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TenBagger United States. Jun 11 2009 21:14. Posts 2018 | | |
There was an Op-Ed piece today by one of my favorite journalists, Nicolas Kristof of the NYTimes. He is one of the fiercest advocates for human rights and I respect him greatly. He wrote the following piece about health care:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/opinion/11kristof.html?_r=1&em
"This Time, We Won’t Scare"
Perhaps you’ve seen those television commercials denouncing health care reform as a plot to create a Canadian-style totalitarian nightmare, and you feel a wee bit scared.
Back in the election campaign, some people spread rumors that Barack Obama might be a secret Muslim conspiring to impose Sharia law on us. That seems unlikely now, but what if he’s a covert Canadian plotting to impose ... health care?
Rick Scott, a former hospital company chief executive, leads a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. He was forced to resign as C.E.O. after his company defrauded the government through overbilling and is now spending his time trying to block meaningful health care reform by terrifying us with commercials of “real-life stories of the victims of government-run health care.”
So here’s a far more representative “real-life story.”
Diane Tucker, 59, is an American lawyer who moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 2006. Like everyone else there, she now pays the equivalent of just $49 a month for health care.
Then one day two years ago, Ms. Tucker was working on her office computer when she noticed that she was having trouble typing with her right hand.
“I realized my hand was numb, so I tried to stand up to shake it out,” she remembered. “But I had trouble standing.”
A colleague called 911, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital.
“An emergency room doctor met me at the door, and they took me straight upstairs to the CT scan,” she recalled. A neurologist explained that she had suffered a stroke.
Ms. Tucker spent a week at the hospital. “The doctors were great, although there were also a couple of jerks,” she said. “The nursing staff was wonderful.”
Still, there were two patients to a room, and conditions weren’t as opulent as at some American hospitals. “The food was horrible,” she said.
Then again, the price was right. “They never spoke to me about money,” she said. “Not when I checked in, and not when I left.”
Scaremongers emphasize the waits for specialists in Canada, and there’s some truth to the stories. After the stroke, Ms. Tucker needed to make a routine appointment with a neurologist and an ophthalmologist to see if she should drive again. Initially, those appointments would have meant a two- or three-month wait, although in the end she managed to arrange them more quickly.
Ms. Tucker underwent three months of rehabilitation, including physical therapy several times a week. Again there was no charge, no co-payment.
Then, last year, Ms. Tucker fainted while on a visit to San Francisco, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital. But this was in the United States, so the person meeting her at the emergency room door wasn’t a doctor.
“The first person I saw was a lady with a computer,” she said, “asking me how I intended to pay the bill.” Ms. Tucker did, in fact, have insurance, but she was told she would have to pay herself and seek reimbursement.
Nothing was seriously wrong, and the hospital discharged her after five hours. The bill came to $8,789.29.
Ms. Tucker has since lost her job in the recession, but she says she’s stuck in Canada — because if she goes back to the United States, she will pay a fortune for private health insurance because of her history of a stroke. “I’m trying to find another job here,” she said. “I want to stay here because of medical insurance.”
Another advantage of the Canadian system, she says, is that it emphasizes preventive care. When a friend was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic, he was put in a free two-year program emphasizing an improved diet and lifestyle — and he emerged as no longer being prone to diabetes.
If Ms. Tucker’s story surprises you, you should know that Mr. Scott’s public relations initiative against health reform is led by the same firm that orchestrated the “Swift boat campaign” against Senator John Kerry in 2004. These commercials are just as false, for President Obama is not proposing government-run health care — just a public insurance element in the mix.
No doubt there are some genuine horror stories in Canada, as there are here in the United States.
But the bottom line is that America’s health care system spends nearly twice as much per person as Canada’s (building the wealth of hospital tycoons like Mr. Scott). Yet our infant mortality rate is 40 percent higher than Canada’s, and American mothers are 57 percent more likely to die in childbirth than Canadian ones.
In 1993, the “Harry and Louise” commercials frightened Americans into abandoning health reform. Let’s ensure those scare tactics don’t work this time.
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| | Last edit: 11/06/2009 21:15 |
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curtinsea United States. Jun 11 2009 21:47. Posts 576 | | |
Just one little question for you . . . . how will you get the wealthy hospital tycoons like Mr. Scott to take less? |
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NewbSaibot United States. Jun 11 2009 21:58. Posts 4946 | | | |
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curtinsea United States. Jun 11 2009 22:03. Posts 576 | | | |
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benjamins, green, monies, cash monies, dinero
you following? |
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curtinsea United States. Jun 11 2009 22:18. Posts 576 | | |
The problem with the health care system in America is the cost of services, and those costs will not be mitigated by increasing insurance coverage. If anything, it will make it worse. Prices are controlled by market forces, you can only charge what you can get paid, and if you are guaranteed to get paid, you can charge whatever you want. So what the government will have to do is fix prices, or reduce services, or both.
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matdon460 United States. Jun 11 2009 23:20. Posts 1089 | | |
just a little story about my recent dealing with the healthcare system here:
I ran out of my inhaler the other day so I went to the pharmacy my insurance provider recommended. I was just getting it refilled so they still had the prescription. I go to pay for it and they claim it will cost $103 dollars. I go WTFFFFFF, I've been on albuterol for years and it's never been this much. 'oh we only have proair. we don't carry the generic. I can get my supervisor if you like.' snapcall
I explain to the manager that I know the doctor wrote the script for generic albuterol because I've never heard of proair before. so she goes and gets the actual proscription and it has albuterol scratched out with proair written. LOL good job staff. This seems borderline criminal to me but I just gtfo. So I take the prescription to target and get my generic inhaler for $9.
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JoeDeertay United States. Jun 11 2009 23:59. Posts 1730 | | |
| | On June 11 2009 22:20 matdon460 wrote:
just a little story about my recent dealing with the healthcare system here:
I ran out of my inhaler the other day so I went to the pharmacy my insurance provider recommended. I was just getting it refilled so they still had the prescription. I go to pay for it and they claim it will cost $103 dollars. I go WTFFFFFF, I've been on albuterol for years and it's never been this much. 'oh we only have proair. we don't carry the generic. I can get my supervisor if you like.' snapcall
I explain to the manager that I know the doctor wrote the script for generic albuterol because I've never heard of proair before. so she goes and gets the actual proscription and it has albuterol scratched out with proair written. LOL good job staff. This seems borderline criminal to me but I just gtfo. So I take the prescription to target and get my generic inhaler for $9.
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LMFAO the pharmacist CHANGED THE PRESCRIPTION??? That can't be legal at all fucking rape that pharmacy for all it's worth and you can buy all the proair you want =] |
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JoeDeertay United States. Jun 12 2009 00:02. Posts 1730 | | |
Btw TenBagger I don't really have an opinion on this but I'm just curious...how costly would it be to reform the US health care system to get it more like Canada's (which, correct me if I'm wrong, after reading the article you posted seems to be some kind of almost universal government-run system)? |
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