Re: The Bull*** Parade

From: Dr. Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD (nospam5_at_heartmdphd.com)
Date: 08/07/04 

Date: 7 Aug 2004 12:37:07 -0700

sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) wrote in message news:<79cf0a8.0408061303.36b79652@posting.google.com>...
> tunderbar@hotmail.com (tcomeau) wrote in message news:<b550f406.0408060618.3c843d34@posting.google.com>...
> > Everyone in Canada gets health care. 100% of all Canadians have access
> > to medical care. A few procedures may require a short wait, but it is
> > available to all. Besides, if there is a wait, the choice is there for
> > us to skip the line and to pay for it in the US, or not. That is if we
> > are willing to pay thru the nose for inferior medical care.
>
> Nobody would pay through the nose for clearly inferior care. Are you
> saying all Canadians who cross the border for US surgery are idiots?

More importantly, has there ever been a documented case of anyone in
the US being denied medical care because of inability to pay?
 
> > No-one refused ANY necessary medical care in Canada. The overall
> > quality of care is as good or better than the US.
>
>
> Hard to prove that. Let's see you get proton therapy for your brain
> tumor. Lets see you get a combined PET/CT to see if your lung cancer
> or ovarian cancer has spread.

More importantly, how do you figure the wait/delay into the quality of
care.
 
 
> >Our doctors are
> > better trained than the specialist-focussed system in the US.
>
>
> Hard to prove. Nor do I believe it.
>

Actually, specialists have more extensive training than general
practitioners by definition. A system with more specialists has the
potential for providing better care in demanding situations than a
system with fewer specialists.
 
> > Our
> > death-at-birth rates are much lower than in the US.
>
>
> Only if you count the overall US. But many of our states like Utah or
> Hawaii beat Canada in all health ratings. Yet they have the same
> medical care system the rest of the US does. Obviously regional
> life-expectancy differences in the US are due to regional extra health
> problems, not medical care delivery. If we sent the entire rotten
> subculture of Washington DC to Ottowa, I think you'd have a strain
> taking care of it, too.

I would concur without judging any one particular "subculture."

> > No-one has had to go into massive personal debt and/or bankruptcy to
> > get necessary medical care in Canada.
>
>
> Nor in the US. Once you get down to close to zero money in the US, you
> qualify for Medicaid, and get a pretty good medical care system. It's
> the working lower middle class that have a hard time, in the US. And
> yes, I think this needs to be fixed. And yes, for the record, I think
> the US wastes a lot of health care dollars doing things like MRIs on
> back pain. But I don't run it.

HSAs are something that may help to repair some of the difficulties
that the middle class is having.

> > And trust me, Canadians will not tolerate for-profit medical
> > operations in Canada. Some idiotic politicians in some conservative
> > provinces may make noise about it and may try to allow some for-profit
> > companies to set up, but that crap will not fly for very long.
> >
> > We choose to spend out tax dollars on health. You guys choose to spend
> > it on invading any foreign country that your president can lie about
> > and somehow convince you suckers that it is in some unlikely and
> > uprovable way even vaguely or remotely connected to Al-Qaida.
>
>
> Now, now. I'm not arguing that the US invading Iraq was not a piece of
> money-wasting stupidity. It was. Not that Iraq didn't need fixing, but
> it was not the US's responsibility to do it, but rather the world's.
> If the world wimped out (as most of it did), then the US should have
> said it had better things to do with its military (which it did-- like
> finding Bin Laden in Pakistan, so we can kill him for planning 9/11).
>
> The US is a target of Al-Quida because we are involved with the
> Saudis, and the Al-Quida and wahabists in general think that all
> Westerners should stay out of the holy Muslim world. Which Canada can
> afford to do, because you have more oil than you need. But the fact
> that you do, is not due to some wise "choice" on your part. It's just
> due to a great *&%$ peice of good luck related to *where* your
> British-ass-kissing ancestors chose to go live, in an era before
> petroleum and natural were known to be worth anything. Very much as in
> the case of the Saudis.
>
> So stop being so supercillious about it. You totally lucked-out on the
> current set of world problems. B.F.D. Your time when you cross the
> Muslim fundamentalists over some issue, will come. As it will for all
> non-Muslim countries.
>
> SBH

Lost in this is the simple fact that the rising healthcare costs in
the U.S. predate the recent war on Irag and current actions against
with Al-Qaida. We have been paying for R&D of medical technologies by
these for-profit companies by letting these companies thrive on U.S.
soil. It seems the Canadians are unabashedly eating the fruit without
being willing to contribute to either fertilizing or watering the
trees.

Please know that you remain in my prayers, neighbor.

Servant to the humblest person in the universe,

Andrew 

--
Dr. Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
Board-Certified Cardiologist
http://www.heartmdphd.com/
**
Who is the humblest person in the universe?
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What is all this about?
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