Tom are you still hooked on the pov that we feel the Canadian system is perfect? Speaking for myself I do not think it is perfect.
Just better than ours for most people.
Not me I have great affordable employer coverage. I would still prefer a system that covers everyone at a base limit.
I’m going to be lounging at the pool for the next week with my good friend from Montreal. I’m going to ask her for opinion on the Canadian system compared to ours. Her mom lives in Florida over the winter and has been hospitalized there a few times and also when she has been home in Montreal.
The article is the POV of one, one!, physician, who would like privatized insurance. In the comments others say that in their 70s, they’ve had no trouble getting the same operation paid for.
The plural of anecdote is not evidence.
I just logged on to the article again. There were 8 comments. 1 person said they’d had surgery at 77. One.
OTOH, the doctor said that he has seen a hundred or so patients who were older and denied shoulder surgery.
So out of a measly 8 comments, one mentioned surgery at 77. What are you assuming from that?
“All of the surgery Beauchamp performs would be considered elective or non-urgent.”
Surgery is simply not always the first level response to shoulder issues. While it’s true this sort of problem can be painful, the article skips much detail, including what alternatives were recommended. Why is it so easy to accept what some journalist writes, without asking probing questions?
Even one means that he is 100% wrong to say it’s banned by the national program. So what is his motivation for sayng so? Again, there’s no evidence there; just one guy making claims. That’s what you’re hanging your hat on?
But if the journalist’s article supports your belief then it is gospel.
The reason I am in favor of a national system of some type is because of my fairly extensive dealings with Canadians of all political and economic levels. Several years ago I ran a program on tax compliance with NJ and we had a voluntary program for businesses from Canada. I spoke to thousands of businessmen, political leaders, accountants, lawyers, truck drivers you name it I was on the phone with them. 100% of them were in favor of the Canadian system compared to the US system.
Prior to that I was always running into small business people in NJ who had tax trouble and many of their financial problems stemmed from health care. I heard over and over again from small employers that had to terminate wonderful long term employees who got sick or had a family member get sick and that drove the businesses health care costs to unaffordable levels. It devastated those business people to have to terminate these employees. Most tried to carry them but when you have a covered employee that has huge medical bills in a small pool the cost can not be covered. You either dropped all insurance, went out of business or had to let the employee go. I saw it more times than I care to count.
I also know people with chronic illnesses and our system is unfair to them.
@tom1944 What you are suggesting is a far cry from the Canadian system where the government micro manages everything, down to the staffing levels at hospitals. The staffing levels are dictated by budget constraints, not patient needs.
US government spending on medical care as a percentage of GDP is similar to or higher than that in other rich countries. But that spending does not give the same results, in that the US only offers universal medical insurance to those age 65 or older, compared to other countries that offer it to the whole population. As a consequence, private spending on medical care is much higher in the US than in other rich countries.
Canadians familiar with both systems overwhelming favor theirs. I am not dead set on the Canadian system although I believe an expansion of our Medicare system would be the easiest to accomplish. I have mentioned the Swiss system and there are others.
What we have does not work for a large percentage of our population.
Medical care is micromanaged in the US too, in case you weren’t aware. The party who pays for medical care gets to make the rules; that’s always going to be true. In the US, the party who pays is the private insurance company, whose sole purpose in life is to make a profit. In my family alone, we have had multiple cases of not getting care we needed because the insurance company had its eye on the bottom line, not on our health.
Earlier in this thread, I posted several links demonstrating that no matter what you may think of the Canadian system, Canadians love it. They don’t think it’s perfect. But when asked in one survey if they’d prefer the American system, their response was “Not just NO, but HELL NO!” (91% of Canadian felt that way.)
And all throughout this thread, we’ve heard from people who are familiar with both systems. In every case, they prefer the Canadian. I notice you’re determined to pay attention to stories about outliers and to American anti-reform voices. Why do you discount actual studies of the people who actually have Canadian health care?
I hesitate to interrupt insurance company bashing, because insurance companies are such deserving targets, but it turns out that quite a few insurers are non-profits. In California, HMO giant Kaiser Permanente is a non-profit. Blue Shield of California is also non-profit, although the state just revoked their non-profit status as far as California taxes go.
Point taken, Fang. Non-profit insurance companies still make the rules for their subscribers.
I used to laugh when I’d hear the trope “We don’t want the government to get between us and our doctors.” As if insurance companies don’t get between us and our doctors.
Our local nonprofit 110 bed hospital pays the CEO >$1MM a year.
I don’t know what nonprofit really means any more.
@mcat2, I think you misinterpreted my statement in post 143 (or thereabouts). I was saying two things:
First, the quality of the Canadian and UK systems is a lot better than conservatives say and the problems are not merely as big as they say.
Second, the same folks minimize or ignore the problems with the US health care system (we spend 17.4% of GDP on health care versus 10.9% for Canada and 9.1% for the UK yet we have worse health outcomes than either – the US health outcomes are ranked at 37th best in the world).
Note that neither statement can be read as the “truth is somewhere in between the two camps.”
I live in a city with great medical schools and teaching hospitals and have very good health insurance. So, the quality of the health care that I get is probably better than I would get in Canada without private, supplementary medical insurance. But, I’m in the top 1% and so life in the US treats me well as long as I continue to work hard. But, for the bottom half of the population and maybe a lot more, I think the Canadian system provides superior health outcomes.
With respect to insurance, in the US, most health insurers really no longer bear real risk. Big companies self-insure but the insurance company manages claims. Smaller companies don’t self-insure but if they have big claims one year, insurance premiums go way up the next year. So, while we are paying insurance companies as if they are bearing risk, they are really glorified third party claims processors and are thus probably overpaid.
The inclusion of non-risk-bearing insurers is part of why our health care costs so much more than other countries without getting better health outcomes. Because there are so many insurers, hospitals and doctors have to staff up to deal with the complex and byzantine rules of each separate insurer. The transactions costs are quite sizeable. In addition, the US pays providers (doctors) more than other countries.
Here’s how I sum up the argument that I think is being made here:
Mother: Johnny, you didn’t make your bed, your room is a mess, you didn’t do your homework, and I saw you kicking the dog.
Johnny: Well, Billy left his towel on the floor.
Just in case you can’t tell, Johnny is the U.S., and Billy is Canada.
So has a very long conversation with my friend from Montreal. Bottom line is she cannot understand why we don’t have a system like Canada. She thinks we are fools.
It means that the organization’s primary goal is something other than profit-making, and that it is treated differently for income tax purposes.
However, a non-profit organization cannot, over the long term, make negative profit, or else it will go out of business. In addition, the principal/agent problem applies just as well to non-profit organizations as it does to for-profit organizations – individual employees may act to further their own interests at the expense of the interests of the organization (the typical example given is executives taking huge pay packets even though the organization is struggling financially due to their decisions).