[GeekyRN]

[quote=Gromit;2147059]well, I'm not a business man, and I'm certainly not 'well off', but I do beg to differ. MY care has been second to none. I'm certainly (obviously) happy with it, and have no desire to mess with socialized care.
I've met far too many Canadian nurses who (for whatever reason) don't seem to concur with your post. In fact, too many of them have been pretty blunt with "if you guys go with socialized healthcare, you deserve what you get".]

1. Well, first of all if you think the Canadian system is "socialized" you either don't know the definition of socialism or you don't know what you're talking about. Or both.

It's not. While i's a single payer system (normally by the province, not the federal government) the healthcare system is entirely run by private Doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. The government owns/manages none of it. The government just writes the check (well part of it) for people who use it from their taxes. With that single-payer system comes efficiencies, a greatly reduced burden in filing claims, such that there's actually far more healthcare professionals than bureacrats in the Canadian hospitals than in the USA, which makes me somewhat suspicious of your claims.

2. As for all the allegedy nurses you know trash-talking the system, where are they? Where all all the zillions of Canadians unhappy with the system folks who sound just like you would have us believe? Nobody can ever find them.

Considering not even Canada's current rightwing govenrment would DARE try to change the healthcare system and model it after this shipwreck in the US, obviously nobody's grossly unhappy with it. (exception for billionaires that don't want to pay taxes and can afford to pay for their own bypass with loose cash). Canadians know our system stinks. (note I said our system, NOT our healthcare, big difference).

3. As I noted, I , much of my family has lived and used the Canadian system (and ours in the USA) for years and noted no large difference in quality. The real difference is for regular people that you won't go bankrupt in CA getting a bypass or if (God forbid) someone develops a terminal illness.

But somehow I am sure none of these things matter to the idealogues. Somebody on am radio told them it was "socialistic" and "bad", so that's that. Just like they don't bother to note that Americans actually pay MORE per capita for healthcare than Canadians do (yet somehow almost appro 70 million still don't have insurance). Nor have they bothered to compare annual medical error rates between the various sytems, nor anything else that would make sense if one were trying to actually scientifically compare the systems in an intelligent matter.

Sorry, if I'm on a roll by the way. It's just with approx 70 million uninsured Americans and rising, and the costs of the system banrkupting the country, it just ****** me off that people STILL want to play the same old knee-jerk politics.

Whereas the SANE thing to do is abandon all commitment to ideology, take a look arond the world at what works well where, who does what well, and so forth, and incorporate the best of ideas, no matter where they lay on the political spectrum.

[lorita]

While i've never met or worked with a cannadian nurse. I've met many canadian pt 's when I was working in michigan near a college that had many canadian students. they would often metion their health care and how they never had to worry and on and on kind of made me jealous to tell you the truth. they were very happy and not all of them were young kids some were families as they had family housing at the college. It was a religous college in westen MI and interestingly enough very republican.

[HM2Viking]

[quote=GeekyRN;2147982]

Originally Posted by Gromit

well, I'm not a business man, and I'm certainly not 'well off', but I do beg to differ. MY care has been second to none. I'm certainly (obviously) happy with it, and have no desire to mess with socialized care.
I've met far too many Canadian nurses who (for whatever reason) don't seem to concur with your post. In fact, too many of them have been pretty blunt with "if you guys go with socialized healthcare, you deserve what you get".]

1. Well, first of all if you think the Canadian system is "socialized" you either don't know the definition of socialism or you don't know what you're talking about. Or both.

It's not. While i's a single payer system (normally by the province, not the federal government) the healthcare system is entirely run by private Doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. The government owns/manages none of it. The government just writes the check (well part of it) for people who use it from their taxes. With that single-payer system comes efficiencies, a greatly reduced burden in filing claims, such that there's actually far more healthcare professionals than bureacrats in the Canadian hospitals than in the USA, which makes me somewhat suspicious of your claims.

2. As for all the allegedy nurses you know trash-talking the system, where are they? Where all all the zillions of Canadians unhappy with the system folks who sound just like you would have us believe? Nobody can ever find them.

Considering not even Canada's current rightwing govenrment would DARE try to change the healthcare system and model it after this shipwreck in the US, obviously nobody's grossly unhappy with it. (exception for billionaires that don't want to pay taxes and can afford to pay for their own bypass with loose cash). Canadians know our system stinks. (note I said our system, NOT our healthcare, big difference).

3. As I noted, I , much of my family has lived and used the Canadian system (and ours in the USA) for years and noted no large difference in quality. The real difference is for regular people that you won't go bankrupt in CA getting a bypass or if (God forbid) someone develops a terminal illness.

But somehow I am sure none of these things matter to the idealogues. Somebody on am radio told them it was "socialistic" and "bad", so that's that. Just like they don't bother to note that Americans actually pay MORE per capita for healthcare than Canadians do (yet somehow almost appro 70 million still don't have insurance). Nor have they bothered to compare annual medical error rates between the various sytems, nor anything else that would make sense if one were trying to actually scientifically compare the systems in an intelligent matter.

Sorry, if I'm on a roll by the way. It's just with approx 70 million uninsured Americans and rising, and the costs of the system banrkupting the country, it just ****** me off that people STILL want to play the same old knee-jerk politics.

Whereas the SANE thing to do is abandon all commitment to ideology, take a look arond the world at what works well where, who does what well, and so forth, and incorporate the best of ideas, no matter where they lay on the political spectrum.

THANK YOU

[GeekyRN]

Originally Posted by rngreenhorn

Well, I'm "Joe Blow" not Joe billionare... actually that would be "Joelene Blow" and I can't help wonder how much "better off" I will be when my wages go down, and I no longer have any choice in my health care should our citizen vote in single payer health care. Last I checked, the US has the highest paid nurses. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that we have private health care. So, I'll be making less and paying more in taxes.... doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

But, I agree with you, employers should not be providing health care.

My wages didn't go down when I worked in Canada, and my US dollars went further (back then, not true today). And how do you figure that Canadians don't have choice in their healthcare? As I said Canada is NOT socialized healthcare despite the delusions of many a knee-jerk (or person with an agenda) Also - I would argue that someone on an HMO is more limited and a PPO as limited in choices.

What is your cite that US nurses are paid in real dollars? Why do you believe the same market system that is driving nursing salaries here doesn't do the same everywhere else?
Also what you really have to look at is the cost of living compared to wages. I don't even know many nurses that have companies that give pensions and health care plans in retirement - do they think we don' need them? Well, in Canada you have both.

Plus last I looked the hospitals and varous business interests are doing all they can to bring our wages down for nurses in the USA in the form of trying to break the limited unions that exist, destroy the indepence of the state board of nursing (aka who can do what tasks on the floor of a hospital, patient-to-nurse ratios) and bringing in zillions of foreign nurses on visas on what is largely a manufactured nursing shortage.

[GeekyRN]

Lolita;

Made me jealous too this January when I got a crash course in patient perspective for the first time in my life ( stomach ache to ER to admit, to 15000 dollar bill for a 5 day journey).

If a conservative is a liberal who got mugged, a Democrat is a Republican whose job got offshored.

Regardless though, our healthcare problems are NOT going to exempt anyone by party affiliation when their number is called, but some boys and girls are just going to have to learn that the hard way.

[GeekyRN]

Originally Posted by KellNY

HM2-Are you married? LOVE your threads and posts.

Don't blame you.

[HM2Viking]

On November 19, 1945, only 7 months into his presidency, Harry S. Truman gave a speech to the United States Congress proposing a new national health care program. In his speech, Truman argued that the federal government should play a role in health care, saying "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility." One of the chief aims of President Truman's plan was to insure that all communities, regardless of their size or income level, had access to doctors and hospitals. The statistics in Harry S. Truman's speech demonstrated the urgent need for such measures: "About 1,200 counties, 40 percent of the total in the country, with some 15,000,000 people, have either no local hospital, or none that meets even the minimum standards of national professional associations. " President Truman's plan was to improve the state of health care in the United States by addressing five seperate issues. The first issue was the lack of doctors, dentists, nurses, and other health professionals in many rural or otherwise lower-income areas of the United States. Harry S. Truman saw that "the earning capacity of the people in some communities makes it difficult if not impossible for doctors who practice there to make a living." He proposed to attract doctors to the areas that needed them with federal funding. The second problem that Truman aimed to correct was the lack of quality hospitals in rural and lower-income counties. President Truman proposed to provide government funds for the construction of new hospitals accross the country. To insure only quality hospitals were built, the plan also called for the creation of national standards for hospitals and other health centers. Harry S. Truman's third iniative was closely tied to the first two. It called for a board of doctors and public officials to be created. This board would create standards for hospitals and ensure that new hospitals met these standards. The board would also be responsible for directing federal funds into medical research.

The most controversial aspect of the plan was the proposed national health insurance plan. In the November 19th address, President Truman called for the creation of a national health insurance fund, to be run by the federal government. This fund would be open to all Americans, but would remain optional. Participants would pay monthly fees into the plan, which would cover the cost of any and all medical expenses that arose in a time of need. The government would pay for the cost of services rendered by any doctor who chose to join the program. In addition, the insurance plan would give a cash balance to the policy holder to replace wages lost due to illness or injury.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniver...lthprogram.htm
President Truman was in favor of National Health Care.......

[Gromit]

Originally Posted by GeekyRN

Plus last I looked the hospitals and varous business interests are doing all they can to bring our wages down for nurses in the USA in the form of trying to break the limited unions that exist, destroy the indepence of the state board of nursing (aka who can do what tasks on the floor of a hospital, patient-to-nurse ratios) and bringing in zillions of foreign nurses on visas on what is largely a manufactured nursing shortage.

Hmm. Guess I'm not the only one guilty of blindly making a generalization. What you're saying is certainly NOT true of all facilities. Sorry.

[GeekyRN]

Originally Posted by ZASHAGALKA

I don't doubt that, at all.

You just won't GET what you want by the means of gov't. I don't doubt your veracity, simply your means.

Free markets have given the most people the most opportunity to move up in the world. Period.

I'm not against your proposed safety nets nearly so much as I'm opposed to the cost you intend to impose on ME to achieve it. I'm not talking about increased taxes, which are bad enough, but decreased care and decreased access to care.

If this were merely a discussion about 'safety nets', it would be a different discussion. Instead, this is about creating a socialist utopia. Such a beast doesn't exist. It never has. It never will.

I'm not opposed to your goals, per se. I'm staunchly opposed to your means because they WILL NOT WORK. And I don't intend to have that proven on the backs of yet another failed socialist system, a system that gov't stormtroopers require me to take part in.

If your utopia is so grand, then why do you need the full and coercive force of government to make it so? Why is because, in order to bring it about, you intend to take away from the many in order to give to the few. And you don't intend to take away a little. You intend to take everything away but what Uncle Daddy will allow us to keep.

Uncle Daddy doesn't have the RIGHT to make such determinations. And, neither does anybody else. I am a free man, with God given natural rights that not incidentally, are protected by the Constitution.

.

this is the kind of emotional rhetoric that has gotten us in the quagmires we are in, in my opinion.

1. Once again, the guvment does not "run" Canada's healthcare and the markets are in fact perfectly private.
2. Taxes in the USA are as high or higher than they are in Canada on working people. (go on ,tally up your fed income tax, state income tax, fica, local, property, fuel taxes, sales taxes, etc ad nauseum) and try to argue otherwise.

The diff is as I see it in Canada you r getting something BACK for your tax dollars. In the USA nurses and truckdrivers pay higher taxe rates than billionaires and way too many of us still won't be able to afford to retire.

Why so many of them feel more inclined to fight for the likes of Steve Forbes, the Walmart heirs and Paris Hilton's "right" to a tax-free life of loafing than they do for their own survival is a mystery that I will just never figure out.

[Gromit]

Wow, I don't know what koolaid you've been drinking, but if you honestly think nurses and truckers pay more in taxes than billionairs, then you really should considder an economics class or at least some classes in basic math. Either that, or give up trying to reference move-onDOTorgs' talking points, because reality doesn't jive with it. No, not even slightly.
In fact, that kind of 'lack of reality' thinking is kind of tarnishing your talking points. You claim that Canadas' healthcare is actually run by private entities, yet in the same paragraph you gush about how their government is paying the tab. If government (and lets be a little more clear here, your taxes are paying it) is paying it, then government is dictating it. No two ways about it.