The Most Outrageous U.S. Lies About Global Healthcare

Thank you for discussing this with some sense of rational thought. But, the bigger question: Will anyone that believes these lies actually read this? I can't shake the feeling it is doomed.

I liked this article. However there is a small inaccuracy. Although Stephen Hawking is undoubtedly a great physicist, he has not received a Nobel Prize, at least not yet.

I want to clarify that Canada does not have a "single payer" system, which the article describes as one in which the government pays the medical bills and hospitals and doctors are private.

Hospitals and doctors in Canada are not private but are owned by and have their salaries paid for by the government. Private hospitals/clinics do exist but they are not funded by the government; the legislation concerning these private services varies from province to province

For example, in British Columbia doctors that work in private clinics that charge patients for medical services already covered by the public health system have to opt out of “medicare” (the name for Canada’s health care system) entirely. The legislation was established in the hopes that it would keep private health clinics at bay which it may have but of course does not deal with the issue of waiting times (which is what drives most Canadian’s to these private clinics in the first place.)

You won't find it in the blogs pushing the Hawking "lie", but nevertheless, the NHS did refuse to provide the care that Hawking thought he deserved back in 1985. He was only able to keep out of the nursing home by raising private donations. From an online bio:

After the tracheostomy, Stephen would need round-the-clock nursing. The best the National Health Service could offer was seven hours’ nursing help a week in the Hawkings’ home, plus two hours’ help with bathing. They would have to pay for private nursing. The advance from the book would not last long, and there was absolutely no certainty about its eventual success. To Jane there seemed little long-term hope. How were they to survive if he could never work again? There were few possibilities. She would willingly have left her own career and devoted herself full-time to looking after her husband, but she was not a qualified nurse, and in any case, who would then provide for the family? The alternative was the dreaded thought of Stephen in a nursing home, unable to work, slipping into gradual decline and eventual death. “There were days when I felt sometimes I could not go on because I didn’t know how to cope,” Jane has said of that period.

It was obvious they would have to find financial support from somewhere. Jane wrote letter after letter to charitable organizations around the world and called upon the help of family friends in approaching institutions that might be interested in assisting them. Help arrived from an American foundation aware of Hawking’s work and international reputation, which agreed to pay £50,000 a year toward the costs of nursing. Shortly afterward several other charitable organizations on both sides of the Atlantic followed suit with smaller donations. Jane feels bitter about the whole affair. She resents the fact that, after paying a lifetime of contributions to the National Health Service, they were offered such meager help when the need arose. She is very aware that if her husband had been an unknown physics teacher he would now be living out his final days in a residential home. “Think of the waste of talent,” she has said of the situation.

-- http://www.scribd.com/doc/7235793/A-Life-in-Science-Second-Edition-by-Stephen-Hawking

The auto industry might have collapsed, but atleast Detroit hospitals will stay in business, what with all those Canuck's coming across the border for healthcare....

From the Detroit Free Press 8/20
http://www.freep.com/article/20090820/BUSINESS06/908200420/?imw=Y

"Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.

Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.

The agreements show how a country with a national care system -- a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress -- copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.

Michael Vujovich, 61, of Windsor was taken to Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital for an angioplasty procedure after he went to a Windsor hospital in April. Vujovich said the U.S. backup doesn't show a gap in Canada's system, but shows how it works.

"I go to the hospital in Windsor and two hours later, I'm done having angioplasty in Detroit," he said. His $38,000 bill was covered by the Ontario health ministry.

Canada eyed in the health care debate

Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.

The Karmanos Institute is one of several Detroit health facilities that care for Canadians needing services not widely available in Canada.

Canada, for example, has waiting times for bariatric procedures to combat obesity that can stretch to more than five years, according to a June report in the Canadian Journal of Surgery.

As a result, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in April designated 13 U.S. hospitals, including five in Michigan and one more with a tentative designation, to perform bariatric surgery for Canadians.

The article continues...
http://www.freep.com/article/20090820/BUSINESS06/908200420/?imw=Y

There's a piece on Fox News this morning titled "The Lighter Side: What Do Republicans Really Want?", by "political comedian" Scott Blakeman. There may be no more accurate--and deadly serious--synopsis of the Republican position.

http://teamwashington.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/08/20/the-lighter-side-what-do-republicans-really-want/

Isn’t it just hilarious that they would avoid reducing the cost of health care and would prevent millions from receiving needed medical treatment, for purely political reasons?

If the congress is so excited about pushing this health reform let them try it for 5 years and show the rest of us that is working. Put up or shut up are my thoughts. In addition I have first hand knowledge of socialized health care from Canada, since I live on a border state and have family living in Canada. Without insulting the Canadian system, I find it that the people wait in line for everything! Further the fact the Canadian hospitals across the border DO NOT HAVE any of the equipment that the poorest hospitals state side all have. Further things are so bad in Canada with the way the hospital staff, doctors, nurses etc; a large majority work state side and NOT in Canada, this is fact, not all the BS presently being reported. So let Congress use whatever system they wish to implement on themselves for 5 years and if it works then the rest of us should consider it.

The fact the USA shells out so much per capita for health care vis-a-vis other countries for sub-par results indicates to me the problem is in the industry itself, not in who is paying for it.

Why do we look at Britain's NHS as a model (to scorn or emulate) while not looking at their trial-law system? If you want to see a disturbing discrepancy between the United States and the rest of the developed world, check out tort law, lawsuits per-capita, lawyers-per-capita, malpractice insurance rates, all of it.

Yet no one does, especially our Democratic friends in Washington who basically are in a permanent "69" repose with their trial lawyer buddies.

Germany is not Single payer in the exact sense you defined it . The Hospitals can be private, but there are state hospitals as well.

In addition, and most importantly, the government doesn't pay. It is Krankenkassen, which are rather large, heavily regulated insurance co-ops who pay and do the regulating of costs. You must have insurance through a Kasse to live here. Private insurance also exists, but one has to be above a certain income bracket to leave the Krankenkassen system and purchase it.

In addition the insurance laws and rules in Germany vary between each of the 16 states and free cities that make up the Republic.

And what I mean by that title is for the very reason we have American pizza and American football-not soccer or rugby. The way we have Taco Bells emulating Mexican food. Or even Ravioli (Can you tell I'm hungry? lol)
That's what America is all about. We observe how others counrties do it and make it our own. We take what works, sprinkle a few drops of American ideology and "vois la"...it's inserted into American way of life forever.
Why can't we do that with Healthcare?? While I'm not comparing Healthcare to that of pizza, football or Taco Bell (still hungry) and I understand the complexity of Healthcare reform...it still bothers me that we can’t move ahead with the mindset that we’re known for.

Case in point: Russia went to outerspace first, BUT WE WENT TO THE MOON!

How about the whoppers being told by Obama and the Dems?

The president has repeatedly promised that no one who is happy with their current employer-sponsored health insurance need change. This is patently false, for it is not only possible but probable that many employers will prefer to dump their employees into the public plan if it should prove less expensive than their current coverage. Individuals employed by such firms would thereby lose their current insurance, quite likely without any say in the matter.

Whopper number two is that the Democratic bills will control costs and improve our country's financial position. The non-partisan CBO says the bills it has scored will not control health care costs and are not paid for, hence they will substantially worsen the deficit and thusadd to the national debt.

And how about the suggestion that there is no principled opposition to the Dem bills? Opponents are all written off as idiots or in the pay of "special interests". Seems to me that the supporters of the reforms, with their coordinated t-shirts and signs, look more like astroturf. And, BTW, aren't the pharmaceutical and insurance trade groups paying for ads supporting the Obama reform plans - why yes, yes they are.

The idea that employer-sponsored health insurance is going out the window because of a public option is ludicrous! Do private universities fail because we have much cheaper public colleges? Are Fed-Ex and UPS going out of business because of the US Postal Service? What a crock. Instead of claiming a public option would kill private insurance, how about letting capitalism work and allow the market to react to worthy competition, like it's supposed to?

Second, everyone is aware what the CBO says about the proposed bills. But the right quickly forgets these are PROPOSED bills, not final. On the other hand, CBO's grim forecasts about the consequences if we do nothing are CERTAIN. The president extended an olive branch across the aisle; perhaps if republicans were more concerned with working to find common ground instead of responding with hitlerized Obama posters and screams of "death panels", a better bipartisan bill would already have been signed.

That's why the suggestion that there's no principled opposition to Dem bills has gained traction. Opponents are written off as idiots because instead of engaging in thoughtful and constructive & democratic discourse, they choose to gang up on members of congress and shout slogans based on lunatic - and debunked - misinterpretations of the proposed bills.

And the opposition movement as a whole is written off as in the pay of special interests BECAUSE IT IS:

-"Conservatives for Patients' Rights" is led by Rick Scott, former CEO of the Columbia/HCA hospitals during a federal Medicare fraud probe in 1997 and recipient of a golden parachute.

- "FreedomWorks" is chaired by Dick Armey, the former Republican majority leader of the House of Representatives from Texas, now a lobbyist.

-"Patients First" and "Patients United" are creations of a larger group called Americans for Prosperity, started by billionaire David Koch (of the Koch Industries oil family) which is one of the country's top donors to conservative, free-market causes.

SO WHERE'S THE GRASSROOTS?? All I see is big names and big business, major stakeholders. Who in their right mind would see this as genuine, principled opposition by ordinary citizens who are concerned?? That's not grassroots, that's about as ASTROTURF as is gets.