Re: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...)

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Disorganization is always expensive.   But the collateral costs are never factored in.   For example, how much does a sick person cost the country in lost productivity.   How much does it cost the nation not to treat TB for example.    Doctors could create their own market if they were unethical but creating illness that was mild enough to irritate but easy to cure thus creating a need for their services.   Especially of the illness was manufactured in a laboratory.   REH ----- Original Message ----- From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ed Weick' ; 'pete' ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 6:12 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...) Ed, This is not a flaw in the Canadian system. It's something that inflicts all health systems -- public and private. As I put in my reply to create, health organizations have to ration their services. To survive, they have to keep down the costs. The trouble with public services is the pressure are placed on them politically to handle far more than that capable of dealing with. So, they tend to underpay their medical staff, slowdown investment in equipment, take shortcuts in treatment. You may remember I told you about my nephew, an anesthesiologist, who emigrated from England to a teaching hospital in Virginia. He told me that doctors in their common room in an English hospital, talk about soccer and cricket. His American colleagues in their common room talk about their stock portfolios. I have a mild asthma and squirt into my lungs twice a day. It isn't to relieve the asthma but to treat it. In an English news story I read that 2000 English asthma patients die each year. They squirt twice a day too. However, instead of a treatment of their condition, they are prescribed an inhaler -- one of these things like Primatene Mist, designed to make breathing a little easier. At the time I read this, my treatment cost $10 for four squirts -- enough to last me four months. The huge purchasing power of the National Health Service would surely have purchased the squirt's for next to nothing. Yet they didn't. I hope they change their policy since then. The advantage of a private system is that it competes with other systems. Kaiser is a little more expensive than Blue Cross (I gather from their advertising). Both of them advertise for membership on television and by other means. They are thankfully caught between the need to provide good service, and the equal need to keep costs down, so they can survive. Just as the national health service in Britain is beginning to show wear and tear, so too will its equivalent in Canada, I suspect. Pete's desire to provide womb-to-the-tomb health services to everyone is laudable. How can anyone say no? But, if you don't ration services (as a private care group must) you will run into serious trouble before too long. Harry -------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 2:26 AM To: pete; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...) I say "Amen" to Pete's posting below.  Yet I have to admit there is a downside to publicly provided universal health care.  There may not always be as much capacity as people would like.  My older daughter, along with her eight year old daughter, is visiting from Washington State, where she works as a nutritionist in a hospital.  Young granddaughter fell ill, so daughter took her to a local walk-in clinic.  The clinic kept them for about an hour and then sent them off to the children's hospital for tests.  It took the whole day to get those tests.  It's probable that they would have been done more quickly had the situation been critical, but sitting around all day waiting for tests and their interpretation was not a pleasant experience when compared to what daughter was used to under the US system.  She said the whole procedure would have taken a couple of hours in Washington State.   Nevertheless, it got done and both parent and child survived.  In the US where, under private health care, affordability would have been a major question.  So, we may be slower in Canada, but everybody has equal access, at least in theory.   A major problem in Canada is the scarcity of health professionals.  According to the papers, ever so many doctors who have been trained abroad and immigrated to Canada are driving taxis.  They want to work as doctors, but must meet residency requirements at hospitals in order to be certified.  The bottleneck is not enough residency spaces.   Ed   ----- Original Message ----- From: "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 8:33 PM Subject: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...) > > On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Harry Pollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Why do you see the private sector is terrible at healthcare? I've > >already described the Kaiser-Permanente system, which I would say > >was the equal of any other in the world - private or government. > > Is that perhaps because they can cherry pick their clientele among > those who qualify? How would they fare if they weren't allowed to > reject any applicant due to preexisting conditions, or charge them > impossibly high premiums? Say if the only allowable cause for a > targeted premium rate hike was willful indulgence in high risk > activity like smoking? Don't you think under those circumstances > they would either close up shop or degrade their service to > levels much worse than public systems? What are the numbers like > for these issues? And then of course there's the "auto-selection" > provided by the private premium system: only those who can afford > the premiums enroll, so the client base is pre-sorted for more > affluent people who will generally be in better health, having > had better nutrition and better self-image (I'm sure you've seen > the stats correlating health with _relative_ income), and had > more prompt attention to any health issues they may have confronted. > A real health care system must look after the whole population, not > just the upper sixty percent who can manage the premiums. > >     -Pete       --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.537 / Virus Database: 332 - Release Date: 11/6/2003