Friday Jan 11th - Zero: Socialized Healthcare

I've been hearing lots of chatter on the issue of socialized healthcare recently. I really hope that everyone will take a few minutes to research this issue. If you have friends in Canada ask them about it, or google the subject and read various opinions.

I know that healthcare in the US is pretty dismal. Costs are very high which causes some people to have to choose not to carry it. But, we have the best hospitals and doctors in the world. Any brilliant doctor in any other country of the world will most likely be US-educated and will want to work in the US.

I know that our prescription costs are out of control, too. It's true that we pay more for some prescriptions than other countries. But, we are the first to get the generic forms and Wal-Mart offers them at $4 a pop. That's affordable for anyone.

Some of the problems, though, are our own damn fault. We are a big ole' sue-happy country. Over the last few decades we have sued our own doctors and hospitals to point that they can't afford to carry malpractice insurance. Then, because you have to see Medicaid/Medicare patients you have to hire several clerks just to fill out the 50 pages of forms that the government requires. And have a lawyer on retainer to handle the audits that said Medicaid office conducts randomly. So, what to do in return? Charge astronomical fees in order to pay those premiums. Then, shuffle as many patients through in a day as possible to collect as many fees as you can.

See, Medicaid/care is the US governments first crack at socialized healthcare. Have any of you ever been on it, or known anyone on it? My Mom has had many struggles with wading through all the crap trying to get my Grandma on the right plan. See, just like most other government programs, you have lots and lots of employees and beaurecrats sitting around trying to look busy for job security. So what do they do? Think up knew forms and restrictions and bs... Need another example? Ever filed taxes? Medicare and the IRS are basically the same damn thing.

So, I found a great book called Code Blue by a guy named David Gratzer. He's a doctor from Canada who was running a hospital. A true insider. He got disgusted and started interviewing lots of other docs disgusted with the system. It's really eye opening. You should look it over.
Here's a few excerpts:

"But if Canadians are looking to the United States for the care they need, Americans, ironically, are increasingly looking north for a viable health-care model. 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. So it’s not surprising that some Americans think that solving the nation’s health-care woes may require adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system, in which the government finances and provides the care. Canadians, the seductive single-payer tune goes, not only spend less on health care; their health outcomes are better, too—life expectancy is longer, infant mortality lower.

Thus, Paul Krugman in the New York Times: “Does this mean that the American way is wrong, and that we should switch to a Canadian-style single-payer system? Well, yes.” Politicians like Hillary Clinton are on board; Michael Moore’s new documentary Sicko celebrates the virtues of Canada’s socialized health care; the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes big businesses like AT&T, recently endorsed a scheme to centralize major health decisions to a government committee; and big unions are questioning the tenets of employer-sponsored health insurance. Some are tempted. Not me.

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. I don’t want to overstate my case: growing up in Canada, I didn’t spend much time contemplating the nuances of health economics. I wanted to get into medical school—my mind brimmed with statistics on MCAT scores and admissions rates, not health spending. But as a Canadian, I had soaked up three things from my environment: a love of ice hockey; an ability to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit in my head; and the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people. When HillaryCare shook Washington, I remember thinking that the Clintonistas were right.

My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way to one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute. Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks."

If that's not enough, think of this: If your dog needs a hip-replacement in Canada, you can get him one in usually less than a week. If YOU need a hip replacement you must get on a waiting list and can get one - in usually 2-3 years. So, you are in excruciating pain, can't walk, can't work, and you decide you will just pay out of your own pocket for it. Not so fast! It's ILLEGAL in these countries to pay the doctor directly and it's ILLEGAL to have private insurance. So what do you do? Why, you go on down to the good ole US of A and get one in 2-3 days.
Hmmm.... could it be that the socialized healthcare in Canada is contributing to our healthcare problems??? Discuss amongst yourselves....

Sucks for the Canadians, eh? But wait. Most of Europe has socialized medicine, too. What's it like for them? Glad you asked:

"And if we measure a health-care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50 percent; the European rate is just 35 percent. Esophageal carcinoma: 12 percent in the United States, 6 percent in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2 percent here, yet 61.7 percent in France and down to 44.3 percent in England—a striking variation."

Europe is quickly trying to increase the amount of privatized medicine in their countries. For example in England, in 2006, only 5 percent of non-emergency medicine was rendered by privatized clinics. The hope is to have that increased to 15% by 2008 (according to the Labour party).

Well, long post I know. If anyone wants more information, just let me know. Or, here's some good links:

http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/healthcare/socialized.html

http://www.cato.org/pubs/catosletter/catosletterv3n1.pdf

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

Peace, love, and GOD,
Tracy