my mother is dying from emphysema and a weak cardio system. why? expense. she has no insurance. not to mention that every- and i mean every- medication she has ever taken other than aspirin has been recalled. i am losing my mother who is only 65 years old because of a shitty system of big pharmaceutical companies, big insurance companies, hmos and the like. why wouldn't i want something to benefit everyone? i can only hope that as more of middle america is squeezed by the healthcare costs- the silent majority will start to yell and yell loudly for change.
As the baby boomers reach the age when health care becomes much more intensive and expensive, its availability will diminish, both in the US and Canada - regardless of how enlightened government policies react. That's just demographics. I fear that there may be a mechanism at work here that is beyond cynicism. By reducing the availability of care, more patients will die sooner, reducing some of the burden - not only on the health care system, but also on governments and corporations who pay their pensions. 
There are probably beancounters in the reight wing of government and industry who would prefer to see a Monty Pythonesque approach to health care - just a guy pulling a cart down the middle of the street yelling, 'bring out your dead!'
The Premier of British Columbia is calling for an "open dialogue" into medical care - desperately pushing for a free-market system. The supposed horror stories about the single-payer system are in full bloom, and it's tough to cut through it, but that doesn't mean we're not trying!
Biggest problem for us in BC is that this is where Canadians go to retiire, so there is a fair number of folks who made their money and paid their taxes in other provinces coming here when they are at their most physically vulnerable (palative care is the most costly ongoing care, meaning outside of emergency surgeries).
The "fix" is to slightly change the equalization payments to consider the age of population as well as the numbers.
I've asked for a seat at the local forum. Fingers crossed that I get one!
I have dual citizenship and have lived most of my life in Canada. For the last four years I have found myself back in the United States, dealing with the sick farce that passes for a 'health care' system here.
Since I'm employed by a major university, I have 'good' insurance. Yet my premiums are $328 a month, with a $25 co-pay for doctor visits (in Canada, I didn't even know what a 'co-pay' was) and I'm responsible for the first $5,000 in hospital costs in any given year. I have a life-threatening 'pre-existing condition' which of course they won't cover at all.
And yet, there are still people in this country who actually defend and excuse this state of affairs. It's nuts.
Dear Thurday,
Give Gordon "Suds" Campbell a smack in the head if you can. And then send a few B.C. voters down here to get an up-close-and-personal look at the disaster we live with. That'll nip that brilliant idea in the bud.
This was a telling story; I'm glad to see it linked on Crooks & Liars. More people need to understand in their guts that the American system is unjust and deadly.
This past summer my brother Paul thought he'd eaten something bad. Or maybe it was the stomach flu. He and his fiancée canceled a Sunday dinner with my stepdaughter and husband, visiting Los Angeles. The next day, Paul strategized with my other brother about whether it would be less expensive in the long run to go to an emergency room or to a doctor.
Paul was self-employed, and with a baby on the way, didn't feel he could afford health insurance for himself, although he made sure the baby and Sarah were covered.
He was a hard-working photographer, caterer, and film-maker — he played "Snake" in "The Real Old Testament," a comedy that won several awards at film festivals around the world.
Tuesday at dawn, he and Sarah finally went in to the nearby UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center. Classic appendicitis. But wait, they gave him a Cat-scan, and maybe it was diverticulitis.
So even though he'd been vomiting for two days, the ER sent him home with antibiotics he couldn't keep down and the advice to follow up at the county hospital, where costs would be less.
The problem was that by this time neither he or Sarah, who was seven months pregnant, were up to negotiating a far-away and unfamiliar part of town.
Standard procedure, we've been told, would have been to admit Paul, since diverticulitis and appendicitis are so easily misdiagnosed for one another, and because that mistake can be deadly.
Sarah brought Paul back to the Santa Monica medical center.
They gave him another Cat scan, and talked some more about transferring him to county.
They did not, evidently, compare the two cat scans, which showed a dramatic and frightening disintegration of Paul's condition.
They did not operate until Wednesday morning. Paul's ruptured appendix was the worst the surgeon had ever seen.
Paul died a little after midnight, August 3, 2006.
I cannot explain how much we miss him. We were not ready to say good-bye.
His baby daughter was born this autumn.
We so need universal health care in this country. Paul shouldn't have died.
Great article. I'm a dual citizen, born in Canada, grew up in New York, went back to canada in my late teens (in the late seventies), and I'm back in the USA again. The superiority of the Canadian single-payer -- economically, morally, and politically -- system to the U.S."system" of planned chaos, is almost impossible to exagerate.
On the other hand, the Canadian system has been drastically de-funded since the nineties and it is not as amazingly good as it was in the ten years or so after I moved back. As neo-liberal policies and ideas have metastasized, basics of a civilized modern society, such as progressive taxation and the right of people not to starve to death if they lose their income (i.e., welfare), have been sacrificed on both sides of the border. The radical-right-wing tactic of strangling social welfare programs by cutting taxes to the rich has been implemened in both countries, but not as drastically in Canada because ... well, because Canada isn't the United States.
I disagree with SadbutTrue, although he obviously has a point. Providing health care in the face of the demographic bulge just requires political will, smart ideas, and dedicated managers and practitioners. Our boy Al Gore could manage it, I'm sure. Or Hillary for that matter, if she can stifle her instinct to triangulate her policies with Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich.
Don't let yourself be taken in by the idea that economics is physics. It's politics and psychology.
Let the flame wars begin.
I'm a physician in the US. I have Canadian patients who come here for vision saving treatments they cannot get in Canada without waiting until it is too late.
The Canadian system has a myriad of problems, mostly associated with ridiculous waiting lists for more urgent procedures.
As a member of Physicians for a National Health Plan, I fully support a single party payor system. Insurance companies are an unnecessary middle man, but, be careful what you wish for. There are millions of Canadians very unhappy with their lot, who look to the US to save them (if they can afford it).
At some point, we're all going to have to face the fact that we simply cannot afford the very best, latest treatment for everyone. The dollars just are not there.
Betmo, Kristen; Thanks ever so much for sharing your personal stories. When I was writing this I was too aware that such tales existed in quantity south of the border. They of course provide the corollary to my article, and the backdrop to why it was written. I am certain my friend Lee would have died as well if he and his family had been faced with the 'rock and a hard place' options that Paul was.
Thursday, Seattle Space Crow, and Jeffrey; you bring up the secondary reason that I wrote this. The Canadian health care system has indeed been in rapid decline for the last decade. This has been driven by the demographic factors I alluded to above, but also by defunding and privatization of some ancillary services - the result of a political drift towards conservatism that is not as bad as in the US, but still threatens the viability of a system that has worked well for as long as I've been alive. More people in need meeting fewer dollars for services is a collision course towards disaster.
Seattle Space Crow, my reference in the article itself to people being killed by decisions made by HMO accountants was extended, perhaps hyperbolically, into the cynical and Monty Python scenario I painted in my comment. I don't think we disagree in principle on what's happening, only on the degree to which it applies.
Disclosure: I'm cross-posting this from crooks and liars, but it's my story...
I live in Toronto, Canada. Two years ago this coming April my son Finlay was born in a local hospital. Although he was awake at birth, his condition quickly deteriorated until he fell into a coma and was put on to a respirator with little sign of neurological response or activity. WIthin 48 hours he was transferred across town to the NICU at the Hospital for Sick Children. We spent the next 3 weeks there and he was given CAT scan, CT-Venogram, multiple EKG and spinal taps, bloodwork, reflex tests and was examined by multiple specialists in genetics, neurology, GI, metabolics, and virology. Ultimately he started to come around in his 4th week in hospital and woke up like a character in some kind of fairy tale.
He was finally diagnosed with a condition called NKH which results in what would commonly be known as cerebral palsy. He has problems developing body strength and may be intellectually delayed, although it's still very early to tell.
Since his release he has been regularly followed by multiple departments at the hospital and we receive homecare visits from occupational and physical therapists, and limited funding for respite workers to give us a break in caring for him.
About 3 weeks ago he started to take a few wobbly unsupported steps on his own and he pushes a walker (also gov-funded) around the apartment like a race car. He laughs a lot and isn't shy about kissing strangers or playing ball with our dog.
The medical expense to us has been:
nothing.
We're lucky to live in a big city where these resources are close at hand, but whereever they do exist they are available to the people that need them, no questions asked.
Every time I read a story about health care in the US I can't help but think to myself
"what are the chances that this happy, amazing little boy would be alive if he had been born there? Even *with* insurance, would the pressure have been to simply pull the plug on him?"
When I consider the possibility of people having to do that in a country where the same capacity to care for everyone exists right behind hospital doors....
I cry and hug my kid.
Good points, sadbuttrue. In any case, all I was really trying to say was, in the noble words of Commander Peter Quincy Taggart "Never give up! Never surrender!"
We must not give up in the long war for medicare! Nothing less than victory is acceptable!
We're not winning, but we're not losing ... I think we may need to send in more troops ...
LOL SpaceCrow - Love the reference to Galaxy Quest.
The Democrats, if anything, are even more to blame for the lack of national health care than the Republicans. 40 years as the majority party in Congress and no health care. 47,000,000 Anmericans do not have an HMO, 8,000,000 of them being children.
Anyone remember Clinton's parody of a health care bill? It was partly written by the ficve biggest health care insurers and it was so complicated that I'm pretty sure even Clinton didn't understand it.
Talk about outsourcing legislation.
As the thread above indicates, J.P., even in Canada health care has many obstacles to overcome. It is obviously not a Republican vs. Democrat problem. The problem as I see it, in a nut shell: health care used to be a profession. Now it's an industry.
My family and I wwere vacationing in Vancouver, B.C. when she had an accident an almost lost an eye. It was emergency room treatment and seeing a specialist in Canada on three occassions in the over the next 10 days. Since we weren't citizens, we were asked about payment, etc. While, I have insurance and knew that I would be reimbursed later, I was worried about the out of pocket. I was presented with a bill for $250 Canadian. I almost laughed and wrote a check.
About a year later, we were in Palm Springs (we had a two year run of bad vacations), my wife's knee was struck by a car. The two mile ambulance ride to the hospital was $1,000. The three hours she spent in the emergency room including x-rays and crutches was another $3,000.
While, I'm fortunate to have insurance, if the anything is done in the next two years, it needs to be national, single payer health insurance.
Bill Clinton was in Halifax, Nova Scotia a while back, giving an address on CAN-AM relations. He quoted this little nugget of data on spending versus coverage: Canada spends 9.2% of its' GDP to provide health care for 100% of its' citizens; USA spends 13.9% to cover just 45% of its' citizens (1997 data).
http://thumbsnap.com/v/hyy14ie3.jpg
The report is here:
http://www.pnrec.org/2001papers/
...eaultLajoie.pdf
Commenting by HaloScan
