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November 15, 2005
Universal Health Care
Maybe I should have titled this "Liberal myth debunked?" The other day I met a couple of RN's from Enloe while I was waiting for good ol' Arnold to arrive at the Cozy Diner for his NorCal tour.
As you might have guessed, they were all for government run healthcare and they were also very pro-union. I questioned them if they knew how the Canadian universal healthcare system work's? Neither really had any idea. I said, "The first thing you loose is your good pay and you won't be needing your union either." That gave em' pause!
I explained, in Canada it's easy enough to get small things taken care of fairly quickly like a cut, a sprain or a broken bone and that's the best part about their system. But, for serious problems, like heart disease or kidney transplant, you could be put on a long waiting list and that could be fatal.
Since the government has limited funds available they must prioritize who gets what and when. It's a case of triage by accounting and your life may be in the hands of some pencil pusher. Example, if you are over 55 and it's very serious, you could be totally written off for a major procedure because saving you doesn't make good financial sense.
By the way, Canada loses many of its top doctors to the US because salaries are so much better here. So, the medical care you may receive in Canada for "free" isn't quite the high quality you've come to expect here in the U.S. of A.
Like I said, the expenditures from taxes on healthcare are tightly controlled and major medical procedures are not always open to everyone. Those that qualify often wait months, while their situation becomes acute, lessening their chances for survival. "....Canada's system is riddled with problems, many stemming from inadequate funding. As a result, delays of several months are common before seeing a specialist or getting nonemergency surgery." Barry Brown, S.F. Chronical
Our medical system is far from perfect, but we still have the best care, best doctors and fastest service anywhere in the world. The Democrats would like to change this for a Canadian style universal healthcare system..go figure?
For more on this I suggest you read...
http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001313.html
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/14/BUGR28JFEN59.DTL
UPDATE:
Cont- Universal Health Care... one of the major problems, as I see it, are those people who make too much to be on Medical and too little to afford health insurance and too young for Medicare. They are in this limbo area.
Low income families who fall into this gap do have an option, California has a limited insurance plan for them (see http://www.medi-cal.ca.gov/), but, if it's a single person or a married couple without a child, no help.
If we were going to do a reasonable fix for health care right now with something we could handle without breaking the bank, we ought to find a way to include those people in this uninsured gap. Their numbers are rising and sooner or later we are going to have to deal with it. According to the Census Bureau's findings that the number of uninsured Americans rose to 43.6 million during 2002.
That high number makes me suspicious, because many of those people who are technically uninsured would qualify for some sort of subsidized health care, if they applied for it. Many simply don't. I know from personal experience the hospital Emergency Room is often the first place where a new patient finally gets around to filling out a request for subsidized assistance so the hospital can get paid. However, even if the patient refuses to cooperate and they have no money, Congress mandates the hospital must provide service anyway. Unfortunately, they don't mandate the patient must pay or provide the hospital with ways they can effectively collect on such debts.
"A study made by the U.S.- Mexico Border Counties Coalition, an American lobbying group, found that U.S. hospitals in border states provide at least $200 million a year in uncompensated emergency care to illegal aliens. In the four border states, 77 hospitals now face a medical emergency." Our brilliant solution, take 200,000,000 from the taxpayers and pay those border hospitals...yep, you are now funding treatment for illegals!
Aren't you glad you have ever informative column?
For more information on this subject I suggest you read...
http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2003/feb03/psrfeb03.shtml
Posted by Post Scripts at November 15, 2005 09:31 AM
Comments
Paramount to the problem of healthcare availability is that it is actually too available. I know this is a strange concept but it's true, allow me a moment to explain.
Medical care is the only service industry that has federal mandates on who it must serve. Who it serves is, of course, everyone. A person with a medical emergency must be treated by a qualified medical provider lest that provider, be it a hospital, doctors office, clinic, or medically trained person taking their wife to dinner, be charged with the crime of neglect, which is punishable by fines, prison time, and loss of licensure. So, what qualifies as an Emergent medical condition? Well, it's whatever the patient states is an emergency. For instance, if my hangnail is a medical emergency to me and I walk into a doctors office to be treated then he or she must treat me or at least refer me to someone who can, ie the Emergency Department. Granted a hangnail is nowhere near the medical emergency as, say, having your arm severed at the shoulder, but there is no differentiation according to the government.
So, as people without insurance, without jobs, without and responsibility for their actions proliferate they use the local ER as their clinic. Daily people flock to the ER because they have "a cold", "an ache", "just don't feel good", "normally feel bad and now feel pretty decent and want to know why", and other rediculous complaints. I put these complaints in quotes because they're complaints I've actually heard in my years as an Emergency Medical Provider. Think I'm kidding, hang out at the Triage Desk at Enloe for a day and listen to the complaints that come in. You'll be shocked at where your tax money goes. And why shouldn't these people come in for their rediculous complaints? It doesn't cost them a dime.
Posted by: Jordan Frazer at November 17, 2005 02:30 AM