mutilated misquotes from Ken Moffat's 3 Dec 2005 classic prose may follow:
" Collins Richey wrote: " " > " >OTOH, I want no part of Candian style, government controlled, no " >choice for anyone medical treatment! Hell has frozen over. Collins and I in complete agreement? /me shakes head in bewilderered wonderment ;-) " I'd like to hear from Canadians on this topic. Most of what I have " heard, including various media sources and talking to people in the " Vancouver, BC area, is that the health system works very well, is quick I'm not sure that I'm qualified to comment based on your criteria, and this is a subject difficult to treat quickly without being critically superficial, but still... My personal unsupported opinion is that the 'emergency' and also 'non- core' parts of the system work quite well. By non-core, I mean those things which are barely tolerated by the system such as walk-in clinics, the occasional for-profit niche services which are permitted to exist, usually for only a short time, trips to the usa for good care when it is really needed and those medical services which are almost completely outside the medicare system, such as dentistry. Core medicare itself is bankrupting the country and its people and works poorly, except for the vlasti - for whom it works very well indeed. It's difficult for many to find a doctor, many of whom are not accepting new patients or have moved to the usa (tho the late word is that at least some are moving back). http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=media_31aug2005_e " to respond to emergencies, but you will have to wait for elective " procedures. The patient has no say in the definition of whether or not the procedure he needs is 'elective' and wait times have been in the news quite a bit lately. Given the attention it's been getting, quite a few people think the system is broken. " I have been told that although the taxes are high for such a system, the " per capita expense for health care is lower than the US. Figures don't lie -- but liars figure. My guess would be that there is more creative accounting in the medicare system than the ever was in Enron. Because waiting lists are so long, a private clinic has decided it can sell MRI's for about $650 each; the medicare system started off by claiming that their incremental cost was about $275 - they were last seen admitting that the private clinic's number wasn't too far off. The debate, by the way, is not about the cost -that's incidental- but about whether or not, and how, the private clinic can be legally prevented from offering the service. I doubt if you will find it simple or easy to get comprehensive, unbiased or accurate commentary on this subject. There are a couple of links you might want to have a look at. I have not looked thoroughly myself but I can tell you for starters that I have profound and serious disagreements with at least some things about them or what they have to say. Make up your own mind. :-) http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=505 http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=home_e R -- http://www.quen.net "Gold needs no endorsement, it can be tested with scales and acids. The recipient of gold does not have to trust the government stamp upon it, if he does not trust the government that stamped it. No act of faith is called for when gold is used in payments, and no compulsion is required." -Benjamin M. Anderson _______________________________________________ [email protected] Unsub/Pause/Etc : http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
