[Sherylcatmom]

Originally Posted by MTK1

Doctors plan to move to VT that want to practice with the program? Really? Please post the data showing that?

Unlike the unscientific online "poll" (in which non-doctors could vote multiple times) that claims 37% of doctors might leave Vermont, here's more reliable info from an article in today's Rutland Herald:

Richter on Thursday presented the Senate committee with a list of more than 200 doctors from around the country who said they would “seriously consider” relocating to Vermont if it enacted a single-payer system. A 2008 poll featured in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that nearly 60 percent of physicians nation-wide support a “national health-care plan."

[grmasterb]

Originally Posted by tom1944

Is health care as much a political issue in say Canada as it is in the US? Do Canadians want to adopt the US system?

It is a political issue as there are frustrations with the system, but you won't find a single poll that indicates Canadians want to move towards a U.S.-style system. If anything, they may favor a parallel private system like the one that exists in Britain.

[Sherylcatmom]

Originally Posted by arctichomesteader

MA and HI have passed universal healthcare laws. Both failed miserably. VT's Catamount program hasn't worked out as expected, nor has Maine's similar program (Dirigo). Government can't run healthcare any better than it can run anything else, and this tiny state can't afford it.

Still, NO state has attempted single payer yet. The fact that other types of universal coverage attempts didn't work out helps Vermont study what went wrong and do it better.

In states where universal coverage is struggling, their cobbled-together public/private systems created more bureaucracy, rather than less. That led to higher costs, inefficiency, and lack of achieving its goals. Whereas Medicaid and Medicare work much better than either private coverage or these hybrid attempts to get everyone covered.

By the way, even if Catamount hasn't worked out as Vermont hoped, my spouse and I, as well as many self-employed people we know, now have life-saving coverage thanks to Catamount. Even with the new budget's increased deductibles, Catamount means my spouse gets the ongoing care he needs for a life-threatening condition.

I think it's too bad my spouse and I weren't paying those tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in premiums, deductibles, and copays to the state of Vermont, instead of to private insurance companies, which profited during all the decades we were both healthy and very low utilizers of the system (getting mainly preventive care and routine stuff like kidney stones & hernias). I would rather have been subsidizing our fellow Vermonters who were in greater need than us at the time.

[arctichomesteader]

As I said before, I am not necessarily against programs for those who can't afford healthcare, but seeing what has happened where single payer has been tried is enough to convince me I want nothing to do with it. I'm no fan of insurance companies, one nearly cost my mother her life (telling the doctor not to run tests to find cancer, which finally turned up when she had my brother...), but government control isn't any better.

[grmasterb]

Originally Posted by arctichomesteader

....but seeing what has happened where single payer has been tried is enough to convince me I want nothing to do with it....

When you say this, are you basing it on your personal experience with such systems or direct conversations with those who use such systems, or is it based on what someone on TV or radio said?

[Sherylcatmom]

Originally Posted by arctichomesteader

As I said before, I am not necessarily against programs for those who can't afford healthcare, but seeing what has happened where single payer has been tried is enough to convince me I want nothing to do with it.

If you mean in the US, single payer has never been tried here. (Single payer and universal healthcare are not equivalent. Single payer is one method to reach universal healthcare.) If you mean you don't like what's working in other countries, that is a viewpoint one may hold, but it's worth noting those countries spend less per person on healthcare and their populations have higher life expectancies than we in the U.S. do.

Originally Posted by arctichomesteader

I'm no fan of insurance companies, one nearly cost my mother her life (telling the doctor not to run tests to find cancer, which finally turned up when she had my brother...), but government control isn't any better.

Horrible. I hope she was okay.

[arctichomesteader]

Originally Posted by grmasterb

When you say this, are you basing it on your personal experience with such systems or direct conversations with those who use such systems, or is it based on what someone on TV or radio said?

I've met Canadians in doctor offices/hospitals here who came because of problems in Canada (delay or denied).

[arctichomesteader]

Originally Posted by Sherylcatmom

If you mean in the US, single payer has never been tried here. (Single payer and universal healthcare are not equivalent. Single payer is one method to reach universal healthcare.) If you mean you don't like what's working in other countries, that is a viewpoint one may hold, but it's worth noting those countries spend less per person on healthcare and their populations have higher life expectancies than we in the U.S. do.



Horrible. I hope she was okay.

I think the generally poor diet and lack of exercise in this country have more to do with that than the healthcare system. Those systems in Europe are not very good for the elderly.

She wasn't supposed to survive (the cancer was so bad) but did inexplicably. That was when I was 5 years old, a pretty bad time...

[grmasterb]

Originally Posted by arctichomesteader

I've met Canadians in doctor offices/hospitals here who came because of problems in Canada (delay or denied).

And there are instances of medical tourism on the part of Americans who need/want procedures that they can't get covered by their insurer, or they are uninsured and found that the service overseas is significantly cheaper, even with travel expenses. There are numerous cases of Americans who have been denied coverage for services by private insurers or who have had service delayed while waiting for insurance approval.

None of this is meant to say that any system is perfect. I'm certainly not going to suggest that our system should mirror that of Canada or Britain. But we cannot avoid the fact that every other OECD nation spends less per capita and less as a percentage of GDP on health care, yet they have longer life expectancies. And, no, it's not solely due to diet. Spend time in Canada and Germany as I have, and you see that they eat garbage just like we do. We shouldn't be afraid to imitate various aspects of other systems in fashioning an American solution.

[Annie Metal]

Originally Posted by arctichomesteader

You're sugarcoating things. You focus on the treatment of the young. How about the older people who are literally starved to death in the UK and elsewhere? The wait times have killed many people too. Including in the UK a former medical director (the irony!): Socialized Medicine Director Dies After Waiting Nine Months for Operation (http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/selwyn-duke/6979-socialized-medicine-director-dies-waiting-for-operation - broken link)

What I said doesn't need sugarcoating, it's just the facts. ALL people here are in way worse shape, thanks to big medicine corps giving bonuses for denial of treatments, pre-existing conditions, etc. ESPECIALLY seniors, who live on fixed incomes. When I took my senior mom yesterday for a cardio stress test, they asked for her money and co-pay first, before they even asked about anything else. That sickens me. This is my moms life in question!!!!
Nixon was so wrong all those years ago about privatized medicine. They should have stopped it in it's tracks. People with Universal health care will be treated regardless of ability to pay, regardless of pre-existing conditions, the way medicine should be. 100,000 or more folks in the U.S. die from being uninsured, or under-insured, and die to preventable deaths, because they couldn't afford to get basic health care.