Kohburn wrote:neither system works that well
I respectfully disagree; your system doesn't work for beans if the majority of treatment options are not available to the majority of people.
Our system works well. Does it have problems? Sure. Could it be improved? Absolutely. But it DOES work.
if people REALLY want socialized healthcare it would need a big revamp. we are better off having a government based healthcare option along with trimming back the rediculous amounts they try to charge for services before the insurance companies tell em they can only charge $$. Along with limiting the payout from lawsuits and limiting what doctors can be sued over.
You can't have it both ways. A two-tier system always results in sub-standard conditions in the "public" system, with a disproportionate amount of money going to the private system. "Profitable" isn't the same thing as "effective."
malpractice insurance has put a number of good people out of business, not because they ever got sued, but because they couldn't afford it on their smaller customer base.
Another reason why two-tier doesn't work; private rates are inflated from higher insurance rates, while the public system is forced to eat the cost.
This is a particularly prickly issue in Canada for a few reasons, but the biggest one is that people will ALWAYS bitch. Doesn't matter how good/bad/great/awful a system is, someone will always know "someone" that fell through the cracks-blah-blah-whine-bitch-moan. And a person's own situation is always--in their mind--inflated by their own sense of urgency.
Hospital services are ALWAYS triaged--here AND the US. The resources go to the ones that need it the most. I'm sorry, but waiting 6 weeks to get a sprained knee MRI'd because a handul of tumor patients bumped you sucks, but it does not in my mind constitute a "failure of the system." It suggests that the system is either underfunded (ours isn't) or under equipped (ours is; too much money going towards admin).
I was on the campaign as a volunteer for our then (and current) minister of health for the province of Manitoba. There was a group of protesters outside with the same sob-story as your video; how they had to go down south out-of-pocket for treatment for a rare form of cancer. They had pamphlets and everything explaining the "whole" story, along with a letter from their doctor confirming everything. The patient was terminal, and present in a wheelchair with a blanket, spewing poison at anyone that would listen.
The story was awful. However, as it turns out, the reason they went on their own dime was that the doctor hadn't bothered to file the treatment request until after they'd already gone--he lied.
The kicker is that the system even allows for this; you can go, get it done, pay, and have the province reimburse you if you get both the doctor where you got the procedure done, AND your GP to sign off that the treatment was necessary and appropriate.
In fact, the health minister went out herself with the proper forms--filled out--and told the guy that if he got his doctors to sign them, she'd have a cheque for the full amount within 72 hours, delivered by Courier to his door.
In front of a crowd of 30 witnessses, he croaked in a weak voice that he wasn't interested in the money, and that he only wanted to see the "evil" socialized medical system defeated.
The irony is that if it'd been private healthcare, he'd still be dying, because he would have gone for the same treatment, paid the same amount... :scratch: