Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare part II

[fencesitter]

Someone posteed part one last week, it was great so, I thought part 2 would be appropriate.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/mythbusting-canadian-healthcare-part-ii-debunking-free-marketeers

Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers

the previous post, I looked at ten of the most common myths that get bandied about whenever Americans drag Canada into their ongoing discussions about healthcare. In this follow-up, I'd like to address a few of the larger assumptions that Americans make about health care that are contradicted by the Canadian example; and in the process offer some more general thinking (and perhaps talking) points that may be useful in the debates ahead.

Government-run health care is inherently less efficient -- because governments themselves are inherently less efficient.
If anything could finally put the lie to this old conservative canard, the disaster that is our health care system is Exhibit A.

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We'll have rationed care
Don't look now: but America does ration care. And it does it in the most capricious, draconian, and often dishonest way possible

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You can't have medical innovation without the incentives provided by the free market.
As in the US, Canada's government funds major medical research that has led to a continuous stream of new medical breakthroughs. (And as this link shows, the rate of innovation didn't slow down in the least when Canada moved to single-payer in the 1960s.)

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Single-payer health care will make America less competitive.
I can't believe people still have the gall to argue this point, but apparently, they do. There are several reasons this is flat-out wrong

Much Much more...great talking points and well researched

[fencesitter]

1. I saw "Sicko" for the first time this weekend..

I was afraid to watch it 'cause I knew it would just piss me off at our "healthcare" system. I finally watched it and was right, I'm just more pissed off.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Thank you for this.

I get so pissed when people talk about Hillary's plan as being 'universal healthcare' when it is actually 'universal health insurance'. All the cost and price mechanisms will remain in the hands of the insurance companies as to what they will or won't pay which mean there will be no real cost controls, and the benefit of 'everyone is covered' will accrue only to the insurance companies themselves.

Worst of all, if her plan is enacted it will create the bureaucracy needed to oversee the hundreds of private insurance plans, and once that bureaucracy is there it will stand as an indomitable bulwark against any successive attempts at real single-payer universal healthcare, whether on the Canadian or British or French model, or something cherrypicking the best of each.