Canada’s Health Care: An Alternate Universe

[marmar]

Published on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Canada’s Health Care: An Alternate Universe

by Elizabeth Rosenthal


I recently returned from a visit of several days to an alternate universe: Canadian health care.

As a physician who has practiced in the United States for 44 years, I have experienced many aspects of our health care system, including its terrible inequities.

Although some Americans get very good health care, there are many who get little or none. Then there are others who get too much: tests, procedures and drugs that they don’t need. The whole system is fragmented, chaotic, inefficient and terribly expensive. We are not getting good value for our enormous expenditure on health care.

Some years ago, having come to the conclusion that a single-payer national health program – an improved Medicare for all – is the solution to our problem, I joined Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). I wanted to help bring about a system that provides comprehensive coverage to everyone, removes the extremely wasteful and intrusive private insurance companies from the doctor-patient relationship, and gives every patient free choice of doctor and hospital. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/20-0

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. All we can do is hope and pray that it will eventually happen here

I think that, with a lot of things, it is inevitable. It will probably have to start on a state-by-state basis and progress from there.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. "fragmented, chaotic, inefficient and terribly expensive" = so-called Free Market

Absence of any central organization is hailed as a virtue by True Believers, but actually leads to huge redundancies in most profitable areas, total neglect in non-profitable ones, regardless of need. (Ability To Pay trumps supply-and-demand.)

The Free Market is not the best solution to most problems. It's not a good solution to many problems. It's not even a solution for some problems.

[Bragi]

3. Evidence of bad Canadian health care...

Michael Douglas's cancer diagnosed in Canada, now he's helping...

MONTREAL - Michael Douglas's battle with throat cancer beg/an in Canada — and now the Oscar-winning actor is giving back to the Montreal hospital that detected a disease others had missed.

An appreciative Douglas, star of Hollywood films such as "Basic Instinct" and "Wall Street," volunteered to headline a posh fundraiser next month for McGill University's head and neck cancer fund.

Last year, Douglas underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments in the United States for a walnut-sized tumour he now says is gone.

But the cancer diagnosis first came from the McGill-affiliated Jewish General Hospital — only weeks after several physicians elsewhere had given him a clean bill of health...

http://www.680news.com/news/national/article/214205--michael-douglas-s-cancer-diagnosed-in-canada-now-he-s-helping-montreal-hospital

[crickets]

4. K&R for single-payer. -nt