, and you pay for each night that you spend in hospital, up to a maximum of €679. And once you get to the chemist, there is no flat fee; no belief that you shouldn’t be financially penalised for the nature of the medicine you require.
The service is not national, but municipal, meaning that poorer areas of the country tend to have a bad health service and limited access even to private GPs, who set up practices in more affluent areas.

---------

Canada....

If Universal Health Care Is The Goal, Don't Copy Canada

Amongst industrialized countries -- members of the OECD -- with universal health care, Canada has the second most expensive health care system as a share of the economy after adjusting for age. This is not necessarily a problem, however, depending on the value received for such spending. As countries become richer, citizens may choose to allocate a larger portion of their income to health care. However, such expenditures are a problem when they are not matched by value.
The most visible manifestation of Canada’s failing health care system are wait times for health care services. In 2013, Canadians, on average, faced a four and a half month wait for medically necessary treatment after referral by a general practitioner. This wait time is almost twice as long as it was in 1993 when national wait times were first measured.
--------

Long wait times in Canada have also been observed for basic diagnostic imaging technologies that Americans take for granted, which are crucial for determining the severity of a patient’s condition. In 2013, the average wait time for an MRI was over two months, while Canadians needing a CT scan waited for almost a month.

These wait times are not simply “minor inconveniences.” Patients experience physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, and lost economic productivity while waiting for treatment. One recent estimate (2013) found that the value of time lost due to medical wait times in Canada amounted to approximately $1,200 per patient.

There is also considerable evidence indicating that excessive wait times lead to poorer health outcomes and in some cases, death. Dr. Brian Day, former head of the Canadian Medical Association recently noted that “[d]elayed care often transforms an acute and potentially reversible illness or injury into a chronic, irreversible condition that involves permanent disability.”

And more on Canada...


The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care

Mountain-bike enthusiast 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.

When Aucoin appealed to an official ombudsman, the Ontario government claimed that her treatment was unproven and that she had gone to an unaccredited clinic. But the FDA in the U.S. had approved Erbitux, and her clinic was a cancer center affiliated with a prominent Catholic hospital in Buffalo. This January, the ombudsman ruled in Aucoin’s favor, awarding her the cost of treatment. 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.

And the truth.......that Canadians don't see until it is too late.....

My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way to one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute. Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.

Norway.....

Government Health Care Horror Stories from Norway

I'll admit this: if, like me, you're a self-employed person with a marginal income, the Norwegian system is, in many ways, a boon – as long as you're careful not to get anything much more serious than a cold or flu.

Doctors' visits are cheap; hospitalization is free. But you get what you pay for. There are excellent doctors in Norway – but there are also mediocrities and outright incompetents who in the U.S. would have been stripped of their licenses long ago. The fact is that while the ubiquity of frivolous malpractice lawsuits in the U.S. has been a disgrace, the inability of Norwegians to sue doctors or hospitals even in the most egregious of circumstances is even more of a disgrace.

Physicians who in the U.S. would be dragged into court are, under the Norwegian system, reported to a local board consisting of their own colleagues – who are also, not infrequently, their longtime friends.

(The government health system's own website puts it this way: if you suspect malpractice, you have the right to “ask the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision in your county to evaluate” your claims.)

As a result, doctors who should be forcibly retired, if not incarcerated, end up with a slap on the wrist. When patients are awarded financial damages, the sums – paid by the state, not the doctor – are insultingly small.
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Take the case of Peter Franks, whose doctor sent him home twice despite a tennis-ball-sized lump in his chest that was oozing blood and pus – and that turned out to be a cancer that was diagnosed too late to save his life. Apropos of Franks's case, a jurist who specializes in patients' rights lamented that the Norwegian health-care system responds to sky-high malpractice figures “with a shrug,” and the dying Franks himself pronounced last year that “the responsibility for malpractice has been pulverized in Norway,” saying that “if I could have sued the doctor, I would have. Other doctors would have read about the lawsuit in the newspaper. Then they would have taken greater care to avoid making such a mistake themselves. But doctors in Norway don't have to take responsibility for their mistakes. The state does it.” After a three-year legal struggle, Franks was awarded 2.7 million kroner by the Norwegian government – about half a million dollars.

Another aspect of Norway's guild-like health-care system is that although the country suffers from a severe deficit of doctors, nurses, and midwives, the medical establishment makes it next to impossible for highly qualified foreign members of these professions to get certified to practice in Norway. The daughter of a friend of mine got a nursing degree at the University of North Dakota in 2009 but, as reported last Friday by NRK, is working in Seattle because the Norwegian authorities in charge of these matters – who have refused to be interviewed on this subject by NRK – have stubbornly denied her a license. Why? My guess is that the answer has a lot to do with three things: competence, competition, and control. If there were a surplus of doctors and nurses instead of a shortage, the good ones would drive out the bad. Plainly, such a situation must be avoided at all costs – including the cost of human lives.

Then there's the waiting lists. At the beginning of 2012, over 281,000 patients in Norway, out of a population of five million, were awaiting treatment for some medical problem or other. Bureaucratic absurdities run rampant, as exemplified by thisAftenposten story from earlier this year:

Japan....

Medical services in Tokyo area in danger of collapsing | The Japan Times

Medical services in the Tokyo metropolitan area are facing a serious danger of collapse as hospitals affiliated with private medical universities and private universities’ medical schools, the key players in the region’s medical services, are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

These institutions, long beset by higher labor costs than in other parts of the country, have been hit hard by the increase in the consumption tax from 5 percent to 8 percent in April last year. While they now have to pay higher taxes when purchasing pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, they cannot pass that incremental cost on to patients or health insurance associations. This is because medical services are exempt from the consumption tax, so patients and health insurance associations are not required to pay it.



Not all smiles



Like other service industries in Japan, there are cumbersome rules, too many small players and few incentives to improve. Doctors are too few—one-third less than the rich-world average, relative to the population—because of state quotas. Shortages of doctors are severe in rural areas and in certain specialities, such as surgery, paediatrics and obstetrics. The latter two shortages are blamed on the country's low birth rate, but practitioners say that they really arise because income is partly determined by numbers of tests and drugs prescribed, and there are fewer of these for children and pregnant women. Doctors are worked to the bone for relatively low pay (around $125,000 a year at mid-career). One doctor in his 30s says he works more than 100 hours a week. “How can I find time to do research? Write an article? Check back on patients?” he asks.


----On the positive side, patients can nearly always see a doctor within a day. But they must often wait hours for a three-minute consultation. Complicated cases get too little attention. The Japanese are only a quarter as likely as the Americans or French to suffer a heart attack, but twice as likely to die if they do.

Some doctors see as many as 100 patients a day. Because their salaries are low, they tend to overprescribe tests and drugs. (Clinics often own their own pharmacies.) They also earn money, hotel-like, by keeping patients in bed. Simple surgery that in the West would involve no overnight stay, such as a hernia operation, entails a five-day hospital stay in Japan.

Emergency care is often poor. In lesser cities it is not uncommon for ambulances to cruise the streets calling a succession of emergency rooms to find one that can cram in a patient. In a few cases people have died because of this. One reason for a shortage of emergency care is an abundance of small clinics instead of big hospitals. Doctors prefer them because they can work less and earn more.



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http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/health-care-funding-crisis-looms-as-australias-greatest-challenge/news-story/c30ec2f120fed9ddaa7a9d84b7939d53


The states are facing a $57 billion health funding hole in the coming decade.

That means longer waiting lists for elective surgery and longer waiting times for hospital emergency care.

Queensland has estimated its $11.8 billion spending cut was equivalent to cutting 818 doctors, 2,895 nurses; and 824 health practitioners.

Victoria estimated it would lose funding for 2.9 million elective surgeries or nearly 32 million dialysis sessions.

In NSW it was estimated by 2050, the Commonwealth’s contribution to the NSW budget will have halved from 26 per cent to 13 per cent, representing a loss of $16 billion a year.