Why don't you ask each and every Canadian Citizen featured in each of the videos on Stuart Browning's documentary videos what THEY think of the Canadian Healthcare system? Then get back to me about the state of health care in Canada. They can all be reached by telephone just in case you want to here the truth. The videos are here: http://www.freemarketcure.com

Wow. Lee makes a serious video about his Dad having a stroke on Father's Day and your response is to spam the comments?

Good people.

Are you implying that if there were a vote in Canada, they'd change to a U.S. style system?

Or just that I can call those specific people and they'd complain. Is it okay if I just talk to random Canadians?

Nice website, by the way. Must have been a nice 'generous grant'.

There was no grant given to Stuart Browning. He funded all of his own documentary work. Ask yourself a question, why can you buy Pet Insurance in Canada and not Health Insurance? Furthermore why do thousands of Canadian citizens come HERE for their health care? Why are their long waiting periods for medical treatment in Canada? Why does the women in the "two women" documentary video have to empty her bladder in to a bag for the rest of her life? Why did the gentleman in "The Lemon" video have to go to the US to have his brain tumor removed? WHY? I'll tell you why? Because the Canadian government controls every aspect of care. Furthermore until VERY recently it was illegal to purchase even supplemental health insurance or to offer to pay for procedures when a persons condition warranted immediate care. Canada's high court was very clear about this when Justice Marie Deschamps stated "Many patients on non-urgent waiting lists are in pain and cannot fully enjoy any real quality of life. The right to life and to personal inviolability is therefore affected by the waiting times." I suggest you do a bit more research before you condemn the US health care system. Otherwise Canadians will have no where to run when they really need quality health care. Most especially when they can't afford to wait. Oh, and Bob, Truth is not Spam. It's just truth!

Best wishes to your father on a speedy recovery.

There are two separate issues here. One is the treatment for the stroke now that it's occured.
The other larger, more relevent question as we consider new healthcare options here is, what did the healthcare system allow and/or do for the prevention of the stroke? There are many identifiable risk factors for early detection for strokes, that may have precluded the actual stroke from happening. Did his doctors identify any of these? Was the option of removal of plaque from the carotid artery ever disscussed? If not, why not? Carotid surgery for prevention of stroke is one most common procedures done in the US, did he have that option? Strokes can be largely be prevented, how do you rate the quality of care he received in this regard?

I hope your father has a speedy and complete recovery Lee. (My dad had a stroke 15 years ago and fully recovered.)

Lee

I have spoken to many random Canadians about the state of their health care system. They all agreed that in general it worked quite well, but they all had criticisms. Many of the complaints were about the same things such as long waits for elective procedures.

They also agreed that they would fix those problems within the current system because moving to a US style system would be much worse.

If CStevenTucker wants to be a propagandist for the corporatists fine. Just don't expect me to believe his bullshit. I traveled to Canada regularly on business. The positions stated in that documentary do not represent the opinion of any Canadian I have ever met. As far as I am concerned Stuart Browning is a John Ziegler type crank and ideologue.

Perhaps Steven can explain how an economic model designed to efficiently manufacture widgets is applicable for treating diseases. How does this work. My health is an externality in the insurance industry's economic model. I've never heard of an economic model being used to optimize an externality. It not only flies in the the face of logic, it is totally absurd.

Sorry to hear about your father Lee. I hope he has a smooth recovery.

Lee, my best wishes for your father's recovery.

As for Csteventucker, most of his complaints are complete nonsense. There is nothing being proposed that would take away an American's right to purchase their own health insurance. In fact, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that we'll even see a public option to compete alongside the private insurance industry.

It's always the same song and dance: Publicly funded health insurance will lead to rationing of care, long wait lists, inefficiency, and poor service. And that's different from the system we have now? Where we're spending a bigger portion of our GDP than any other industrialized nation on health care? Where insurance companies can tell you where you're going to go for care, with whom, and what procedures you can get?

Here's a small example: I recently had to get a prescription for allergy medication. But, when I went to get it filled, my pharmacist told me that I could either pay $81 for what my doctor prescribed or $8 for an over-the-counter medication. Why? Because my insurance wouldn't cover the drug my doctor wanted me to take (If it did, I still have been out $8 for the co-pay).

On another instance, I had to purchase a medical device. The doctor gave me a list recommended suppliers. There was one that was less than five minutes from my house. Naturally, my insurance company wanted me to go to one on the other side of town that required me to take half a day off work to get there during business hours.

Anyone who wants to tell me that we have freedom of choice for health care in this country can enjoy a nice hot cup of STFU.

Anyone who wants to tell me that we have freedom of choice for health care in this country can enjoy a nice hot cup of STFU.

Amen and Amen

Best of wishes and best of luck with your father, Lee.

Thanks for everyone for the best wishes.

I am a random Canadian (currently living abroad in another country with "socialized medicine", the UK).

I can state very clearly that not only do those Canadians not sound like me or anyone else I know, but most of us would be disgusted by the callousness and lack of empathy of someone like Tucker claiming that the more affluent should have better health care than those in need. On behalf of my fellow citizens of the two countries righties usually hold up as being socialist hellholes as regards medicine, please, Tucker: stop lying about us, and go take a long walk off a short pier.

First, you and your father have my prayers and best wishes. I lost my father 11 months ago, and I know how frightening these health crisis moments can be.

Second, for the wingnut who attacked Canadian health care:
1. From diagnosis to surgery, my "new" hip took better than 18 months, and I have "cadillac" coverage in a US town with a leading university hospital and medical school -- so he can stick the "long lines" carp where it belongs, up his ass.

2. As my father lay dying last summer in an American hospital, in a major metropolitan area, the hospital social worker flat out lied to my mother about his options for hospice and home health care. Why? Because he had profitable DRGs and the hospital wanted to be able to bill for his care for as long as possible, rather than move him to a more appropriate health care setting. Fortunately, I work as a health care advocate for the elderly and disabled, so I knew the truth and was able to slap down the SW. A fine example of what you get from "free market" health care.

3. The US "free market" health care system is wildly inefficient, as Ezra Klein pointed at at WaPo last week. To be fair every health system has horrifying anecdotes. But anecdotes don't tell us anything meaningful about health systems. To approach any meaningful evaluation, we have to consider comparative data.

Compared with five other nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom — the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives.

Efficiency: On indicators of efficiency, the U.S. ranks last among the six countries, with the U.K. and New Zealand ranking first and second, respectively. The U.S. has poor performance on measures of national health expenditures and administrative costs as well as on measures of the use of information technology and multidisciplinary teams. Also, of sicker respondents who visited the emergency room, those in Germany and New Zealand are less likely to have done so for a condition that could have been treated by a regular doctor, had one been available.

One needn’t even look abroad: The US government-run Veterans Administration health care system is the most effective health care system available, not just on results but on cost efficiency as well.

Consider this measure of the VA’s medical efficiency: Veterans enrolled in its health care system are, as a group, far older, sicker, poorer, and more prone to mental illness, homelessness, and substance abuse than the population as a whole, yet the VA’s average expenditure per patient in 2004 was $5,562, including prescription drug and longer-term care benefits that have long been available to VA patients. By comparison, Americans as a whole, including children and those who never saw a doctor during the year, consumed an average $6,260 in health care dollars in 2004.

To understand the point about efficiency you have to understand how much more the United States spends than other developed countries. Per capita health spending in Switzerland is 68 percent of what we spend. And that’s the most expensive country! In Canada it’s 57 percent In Denmark it’s 51 percent. In the UK it’s 41 percent. In Finland it’s 38 percent. The OECD median is 44 percent. Including private and public spending, more is spent per person on health care in the United States than in any other nation in the world. We spend three times what the average country spends on a day of hospital care and we also spend twice what the average country spends on prescription medication. Nor is it spent equitably: In the US, 1 percent of the population with the highest spending accounted for 27 percent of aggregate health care spending; the highest-spending 5percent of the population accounted for more than half of all spending.

The high cost of care and the immoral performance of our employers and insurers is causing this nation great pain. Researchers at Harvard have concluded that medical debt contributed to 62 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies in 2007 — 78 percent of bankruptcy filers burdened by healthcare expenses hadhealth insurance but "still were overwhelmed by their medical debt."

Many families with continuous coverage found themselves under-insured, responsible for thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs. Others had private coverage but lost it when they became too sick to work. Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year. Income loss due to illness also was common, but nearly always coupled with high medical bills.

The proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems has increased by 50 percent since 2001, and is likely to grow even higher once the economic climate of 2008 is considered.

Meanwhile, our health care doesn't produce results in which we should take pride. The CIA World Factbook ranked the United States 41st in the world for lowest infant mortality rate (and we're dead last among developed nations) and 46th for highest total life expectancy. Some other unflattering results:
• The U.S. is 33 percent worse than the best country on mortality from conditions amenable to health care – that is, deaths that could have been prevented with timely and effective care.
• Recent studies show that only a little more half (54.9 percent) of adult patients receive recommended care. The level of performance is similar whether it is for chronic, acute, or preventive care and across all spectrums of medical care -- screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up.
• Underuse of care is sometimes a greater problem than overuse. Patients do not receive recommended care (as prescribed in national medical specialty guidelines) about 46 percent of the time. Another 11 percent of patients receive care that is not recommended and potentially harmful, according to practice guidelines.
• People with diabetes receive only 45 percent of the care they need.
• Nearly a third (32 percent) of patients with coronary artery disease receive recommended care.
• Less than two fifths (39 percent) of patients with pneumonia receive recommended care.
• Patients with colorectal cancer receive only half (54 percent) of recommended care.
• Patients with hypertension receive less than two thirds of recommended care.
• The Institute of Medicine estimates that nearly 100,000 patients die in hospitals each year due to medical errors. This is three times the number who die on the highways. This number does not include deaths that occur in the ambulatory setting or deaths after discharge that resulted from medical errors when the patient was hospitalized.
• Total national costs (lost income, lost household functioning, disability and health care costs) of preventable adverse events (medical errors resulting in injury) are estimated to be $35 billion a year.
• In a study of wrong-site surgery cases, JCAHO cited several factors contributing to medical errors: the involvement of multiple surgeons, performance of several different procedures during one surgery, and pressure from hospital administrators to finish the surgery quickly. (I note that when I was about to enter surgery for my hip -- the one delayed by a year and half by the "free market" system -- my wife noticed that the nurse had marked the WRONG sides "yes" and "no." I was literally moments away from surgery on the wrong site -- and this was at a leading university hospital.)
• The Harvard Medical Practice Study estimated that approximately 1 million Americans are injured by errors in treatment in hospitals each year.
• Nine in ten hospitals fail to meet the standards for performing two-high risk procedures: coronary artery bypass graft surgery and abdominal aortic aneurysm repair.
• Among adults in seven countries surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund, adults in the United States reported the highest overall error rates, including laboratory and medication errors. One third of U.S. adults with chronic conditions reported a medical, medication, or lab test error in the past two years.

Let's get back to the one example of truly socialized medicine in the US -- the VA system: It has provided quality care to millions of sick and injured veterans since its inception:

— New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared veterans health facilities on 11 measures of quality with fee-for-service Medicare. On all 11 measures, the quality of care in veterans facilities proved to be "significantly better."

— The Annals of Internal Medicine recently published a study that compared veterans health facilities with commercial managed-care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients. In seven out of seven measures of quality, the VA provided better care.

— Winning NCQA’s seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. And who do you suppose this year’s winner is: Johns Hopkins? Mayo Clinic? Massachusetts General? Nope. In every single category, the VHA system outperforms the highest rated non-VHA hospitals.

– A recent study by the RAND corporation found that “VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care” and “received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up.”

Not only does the VA provide better quality coverage, but it spends less per patient than other health systems despite having to care for “older, sicker, poorer, and patients more prone to mental illness, homelessness and substance abuse than the population as a whole.”

There simply is no case to be made for "free market" health care or insurance.

Lee:

Please know, for whatever it may be worth, I am actively hoping for your dad to have a quick and full recovery.

I just lost my dad in April. This was my first father's day without him. It is a strange, strange feeling and one I hope you don't experience for years and years and years and years to come.

All the best.