Is Canada?s Economy a Model for America? (good article by Mark Steyn)

[Vic]

Yaknow, it always strikes me as more than a bit ironic that those people who are always accusing Americans of nationalism are usually the same ones who are the most vocally nationalist about their own countries.

 

[senseamp]

Yeah, we can look at anecdotal "evidence" or we can look at the fact we are spending much more than Canada on health care and getting worse results.
Canadian health care system probably has problems just like any other one, but our health care system is fundamentally broken and headed for chaos, and making America uncompetitive. How many hospitals have closed because we don't pay for preventative and nonemergency care, and force them to treat people in the ER? How many jobs have been shipped overseas because of huge health coverage costs on employers? How many businesses don't get started because would be entrepreneurs decide to stay at their current jobs because they can't afford to lose their health coverage?

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: glenn1
Everyone knows that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait?six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward.

When a sentence starts with "Everyone knows" it sets of my bullshit detector big time. Considering I live in New Zealand (where we have free national health care) and happen to have a lot of experience dealing with the health acre system I can tell you this is complete bollocks. I have already related my story on this forum of the excellent medical care I received when I got Bells Palsy and have many more experiences, both personal and through my family that show this is bullshit. Maybe in some poorly run countries or districts the waiting lists are real, but it's not an intrinsic property of socialised medicine. The waiting lists this moron refers to are a function of a mismanaged health care system, not socialised medicine itself.

On top of that, and I really would like people to read this because ignorant Americans seem to gloss over this point every time I post it, private health care is available if you prefer private health care to public health care. Read that again and digest it.