I don't think taylor192 is being elitist in any sense.
He is merely stating the facts.
Its very simple - the healthcare system is a giant Ponzi scheme.

Noir - stop talking ghetto talk in a healthcare discussion. You sound like you're 12 or something.

What ghetto talk?

Taylor's ideology was being challenged as it favoured a certain social class. What's wrong with finding out if he's legit or a guy that just likes to talk big. He called out someone for maybe being poor, the favour was returned.

You don't like what occurs in here, then I suggest you quit RS and stick to your Sesame Street you fag.

It is my neutral opinion that the vast majority of people on this site are high school aged and/or very poorly read. It is this exact frustration I feel when trying to make patients understand how much easier it is to improve their health situation with very simple adjustments to their lifestyle - cutting out smoking, exercising, etc.
But the reality is that those born in lower socioeconomic tiers feel no sense of empowerment due to their inherited lack of choices. As health professionals we have been taught that this is the primary barrier that prevents patients from choosing to adopt the correct path - they feel that nothing they do will change their situation, and therefore remain on the same push button mentality of instant gratification from fast food, or just sitting around and not going to the gym or running.
I have had countless patients continue on a high risk lifestyle combining smoking with poor dietary habits mere months after experiencing strokes or infarctions and the frustration is just disgusting.
Half the people on here know how to fix and/or maintain their car to a basic degree. Yet I'd wager that few would take the initiative to read up on how to improve their health although the advent of the web has made this incredibly accessible.
I for one, from experience, am fully for the American way - if you choose to lead that lazy, sedentary, self-destructive path, you've made your own bed.

Nah, I'm just very blunt which can be taken harshly at times.

I'm in the top 8% of earners, yet even 50% of my lifestyle is subsidized by those making more than me. :D

Just don't ask me how to fix our health care system... that may be too blunt and come off as immoral :angel:

Wow, my sisters are nurses and they both feel this way too.

I always hate the argument "its hard to get ahead". Yes it is, that's why only certain people do and the rest are not meant to live well.

Yet its not as hard as we all make it out to be. I don't know why so many people need their hand held and have everything sugar coated.

i like this answer lol

1. Cut "quality of life" benefits.

We pay for a lot of services that people "want" that they don't "need".
Lookup the types of pills covered under your health benefits you pay for from work, and see how many are actually illness related. I can get massages with my benefits without a reason from my doctor. No wonder my benefits at work keep costing more and offering less.

2. Cut services to seniors.

The older generation did not pay their "fair" share. They paid less in tax to enjoy better benefits. Despite the "OMG old people are soooo poor living on pennies" media crapola we hear, they are the wealthiest generation to ever live.

2a. Tax seniors more.

Many are sitting on homes worth $100ks and refuse to sell, while they will demand more and more services they didn't pay enough tax to support, and we give them further tax breaks.

2b. Raise the retirement age.

The retirement age used to be set so high that most people were not supposed to live long enough to enjoy it. Lifespans have increased, the retirement age needs to be increased.
NOTE: This is especially true of our service personnel, in particular military and police. They can retire with great pensions after 20-25 years of service.
I know they are hard respected jobs, and I'd love to pay them more, yet we cannot afford it.

2c. Put seniors in homes.

My grandmother was able to get at home care. Tons of equipment in her house, a nurse that visited, ... things that would be regularly available in a car facility with staff on call to help her. Yet why should she enter a home if she's allowed to get treatment at home?

3. Fix health care costs.

Women in pharmaceutical sales are the worst example. They convince doctors to sell pills by taking them out golfing or to steak dinners. This is what our tax dollars is paying for, industry brides.
Aspirin can get billed out at $100 in a hospital, for 2 pills! Ridiculous.

4. Add a private health care tier.

Too much money is being spent outside our borders by Canadians not wanting to wait, or wanting better quality treatment. These people would pay in Canada is it was available.
Severely regulate, yet introduce a private health care system while keeping the public one.

5. Remove dual citizenship.

If you leave the country for > XX months, fuck off. Right now my sisters can work in the US basically the rest of their working careers under NAFTA then return to Canada in retirement and abuse our system. not fair, its worse. I know Lebanese families that get their citizenship here then return to Lebanon and do the exact same. Now we're talking about immigrants that offered little to our system coming here, abusing it, leaving, then returning to abuse it.

6. Add more doctors. Now.

Good healthcare starts at home. More Canadians need a family doctor and to see their doctor regularly.
I'm hoping that with advances in health care IT (HIT) that more people will have access to EMR at home and be more responsible for their own health. (I work in HIT)

---

Many will disagree, and I'm sure I ruffled some feathers. I'm not an idealist, although it would be nice to give everyone access to everything they need, its just not possible.

Some hard decisions are coming, either more taxes or more cuts. We'll have to see how the younger generation handles liing lesser quality lives paying for the debts (our futures are mortgaged to the tune of $450B) and excesses and treatments of the past generations. Will we want to help those who left us in such dire conditions?

Maybe the government will enact something similar to "Children of Men", where seniors can offer to kill themselves to leave their family a pension. maybe that wouldn't go over so well... :D

I think people won't like the senior bits at all. I think its hard to apply to the ones that actually worked all their lives only to say you can't have this or that. The retirement age thing for police is iffy too I would say since they get paid pretty good which means they paid a lot in taxes.

^ not only women salespeople take customers out to sweeten the deal.

idiot

You won't believe the ripping off of the Healthcare system that goes on, which all taxpayers pay for.
In Europe, many creams at Pharmacies are now contracted out to companies. Many of the more "rarely" prescribed formulations are simple to make with very little time used yet the governments have agreed to pay nearly C$100 for something that takes pennies to purchase and minutes to produce.

Sarcasm, some people get it, you obviously didn't.

My cousin in the US had to get his Kidney stones removed, luckily, his wife had insurance coverage through work, otherwise he would've had to pay $20,000USD.

How much would've had cost here? ZERO.

In my tax bracket I'd save $10K/yr in taxes even after paying health care insurance and the deductible would only be $3K max with another $7K to buy more stuff!

Its not ZERO here. In my case, its $10K/yr.

yea i agree we do need more doctors and nurses...

i keep hearing on the news about not enough beds.. but then.. there are the abusers too

Health benefits are provided by private insurers like Sun Life, etc.; they have nothing to do with the public system. You might not care for extended health benefits, but most people do which is why decent employers offer decent benefits packages in lieu of higher salaries.

Seniors fought through world wars to give us what we have today (or so the argument goes.) Also, seniors vote in droves so the politicians have to pay attention to them. I don't have issues with seniors; it was largely the baby-boom generation who expanded social services and indebited us.


Time to invest in some pharmaceutical stock.

The problem with this is that the best doctors will go to the private system and eventually, the public system will decay. If by regulation you mean fixing salaries in the private system, well such a system wouldn't really be private anymore.

I'd like to see a real study on the effects of part-time citizens on our social services. It's like saying that all immigrants are on the welfare rolls when more often than not, you see WASPs out on the streets.

Adding doctors isn't as simple as it seems. Our system can only have so many doctors billing for services - it's already overburdened. You need the infrastructure (more universities) to pump out more med-school grads (which requires more tax dollars). Furthermore, family practice isn't attractive for a fresh med-school graduate. Why would you be a family doctor when there are more glamorous options available, such as plastic surgery? (where the payoff is higher)

there were plenty of empty beds when i was at RCH... just no staff to man them :(

You neglected my point. We pay for these extra benefits for health care coverage, yet due to people abusing them they are being eroded. Both my current and former employers have rolled back benefits while raising premiums recently.

My parents are part of the baby-boom generation and my father turns 60 this year. We need to fix the system before they end up in it, put an exponential drain on the system.

More young people need to vote, yet we don't, so we will get screwed with more taxes.
There's lots of opportunity to go to the private system already, the border is only a few hours away.

There's lots of private industries that are heavily government regulated.

I'll see if I can find it, yet there was a study that showed we only get an 80% return on immigrants for every dollar we invest in the immigration process.

Our universities pump out enough grads, they just don't stay here.

Clinics are easier to open/operate than family practices, and can have the same benefit of providing more services to people who would usually see a family doctor.

You might need to clarify this one because I'd say it's only partially true at best?

Are you saying we have an intellectual drain on university grads in general or are you saying this specifically to med. graduates?

I'm pretty sure it's only true to a margin but I doubt we'd have such an intellectual exodus that you see from under-developed countries.

sigh...i don't understand why Canada wouldn't allow for a dual public/private health care system.

It would hugely reduce the strain on the public health care crisis we are facing, lessen waiting time and improve quality for BOTH public and private sector.

Even our legal system is based on such similar design, people who want to pay hire their own lawyer, otherwise, the crown appoints one to you for free.
If we can do this on our justice system, why can't we do this to our health care system?

Yeah, but extended health benefits (like optical care, massage therapy, podiatry, etc.) have nothing to do with the services that are covered by our public health care system (like cancer treatment, regular check-ups, etc.). Yeah, your premiums have gone up because of abuse within the extended health benefits industry.


Wealthy individuals are going to pay for their care no matter what and I imagine that the politicians and bureaucrats view the US as convenient relief valve on our system.

I will admit that I'm not an expert on two-tier health care models, but before people and politicians start spouting off arguments in favour of two-tier health care, there needs to be a comprehensive study done on other countries' systems to see what works best.

Even policy wonks and economists in the United States understand that their exorbant health care costs are a drain on their productivity. The bottom line is that I'm not in the top tax bracket and neither are 85% of the rest of Canadians. And even if I were, I would remember a concept that I learned in Poli Sci 101 - "noblesse oblige." Too bad that "new money" seems to have lost the value of this concept.

I agree with the two tier health care system. If people have the money to pay for the service let them pay for there surgeries it will be quicker for them and they probably will get a better doctor. And for those who cant afford private they can use the public healthcare system and wait for there procedures. I personally like the public side of things because i was born with a disease and need to take medication and it is quite costly but because of the public side i get it for free. On the other hand i had a seperated shoulder from hockey earlier this year, after it happened i went to the hospital to get ym x-rays done the wait time was 4 hours!!!! i was very mad so i decided to go to med ray MRI and payed to get it done i was in and out in 5 minutes it was great.

There's lots of countries to study, and lots of studies that have already been done.

Typical political crapola, lets spend more money to look at fixing the system in several years, when the system needs fixing now and enough material is out there to form a valid opinion.

"Robin Hood" and the Disney version of "The Ant and the Grasshopper" are examples of the lie of "noblesse oblige" that society has been told. This is why more people have their hands out feeling entitled to a life rather than any personal responsibility.

Since we're trading concepts, here's mine: "don't bite the hand that feeds".
We need those 20% to stay in Canada, rather than flee to the next great country that's might also be a tax haven.

I was listening on the radio today CKNW and they were talking about this, apparently Sweden and Norway has a really good two-tier health care system, public and private.. and the private actually provides room for public health care because for certain things people are willing to pay to get it done faster... vs waiting in line for such a small thing...

Quote:

Originally Posted by hung_low (Post 6468013) the americans are just jealous of our health care system.

qft

Yeah, seriously. After 2 pages of discussion, I'm still not convince of otherwise.

It's like downloading torrents. Sure you can get better quality if you pay $25 for a movie for you and your date (because seriously, who goes to movie theatres alone). But when the opportunity is there, people would rather opt to watch for free.

Unless you in the top 20% income bracket in USA and have that much disposable income, I don't imagine any other American that would refuse Free Health Care.