If Canada's health care system is so great, why did the Canadian supreme court say the following?

I'm a Chicagoan living in Europe, I can tell you the dirty little secrets about Universal Health Care that its proponents don't want you to understand.

1) Health Care is rationed. Period. No ifs, ands or buts. Proponents will say that won't happen in America. Yes it will. I can practically see the predictable, teary-eyed 60 Minutes episode right now.

2) It's not just rationed, but practically everywhere people are now having to PAY for that "free" health care. So, add to the indignity of having to wait in a dingy waiting room with 40 other people for your "appointment" (cruel joke) to be seen by a surly doctor who doesn't get paid any extra for seeing you, and add to it the insult of now having to pay for this substandard care and treatment.

3) Universal Health Care cannot work in America. Why? First of all, we are the fattest nation on earth. How long until tens of millions of people start demanding expensive treatments for their "obesity disease" (oh yeah, you KNOW that's coming!). Second of all, as a John Stossel exposé showed many years ago, Americans take far, far more medication than any other nation on earth. Imagine if now it's "free". Consumption would probably increase 30x.

4) The wait. Yes, with Universal Health Care you wait. There is bureaucracy involved. There are agendas to adhere to. My Czech friend here in the Prague needed knee surgery. It would be "free". However, after they rescheduled him twice, he couldn't tolerate the disruption to his life. We all have jobs to go to, trips we want to take, events we want to participate in, and the constant threat of having yet another postponement was too much. They wanted to reschedule him for January, which would be perilous. He'd have an unstable knee and have to walk on slippery sidewalks for the next couple months.

So what did he do? What millions of other people do faced with that "free" health care: he figuratively threw it in the garbage where it belongs and paid for the surgery himself. So did his colleague a few months later.

I can just see some Liberal right now reading this shouting to himself, "No! No! No! We'll do it better. We won't make these mistakes. We'll perfect the system."

Answer: look at anything the government does, from the woeful state of education to repairing roads which end up costing millions of dollars PER MILE. No, we won't do it better.

There are perhaps three countries on earth where Universal Health Care can work: Denmark, Finland, and Norway. If you want socialized medicine, go there.

Well, it's true that this was the opinion of the court, by a four to three majority. At issue was whether to allow private insurers to compete with the public health plan. (The proposed system is similar to what Obama is proposing for the U.S., right?) In polling results, the majority of Canadians agreed that such a change would likely reduce wait times. Yet the majority were against the change, because they feared that it would threaten the public health system, which is very popular indeed. How popular? "And in terms of ensuring the best health outcomes, a majority of physicians (88%) and Canadians (77%) favour a health care system where core services are funded by governments, and which includes a guarantee of timely access to services backed by adequate new resources rather than the status quo or a system with a private pay/insurance option."

I see too many people give way to much credit to big private industry like they fix all problems and the government can't do anything right. Well, in my book they both are heavily inefficient, corrupt and anti-american.

I see big industry just as bad as big government. Look at oil. Do you really think every oil company has the same costs as each other and that a gallon of gas is always a few cents of each other nationwide and that and price can fluctuate 10% in a single day? Name any other business, including government functions that can move prices around like that and think you can possibly have stability. This is what started our depression. Every oil hike in the past was followed by a recession, and there has never been an oil hike like we've seen last year....so get ready for this recession, it is going to be a doozy.

Why debate socialized medicine but not debate socialized military, education, welfare, social security, police, post office, firemen and librarians to name a few?

I believe the government should nationalize the energy system before tackling health care. At least the government would stabilize prices and it would be hard to do the mass collusion of the oligarchies I see going on now. It would be nice to see a vote on raising prices 3% a year instead of 3% an hour.

Personally, I think healthcare is good in this country, but guess what...it's not being paid for by just the insurance premiums being collected. The former idiot resident, err..rr. , I forgot the Pee on the resident, I meant President, committed 47 TRILLION dollars to future medicare payments for all you future retirees. Yeah right, you'll all receive that in your private health care system, they'll find that money somewhere.

My point is, Canada has problems, but they are PAYING THEIR BILLS, not borrowing like we are. And our credit card is getting really worn out. Canada's problems are related to not having enough doctors and it is actually harder to become a doctor in Canada than here, plus a lot come here for better pay. But I admire any country that knows how to balance their budget. I don't think that many people in this country understand the extreme economic damage that has been done to this country.

Wall street was private industry. They managed all our pensions, 401k's and bank statements. What a fine job they have done in comparison to our incompetent government.

Canada needs to learn what we need to learn, you got to learn how to drop costs and allocate resources properly. If you got a cold or are feeling depressed, you don't need a doctor, all you need is a nurse. They are a lot cheaper and you can get a lot more of them quick if you need them. I f Canada would send those little problem cases to nurses and use the money saved there to hire more and at higher pay for specialists, their medical system would work much better. Most problems are caused because systems don't learn how to adapt. They need changes and so do we. Our system isn't working either.

So? No one is advocating a government run national health monopoly for the United States - certainly not the current administration.

Be that as it may, do you know that you have already ceded your rights in this matter? Only not to the government, but to private insurance. If you are in an HMO, the HMO has the right to deny to pay for your care and is protected from the consequences of denying payment for care you need. No one, save the very wealthy has any real choice in health care today. And everyone, save the very wealthy, is at risk for devastating, home destroying, family wrecking medical bills with or without insurance. It is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy - even among the insured.

First, Obama's health care reform, no matter how many times you post this drivel, is not socialized medicine. It is encouraging competition between insurance companies and stopping their denial of coverage and claims on sick people.

Second, Canada may operate this way, but in Britain, you can pay for private coverage if you want to. Many countries operate their healthcare system differently. Don't condemn all of them just because one stupid ruling was made.

Oh, I see. In other words, no matter what information we give you, you are going to believe what you want to believe. In that case, don't let me confuse with the facts.

The wait times occur in both countries, but our slightly shorter wait times cost far more in the U.S., making it inaccessible to begin with.

A peer-reviewed comparison study of health care access in the two countries published in 2006 concluded that U.S. residents are one third less likely to have a regular medical doctor, one fourth more likely to have unmet health care needs, and are more than twice as likely to forgo needed medicines, all because of the cost, while wait times are not that disparate.

And under Obama's plan, you could still pay privately out of pocket if you wanted to speed things up. That option is not being removed. I already have to do that thanks to my lousy, greedy insurance company, supposedly one of the best.

Canada's system has its flaws but overall is better than ours and you'd hard pressed to find any Canadians swapping their system for ours.

That said, there are many different types of universal health care systems all over the industrial world, not just the single payer types like Canada and the U.K. that conservatives hold up. Personally, I like the Swiss system and think it would work here. The key though is that it must be made universal and no one is left out.

This isn't being proposed for our health care system.

I wish you would take some time to get the facts before you go around consistently making yourself look like a fool.

My doctor is a Canadian transplant. Many good docs leave Canada to make more money in the US.

OH people die in the USA because they can not afford medical Ins . at all . And by the time they are admitted into emergency it is often times too late .

The Ghouls that run Private Medical Health Ins care only about profit and making money. I have got news for You they could care Less about your life or mine .