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July 1st, 2008 at 08:48amChuck Sweeny
U.S. politicians — Republican variety — love to disparage Canada’s national health care system with the fact-free observation that Canadians come here to get vital operations so they don’t have to wait in line in Canada.
Because I’m a frequent visitor to Canada, and I actually talk to real people there, I’ve replied to these Republicans that Canadians I’ve talked to say they wouldn’t trade their health care for anything else, especially America’s roll-of-the-dice nonsystem of private insurance — “maybe we’ll cover you for that, maybe we won’t.”
Now I have data to back up these informal conversations: In a new, bi-national opinion poll done by Canada’s CTV television network and the national newspaper Globe & Mail, 91 percent of Canadians said they prefered their national health care system over America’s pseudo-private system.
Ninety-One percent. In the world of scientific opinion polling, that’s about as unanimous as you ever get.
Also, 45 percent of Americans surveyed prefered Canada’s system, and 42 percent prefered to stick with what we’ve got.
You know what we say about Canadians not liking their health care system? Well, a poll done by conservative CTVglobemedia found out that 91% of Canadians say they prefer their national health care system over US.
The sentiment is echoed by UK and most EU. About the only thing Margaret Thatcher couldn't privatize was the health care insurance. Another thing, any politician who ever speak of privatizing universal health insurance in these countries will get a swift kick in the buttocks, figuratively.
Folks should note, this is not an endorsement of the current health care bill, the current health care bill is a piece of siht. It doesn't solve anything much other than rip off the taxpayer more. I'll include an excerpt which I highly recommend folks to click the link and finish reading, this especially goes for mind-numbing Obama supporters and Tea partiers.
There ain't any healthcare debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough, be it our taxpayer dough or the geet that isn't in ole Jim's impoverished purse. The hoo-ha is about the insurance racket, not the delivery of healthcare to human beings. It's simply another form of extorting the people regarding a fundamental need -- health.
Unfortunately, the people have been mesmerized by our theater state's purposefully distracting and dramatic media productions for so long they've been mutated toward helplessness. Consequently, they are incapable of asking themselves a simple question: If insurance corporation profits are one third of the cost of healthcare, and all insurance corporations do is deliver our money to healthcare providers for us (or actually, do everything in their power to keep the money for themselves), why do we need insurance companies at all? Answer: Because Wall Street gets a big piece of the action. And nobody messes with the Wall Street Mob (as the bailout extortion money proved). Better (and worse) presidents have tried. Some made a genuine effort to push it through Congress. Others expressed the desire publicly, but after getting privately muscled by the healthcare industry, decided to back off from the idea. For instance:
Franklin Roosevelt wanted universal healthcare.
Harry Truman wanted universal healthcare.
Dwight Eisenhower wanted universal healthcare.
Richard Nixon wanted universal healthcare.
Lyndon Johnson wanted universal healthcare.
Bill Clinton wanted -- well we can't definitely say because he made sure that if the issue blew up on him, which it did, Hillary would be left holding the turd. Is it any wonder that woman gets so snappy at the slightest provocation? First getting left to hold the bag on healthcare, then the spots on that blue dress.
So why did American liberals believe Obama would bring home the healthcare bacon? Because they live in an ideological cupcake land. It's a big neighborhood, a very special place where "Your vote is important," and "by electing the right candidate, you can change our beloved nation." Most of America lives in that neighborhood, even though they've never personally met. It's a place where the shrubbery and flowerbeds of such things as "values" and "hope" bloom. Hope that our desires coupled with the efforts of a good and decent president can affect "change." Evidently these voters never heard the old adage, "Hope in one hand and **** in the other, and see which one fills up first."
The slaughter of the innocents by the healthcare lobby has pretty much extinguished the political usefulness of the word hope. Nobody, especially Obama, uses it now.
The first on-stage scuffle of the Obama administration, government assured healthcare, quickly settled down into the accustomed scenario of very rich and powerful people in expensive suits "finding middle ground," otherwise known as the status quo. Single payer healthcare soon became "a consumer government alternative to private insurance," and is now "a system of health cooperatives. Next comes "slightly better health insurance (but not medical services) than before, from the same insurance companies but at twice the price; don't worry though, we're increasing your tax load so you can afford it."
The televised screaming matches, having served their purpose, are over now. The presidency and the nation have settled back into the normalcy of the officially sanctioned state consciousness and its curious non-language, one modified and shaped daily by corporate and government symbiosis.
Over generations we've come to internalize this imagistic language, which is quite theatrical when heated up for public consumption and dully bureaucratic when attention is to be avoided. But always it is void of content and any sort of truth. In the corporately managed theater state, it's not whether a thing is true that matters, but how it sounds and looks and what you call it. Call end of life counseling a "death panel," and you've just turned mercy and choice into one more Great Satan.
In the end though, healthcare American style comes down to the preferences of two elite castes, Congress and corporate powers, neither of which can exist without the other. Corporations need the government to sanction their methods of extracting wealth from the public. Congress needs corporations to finance its campaign chariot races. Right now members of Congress have an excellent chance of putting the arm on healthcare industry lobbyist for some real cash:
Senator Smedley Heathwood: "Oh, I dunno, I'm sort of liking Obama's alternative." Godzilla Healthcare Inc.: "Here, take this suitcase full of gold bullion, call me if you run short. And remember, we've got that ‘Life is a pre-existing condition' bill coming up in the Senate soon."
Siamese twins, joined at the hip, they share the same goal, preservation of control -- the government's social control and the corporations' economic control. And you cannot have one without the other.
Obama got elected on hope of reform, despite that one cannot reform a mafia, only pay increased extortion moneys. He's fortunate that it was not a genuine demand for reform, just hope. We're fortunate we did not demand reform because we're not going to get it. Obama doesn't have to reform the healthcare industry mob. All he has to do is look like he took a shot at it, and hope it's convincing enough. What we've seen is probably his best shot, too. Why not? There is always the off chance it might work, in which case his "presidential legacy" would be assured. And if it doesn't, well, the serious progressives who are screeching mad at him now will still have to vote for him as the incumbent in 2012. Or learn to love somebody like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum (take your pick) or some as-yet-unknown the GOP drags out from under the hen house and ballyhoos as a "new face." Luckily, Dick Cheney is out of the question, barring a coup by the far right wing of the schizophrenic GOP. But still, after Palin, one shudders at the prospects.
Whatever happens, we will not see Congress stand up against the extortion of its people by the healthcare industry. We will not see even the most ordinary kind of healthcare declared as a human right, as it is in so many other nations. We will see, however, greater access to the public treasury by the insurance corporations.
Every nation in the world is now party to at least one treaty that addresses health as a human right, including the conditions necessary for the delivery of health services. Healthcare is a right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hell, even Saddam Hussein provided healthcare.
That Americans cannot grasp this fundamental aspect of human rights (but then we cannot even get child nutrition, or limiting the number of times you can taser an old lady in an airport, out of the starting gate) and join the civilized world and assure its people of such things is testimony. Testimony that we live in a vacuum exclusive of the accepted standard of mercy and decency common to civilized democratic nations elsewhere. Testimony that even we the citizenry would rather maintain and spread lies than accept truths such as most people in countries with universal healthcare would not ever give it up in favor of the U.S. system.
Folks, I dislike the US gov't as much as the libertarian next to me, but do be realistic and understand, somethings are just better left when run by the government.
It's unreal to me that some people actually think our current health care system is worth keeping, or even worthy of praise.
Bunch of bumpkins, I guess.
Yea know what you mean, It''s totally unreal to me why so many people have blind faith in government that pretty much screws everything up that it touches, that they want to give them more power and money to screw it up even worse than it already is.
Yea know what you mean, It''s totally unreal to me why so many people have blind faith in government that pretty much screws everything up that it touches, that they want to give them more power and money to screw it up even worse than it already is.
I'm not for government completely in everything and I'm not for government out of everything, but government haven't screwed up the military, highway, or medicare. Government run insurance are vastly more efficient than private, and the largest banks in the world by market cap is government owned (and they're not US banks).
Time and time again it's been established where government does not belong and where it does belong. Repeat the mantra "government can't do anything" right is foolish.
You know what we say about Canadians not liking their health care system? Well, a poll done by conservative CTVglobemedia found out that 91% of Canadians say they prefer their national health care system over US.
The sentiment is echoed by UK and most EU. About the only thing Margaret Thatcher couldn't privatize was the health care insurance. Another thing, any politician who ever speak of privatizing universal health insurance in these countries will get a swift kick in the buttocks, figuratively.
Folks should note, this is not an endorsement of the current health care bill, the current health care bill is a piece of siht. It doesn't solve anything much other than rip off the taxpayer more. I'll include an excerpt which I highly recommend folks to click the link and finish reading, this especially goes for mind-numbing Obama supporters and Tea partiers.
Folks, I dislike the US gov't as much as the libertarian next to me, but do be realistic and understand, somethings are just better left when run by the government.
Well since your graph seems to be the interesting part of this. Public spending is higher then canada in the united states according to this chart and if that is true the government gets to much money already.
"public spending" is tax dollars of which I'm sure if we looked at the tax brackets and compared how much Canadians have to pay in taxes we might see why they run the healthcare. So a large part of their paycheck goes to taxes and government runs healthcare and other services and some how people are just HAPPY to lose most of there check to a system based on red tape. What ever happened to individual choices and freedom when it comes to responsibilty.. I also would like to know how many people HAVE to carry other insurance and pay out of pocket to get the service they need. I'm sure that figure is not listed. Once you give your income and wealth to government they have to by the balls no matter what "free healthcare" and service they say to provide you. How about writting off all medical expenses if you want to make it "affordable".
Or start a national lottery to fund only those who DONT HAVE INSURANCE.
CAP law suits and use tort reform to bring prices down.
Allow doctors to create a payment program, if I pay cash when I go to my doctor it doesnt cost the same they bill the insurance.
I still say government is the problem, to much power in washington to much money. No money to power and no laws to create benefits for any person or company.
"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. " -Dwight D. Eisenhower
What a joke..thats why they come here for medical care...nice try liberals..but it won't work this time. You guys are finished...can you say "relocate to Russia"??
You know what we say about Canadians not liking their health care system? Well, a poll done by conservative CTVglobemedia found out that 91% of Canadians say they prefer their national health care system over US.
The sentiment is echoed by UK and most EU. About the only thing Margaret Thatcher couldn't privatize was the health care insurance. Another thing, any politician who ever speak of privatizing universal health insurance in these countries will get a swift kick in the buttocks, figuratively.
Folks should note, this is not an endorsement of the current health care bill, the current health care bill is a piece of siht. It doesn't solve anything much other than rip off the taxpayer more. I'll include an excerpt which I highly recommend folks to click the link and finish reading, this especially goes for mind-numbing Obama supporters and Tea partiers.
Folks, I dislike the US gov't as much as the libertarian next to me, but do be realistic and understand, somethings are just better left when run by the government.
I wonder if most Canadians don't like their care because they can cross the border when things get bad enough during their waits for service or can even cross the line to get surgeries they must have and know they can get them in so doing. I don't know but then I am sure that a question has never been used in a poll to find out about that.
"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. " -Dwight D. Eisenhower
It has been suggested that all those of us of the retired group be given a handgun with three bullets to go to DC and kill Congresspersons. Then we would be arrested and thrown into prison. That may be very self-satisfying and life-saving for most of us in that we will be at the bottom of the pole when the rationing is brought about.
I love seeing these libs talking about and comparing our healthcare to that of Europe. They don't know the difference in the populations of those nations and ours, or don't admit it if they do.
91% of Canadians say they prefer their national health care system over US.
.
How the hell do they even know?
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