As someone who has actually gotten a tetnis shot (stepped on a rusty nail) and was uninsured at the time, I can tell you it was not expensive (less than $100 at the time, probably a bit over $100 these days).

That is just inaccurate.  I went to the ER with a broken hand and foot (after a martial arts tournament), I had x-rays, pain meds, and taken of and the actual bill was way less a thousand dollars. 

Want the least-trained, least-experienced "health care provider" you can find? WalMart's got what you're looking for.

 

Yeah, but they'll have a great tan from their med school training!

So much for debate.    I'll check back later on.

Some resources:

Great website with short documentaries, lots of research, and numerous links regarding the Canadian healthcare system and its many problems.


Man needs brain surgery for malignant tumor, ~8 month wait in Canada (free + lifetime of taxes), 4 weeks in US ($28,000).


Research on single-payer healthcare.


Man has fist-size hole in skull after car crash. Waits one year for skull reconstruction (Toronto Star).


From 1974 to 2003, 462,000 Scots have died from lack of "timely and effective health care." Scotland has one of the highest avoidable death rates in western Europe.


Don't have much else to add at the moment, but thought some people might enjoy looking some of that over.

BTW, here's something to consider:

When something is not controlled by the government, we're told how we spend too much on it (like healthcare).

But once the government has control, we get told how we're not spending enough on it (like education).

I don't want the same people who have ruined our education system to get their hands on health care. 

Exactly!

 

The tomatoe story I read on msn about a year or so ago, it was about a fellow who was working to pay off his 5,000.00 bill that he had for treatment for cutting his hand while uninsured. Didn't mean to come across as trying to sensationalize things, sorry if that's how it was interpreted!

The horror stories that everyone trumpets about long wait times are

A) just that, horror stories. They are the rare exception. I live here and am perfectly happy with the healthcare here. I have friends who have needed serious operations and have gotten them in a timely manner. I have never experienced any of the supposed horrors of socialized medicine that are routinely used. This weekend I was curling and a buddy of mine blew his knee out... he had to be carried out of the building, couldn't walk. He was seen right away at the ER and had his knee stabilized, x-rays and all the funky tests done. He is now walking with the aid of a specialized brace and next week he is going in for an operation.

Are due to a shortage of doctors, not money or other resources. This is not a problem with the system, it is a problem with the fact that there aren't enough students going through the years of school it takes to be doctors and nurses. And then of course there's the fact that some med school graduates go down to the States as they can make more money there, further siphoning down the pool of doctors. 

In more privatized systems, these kinds of delays are not due to lack of healthcare but the health insurance provider stalling on agreeing to pay for a procedure. There are plenty of horror stories in which patients have been denied treatments or operations because a bean counter in their HMO has decided they don't need the treatment, the treatment is "experimental" and so therefore won't be covered, or the patient has to seek services in an approved "on network" hospital.

Then of course there is always the health insurance provider deciding that because the treatment you need is too expensive they're going to find a way to get out of it and cancel your policy- they may decide to say that you had a pre-existing condition you didn't disclose which terminates your policy, etc.

In regards to people having to pay in Canada, yes, if you're not a part of the health care system you have to pay. If you are a part of the health care system, you don't. It's pretty cut and dry. This is because healthcare is different on a province by province basis, and each province has different rules etc. But there are no rejections, no pre-approval tests or pre-existing conditions you have to disclose. If you live here and apply, you're in.

One way to control costs, for sure. And I would dare say that it is a problem with the system.

I was joking about us all going to the new WalMart clinics for healthcare.  I'm as anti-Walmart as they come.  I won't even mention how horribly the workers in China are treated.  No thanks WalMart, I've decided I'll pay a little more somewhere else.  Every time you spend money you vote for the kind of world you want to live in and I don't want to support WalMart's policies or philosophies.  There are more important things than low prices. 

Unless you are poor and struggling to make ends meet. I would argue that WalMart has done more for our poorest families than any Government programs.

Do you know realize we pay millions and millions in government assistance for Walmart employees? They keep pay low so they can show more profits which wouldn't be such a problem if their workers didn't have to rely on welfare programs to live. WalMart actually encourages their employees to sign up for welfare programs.

And you blame WalMart for that? Ask the average lower-middle class mother of 3 or 4 kids whether that bothers her. I find that WalMart's biggest critics are people who wouldn't (and don't) set foot in the place.

And who would you blame for WalMart paying their employees crappy wages to increase profits while handing them info on how to apply for government assistance?  Should the government have to subsidize WalMart's profits? 

Far as I know, WalMart didn't write the rules. And if that is to be the standard, businesses should hire noone who receives government assistance of any kind (wouldn't want to subsidize profits, would we?), which would narrow the pool of workers just a tad, say by half.

Okay we're having a chicken/egg debate here.  I have a problem with WalMart giving their employees info on how to apply for government assistance instead of paying them a decent wage.  You obviously think that's peachy.  I guess we're going to have to disagree on this one. 

The phrase "instead of" is where you fall into the pit of false assumptions. The information about government assistance is not in lieu of compensation. WalMart pays what people are willing to work for. If there were no government assistance programs, WalMart would still pay what people are willing to work for. Sounds like government assistance is the problem, not WalMart. They at least are helping their employees learn about their "rights." You'd rather they not do that?

Regarding why there are long waiting times for serious medical treatments in countries with "universdal" healthcare:

Yes and why do you think that is? Because as soon as the government decides to fix prices, you end up with shortages.

One of my mantras I repeat over and over in these forums is that the people who do stuff are the ones with the power because they can withhold their talents from a society.

People who talk about wanting to "reduce cost" of health care really mean they want to reduce profits for unfavored groups. Profit is not a bad thing. I don't want the salary of doctors set by the government, I want them set by a free market to encourage as many people to go into medicine as possible.

I wouldn't use the word blame. I would use the word credit. Kudos to Walmart for setting up such a structure in the first place.

Should the government have to subsidize Walmart employees? Not at all.  But that's the problem with liberals - they operate on emotion and never seem to figure out the unintended consequences of their policies. 

Even now, liberals are screaming for universal healthcare without any seeming grasp of the logical conclusion should they get their way - lowered costs to businesses. A massive corporate subsidy.

Get rid of government aid to low income families and WalMart would be forced to pay higher. 

That can be said for ANY large corporation, and has nothing to do with Wal-Mart itself, but due to the fact that "poor" people in America have a fat rich life by world standards.

Wal-Mart is picked on BECAUSE it is the largest. It is not even close to the worst. But like the idiot who lost $10, and was looking around the corner from where he lost it says "the light is better over here". So it is with the ones that hate wal-mart because ....... "the light is better over there".

And before you go denying it, think about one thing. Why did Maryland have to pass a law stipulating not only a minimum employer amount for health care, but a minimum employee base that would only affect Wal-mart? If Wal-wart was the worst, a simple minimum would have gotten them. They are not. But they are the biggest.

Last time I checked Loca, nobody has to work at Wal-Mart.  Like most jobs in the U.S. you are free to work where you want.  Why do you always have to blame someone else?

Artysim -

A little follow-up quote on Cuban healthcare:



From WWW Link.

I agree that it is not fair but it is part of our social obligation to help those that can not help themselves. If a citizen is ill or injured and can not afford the health care needed to mend then we as good citizens should pick up the tab. My gripe is that we are doing it for ever Tom Dick and Harry that is not a citizen which is one of the reasons why things are so expensive.

It was Senator Kennedy that brought about health insurance for the masses in the form of HMO’s, this was THE THING to save us all from high health costs. Twenty years later Senator Kennedy cried that the HMO’s were taking advantage of people and we need a new system to save all of us from high health costs. Translation: his fix did not work so he has a new fix that won’t work. Because the insurance companies are not fully entrenched in the health care industry costs have done nothing but go up. If we socialize medicine and medical care the costs will drop like a rock but we will be back where we were before the HMO’s got involved. We will see people turned away because the government can’t pay for the procedure, examples would be Japan, Canada, and Great Briton with Japan being in the best shape but they charge a 40% tax on your income in order to provide free health care. This in a country where a melon cost 75 dollars and a cup of coffee costs you five dollars if you get the cheap kind. I am basing this off of when I lived in Japan in the magical 80’s before their economy collapsed again.

My point is that if the free market continues to be managed by politics rather than free market forces we will continue to have rising health care costs. When the market place is left on its own prices stabilize to an affordable level. When the government gets its hands in the mix the price goes up dramatically.

How do we fix this? Bite the bullet and costs will go down. The first things to eliminate are the lawsuits. If a doctor is bad get him out of the profession. The malpractice insurance will drop like a rock and sixty percent of the cost of health care with it. Two grand a day to stay in a hospital is outrageous I can get a hotel room for three hundred dollars a day and get ill and the concierge will have a doctor in my room within the hour who will treat me for a minor illness and they will add a hundred bucks to my bill. But when a hospital has to spend eighteen million a year on insurance you better believe they are going to charge two grand a day plus fifty dollars for an aspirin and twenty dollars for a plastic cup to drink water from. The actual cost for a patient in a hospital is roughly 150 to 200 a day, insurance for the hospital, and a separate policy for the doctor and one for the nurse kick up the cost. Then you have tests that have to be done to protect the doctor that rack up a hefty fee. Tests you don’t need, tests the doctor knows you don’t need but he needs to protect himself from trial lawyers that will ask if he had done this test might the patient not been injured? The doctor will have to answer yes and lose the case and his profession because no insurance company will touch him again. The hospital will get sued if they don’t have the most up to date equipment to run these tests even if last years model does the same thing as this years model only three minutes faster.

A doctor just out of med school makes between 95 and 150 an hour, between his malpractice insurance and his student loans, he makes enough to afford a used car for the first 8 to eight years and not live in the best of areas. My girlfriend is an ICU nurse which is how I got the information.

The next thing we have to do is reduce the cost of education. Charging 50 grand a year to go to school for 7 years racks up a huge debt on the student. It is not so much the cost to education it is the cost of the classes you have to take that mean nothing to your chosen profession. They did away with ethics but make you take humanities and a host of classes no one needs but they don’t cost much to the school and they charge a premium price. Now days everyone is demanding a college degree for even the simplest of professions. A prison guard needs a college degree. All he has to do is count the inmates and report when the numbers don’t match. For this he has to have two years of college just to get the job and promise to get his bachelors degree within five years. And since he as a degree he needs more money to pay for it and his salary goes up and then your taxes go up.
If you are a doctor, or an engineer a college degree is a good thing. Case in point look at all the people saved by medicine, oh wait, most of the medical advances are made by high school drop outs, well we have engineers, oh wait, the titanic was designed by college graduates and Microsoft was created by a college drop out. Anyway a college degree is a good thing. My son has several of them to prove it.

My point is we demand so much education that we price ourselves out of business.

What happened to "debate," Kupe?