Canada's healthcare saved her; Ours won't cover her

Wow, should everyone be poor in this country? Should we all strive to the lowest common denominator?

Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth and socialism is the equal distribution of misery.

Those darned miserable Swedes and Dutch and their socialized healthcare.

Preventative health care savings another myth perpretated by the left.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/358/7/661

http://www.businessinsider.com/more-...-a-myth-2009-3

http://www.factspluslogic.com/articl...e-health-costs

http://www.heartland.org/publication..._Benefits.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/he...essa.html?_r=1

Let me throw in 20 million low skilled minimally educated illegal mexicans into their country and then tell me how great their benefits are.

http://www.establishingabroad.com/Bazment/1423.aspx

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA555...alth_Care.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...t-swedens-way/

My husbands three younger brothers died of cardiovascular disease.
Two mIs and a second CVA.

The difference, I believe, is that my DH had been taking medication for his hypertension since he was 41. He is now twice that age.

His brothers didn't even know they were hypertensive.
And one didn't understand the need for his meds even after he was started on one saying, "I feel OK."

I think basic simple office visits have kept him healthy.
Oh - I also think an NP may have taken more time for my BIL than the HMO MD did.

NEITHER!

A very interesting and thought provoking post...

I have to disagree on a few grounds. The goods you listed are provided either because they would not be provided by the market or because they are best done by gov't due to the ease of enforcement and magnitude of undertaking.

First Fire, law, and infrastructure are "public goods" that would otherwise not be provided by the market. These so called "market failures" need to either be provided by the Gov't or by assurance contracts otherwise they will not be provided. This is actually an ideal role for gov't. Wikipedia public goods if you are interested in more.
You could make the argument, at least for law inforcement that they are needed to maintain order and protect personal liberties. As for infrastructure you could argue that a good infrastructure is needed for proper commerce and so providing these things is best for the common welfare.

Regulation of food and drug safety differ from health care on a few levels. First no other private organization would be able to enforce strict drug or food safety restrictions like the Gov't can. It would be wholly ineffective without the law, judicial system and the enforcement system already in place.
Second, this is a clear instance when the gov't is providing for the common welfare, rather than the individual. Everyone eats a variety of foods/takes drugs and thus regulations affect all. Not everyone needs health care at any given instance. Providing Mrs Smiths BP meds does not affect me or you. Knowing you wont get botulism from the grocery store garbanzo beans does.

With regards to education I dont really have a strong argument. You could say that a more educated populace is better able to control their gov't and make informed decisions in an election-that without it our gov't would crumble. Kinda weak I think - but I do feel it is necessary.

With health care the gov't is not providing for the common welfare, but rather the individual's welfare. You could say that by controlling infections they are providing for common welfare but this is a very weak argument. You could argue that there is a lot of productivity lost from healthcare losses, but again, quite a weak argument, especially when you consider the taxes needed to hoist a national health plan of this magnitude.

If the gov't could come up with a nationalized plan that did these things I would be on board:
1) Provide the same standard of care (or better than currently)
2) Create a more cost effective system
3) Reward primary care and prevention but not at the expense of valuable specialty procedures
4) Not create long wait times- average wait for MRI in Canada 10.2 weeks
5) Insure everyone
6) Not cut physicians pay- as an aside, if physicians pay goes down, everyone's pay will go down, in proportion
7) have some sort of pressure system like higher co-pays for poor lifestyle behaviors (smoking, voluntary poor compliance, drug use, sedentary lifestyle/morbid obesity)
8) Be well run unlike pretty much every other gov't run system

Unfortunately 1 competes with 2, 4 and 5. 2 competes with 3 and 6. America wants to have its cake and eat it too. If this goes through expect a poorly devised system.

Cute, CRNA2007. Even though there could be that many illegal aliens here, they're not all stupid. I've known many who became literate while here, got educations, became self sustaining, and are a credit to this country, as are some of their children and grandchildren.

THEY are not the lowest denominator, it's those who believe that all immigrants stay as they were the day they arrived, and perpetuate untruths who are the lowest denomenator. Granted there have been big problems, as there were when Italians, Irish, Polish, Greek, and Russian immigrants, along with others, came through Ellis Island. Let's not encourage the re-creation of, "You're different, I hate you"!

I've worked among Hispanic people many years, and found that those who remained true to their culture have presented less problems than the newer generations, who fell victim to our drug and gang cultures. There are more problems with the drugs in their countries, due to viscious cartels.

As far as equal distribution of anything - it hasn't happened yet, and it's unlikely that it ever will...... The misery is caused by dictatorships exerting their own will over others. In Russia, the communist revolution wasn't about equality. It was about getting even with those who held power and wealth previously. Then, as victims do, the people became victims of their "liberators" who wouldn't even let them leave the country if/when they wished. There is a movie about modern life in East Berlin/Germany that epitomizes the constrictions there. It's a foreign German film called "The Lives of Others", well worth watching.

By the way, no one is miserable in Canada, unless they aren't assertive about their health needs, or earn less than their needs dictate and have too much pride to apply for financial aid. My friends and family members there, from B.C. to the Maritimes have no complaints about their medical care, they have prevented most of the diseases we Americans have by the millions, and are mostly compliant about taking their meds, as they're free! I've had to choose to pay for the ones I need most, for which I had money. They follow prescribed diets, take illness seriously for the most part because they receive enough information about their disease to make those decisions for themselves (especially diabetics); and they have much lower morbidity and mortality stats than we do............. and theirs is a capitalist system - with few heads of industry on the take, at the expense of others!
If that occurs, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (equivalent, but far superior to our FBI) quickly figure out what's going on, as the tolerance (obeisence) of crooks is zip.

The difference between preventive health programs here, and in Canada, is that the desire to be healthy isn't fostered by teachers at school, here. Lip service is given good health practises, here, but the caring factor is left out. When a child has been ill and returns to school, does anyone say, "I'm so glad you're back, I missed you. Don't get sick again, eat apples".

Here, it's the YOU WILL DO THIS BECAUSE I SAY SO factor, which isn't heard, because students aren't listening by the time they have those facts flung at them, with the implication that they're hopeless kids who won't take care of themselves, anyway. It's a predictor that is self fulfilling - like the one a politician says in his campaign spots on TV, "You know how many prisoners there'll be by looking at kids in the 3 rd grade". So of course nothing is done about that, unless he becomes the Governor - and probably not even then.......

It would be better if those articles you've flung there, had an analysis of the type of teachers/approaches, types of visual aids and how they're presented, and emotion that gets students and the public's attention.

I'm a public health nurse, and have watched untold numbers of others' presentations about healthy living. The goal is to present X amount of material in X amount of time to as many people as possible. There is no consideration of the material matching learning skills (different than smart and dumb), readiness/interest for the information, or self esteem of the listeners, which has a lot to do with their willingness to live less complicated lives. A good teacher assesses his/her students, creates imagery to perk up their desire to know more, asks throughout the presentation if they got it, want to know more, or think they'll use the information. Visual aids need to be used only after the teacher views them, knows when they get dull (encouraging sleep), and if they achieve the goals desired (as evidenced by enhanced immediate and later recall of the material.

Somehow in this land of many superior minds, the goal of health education is always what it achieves for the presenter, not if it meets examined needs of those attending, with the added benefit of achieving absorption of the material and ability to use it! None of that was shown in the sources of information given, although presumably credible. All the tests given students these days to determine what has been learned, yield abysmal results if compared with that in other literate countries. Employers despair about the abilities of high school graduates who work for them these days. The evidence is everywhere that learning isn't happening, among the bulk of students! What has happened is that, rather than learning the material taught, the students have learned to "work the system".

Have you ever watched Jay Leno doing his "Jay-walking" stuff? He doesn't purposely go for the most unintelligent looking folks, he goes for anyone who isn't afraid to talk into a mike. He asks questions that is on most elementary school curricula, and gets the most extraordinary ignorant responses! My favorite is how many young people think President Lincoln was our first President..... Then he'll do everything, including give the answer, and they still get it wrong. Now you coukld say that's because they're nervous, but that doesn't jam the brains of what they already know, it's that they never learned it sufficiently to recall the information they read and were taught!

So do Canadians function better? From the things I've seen my nephews and their children accomplish, I have to say they do learn more. One of the things that causes that, is that final exams cover all the facts taught for all the previous years they attended school, and they WANT TO DO WELL, not only to please teachers and parents, but mostly for themselves! Now when I was a student there in high school, I was different, from a highly dysfunctional family. If a teacher betrayed his/her profession, by teaching badly, as if they didn't care if anyone learned a thing, I wanted to show them up by getting the lowest grade in their subject I could, just to expose how bad they were! Well, guess who was shown up. I suppose I was the exception, not the rule.

It took nursing school to separate the me who could achieve good grades, because I very much wanted to really know the material, from the underachiever/victim of faulty parents. Being a nurse was so important for me that I overcame my anger (well, not completely, as you can see in my posts), and gave in to my caring self. I got the highest grades ever achieved in my licensing exams. It was due in greatest part to my supportive teachers who told me I was bright (no one had said that about me, before that).