The answer is to get rid of all private health care so that everyone has the same access. Single payer health care. It's the only way to go.

I've been among the tender mercies of a public health care system. I'll pass on eveyone being equally ignored and mistreated.

I second LazLong's comment. Anyone who has ever lived through single payer healthcare knows what a nightmare and umitigated disaster it is. Think Department of Motorvehicles level of service.

I was in the single payer system in Canada and got much better service I get in the apartheid system here in the U.S. All that for $375 a year in Canadian money, taken out of my paycheck, 10 years ago. Most memorable is walking into the eye doctor, getting a check-up, getting a pair of contacts, with friendly, polite service, and never once reaching into my pocket except to show my national health card.

And besides, even if you had to put up with a little inconvenience, what's more important, your convenience or everyone getting the health care they deserve? We all need to confront that question. The standard macho-man spew is going to be screw everyone else, I work for my money and it should by me better health care. Okay, but someone in power is going to say that about you, too, sooner or later.

Like democracy, single-payer healthcare is the worst possible system, except for all the alternatives. For every horror story about poor service from a national or provincial health system, I can provide two from the so-called free market. Folks who are toothless in their twenties for lack of dental care, women getting ovarian cancer after their ovaries had supposedly been removed, people condemned to a lifetime of diabetes because their doctors couldn't spend enough time with them to explain how it could be avoided, hospitalized patients who become dehydrated just because no one refilled their IV's. Higher infant mortality. Shorter lifespans. Higher morbidity rates. And all at only double the cost!

The difference is that for-profit health insurance providers indirectly subsidize the "news" about what's wrong with single-payer, and no one subsidizes (directly or indirectly) stories about what's wrong with a market-based approach.

Privatization in Ireland is but a single misguided step towards a "system" like the one in the USA. Why anyone would want to imitate a mechanism which produces worse general outcomes at twice the price is beyond me.

When you have to cough up thousands of dollars for an operation or hundreds for an exploratory procedure, one starts to wonder why those who can afford good preventative healthcare should get it whilst those who can't...

Public healthcare is different in efficiency, effectiveness and timing in every country that has it (which is all of the rich countries except the US).

However, nobody has to go into debt paying for needed healthcare procedures and operations. I, myself, have to postpone an important procedure because I don't have the money.

A real problem with some public healthcare systems is the fact conservative governments are not committed to them and thus have usually starved these services by annually cutting funding.

I think anyone who's lived thru the for profit only health care system and still advocates that system as better is either rich, never had a serious health issue, or is working for an insurance company. As I write this my father is in the ICU, has been for the last week after having a heart attack here in Canada. There's no doubt in my mind that our family would be bankrupt if we lived in the yankee system; here in Canada we'll keep our house. If we lived in the states, the for-profit insurance company would be looking for a way to kick our family out of their coverage. Screw your analogy, people aren't cars...

It's hard to imagine a better way for an immense amount of Americans' wealth to move out of the hands of individuals/families and into corporations' hands than to allow Republicans to reform health care, including Medicare, with more "private insurance" choices.

You get employers backing away, government backing away, insurers writing odds worse than Vegas into new products, citizens FORCED to buy, and competitive advertising of "choices" presented as usefully as by our now-famous AFLAC duck and GEICO gecko. Media, by the way, won't criticize it because media profits from it.

As for Canada, if they elected a more conservative president, they have their problems to contend with.
As for us, you ain't gonna like Giuliani-Care.

I don't know why Daniel David attributes forced insurance buying to the Republicans. The Republicans, by and large, are content with the present system.

It's the Democrats who are pushing the forced insurance buying. Only Dennis Kucinich is for a single payer system. The others all look at 43,000,000 uninsured Americans not as a tragedy, but as an opportunity for insurance companies to make $15,000 x 43,000,000 a year that they're not making now. They compare it with car insurance, but of course, you can choose not to have a car, but you can't choose not to be alive. (That's up to the adjuster at the insurance company)

Listen to the insurance company spokesmen. They get indignant at the very idea that there are workers out there who can "afford" insurance, but don't get it. How dare they choose to spend their money somewhere other than insurance? There oughta be a law. And, thanks to the Democrats, there soon will be. So, listen to Susan Long, and don't disregard what the candidates say.
So many people on this site do disregard what Clinton, for instance, says, because they'd rather believe that she doesn't mean it, that a Democrat just has to be better than a Republican. Evidence be damned! History be forgotten! They want to believe, so they do. Sad.

The sad thing about the Suzie Long story is that the Rushs of the world will use it as an example that the public system doesn't work and call for even more privatization - even if it is privatization which is at the bottom of the problem.

There is something to be said for putting the Foxes in charge of the hen house of Universal Health Care. Foxes are beholden to Foxes rather than chickens.

Yes, all these tax cuts (which mostly go to the big corporations but throw the overtaxed middle-class a few much appreciated crumbs just before Christmas) are designed to empty the government coffers so that there is no money for education or Health Care or Affordable Housing or Affordable Day Care, or Senior care.

LazLong and RMouse tell me when you suffered through the public system and we will see how much of the system has been privatized in your area. I think most of us would agree that Health Care in Canada was better before 1995. What did Avi say that then Finance Minister Paul Martin did in 1995 again? Oh yes, gut the system.

Avi Lewis is son of Stephen Lewis and journalist Michele Landsberg and grand son of David Lewis who co-wrote "Make this YOUR CANADA".

http://www.ndp.ca/ourhistory/#lewis

Stephen Lewis is presently trying to irradicate AIDs in Africa. He does know which Health Care policies do and do not work in Africa, among other places.

http://www.ndp.ca/page/4322

greenerthanthou,

The significant difference between Republicans and Democrats on health care, specifically health insurance, is whether insurers are allowed to do selective underwriting based upon medical history.

Indeed, Republicans are fairly happy with the present system, and their idea of reform is to watch group plans quietly go away, replaced only by Health Savings Accounts (a tax dodge for the well-to-do) where the high-deductible insurance part is wholly based on medical underwriting. Their other idea of reform is to cut Medicare benefits and replace with "requirements" you buy increasingly privatized supplements, the requirement being you GO BROKE ON YOUR NEXT ILLNESS if you don't.

There are many ways to be "forced" to buy a private insurance product. Legislation is one way. Fear of bankruptcy is another way. Democrats may do the former with consumer protections. Republicans will "reform" by cutting the legs out from under what's left of our present system, then allowing the latter to occur by default.

There are also a number of ways money moves from family hands to corporate hands. Insurance premiums are one.
Papa deciding he has to spend all the family savings on care for Mama, because he loves her, and because the insurance (with copays, deductibles and lifetime limits is inadequate) is another. Then he's broke and any modest inheritance to kids just went to guess who, the medical corporations.

You can argue all you want that Republicans are good for health care. Most Americans count this as one of the biggest reasons they think America is on the"wrong track."

May Susie Long rest in peace.

More funding for equipment and medical professionals in Ireland might have saved her life by shortening the line. 43,000,000 Americans don't even get to wait 7 months for a colonoscopy. For over 1/8 of the population of the United States, there isn't even a damn line in which to wait.

And any system that isn't universal is never going to be able to cope with a pandemic. Your platinum level private insurance isn't going to save you when some uninsured person coughs anti-biotic resistant TB on you.

I am not going to argue with Ms. Long; it is a tragedy. But the insurance companies are not regulated because they buy off the politicians who appoint their regulators who are their future employees...

...here in the States, many misguided worship at the altar of Ronald "the De-Regulator" Ray-gun; and have no idea how terrible our status as once-citizens but now serf-esme-peons is quickly becoming. We have the highest infant mortality rate in the first world (we are quickly becoming a banana republic). A single payer system sounds like a symphony after the cacophony of the insurance leeches. The rich will always have options the rest of us do not have; go back into history as far as you can and this has been true. But at least with a single payer system, medicine has another philosophy. In the US we have doctors who are trapped as slaves of HMOs or are complicit in the evils of the Empire (death sentences, torture, experiments, etc.) Wouldn't it be wonderful if kids who wanted to heal (instead of make a killing in the market) were given free medical training (instead of those who have 'connections')?

I side with the single payer system as it at least offers something, which is better than the nothing we have now in the US.

Having lived three years under NHS in the UK and having many friends who continue under that system, I know that there are enough horror stories about NHS's all around to sink many a boat. The only problem is that under our current apartheid system in the US, the horror stories are more numerous and more horrific.

I got good service from my NHS doctors, and, after my 60th birthday, paid NOT A SINGLE PENCE for my prescriptions. I got an appointment with my GP every time I needed one, got blood tests, and even got a same-day appointment when I was in pain.

Yes, there are problems with the NHS and other national health plans, and they get played up big and surely will in the coming presidential campaign. But the best argument in favor (favour?) of a national health plan is that it is available to everybody, regardless of employment, unemployment, earnings or lack thereof, etc, etc, etc.

And it works. Good health care (sometime even great health care) is available to everybody.

I hope this comes to pass in the US of A soon.

I waited over a month for an MR image for a serious injury in the US. Waited 6 weeks for a regular appointment with my primary "care" [hah! more like factory assembly line, I can spare you 10 minutes, what was your name again] physician.

My doc is not a bad guy, quite the contrary, but he's not a doctor any more, he's an indentured labourer controlled by profit-skimmers and bean counters at the HMO head office. We talked about HMOs and how discouraging and depressing it is for the doctors to be treated like assembly line workers, with constant "line speedups" and interference from the accountants. "People with an MBA are telling me how I can and cannot practise medicine," said my doc sadly.

And all this *with* substantial co-pays, dedictibles, and large contributions from my employer. My health is good, thank heavens, but I am moving to Canada anyway. Will happily pay higher taxes to live in a country where sick people are not left to die in pain because they weren't rich enough, and where (should I end up needing medical attention) I will be treated with compassion as a person, not just another widget on a conveyor belt tended by sleep deprived depressed wage slaves. Nuff said.

We should be glad that there isn't any Health Savings Accounts because it could serve as a down payment for one of those sub-prime loans.

All that Health Savings Account does for the responsible is keep them from treating a problem until it gets very serious. And even if a person doesn't spend a dime out of it until they get cancer, how long does it last?

And can one have a Health Savings Account and still collect Social Assistance or would they expect you to spend that money first before receiving benefits? What if you are working at Wal-Mart and they cut your hours because it was February and business is a bit slow? Would you be able to resist dipping into it to pay a bill or buy a few groceries?

The whole thing strikes me as blame the poor.

The way I look at it, the 'rich' guy would have died as well if there had been no private sector, he would have had to wait in line as well. so at least one life was saved, maybe that system is not the complete solution, but the system we have in Canada is not either.! so a system that saves some lives must be better ,regardless of what idiot Lewis says.(and believe me he and his family have the money for private health care, and I am sure would use it if they needed to ).

I get so tired of hearing that private insurance provides better care than universal single payer. I had health insurance and still could not get a colonoscopy until months of other less expensive tests which failed to detect the cancer until it was so far advanced that I had to undergo surgery, chemo and radiation. And beyond that folks with insurance are afraid to use it for fear they'll lose it, either literally or through escallating premiums. My insurance company, Anthem, doesn't directly regrade you after an illness; they play another game. They initiate a new policy pretty much like yours and new folks enroll in that pool, while all the old policy holders with now "preexisting conditions" are unable to change. Then the old policy rates can rise steeply because the "risk pool" is older and sicker.

The rich are simply superior to you. If they weren't superior they wouldn't be rich, they'd be poor. Poor people are inferior, since they are poor. It's obvious. If you can't afford to be well, commit suicide. If you want to object, then please contact the Dept of Homeland Sec, shut up and wait for the knock.

I must be missing something. The woman with the publicly funded health care died and the man with private insurance lived and we are to take from this example that private health insurance is bad. I don't support the U.S. system and do believe that a single pay system is better and necessary but this is a very bad example to use if you're trying to fight the private insurers.

foxton, the message is, only those able to afford private health insurance have a right to competent treatment. Read what VetOfKorea said again.

Lots of good posts here, especially the personal testimonials on US versus Brit or Canadian health care.

I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy soon, and to my mind it should be an in-patient procedure. Except for the three hours when they'll dope me up and shove a camera up my butt, I'm doing all the work at home. And I also have to draft a friend to drive me home afterwards because I'll be in no condition to drive. So for the sake of "keeping costs low" I get this hurried and desultory treatment.

And here I am one of the lucky ones, actually, because I have health care. Most of my life I've been in lousy jobs--not bad work, actually, but poor pay and no benefits--and my health plan was "don't get sick". Fortunately, I was in good health. But the point is that health care shouldn't be a matter of luck in employment, it is something we are all entitled to get.

So in a universal system, there may be more waiting for care, because all those who need it can get it. Under private insurance, you get rid of all those poor people ahead of you in line. They go to emergency or just cope.

When are we going to take profit out of healing? That some people make a killing by providing healthcare is outrageous and contrary to basic human values of compassion. We need a good health care system that emphasizes well-care and values human life over the dollar. We need politicians who listen to us and work for We the People and not the corporations and health care "industry". [What a crass term!]

Seems that the lines are much longer in areas where there is both public and private delivery of the same service - and much longer since Finance Minister Paul Martin cut those transfer payments to the provinces. Ever wonder where those Federal surpluses keep coming from?

In areas where there is both public and private delivery of the same service, part of that may be because of the shortage of doctors at present. There is the same amount of spaces whether is it all public or split.

And where does a person go when the private system messes up? Marketplace did a show on cosmetic surgery (which costs if it isn't to prepare damage or a birth distortion) and if there are complications, the person has to turn to the public system to fix it.

Anyone remember Connie Curran? Filmon was like her Eva Braun.

Anyone remember the studies that talk about the tendency for more errors to occur in the private for-profit system?

Anyone remember hearing that private for-profit delivery of a service is more expensive than nonprofit delivery of the same service? In otherwords, it is not a way to save money.

Anyone remember that private for-profit delivery results in more medical errors than the non-profit system?

Anyone here read the Romanow Report?

I would recommend that you take a peak at chapter 1 page 6 and chapter 11:

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/care/romanow/hcc0023.html

Have no complaints. Son woke up Monday and could not move his arms and legs - ok he could move his left arm a little because I got him from the chesterfield onto a chair. Phoned Health Links because was a bit freaked what I would do if he had to go to the bathroom which was up a flight of stairs. They phoned an ambulance. He was taken to the hospital and had a chest X-ray, blood work and an MRI. And, since he was still under 18 his room had an Xbox that he could play with when he started to regain use of his limbs. And a prescription for flu medication.

Actually, I do have one complaint. Those moveable custodian carts - I hate those things with a passion. My son got out Wednesday and spent most of yesterday coming down from what amounts to free samples of drugs. The difference between dealers/pushers and custodians/janitors is that the former make their money from selling drugs while the latter makes their money from handing out free samples. Some of those so-called cleaners should be banned. That is my big complaint about the public system.

it is odd that such an article would appear on this site, whose readers are mostly USAns who have an even worse system - but with propagandists perversely upholding the Irish example as example of why "socialized medicine" doesn't work. Of course, it is really an example why private "tough luck buddy" health insurance doesn't work.

Of course, no one points out if she lived in the US, Ms. Long, presumably someone earning a low income (but not as low as the US - Ireland's minimum wage is equavalent to about US $12.00), she would never have been able to get a colonoscopy at all (about $5,000 here in the US if paid out of pocket.

but, at least she would hsve been in happy ignorance until the cancer fills her abdomen to the point that it causes severe pain.

This gradual strangulation of a vital public service, followed by announcements, by the very people who destroyed the system, of: "See? Socialised _________ doesn't work!" is a classic neoliberal tactic, first perfected here in the US - particularly under the Clinton Administration.

foxton,

You sure are missing something!

The people who had private insurance only had it because they were rich enough to afford it! The people who can't afford it are left with an ineffective system, or in the US, no access at all for practical purposes.

The public system could be at least as good as the private system, but it is being deliberately de-funded to give corporations and rich people the preferential tax treatment they demand, and force the system into privatization.

It looks like I was right about USAns having trouble understanding this article.

in most of the world, (but not the US) access to medical care is considered a universal human right, therefore, ability to pay should have NOTHING to do with quality of care. I know, this is a pretty radical, communistic concept for USAn ears, but just think of, say, streets, highways or sidewalks, are rich people given preferential treatment to use them?*

*Not yet anyway, but some states are actually thinking of opening HOV lanes and busways to toll-paying single occupant cars. Only in the US...

I wonder how much Naomi Klein agrees with Avi Lewis's opinion on Health Care.

PJD says: This gradual strangulation of a vital public service, followed by announcements, by the very people who destroyed the system, of: "See? Socialised _________ doesn't work!" is a classic neoliberal tactic, first perfected here in the US - particularly under the Clinton Administration.

I am sure this scam predates Clinton. I think that they first used it on railway travel or something like that - and to close libraries. If you try to close a library (this is before the internet) the people will be pissed off. So first you cut down the hours so that it is harder for people to use the library and then, when people are so fed up with the local library that they no longer care you close it.

I think that proponents for Universal Health Care in the US tend to figure that once they win the battle and it is impliamented that the war is over. Proponents of Unsocialized for-profit Health Insurance, hospitals, clinic etc are never going to give up the fight.

I think you make an important and central point that first the Privateers get their puppets to start dismantling the system and then they turn around and say "See it doesn't work any more! It is a failed experiment!" See how many on this thread have bought that phony argument (and Canadians too!). Though, I think that many of them have ties to Corporate Medicine which would rival those Swift Boat Vets who spoke out against Kerry. Didn't Kerry make some Health Care recommendations during one of his debates with Bushit?

I would personally like to see more articles by Canadians on Common Dreams - Frances Russell has one on the Death Penalty which is quite interesting and simple to read.

BTW - did you see the video Ballad of the Axe (featuring Paul Martin as Finance Minister) yet?

http://www.waitingformartin.ca/videos/hatchet.html

You have all heard of Kiefer Sutherland? He has a very famous grandfather named Tommy Douglas.

Tommy Douglas coerced Lester B Pearson to pass the Medical Care Act of 1966 - where the Federal Government would pay 50% of Health Care costs but Health Care would be run by the provinces. Paul Martin slashed the transfer payments in the early 90's when he was PM Jean Cretien's Finance Minister (one of the reasons why the Federal Government keeps having all those surpluses). By the time Roy Romanow wrote his report what the Federal government was paying 18.7% of Health Care costs because Roy Romanow wanted them to increase it to 25%. (Chapter 2 of the Romanow Report)

PJD says: therefore, ability to pay should have NOTHING to do with quality of care.

Actually, it has more to do with the access to care. Private for-profit hospital care tends to be inferior to non-profit hospital care because they tend to take Connie's advice and use underskilled and/or insufficient numbers of health care providers.

Single-payer has my vote. Vinlander has got it right about that : "And any system that isn't universal is never going to be able to cope with a pandemic. Your platinum level private insurance isn't going to save you when some uninsured person coughs anti-biotic resistant TB on you." According to some people in the "complementary" health care field, the pandemic is already here -- try Lyme Disease.

While we're at it, let's put in a plug for health care education (positive life style features that help to keep us well and healthy) and pro-active prevention of developing serious conditions. This is clearly quite a generalized statement and possibly applies more to the younger part of the population, but education and prevention of disease would cost a fraction of hospitalization and expensive testing.

Healthy living? Sure! Drive the sugar, soda pop, snack and fast food people crazy! Pay a living wage so people can actually afford to buy vegetables and fruit instead of chips and candy bars.

Did you hear on Public Radio about the doctor who opted out of the present system? Just couldn't stomach what he had to do as part of the HMO and insurance driven health "industry". Decided to open up an office on his own, just to see patients for regular types of complaints. Patients sign a paper saying they will not hold him responsible, i.e., sue him. He charges something like $25.00 per office visit, and people come in with their children who have earaches, funny little rashes, -- you know, all the little things that indicate something out of balance, feeling unwell, something not quite right, etc. The doc said he was scared he would go broke, but it turns out he was overrun with business instead and now has a couple of other doctors who want to work this way too. He and his wife and family make a comfortable but not extravagant living.

Change is coming. The barely detectable signs of it are around us. Hard to see amidst the massive overwhelming problems we face. One of those signs is all this seething uncomfortableness, irritablity and general fed-up-ness in people. Somehow we need to cover all sectors of society but not stifle creativity -- and it seems to me that's the challenge.