Are you in favor of Single-payer Health Care, like Canada?

UHC NEVER works. Anywhere.

Canadian doc, now here:

...Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the health-care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,” he fumed to the New York Times, “and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. Day’s clinic, for instance, handles workers’-compensation cases for employees of both public and private corporations. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80 percent of government-funded diagnostic testing. In Ontario, where fealty to socialized medicine has always been strong, the government recently hired a private firm to staff a rural hospital’s emergency room.

This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain’s government-run health care dates back to the 1940s. Yet the Labour Party—which originally created the National Health Service and used to bristle at the suggestion of private medicine, dismissing it as “Americanization”—now openly favors privatization. Sir William Wells, a senior British health official, recently said: “The big trouble with a state monopoly is that it builds in massive inefficiencies and inward-looking culture.” Last year, the private sector provided about 5 percent of Britain’s nonemergency procedures; Labour aims to triple that percentage by 2008. The Labour government also works to voucherize certain surgeries, offering patients a choice of four providers, at least one private. And in a recent move, the government will contract out some primary care services, perhaps to American firms such as UnitedHealth Group and Kaiser Permanente.

Sweden’s government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80 percent of Stockholm’s primary care and 40 percent of its total health services, including one of the city’s largest hospitals. Since the fall of Communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany: increasing co-pays, enhancing insurance competition, and turning state enterprises over to the private sector (within a decade, only a minority of German hospitals will remain under state control). It’s important to note that change in these countries is slow and gradual—market reforms remain controversial. But if the United States was once the exception for viewing a vibrant private sector in health care as essential, it is so no longer."

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_hea...

California:

"California Senate Panel Rejects Health Coverage Proposal

JESSE MCKINLEY AND KEVIN SACK

SAN FRANCISCO — In a blow to universal health care coverage in California and possibly to its prospects nationwide, a State Senate committee on Monday rejected a sweeping plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would have offered insurance to millions of uninsured residents.

The Senate Health Committee defeated the plan 7 to 1, with three abstentions, as Democrats and Republicans alike said they found it too nebulous and potentially too costly for a state facing a $14.5 billion deficit.

“This bill is not only not perfect, it is flawed,” said State Senator Sheila James Kuehl, Democrat of Los Angeles and chairwoman of the committee, who voted against it.

...

But last Wednesday, as the California Senate committee heard testimony on the bill, Massachusetts announced that spending on its health care plan would increase by $400 million in 2008, a cost expected to be borne largely by taxpayers.

Shortly after the vote, Assemblyman Michael N. Villines of Fresno, the chamber’s Republican leader, praised it as a rejection of “a massive government-run health care scheme.”

On the Democratic side, there were concerns about the so-called “individual mandate,” which would have required all Californians to carry and pay for insurance, except those in economic hardship...."

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080129/ZNYT...

Last modified: January 29. 2008 5:03AM

Plan that would work (and yes it IS free market, it starts out with REFORMING government health care because lose a LOT of money on that):

http://www.booklocker.com/books/3068.html

Read the PDF, not the blurb, for the bulk of the plan. Book is searchable on Amazon.com

Cassandra Nathan's Save America, Save the World

HMOs totally suck, and profit should not be part of the health care equation. I favor taking the profit out of it, and I favor single payer health care. I am not interested in helping the insurance companies get richer at the expense of the people. Dennis Kucinich had the best health care proposal, but the media did all they could to make sure that as few people as possible heard what he had to say. *sm*

No, I'm against any area of socialism in the USA. One way we can reduce medical costs here is to remove the burden of malpractice insurance from MDs. This, of course, means that litigation must be rare and justifiable. You can be sure that politicians like Clinton and Obama will find private health care for themselves and their families if they are able to foist it upon the American public.

To see some examples of the effect of socialism on our neighbor to the north (or east if you live in Alaska) check out Imprimis from Hillsdale College, MI. The author of the recent issue had the following to say about Canada's socialized medicine:

"Canadian dependence on the United States is particularly true in health care, the most eminent Canadian idea looming in the American context. That is, public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the U.S. "

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

I support health care for children in poverty (as we have now), the elderly and the disabled.

However, I oppose UHC.

Given the problem with Obesity in America (which is self-inflicted), why would I want to pay for the health care of someone who refuses to take care of themselves by living an unhealthy lifestyle? Exactly, I wouldn't.

Canada's health system sucks. My mother lives in Canada and like many Canadians, she ends up coming to the US to pay for superior health care and to avoid long waiting lists for needed surgery.

I am for serious change. what ever it might be. The current "group plan" I was offered cost $1,000 for my family. The employee portion is paid for. That is $12,000 a year. The are tens of millions of Americans that don't even make that much money in a year. We need serious change.

Absolutely NOT. There Health Care is horrible. It takes MONTHS to have ANYTHING done. I cant believe people think the government will help this process

As long as we are nine trillion in debt, I am opposed to any sort of government funded health care.

If we get back to a balanced budget, maybe we can talk.

I'm not in favor of anything run by the government or any government ideas.

absolutely not, that will only raise taxes, promote less competition giving us a worse healthcare system. Canada's system is horrible.

Lord no! Socialism does not belong here. Vote Republican!