Oh For F#cks Sake!

[2aguy]

I am interested to see what finally takes shape. I would suggest a splitting of the Bill; repeal first and then f##k knows.

Greg

Here's the problem, many of the moderate Pubs are looking towards reelection in states that are fairly split. If they repeal one of the favorite aspects of the ACA, expanded Medicaid, they know the chances of losing are high.

In all seriousness, here's why the Republicans are having problems repealing Obamacare.

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump

The truth is, many Trump voters don't want Obamacare repealed. They want it repaired.

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

 

[Ringel05]

Here's the problem, many of the moderate Pubs are looking towards reelection in states that are fairly split. If they repeal one of the favorite aspects of the ACA, expanded Medicaid, they know the chances of losing are high.

In all seriousness, here's why the Republicans are having problems repealing Obamacare.

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump

The truth is, many Trump voters don't want Obamacare repealed. They want it repaired.

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

You guys? Typical hack retort........

 

[2aguy]

In all seriousness, here's why the Republicans are having problems repealing Obamacare.

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump

The truth is, many Trump voters don't want Obamacare repealed. They want it repaired.

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

You guys? Typical hack retort........

You guys own obamacare....have fun in the next few months......

 

[cwise76]

It's amazing how fucking incompetent the Republicans are.

For seven years, they screamed "Repeal Obamacare!"

Yet, once they gained control of the House, the Senate AND the Presidency, they couldn't do it!

Un-fucking-believable.

Say what? I didn't think you went for political rhetoric...... Oh well.

Toro does not go for political Hetero's. Its a bit different.

Who you going to blame now, 214?

You rubes control everything.

And still, you are so incompetent, you couldn't do what you rubes promised for seven years.

There is a DNC infection inside the GOP and we have known about even BEFORE the election. As with many infections there ARE cures. 2014 was the first shot and 2016 the second. The final is 2018 when we RETARD the infection back to PRE existence.

When all else fails blame the DNC.. What a joke.

 

[Ringel05]

It's amazing how fucking incompetent the Republicans are.

For seven years, they screamed "Repeal Obamacare!"

Yet, once they gained control of the House, the Senate AND the Presidency, they couldn't do it!

Un-fucking-believable.

Say what? I didn't think you went for political rhetoric...... Oh well.

Toro does not go for political Hetero's. Its a bit different.

Who you going to blame now, 214?

You rubes control everything.

And still, you are so incompetent, you couldn't do what you rubes promised for seven years.

There is a DNC infection inside the GOP and we have known about even BEFORE the election. As with many infections there ARE cures. 2014 was the first shot and 2016 the second. The final is 2018 when we RETARD the infection back to PRE existence.

When all else fails blame the DNC.. What a joke.

When all else fails each side blames the other...... Welcome to the reality of politics......

 

[Ringel05]

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

You guys? Typical hack retort........

You guys own obamacare....have fun in the next few months......

There you go again...... You must love those red blinders.

 

[Old Rocks]

Here's the problem, many of the moderate Pubs are looking towards reelection in states that are fairly split. If they repeal one of the favorite aspects of the ACA, expanded Medicaid, they know the chances of losing are high.

In all seriousness, here's why the Republicans are having problems repealing Obamacare.

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump

The truth is, many Trump voters don't want Obamacare repealed. They want it repaired.

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

 

[DarkFury]

It's amazing how fucking incompetent the Republicans are.

For seven years, they screamed "Repeal Obamacare!"

Yet, once they gained control of the House, the Senate AND the Presidency, they couldn't do it!

Un-fucking-believable.

Say what? I didn't think you went for political rhetoric...... Oh well.

Toro does not go for political Hetero's. Its a bit different.

Who you going to blame now, 214?

You rubes control everything.

And still, you are so incompetent, you couldn't do what you rubes promised for seven years.

There is a DNC infection inside the GOP and we have known about even BEFORE the election. As with many infections there ARE cures. 2014 was the first shot and 2016 the second. The final is 2018 when we RETARD the infection back to PRE existence.

When all else fails blame the DNC.. What a joke.

I think the DNC has gone well beyond just being a joke. They are terrorists and Treasonous.

 

[2aguy]

In all seriousness, here's why the Republicans are having problems repealing Obamacare.

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump

The truth is, many Trump voters don't want Obamacare repealed. They want it repaired.

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

Dumb ass....your plan is going to go away...that is the whole point to obamacare..........it was created to destroy the private healthcare industry........and you actually think you are going to escape that......?

 

[Old Rocks]

Say what? I didn't think you went for political rhetoric...... Oh well.

Toro does not go for political Hetero's. Its a bit different.

Who you going to blame now, 214?

You rubes control everything.

And still, you are so incompetent, you couldn't do what you rubes promised for seven years.

There is a DNC infection inside the GOP and we have known about even BEFORE the election. As with many infections there ARE cures. 2014 was the first shot and 2016 the second. The final is 2018 when we RETARD the infection back to PRE existence.

When all else fails blame the DNC.. What a joke.

I think the DNC has gone well beyond just being a joke. They are terrorists and Treasonous.

Not at all into hyperbole are you?

 

[Old Rocks]

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

Dumb ass....your plan is going to go away...that is the whole point to obamacare..........it was created to destroy the private healthcare industry........and you actually think you are going to escape that......?

I hope not. It would be good to see my nation have a real health care system in my lifetime.

 

[BuckToothMoron]

How's that Obamacare repeal going, 214?

The problem with the repeal bill is that members of congress actually read it before they were asked to vote. Too bad Nasty Puklosi didn't let house members read BOcare before they were told to vote for it.

 

[2aguy]

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

Dumb ass....your plan is going to go away...that is the whole point to obamacare..........it was created to destroy the private healthcare industry........and you actually think you are going to escape that......?

I hope not. It would be good to see my nation have a real health care system in my lifetime.

And you don't understand .....the social welfare countries...all of their healthcare systems are collapsing.........

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


'Sweden's healthcare is an embarrassment'



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.
------------

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.

 

[DarkFury]

Toro does not go for political Hetero's. Its a bit different.

Who you going to blame now, 214?

You rubes control everything.

And still, you are so incompetent, you couldn't do what you rubes promised for seven years.

There is a DNC infection inside the GOP and we have known about even BEFORE the election. As with many infections there ARE cures. 2014 was the first shot and 2016 the second. The final is 2018 when we RETARD the infection back to PRE existence.

When all else fails blame the DNC.. What a joke.

I think the DNC has gone well beyond just being a joke. They are terrorists and Treasonous.

Not at all into hyperbole are you?

I say what I think. I also SUPPORT the idea of exterminating ALL the democrats. It is NOT sexist or racist or genderist .

 

[Old Rocks]

LOL The assholes stated that this was phase one of their plans, and that when we saw phase two, we would be delighted. LOL They asked us to buy a pig in a poke, and what was sticking out of that poke looked pretty bad.

 

[Old Rocks]

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

Dumb ass....your plan is going to go away...that is the whole point to obamacare..........it was created to destroy the private healthcare industry........and you actually think you are going to escape that......?

I hope not. It would be good to see my nation have a real health care system in my lifetime.

And you don't understand .....the social welfare countries...all of their healthcare systems are collapsing.........

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


'Sweden's healthcare is an embarrassment'



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.
------------

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.

So your rightwingnut sites hate universal single payer systems, and are willing to lie about them. What the hell else is new?

 

[2aguy]

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

Dumb ass....your plan is going to go away...that is the whole point to obamacare..........it was created to destroy the private healthcare industry........and you actually think you are going to escape that......?

I hope not. It would be good to see my nation have a real health care system in my lifetime.

And you don't understand .....the social welfare countries...all of their healthcare systems are collapsing.........

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


'Sweden's healthcare is an embarrassment'



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.
------------

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.

So your rightwingnut sites hate universal single payer systems, and are willing to lie about them. What the hell else is new?

Moron....those links are from the local news organizations......keep lying to yourself.....it will be a long 8 years for you....

 

[gtopa1]

I am interested to see what finally takes shape. I would suggest a splitting of the Bill; repeal first and then f##k knows.

Greg

Here's the problem, many of the moderate Pubs are looking towards reelection in states that are fairly split. If they repeal one of the favorite aspects of the ACA, expanded Medicaid, they know the chances of losing are high.

In all seriousness, here's why the Republicans are having problems repealing Obamacare.

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump

The truth is, many Trump voters don't want Obamacare repealed. They want it repaired.

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

I prefer to think that the polls are "funny".

Greg

 

[gtopa1]

In all seriousness, here's why the Republicans are having problems repealing Obamacare.

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump

The truth is, many Trump voters don't want Obamacare repealed. They want it repaired.

Duh, I know but the two most liked aspects of the ACA were the ban on preexisting and expanded Medicaid, they want the rest fixed.

Fixed, not terminated.

Yeah I know. The funny thing is all the polls which were once constantly negative towards ObamaCare are now heading towards the positive side. Voters are funny......

Yeah...math doesn't care....obamacare can't work...it is going to fail...and no matter what the fake polls say, real people are going to see their premiums go up...and they won't be able to access actual medical care because the deductibles are up to 7,500 dollars.........and you guys own it....

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

So if it is a UNIVERSAL system shouldn't EVERYBODY pay the same?

Greg

 

[Old Rocks]

Well, dumb ass, if I have a health care emergency, $7500 will not bankrupt me. And under the present plan that I will subscribe to when I retire, the deductible will not be that high.

The ACA is the best we have had so far. Far, very far, from perfect. But it can be repaired, and it does not do the damage that the proposed,and rejected, AHCA would have done.

Dumb ass....your plan is going to go away...that is the whole point to obamacare..........it was created to destroy the private healthcare industry........and you actually think you are going to escape that......?

I hope not. It would be good to see my nation have a real health care system in my lifetime.

And you don't understand .....the social welfare countries...all of their healthcare systems are collapsing.........

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


'Sweden's healthcare is an embarrassment'



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.
------------

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.

So your rightwingnut sites hate universal single payer systems, and are willing to lie about them. What the hell else is new?

Moron....those links are from the local news organizations......keep lying to yourself.....it will be a long 8 years for you....

Like the orange clown, you lie stupidly. The Front Page Mag is a far right wingnut site.

Government Health Care Horror Stories from Norway