Tell Congress we can't afford to wait for helath care reform!

[Anonymous]

No thanks!

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html

http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk/nhshealth/Cancer-survival-rates.5105729.jp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No thanks!

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html

Exactly! Thanks for posting the link above!

There’s no question that American health care, a mixture of private insurance and public programs, is a mess. Over the last five years, health-insurance premiums have more than doubled, leaving firms like General Motors on the brink of bankruptcy. Expensive health care has also hit workers in the pocketbook: it’s one of the reasons that median family income fell between 2000 and 2005 (despite a rise in overall labor costs). Health spending has surged past 16 percent of GDP. The number of uninsured Americans has risen, and even the insured seem dissatisfied.

[Anonymous]

Healthcare costs will continue to rise for a variety of reasons 1) in the old days we didn't have MRIs, Cat Scans and other cutting edgel technology that costs money and the USA has the best..people all over the world come here when they seek the best. Going back to Canada and the actress Natasha Richardson--a not so long time back (five years) Canada had the same amount of MRI machines as the city of Houston--that's socialized medicine. 2) The other problem is lawsuits--the cost of practicing medicine and the drugs we use are under constant scrutiny--unless we have some serious tort reform, this will not change. I don't think anyone would advocate not being able to sue for a good reason but tooooooooo many suits are frivilious. Healthcare is important though and we need to educate people that the first bill you pay is your health insurance and mortgage--too often healthcare doesn't get paid first--government intervention will be a loser for the 85% of the country who has coverage and who likes their doc. Oh..if we try in any way (and this is what we are moving to) to curb the salaries of our doctors we will have a huge brain drain. I want my doc making as much as he/she can--it's their right and they deserve since not many people have the brains to get through med school.

[Anonymous]

pp, I agree. The doctors' salaries are not at all too high when you consider the productivity of US docs. I know that UK docs make a little MORE than US docs and don't work NEARLY as hard. So per hour, they are way ahead.
Also, they don't make the same investment into med school. The US gov. wants to socialize medicine, but continues to ask med students to pay 50K a year times 4 years in tuition? I get it: you, the naive med student, make the investment, the we the public come and exploit you. At least in Europe, the gov. practically pays for med school.
Malpractice forces doctors to test and retest even when they think that nothing is wrong. You would be a fool to get caught by some sleazy malpractice attorney having not ordered an array of silly tests. $$$.
Yes, the insurers are making a ton of money. That is why it is best to keep the money out of their pockets and buy high deductible policies. Save cash for the routine stuff, and call on insurance for the unexpected.

[Anonymous]

I wish they (whoever they may be) would simply overhaul the whole system. We should start paying to prevent to avoid paying even more later to intervene which is what we are doing in so many areas.

Lets take ob/gyn as an example. A low risk pregnancy with an ob/gyn practice will involve monthly and then more frequent visits to the ob to do nothing more than have her wait for 2 hours then spend 2 minutes measuring her belly. The nurse takes the BP and urine dip. This is all billed out at a high rate to insurance. US doctors are very intervention prone so give her a 30-50% of requiring pitocin and c-section and add in the full cost of an OR, ob/gyn, OR nurses, anes doc etc and you've spent 10 times what a birth in another country would have cost.

Why not use nurse practioners who are cheaper to actually spend time with a patient. The ob/gyn whose training is to intervene when he spots some pathology can monitor the labs and reports. Why not disallow insurance payments for elective c-sections. Why should everyone pay because someone wants convenience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish they (whoever they may be) would simply overhaul the whole system. We should start paying to prevent to avoid paying even more later to intervene which is what we are doing in so many areas.

Lets take ob/gyn as an example. A low risk pregnancy with an ob/gyn practice will involve monthly and then more frequent visits to the ob to do nothing more than have her wait for 2 hours then spend 2 minutes measuring her belly. The nurse takes the BP and urine dip. This is all billed out at a high rate to insurance. US doctors are very intervention prone so give her a 30-50% of requiring pitocin and c-section and add in the full cost of an OR, ob/gyn, OR nurses, anes doc etc and you've spent 10 times what a birth in another country would have cost.

Why not use nurse practioners who are cheaper to actually spend time with a patient. The ob/gyn whose training is to intervene when he spots some pathology can monitor the labs and reports. Why not disallow insurance payments for elective c-sections. Why should everyone pay because someone wants convenience?

There is evidence that using nurses to screen pregnancies can have poor outcomes. Some practices already do this though.
Almost all women in the US get prenatal care regardless of their insurance (good care). Many insurance pay no more for c/sections, and believe me, the docs are doing them more to cover their tails from the lawyers. The pitocin is for convenience, I will admit. The reason they are doing things for their convenience is that they are underpaid, overworked, and sleep deprived. They used to get up to $4300 per pregnancy in the 1980's. Now some insurers pay as little as $900 per pregnancy. That is for conception to 6 weeks post partum. That is a big rip off. They have to see tons of patients to pay the malpractice insurance, so it becomes a vicious cycle.
Take a close look at what these guys are getting. My dd's foot was x-rayed at an ER. The radiologist charged $35 (which seemed quite reasonable to me), the insurance paid $8. I could not believe it!

[Anonymous]

PBS: Sick Around America


"As the worsening economy leads to massive job losses—potentially increasing the ranks of the tens of millions of Americans without health insurance—FRONTLINE travels the country examining the nation’s broken health care system and exploring the need for a fundamental overhaul.

The scale of the problem now facing the Obama administration, FRONTLINE finds, is staggering, as lay-offs, major illness and other unexpected life changes leave more and more Americans uninsured, underinsured or uninsurable. FRONTLINE also goes inside insurance companies to question executives on their policies, programs and priorities and examines the problems in one state’s attempts at health care reform." - excerpt

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica

[Anonymous]

Medicaid, BTW, doesn't cover every poor person.

If Nikki had lived in Canada, would she have gotten earlier lupus treatment?

So what if your country has great, easy access medical care with no waiting list and no "medical rationing" -- but you can't afford the care, so you get none of it, and Medicare is cut in your state?

For some Americans, life becomes a quest to find and keep health insurance. In 1994, Nikki White, a Bristol, Tenn., native with dreams of becoming a doctor, was diagnosed with lupus, a serious but treatable autoimmune disorder. Too ill to work, she lost her health insurance for several years, but then received coverage from the state's Medicaid program. Soon, budget cuts made her ineligible for the state program. A few months later, White was rushed to the ER with severe lupus complications and racked up nearly $1 million in medical bills. She finally secured insurance under the government HIPPA law, but her condition was too advanced, and in 2006, at the age of 32, she died. White's primary care physician, Amylyn Crawford, tells FRONTLINE: "Nikki didn't die from lupus. Nikki died secondary to the complications of a failing health care system."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/etc/synopsis.html

[Anonymous]

I am not moved-there will always be exceptions in coverage. Doesn't answer the fact that thousands of Canadians are going over the border to get better care in the US. Doesn't answer the fact that any large ski resort in the us has a hospital available within minutes (as well as helipads) for head injuries that Natasha Richardson died from. Mount Tre Blanc is like sking in Colorado and not some rinky dink resort.