Why do Americans fear Canadian style health care?

You should vote for McCain then. He wants to break the connection between your job and health benefits. A radical idea that deserves more attention.

I don't think the government is anymore reliable than my employer. In fact, I can sue my employer for not following through with promises, I can't sue government.

Healthcare should be personal. I should be able to shop and pay for it myself. Hospitals should be able to give me a quote and a list of what certain procedures cost. If the doctor screws up and it takes more time, or he has to rebreak my arm, than he pays for his own mistake. No different than Joe the Plummer.

The last thing I want is another government waste of my money.

Because Canadians come to America for healthcare so they don't have to wait in line until they die.

The media makes us think this way.

Insurance wrote:

Shouldn't healthcare be a human right available to everyone? Even the poor and the unemployed.

The poor and the poor unemployed already already receieve government supplied healthcare - Medicaid. If someone who can afford health insurance would rather pay for a cell phone, cable, and high speed internet, than for health insurance, that's his problem. Why should the rest of us be forced to buy it for him?

What makes healthcare a basic human right? Is food a basic human right? What about clothing? Or a house? Or transportation? Or entertainment? Where do you draw the line?

If healthcare is a human right, what kind? Do I get free cancer treatment? How about if I smoke? Do I get free diabetes treatment? How about if I'm a lard*ss with type II diabetes? Do I get free heart condition treatment? How about if I eat at McDonalds every day? Do I get free plastic surgery for burns? What about wrinkles? What about liposuction? The list goes on and on.

Scoreboard wrote:

The media makes us think this way.

Corrections:

1) The people who pay the media's bills want us to think this way.

2)Some Americans fear Canadian-style health care, but they're the minority. See below.

Associated Press-Yahoo Poll

Interview dates: December 14 - 20, 2007

14. Which comes closest to your view?

34% - The United States should continue the current health insurance system in which most people get their health insurance from private employers, but some people have no insurance

65% - The United States should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers

2% - Refused / Not Answered

Blowing Rock Master-nice post.

Insurance wrote:

Shouldn't healthcare be a human right available to everyone? Even the poor and the unemployed.

No.

As mentioned earlier, my taxes pay for county hospitals. To be honest, if I'm ever shot or in a serious accident, I'd rather go to the county hospital instead of the usual private hospital because they are more experienced with those type of injuries.

One of the best burn units in the country, Parkland Hospital in Dallas, is a county hospital.

I do think food and shelter should be basic rights in America. That's why I also support giving the poorest people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford things like food, welfare, to cover that. And I even believe in foodbanks and shelters should be available to those who are too incompitant to spend there welfare money on their own personal welfare.

Basic healthcare is a different beast. If you are diagnosed with a serious disease or have sudden accident it may cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue living. I do think that even lazy people or those who smoke should have full access to basic healthcare in a First World Country.

Also to another poster I don't believe a statistically significant amount of Canadians seek medical treatment in the US because the lineups are shorter or the treatment is better.

Sorry for the spelling...incompetent, their

Most county hospitals treat the indigent for minimal costs. Was that your case? They usually don't distinguish between who can pay and who cannot. Emergency Rooms are socialized medicine. Those who can't, or don't want to, pay go there.

So we all end up paying. Let's settle this once and for all, everyone has at least a minimum amount of health insurance or coverage.

Most of the posters who write here will have a far different opinion on this when they reach middle and old age.

I'm on Medicare. I'm healthy so aside from annual check-ups, I almost never go. But it's ENORMOUSLY reassuring that, if I need it, I am protected. And I can choose my own doctor and hospital - no gov't mandates. I'd bet 98% of older people are VERY glad to have Medicare.

Why should it only be for the old?

Oh, and the costs are lower, by far, than private insurance since there is no cost for advertising or profits to shareholders and the paper work is far simpler.

Insurance wrote:

Sorry for the spelling...incompetent, their

There*

Insurance wrote:

Shouldn't healthcare be a human right available to everyone? Even the poor and the unemployed.

No one has the right to healthcare. Rights are universal, you can't give them to someone or take them away. They exist independent of government.

No one has a right to any good or service. There is no right to healthcare just as there is no right to food, housing, clothing, ipods, haircuts, cars, art or any other good or service.

Sorry for the long post, but this is an informative discussion on "rights"

Liberty vs. Welfare Rights

Let's begin by defining our terms. A right is a principle that specifies something which an individual should be free to have or do. A right is an entitlement, something you possess free and clear, something you can exercise without asking anyone else's permission. Because it is an entitlement, not a privilege or favor, we do not owe anyone else any gratitude for their recognition of our rights.

When we speak of rights, we invoke a concept that is fundamental to our political system. Our country was founded on the principle that individuals possess the "inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Along with the right to property, which the Founding Fathers also regarded as fundamental, these rights are known as liberty rights, because they protect the right to act freely. The wording of the Declaration of Independence is quite precise in this regard. It attributes to us the right to the pursuit of happiness, not to happiness per se. Society can't guarantee us happiness; that's our own responsibility. All it can guarantee is the freedom to pursue it. In the same way, the right to life is the right to act freely for one's self-preservation. It is not a right to be immune from death by natural causes, even an untimely death. And the right to property is the right to act freely in the effort to acquire wealth, the right to buy and sell and keep the fruits of one's labor. It is not a right to expect to be given wealth.

The purpose of liberty rights is to protect individual autonomy. They leave individuals responsible for their own lives, for meeting their own needs. But they provide us with the social conditions we need to carry out that responsibility: the freedom to act on the basis of our own judgment, in pursuit of our own ends; and the right to use and dispose of the material resources we have acquired by our efforts. These rights reflect the assumption that individuals are ends in themselves, who may not be used against their will for social purposes.

Let us consider what liberty rights mean in regard to medical care. If we implemented them fully, patients would be free to choose the type of care they want, and the particular health care providers they want to see, in accordance with their needs and resources. They would be free to choose whether they want health insurance, and if so, in what amounts. Doctors and other providers would be free to offer their services on whatever terms they choose. Prices would be governed not by government fiat, but by competition in a market. Since this is an imaginary state of affairs, no one can predict what mix of private practitioners, HMOs, and other sorts of health plans would emerge. But market forces would tend to ensure that patients have more choices than they do now, that they would act more responsibly than many do at present, and that they would pay actuarially fair prices for health insurance—prices that reflect the actual risks associated with their age, physical condition, and lifestyle. No one would be able to shift his costs onto someone else. In a truly free market, I might add, there would be no tax preference for obtaining health insurance through employers, so most people would probably buy health insurance the way they buy life insurance, auto insurance, or homeowners insurance—directly from insurance companies. They would not have to fear that losing their job, or changing the job, would mean losing their coverage.

So that is what liberty rights—the classical rights to life, liberty, and property—would mean in practice. The so-called "right" to medical care is quite different. It is not merely the right to act—i.e., to seek medical care, and engage in exchanges with providers, free from third party interference. It is a right to a good: actual care, regardless of whether one can pay for it. The alleged right to medical care is one instance of a broader category known as welfare rights. Welfare rights in general are rights to goods: for example, a right to food, shelter, education, a job, etc. This is one basic way in which they are quite different from liberty rights, which are rights to freedom of action, but don't guarantee that one will succeed in obtaining any particular good one may be seeking.

Another difference has to do with the obligations imposed on other people. Every right imposes some obligation on others. Liberty rights impose negative obligations: the obligation not to interfere with one's liberty. Such rights are secured by laws that prohibit murder, theft, rape, fraud, and other crimes. But welfare rights impose on others the positive obligation to provide the goods in question.

Health care does not grow on trees or fall from the sky. The assertion of a right to medical care does not guarantee that there is going to be any health care to distribute. The partisans of these rights demand, with air of moral righteousness, that everyone have access to this good. But a demand does not create anything. Health care has to be produced by someone, and paid for by someone. One of the major arguments offered by supporters of a right to health care is that health care is an essential need. What good are our other liberties, they ask, if we cannot get medical treatment for illness? But we must ask, in return: why does need give someone a right? Fifty years ago, people whose kidneys were failing needed dialysis every bit as much as they do today, but there were no dialysis machines. Did they have a right to protection against kidney failure? Was Mother Nature violating their rights by making their kidneys fail without a remedy? It makes no sense to say that need itself confers a right unless someone else has the ability to meet that need. So any "right" to medical care imposes on someone the obligation to provide care to those who cannot provide it for themselves.

If I have such a right, some other person or group has the involuntary, unchosen obligation to provide it. I stress the word "involuntary." A right is an entitlement. If I have a right to medical care, then I am entitled to the time, the effort, the ability, the wealth, of whoever is going to be forced to provide that care. In other words, I own a piece of the taxpayers who subsidize me. I own a piece of the doctors who tend to me. The notion of a right to medical care goes far beyond any notion of charity. A doctor who waives his bill because I am indigent is offering a free gift; he retains his autonomy, and I owe him gratitude. But if I have a right to care, then he is merely giving me my due, and I owe him nothing. If others are forced to serve me in the name of my right to care, then they are being used regardless of their will as a means to my welfare. I am stressing this point because many people do not appreciate that the very concept of welfare rights, including the right to health care, is incompatible with the view of individuals as ends in themselves.

I might add that the difference between charity and rights is very well understood by the advocates of a right to health care. One of their main arguments for using the language of rights is that it removes the stigma associated with charity. A right is something for which you don't owe anyone any gratitude. But notice the contradiction. The reason for proposing such a right in the first place is the claim that certain people cannot provide for themselves, and are thus dependent on other people for their medical care. The advocates of a right to health care then turn around and insist on using the concept of rights to disguise the fact of dependence, to allow the recipients of government subsidies to pretend that they are getting something they earned.

It is also worth noting that the Supreme Court has never recognized a constitutional basis for any welfare right, including the right to medical care. The Court recognizes that the concept of rights embodied in our legal system is the concept of liberty rights. Welfare rights are a product of later movements to expand the role of government beyond the original conception of its role. In our constitutional system, there is no requirement that the federal government provide health care. Health care entitlements, unlike fundamental rights like freedom of speech, have to be invented by legislators

Name one thing the government does better than the private sector? I\'d rather work hard and get health benefits from my company than let Uncle Sam decide how much I pay for healthcare and who I get to go see.

I\'m sorry the poor and lazy don\'t have healthcare. But they can go to the emergency room and still get treatment even though they can\'t pay. It\'s part of the reason healthcare is so expensive in the first place.

Rainy Day wrote:

Name one thing the government does better than the private sector?

Fight fires?

Last time I checked, we don't have competing fire-fighting companies playing the "free market."

Insurance wrote:

Relying on your employer for health insurance sounds ridiculous to me and anti-capatalist for the employer. Shouldn't healthcare be a human right available to everyone? Even the poor and the unemployed.

I know you guys are afraid of communism but don't you think you can have a strong capitalist society where healthcare workers are like police officers or fire fighters. It upsets me that so many people don't have access to healthcare in such a great country.

Maybe its cause you have to wait 30 weeks for an MRI or 60 weeks for surgery? There's a reason Canadians who can afford it come to US for surgery and other major medical procedures....

Rainy Day wrote:

Name one thing the government does better than the private sector? I'd rather work hard and get health benefits from my company than let Uncle Sam decide how much I pay for healthcare and who I get to go see.

I'm sorry the poor and lazy don't have healthcare. But they can go to the emergency room and still get treatment even though they can't pay. It's part of the reason healthcare is so expensive in the first place.

Prisons. Read a little on private prisons, you'll see that privatizing them is one of the worst moves in terms of efficiency, cost, treatment, etc. Golf courses. Go find what was formerly a nice municipal golf course that was sold to a private company. It's complete crap now. I've seen it happen in several towns in Texas.

I'm guessing you and several of the posters above are somewhere in the 15-25 age range (or you haven't matured past that age range). The poor and lazy comment is typical of that age range (still living off of mom and dad, so you assume anyone without healthcare got there by choice). Do you even know what health insurance costs monthly for a healthy 30-year old? I'm betting you don't. Do you know how few employers provide health insurance to their employees? Not many. The expense of healthcare has nothing to do with poor people getting it for free from the emergency room. It's more likely caused by the medical industry gouging patients with ridiculously inflated charges, and with insurance companies doing the same.

Just my thoughts. Sorry I didn't respond correctly to your challenge...I named two things instead of one that government does better than the private sector. The private sector's problem is that it only has one goal: profit. That's not always the best or most important goal.