http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8w4DE2CwM

"Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit."



What bugs me is that "they" have been working slowly and covertly to privatize our health care here already; the whole boiling the frog from cold rather than throwing it directly into the hot water.

What Sarah Palin needs to realize is that there is no way in hell that privatization would solve any problems we have - which aren't the oversized stories heard by others. As it is right now, we (the people = the government) own our health system. If privatized, some small group or fictional entity would own our health care system and charge us for it.

If you had a car that had a few mechanical hiccups in it, would you sell it to some person you don't know AND make an agreement with them that not only will you pay the rent on it to use it, but that you'll also continue paying back the original loan?

Under the reign of the great kind Ralph Klein, Alberta sold it's power, telephones, and insurance to the private sector in one of the largest deregulation efforts in our country. Since that time, power bills have shot up and have no stability, telephone service is at the mercy of companies who Look forward to serving you better and who are sorry for the wait, and insurance costs rape our back pocket. And now that we no longer own any of it, we are powerless to change it, because when government fucks us over too bad we have the option in our toolchest of free citizens to exert the necessary change, as it is ours, with a corporation, the shareholders make the changes as necessary to themselves.

Maybe I'm missing something... Iunno

Dont take her seriously.
Shes playing a particular song for a particular audience.

And even if we can make the case that a completely sociialised system cant be tossed on america like your frog analogy, she doesnt have a CLUE whats best for canadians.

The canadians do.

America understands that shes a hollow (yet Milfish) ideologue, and nothing more.

Please dont take her fluffy statements as anything other than another extended (and hopefully unsuccessful) run for office.

Low, I'm not too familiar, are you American?

I'm genuinely curious about what the Americans actually think of Canada's health system. I keep on hearing these stories about how opposed to socialized health care most Americans are, and Canada being used as the example, but that's from 'official' sources.

As for Palin: I read the inside flaps of her memoire, and I didn't realize this, but she's a saint.

Yes i am.

I think what americans think is a mix of fact and propaganda to make us fear socialized medicine. Some of our perceptions are accurate, others arent, im sure.

I went to school in west texas, where we had a renowned medical school.
It was filled with 70% canadians, and i dated two canadian nurses in college.
So i feel i got a reasonably accurate view of the system.
Some strengths with a lot of weaknesses...stated by the people who work within it.

I think in the final analysis, the truth is, we are conditioned to fear it, with more examples of waiting lines for treatments, and things like that. UNcles and aunts live in upstate new york in the medical field, and all my life i have heard firsthand of canadians crossing the border so as not to have to wait for certain types of treatment. So i take it with a grain of salt that some of those anecdotes are true.

Conversely, i have also heard plenty of favorable things about it...chiefly among them, the absence of the fear that grips americans..and that is NOT having access to low and medium level care at all, or paying exorbitant prices, from being forced to get our care at emergency rooms ($600+ for simple stuff), when we cant afford medical insurance. (this mostly applies to the self employed, and lower income workers who do not have it offered through work.)

Out of pocket expense for these groups, though are not even comparable. Your system wins hands down. Dental, eye care, and non emergency maintenance are all freely accessible to you guys...and im SURE that the cost savings up the ladder are tangible.

Heres the rub.

We cant afford to switch right now..straight over into socialized care, becuase our economic system wasnt set up for it in its initial consideration. The infrastructure..so on the front end our taxes to implement it, will be through the roof. Also on the doctors side, they are not willing to accept the across the board pay cuts it would require to get THEIR incomes in line and manageable. We are 100% capitalistic there. Better doctors pay more for their degrees, and earn more in their fields. Under the new proposals..all doctors of certain specialties would lose the incentives and received standardized incomes.

They are furious and fearful of that. And by extension, people are afraid of seeing an angry doctor who was making 200k a year, but has been placed under the new system at a set income...of say 60-70 thousand. I do understand that.

Also our physical infrastructure has never been built to support socialization. Construction costs and equipment are not subsidized, so those costs would either be aded int he form of taxes on the back end, or facility quality would suffer.

I think in reality, this late in our organization, it would be difficult to inject that philosophy into what we have into place...ad it would become a train wreck. When you scale up a system that can support 40 million, into one that supports 300 million, it would collapse under its own weight and upfront cost.

Not that we dont think social care is honorable (it is 100%) we just fear HOW it would be implemented, and which areas of quality would suffer on the front end. Change would be painful..to scale from 40 to 300mil. That part i believe is fact.

We need reform, but OUR reform needs to come in the areas of insurance pooling, and openeing up the range of insured in order to bring costs down. We have huge burdens of illegal immigrants, and an offsetting of costs because here, in reality the insured PAY more to cover th euninsured.

Its sort of a myth that everyone isnt covered. They are, but not or low and middle end stuff. Catastrophic injury is ALWYS absorebed by the state, and that in turn is why insurance is unaffordable.

So we have to rearrange the paperwork, and Risk pooling, instead of jamming it all under the government roof.

Im sure there are lessons to learn and case studies to examine that would work here, but not the whole kit and kaboodle, all at once.

Hopefully that cleared some of it up..and hey man...welcome to our little corner of hell.

Please dont believe a single word you will likely read about me.

So thats an example of the infrastructure not being in place.

@Six
Thanks for that statement, as an Aussie I like a free healthcare system but it is not as free as it was years ago. I dont have a bill to worry about from my stay in intensive care. The way you put it showed a different perspective that I havnt had to consider.

Didja notice the maple flavoring?

It would be very difficult to implement a sudden social health system on your country, and I don't want to pull a Palin and tell you what you should do with your health system. However, I do feel that there could be a genuine solution if the entire private health industry was forced into becoming non-profit organizations. This would essentially just cut the fat, which are the greedy tycoons at the top of these companies and the shareholders buying yachts. With a NPO, employees are paid for their work, but all profits must be reinvested back into the organization.

I decided to look up Chemo Therapy, and Bristol-Myers Squibb appears to be one of the biggest manufacturers. For this profit driven company, wikipedia reports that it's Net Income for 2008 was 2.165 Billion. According to Forbes.com, CEO James M. Cornelius was paid a total compensation of $25,037,768.00 for 2008! Imagine if even just this $25 million was put back into curing cancer... James would get a healthy blue collar wage, and the company would be curing cancer instead of poising people or paying for x number of extra life saving proceedures per year.

Sitting here looking at the way the world is, seeing an obvious solution right in front of me, I have to wonder what the use of being here even debating it is anymore. Like you said, things seem to have gone too far with your country to save it for the people. And here, we're just the next in store for the profiteers to rape and pilage. Our government seems quiet intent to pander our people quietly to the New World Order.... Arrggghhh... Getting angry. Did I make a point?