Why do Americans fear Canadian style health care?

I've read alot of the posts here, not all, but I have to say the bellicose refrain of the defenders of the established system is discouraging. I would think the some common sense and a little historical knowledge of the western political systems grasped by some college-level education would lead to a more informed discourse, but from the amount of urban myth and xenophobic attacks visited upon attempts at discussing the relative merits and advantages of a universal pay health system it seems there is little of either.

I think the need for universal health care was viewed by Western Civilization as increasingly necessary with the recognition of the virulent plagues and infectious diseases experienced as late as the mid 20th century. Governments, including the US, galvanized medical education, research and practice to treat and prevent these devastations to the greater community and the economic well-being of those countries. The movement toward broader systems of health treatment and coverage led to many of the health plans and insurance systems we know today.

Western Europe, Canada and many other industrialized, highly educated societies adopted managed care practices to prevent these health system from being obvious sources of exploitative profit. The USA, long accustomed to the benefits of political action groups and lobby type organizations, before they had these names, elected to follow a more market based solution. Just as in earlier periods, allowing the railroads, airlines, fire departments, and various other public utilities to offer their services unfettered.

As we've seen from previous instances when fire departments, airlines, railroads, water utilities and power utilities were allowed to operate in a purely free-market based fashion, the consumer was put at great risk of injury and death. Airplanes were extremely risky to fly in the twenties, losing a high incidence of aircraft with loss of life until the FAA was formed to oversee production and reliability standards. Railroads were a disaster of greater order as locomotives blew up from the for-profit motive of faster and cheaper in the 19th century. The original for profit fire departments had to banned and the fire workers employed in institutional government owned departments to prevent the fire companies from starting fires in the early 19th century. Water and power utilities did a terrible job delivering safe drinkable water and power without risk of fire and injury until the government set out the quasi-socialist system of a government-monitored monopoly.

All these comments about the government creating a more expensive, less productive system fly in the face of overwhelming historical and current information of the necessary role of the government in creating safe markets and in many cases better performing services than commercial institutions.

Insurance companies, like derivative brokers in the financial markets, have proven to be enemies of protecting the financial participants (read: those who pay) from their predatory practices. Open your eyes, you defenders of the imperial realm. You are being robbed of your birthright to quality medical care earned by earlier generations of your society who knew an enemy when they saw it ! Health care is not better in this country - read the statistics, learn what is happening around you.

The insurance companies are so malevolent that the California Nurses Association advocates and is lobbying Congress for Universal Health Care. If the health care providers on the front line say that you aren't getting representative health care, what do you know that they don't? From the discussion on this thread, it seems that belligerent ignorance has replaced your own beneficial inquiry.

Because they are brainwashed into thinking that socialized

health care can not work. There is so much money involved in the profit based health care system, so they do anything they

can to keep it the way it is.

I lived in Sweden for many years. In my opinion the swedish social health care system is way superior to the american system. And I never saw examples of the "bad side" that the

"anti socialized medicine" people are painting up for us.

First off, go to the CNA site and it is nothing more than union propaganda with pictures of the 99%, striking RN's and info about taxing Wall St. Then they brag about striking to send a message-glad they have their priorities straight and care more for the well being of the patients.

Employer sponsored health care came about in the mid to lat 40's as the GI's were returning from Europe as a way for employers to attract and retain workers. Most BCBS plans didn't come into existence until after that and they began merging together in the late 1960's in order to offer full-blown and integrated insurance products.

HMO's took off in the 1970's and made their way East in the mid-1980's and as you know, consist of 3 primary models. The staff model, like Kaiser, is essentially the only one in existence now and will be a model moving forward. The others died because of consumer choice mandates and doctors decided that capitated systems were flawed and a primary care doc being held financially responsible for specialist care was not business friendly and financially responsible.

The government cannot effectively run the health care for this country program as we see with nearly 30% of Medicare dollars being involved in fraudulent claims. Innovation will be stymied and the drug pipeline will dry up like in the U.K. Furthermore, the next time that you crave and desire government run healthcare, stop by your local DMV or post office and get a good look at the level of customer service being doled out.

CraigMac wrote:

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."

Keep the peace?

Imperfect as they are, it seems like the police are the way to go. Of course, we could try going the local war lord route for a while just to see what it's like.

In a recent poll, 73% of Canadians were happy with their health care system and 27% of Americans were happy with their system.

So yes, this proves Americans should keep the system they have.

Idiots!

Human rights have to do with what you can and can't do, not what you can and can't receive.

A good general rule is if you can do something in isolation on an island, it's probably your right. You have a right to speak your mind or practice your faith without fear of recrimination. You have a right to not self-prosecute. You have a right to defend yourself when attacked. You can do all of these things in isolation, because they don't directly, physically impact other peoples' rights.

You don't have a right to a job, or a home, or medical care. These are products. They don't just appear out of thin air. They exist because other people exist. If you need someone else for it to exist, it's not a right.

themanontherun wrote:

Human rights have to do with what you can and can't do, not what you can and can't receive.

A good general rule is if you can do something in isolation on an island, it's probably your right. You have a right to speak your mind or practice your faith without fear of recrimination. You have a right to not self-prosecute. You have a right to defend yourself when attacked. You can do all of these things in isolation, because they don't directly, physically impact other peoples' rights.

You don't have a right to a job, or a home, or medical care. These are products. They don't just appear out of thin air. They exist because other people exist. If you need someone else for it to exist, it's not a right.

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This is a poor definition. We as a civilized society can decide to give these, "as rights" to people.

themanontherun wrote:

You don't have a right to ...a home, or medical care. These are products.

In the US, these are products. In the rest of the developed world, these are public goods, as is education.