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Originally Posted by Terry Bohannon
Your whole argument is circumstancial. I can just as easily point to foreigners who favor the American system. Case in point, Pope Shenouda III. Why does he come to Cleveland Ohio for major treatment. He could just as easily use his connections to choose a British or a Canadian hospital, but he chooses an American hospital.

The Pope get treated in Ohio, not because American health care is better but for other reasons. From my understanding, the Pope' brother live in Ohio and the church leader likes to kill two birds with one stone: get medical treatment and visit family at the same time.

I.F.

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Do you think that he is inconfident in the treatment?

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My point is that I have no idea why he gets treated in Ohio. Your statement that he gets treated in Ohio because the American health care system is better is a hypothesis on your part as is mine that he gets treated in Ohio because his brother lives there. Who really knows why gets treated in Ohio ?

I.F.

Last edited by Jean Francois; 07/10/09 08:30 PM.
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"Your statement that he gets treated in Ohio because the American health care system is better is a hypothesis..."

I did not make any such claim.

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Well, the World Health Organization (which one approaches carefully as one does all organizations) ranks the United States 1st in providing quality health care and Canada 7th. J.F. makes it sound like Pope Shenouda III condescended to accept American health care only because he happened to be visiting relatives. As a private pay patient he could get good health care in a number of countries, but I have no doubt he chose America purposely. He probably chose Cleveland over New York or Los Angeles because the relatives were there to help care for him.

That does not mean one cannot get decent health care in Canada - even with the many problems that system has. But it does help explain why those who can afford it come to the United States for health care - including those Canadians who either are denied care in Canada or who cannot tolerate the wait lists. The point is that the Canadian model of health care is too problematic to be used as a model. It has far more problems then our own and should not be copied.

We already have problems with socialized medicine here in the States. Don't forget the Oregon woman who was denied a cancer drug by the state but told she could get a suicide drug. Luckily one of the big pharmaceutical companies gave her the drug for free.

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Health care is an issue which President Obama will need to execute carefully. If he fails to make improvements he could be a first term president.

I do have a serious question about the proposal to spend billions if not a trillion or more on healthcare.

We do not have the money for this project. Foreign and domestic entities who buy American securities are fueling the credit line for our current deficit spending. What will happen to this said spending if America's credit runs dry?

Terry

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The finances are a major problem that those proposing socialized health care don’t seem to want to address. Socialized anything costs more then private anything. The government simply has no incentive to run anything efficiently. It’s almost impossible to fire workers who don’t produce and no one wants their health care run with the efficiency of the long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But there are major hurdles ahead. We are an aging society. The number of elderly is going to double and the elderly are the largest consumers of health care services (maybe President Obama sees rationing as a way to kill off the elderly to save money?). Add in the skyrocketing costs of paying social security and anyone can see a major financial crisis looms. And if the global warming folks foster off bad science and manage to raise taxes on utilities on the average family by $1,000 to eventually $4,000 a year there is a disaster in the making. Obama's rationing is not the answer.

The way forward is to keep the government out of health care as much as possible. Socialized medicine gives the State great power over the individual – a power government should not have. It leads to people becoming dependent upon the State (children, if you will) which fairly quickly destroys a society.

Further, in a socialized health care system the doctors, nurses, staff and other workers all need to be paid regularly no matter what, so the only way to cut costs is to ration care. In the United States, under the capitalist portion of our health care it is in the doctor’s best interest to heal you as soon as possible or he looses a patient to another doctor who will treat the patient with the proper care.

One Canadian commenter likes to opine that in Canada the wait list for a room in the maternity ward is 10 months. biggrin

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I'm told that in Poland the waiting list is now three years!

Fr. Serge

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Originally Posted by Jean Francois
The medical profession is to a large degree a racket. Medical doctors are not PhD graduates. Medical professional have a bachelor degree in Medicine and the title Doctor is simply an honorific from a bygone era. In other words, physicians earn 'glorified bachelor of science degrees' with some on site training.

And a *very* recent bygone era at that.

The MD was designed to borrow the respect & prestige of the doctors of the universities, who, unlike the medical providers of the time, didn't kill very many people (although *some* faculty spats could lead to that smile )

I giggle at their, "I'm a *real* doctor spiel." No, they're not (with some notable exceptions). A doctor has, for thousands of years, been one who acquired significant knowledge *AND* contributed to that body of knowledge. Most MD's have never done the latter.

I'd quaffle some at the equating their training to a bachelor's degree--the two years of coursework past the bachelor's is at a graduate level.

While I'm at it, the problem isn't just (or even) keeping out the foreign trained physicians. It's the stranglehold on the entry to medical school, the artificially small number of them, and the size of their classes. If lawyer's tried to pull that nonsense, the better qualified of the non-admitted would sue, successfully, for the restraint of trade and monopolistic behavior. [The real pity here is that there *are* two many lawyers, and two much legal work being done, and that society would be better off if a fourth year were added to law school for the sole purpose of reducing the number of lawyer's produced frown ]

hawk, one-time recovering lawyer who is back off the wagon, and also a real doctor

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Originally Posted by Terry Bohannon
From the business end, it would not make much sense to compensate employees for "health benefits" if it costs them and the employee more up front to do so than the public option. Right now insurance is tax exempt, but they are talking about getting rid of that exemption to "help pay for the public option".

Today's employer-provided health care system is a leftover of WWII wage and price controls--since salaries could not be raised to recruit or retain, non-cash compensation became common, and now expected.

hawk

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ObamaCare will effectively eliminate abortion in the United States, because the waiting time for the procedure will be ten months.

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I'm not so sure about that. When Obama was in the Illinois state legislature he opposed legislation to protect babies who survive abortion. He has had absolutely no problem murdering the child who survived abortion. The euphemism they use is "post-natal abortion."

He also appointed John Holden to be his population/science czar. Holden openly advocates that the U.S. government should spike the domestic water supply with drugs that will sterilize people (in certain neighborhoods). He also supports forced abortions and wrote a book in which he recommends an "armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force" to make sure couples do not have more then the number of children authorized by the government. But of course during the confirmation hearings all of a sudden he no longer believed in those things.

President Obama has made clear that abortion is a human right and WILL BE FULLY FUNDED UNDER OBAMA CARE.

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"ObamaCare will effectively eliminate abortion in the United States, because the waiting time for the procedure will be ten months."

Are you joking?

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Are you joking?

I merely point out that in all socialized health care systems, getting to see a doctor begins to resemble Waiting for Godot. If a person with cancer has to wait six months to begin radiation therapy in Canada, if people in need of hip replacement surgery go for years on the waiting list, if women have to deliver their own babies because no delivery room is available at the hospital, what makes anyone think there won't be long lines and waiting lists to get an abortion.

Short answer--Yes, Terry, I was joking. Sheesh!!!

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Well, I thought you heard something I missed...and I hadn't had my coffee yet.

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