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Maybe you all should listen to an interview by the lady (plant) that Obama had at one of his town hall meetings or whatever. You know..the one with cancer? She admitted herself that if it wasnt for US healthcare she would probably be dead right now because Canada wouldnt give her the right tests.
Everyone everywhere complains about doctors missing symptoms Blah, blah, blah. Just look at the cover of any women's magazine, every month.
As someone said a public plan competing against private insurance is like an alligator competing against a duck. Private insurance cannot hide costs like the government can. You see when the costs to a business exceed its revenue it's the end of the road. Government, on the other hand, just prints more money and passes the cost on to future generations.
And the idea that private insurance can charge whatever they want is absurd on its face. Every year our company makes a decision whether to stay with our current insurer or switch to another based on cost and the quality of the product offered. That's real competition and that's what inhibits insurers from charging as much as they want for their product.
Finally the idea that insurers can willy nilly refuse to pay for a contracted-for- service is also absurd. An insurance policy is a contract. If an insurer refuses to pay for a medical service that was specifically included in the contract of insurance they can be sued. Try suing the government bureaucrat who denies you life-saving medication or a life-saving procedure that he doesn't think is cost-effective.
Your company makes a decision among health insurers IN THAT REGION. The health insurance companies have a near monopoly in most regions. Their market share can be up to 80%. This has been caused by the mass mergers of insurance companies thereby limiting choice, which of course limits competition. There is very little competition in the health insurance industry. Don't kid yourself.
Your company makes a decision among health insurers IN THAT REGION. The health insurance companies have a near monopoly in most regions. Their market share can be up to 80%. This has been caused by the mass mergers of insurance companies thereby limiting choice, which of course limits competition. There is very little competition in the health insurance industry. Don't kid yourself.
Yes, there is very little competition in most places. Because the GOVERNMENT says that you can only buy health care insurance from a company in your state. A stupid rule. Change it. Make it legal to by health care insurance from companies all over the United states. Lack of competition no longer an issue. And it doesn't cost billions of dollars in taxpayer money, or create a giant, bloated, money-sucking beaurocracy to run it.
Originally Posted by sanrene
You're going to see more of your example in the future with obamacare. Bureaucrats and bean counters making life and death decisions.
Bureaucrats and bean counters make life and death decisions now. They're insurance company Bureaucrats and bean counters. The average Canadian has far better health care than the average American. Canadians get test, treatments, and surgery that is out of reach for 1 in 3 Americans. I can find a hundred horror stories in the US for every Canadian horror story (many are fraudulant) you can find. It is the US that systematically kills 45,000 Americans by rationing health care by insurance company profit. Canadians get tests, treatment, and and surgery that is unavailale to those 45,000, as well as to 110 million Americans who do not have access to a physician because they do not have financial access to sufficient health care coverage
"to contain rising costs, government-run health-care systems invariably restrict the health-care supply. Thus, at a time when Canada’s population was aging and needed more care, not less, cost-crunching bureaucrats had reduced the size of medical school classes, shuttered hospitals, and capped physician fees, resulting in hundreds of thousands of patients waiting for needed treatment—patients who suffered and, in some cases, died from the delays."
David Grazer has been discredited and is a bought and paid for by US medical insurance companies. Grazerd has been proven to be telling lies. As a Canadian who has lived in the US for 7 years, I can verify that the average Canadian gets far better health care than the average American. Average Canadians get tests, treatment, and surgery that are out of reach for similar Americans until they qualify for Medicare.... this can mean a 30 to 35 year waiting list for Americans because US health care is rationed by insurance company profit.
Yes, there is very little competition in most places. Because the GOVERNMENT says that you can only buy health care insurance from a company in your state. A stupid rule. Change it. Make it legal to by health care insurance from companies all over the United states. Lack of competition no longer an issue. And it doesn't cost billions of dollars in taxpayer money, or create a giant, bloated, money-sucking beaurocracy to run it.
Insurance companies would still be rationing health care by profit. The average American would still have inferior health care compared to the average Canadian with a government funded single payer system. Waiting lists are far longer in the US than they are in Canada. Waiting lists of 2 weeks to 3 months are what Americans call insurance company approval. Only uninformed and uneducated Americans think the US has a superior system to that of Canada. I have far better health care in Canada to what I had for seven years that I lived in and used the garbage you call a "health care system" in the US. What the US has had for many years is insurance-run health care, rationed by profit.
Last edited by murphyj87; 10-26-2009 at 12:20 PM..
Reason: spelling
I would like to know what exclusively defines socialized medicine as physicians working directly for the state. .
The universal (ie non American) definition of socialized is that phyicians are civil servants and hospitals are government owned and operated. Americans show they are not educated and uninformed to think anything else. Educated and informed pepole know what "socalized medicine" really means. DOD and DVA are socialized medicine. Medicare, Medicaid, and the Canadian system are social insurance systems NOT socialied medicine by the UNIVERSAL definition of socialized medicine.
Quoting Fox News automatically discredits that article. The "imploding" reference was hyperbole and that speech by the CMA president (who is highly funded by US insurance companies to make such false claims), when taken in context,suggests that a few small tweaks are necessary, far less than is required for the US insurance-run health care system, which is deeply flawed and needs total reform.
There is hard socialism,hospitals belonging to the gov & doctors being gov employees
& there is soft socialism,hiospitals & doctors are directly dependent on gov,under gov authority.
The soft version is more dangerous than the hard one...
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