ACU_RN

I work 12 hour shifts, 7p-7a. Some days I'll stay up all day on my "day off", other times I nap a couple hours after work and then get up. Midnight shift is hard on your body. I think you age faster too. :)

A patriotic American, that is who. Next time your country comes whining to mine because it can't do something, give me a ring.

I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe God placed this land between two great oceans, wind swept and God blessed. I do care what happens to my fellow man, which is why I don't want socialized medicine. It leads to crappy care. I BELIEVE IN HEALTHCARE REFORM, DO YOU PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND THAT. Everybody knows something needs to be done, but NOT GOVERNMENT RUN MEDICINE. The government has not business in this area. Ignorant, no. Informed, yes. Unlike Obama Kool Aid drinkers, I care about my countries future.

If I quote NPR or MSNBC you'll eat it up, right?

I am amazed that people still watch MSNBC and believe the government could successfully run health care. I am amazed people still believe Barry Obama. I am amazed how progressive liberals have no clue what the constitution is, why this country was founded, or what socialism is. You blame the "talking heads" simply because those people are putting the brakes on the utopia you all are trying to create at the expense of freedom.

This is what everyone on the conservative end is talking about. We don't oppose health care reform, we simply want the government to keep its sticky paws off health care. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Bill O Reilly, all want health care reform, simply not universal government health care.

Good post, but liberals won't understand because it makes sense. Babble a little bit, make no sense and talk about raising taxes and they'll nod in agreement, scream change, and be your friend. EVERYONE KNOWS WE HAVE PROBLEMS IN OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, BUT UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE IS NOT THE ANSWER. I was educated in private school and my son goes to private school. I refused to let him attend the socialist indoctrination camps.

So your alright with a neurosurgeon who earns $400,000 per year in the state of New York being taxed $200,000? That is not right. I am not okay paying more taxes, I want less taxation. We fought a revolution over taxation. Why are wealthy people demonized? The majority have worked hard, let them keep there money. How about a flat tax? Everybody pays the same. That is fair. My father was in the hospital for four weeks, one on a med surg floor and three in ICU....he is not bankrupt. Far from it. He has private insurance and is a chemical worker. Try again.

My father in law has been to the land down under several times. As he has said, it does not compare to these United States. We are the wealthiest nation on earth. We are the beacon of freedom for all the world, the gold standard among free peoples. If I am hit by a bus in America, I will not go into bankruptcy.

The website from NPR does not count. NPR is blatantly liberal, there facts and figures are as corrupt as Hugo Chavez. The Wikipedia article proves my point so I am unsure why you posted it. We have the highest standard of living throughout the world for a reason, less taxes. Universal health care WILL mean higher taxes for the working class, 100% guaranteed. Please stop listening to NPR and MSNBC.

so when have you made enough money? how about i cap your income at say, $35,000 per year. that is more than enough to live on because i said so. do you realize how dangerous it is limiting a private corporations profit? this isn't the ussr, or do you want it to be the communist states of america?

Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits By DAVID GRATZER | Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:30 PM PT As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few. But no one will mention Claude Castonguay-perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades. Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however, should weigh heavily on how the candidates think about the issue in this country. Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec-then the largest and most affluent in the country-adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies. The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast. Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis." "We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice." Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance. In America, these ideas may not sound shocking. But in Canada, where the private sector has been shunned for decades, these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It's as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced. What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor. Years ago, Canadians touted their health care system as the best in the world; today, Canadian health care stands in ruinous shape. Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more. The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form. At death's door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better. De Vires is far from unusual in seeking medical treatment in the U.S. Even Canadian government officials send patients across the border, increasingly looking to American medicine to deal with their overload of patients and chronic shortage of care. Since the spring of 2006, Ontario's government has sent at least 164 patients to New York and Michigan for neurosurgery emergencies-defined by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain." Other provinces have followed Ontario's example. Canada isn't the only country facing a government health care crisis. Britain's system, once the postwar inspiration for many Western countries, is similarly plagued. Both countries trail the U.S. in five-year cancer survival rates, transplantation outcomes and other measures. The problem is that government bureaucrats simply can't centrally plan their way to better health care. A typical example: The Ministry of Health declared that British patients should get ER care within four hours. The result? At some hospitals, seriously ill patients are kept in ambulances for hours so as not to run afoul of the regulation; at other hospitals, patients are admitted to inappropriate wards. Declarations can't solve staffing shortages and the other rationing of care that occurs in government-run systems. Polls show Americans are desperately unhappy with their system and a government solution grows in popularity. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain is explicitly pushing for single-payer health care, as the Canadian system is known in America. "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program," Obama said back in the 1990s. Last year, Obama told the New Yorker that "if you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system probably makes sense." As for the Republicans, simply criticizing Democratic health care proposals will not suffice-it's not 1994 anymore. And, while McCain's health care proposals hold promise of putting families in charge of their health care and perhaps even taming costs, McCain, at least so far, doesn't seem terribly interested in discussing health care on the campaign trail. However the candidates choose to proceed, Americans should know that one of the founding fathers of Canada's government-run health care system has turned against his own creation. If Claude Castonguay is abandoning ship, why should Americans bother climbing on board? Gratzer is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a physician licensed in both the U.S. and Canada, where he received his medical training. His newest book, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care," is now available in paperback.

http://helpglobe.com/answers.aspx?qid=152 Notice the countries with the highest personal income taxes are those who have adopted universal health care plans. Do you really want $.50 of every dollar you earn being turned over to the government? Claude Castonguay is the architect of the Canadian health care system. He championed this system in the 1960's and now says that it is in ruins. His solution: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Comparison is between a single individual and a married couple with two children. France: 50.1% and 41.7% UK: 33.5% and 27.1% Canada: 31.6% and 21.5% and The United States of America 29.1% and 11.9% This is a comparison of taxes paid by a household earning the country's average wage as of 2005. Source is the OECD.

I've worked my 36 hours this week and picked up Thursday for overtime. I am dressed, ready to walk out the door when staffing calls. I'm told their are four CCU nurses on call and they need hours so I am being put on call. Not terribly upset, but frustrated I get out of the scrubs thinking their is no way I'll be called in tonight. Out of curiosity I call the staffing office to find out what number I am on the call list. I am told I am supposed to be there at 2300, didn't I know that? I asked who else was on call and they said nobody, I am the only one on call. I asked if CCU was full now and they said no, but I am the only one on call. Fine. 2221 they call back and say that I am on call again. Does this occur everywhere? I get $3.00 an hour for being on call and possibly time and half if I go in, but nobody knows for sure, not even staffing. I'm ready to strangle someone with my stethoscope.