Posted on 10/19/2008 9:29:56 PM PDT by JamesP81
In Canada, where they have what is supposedly a wonderful government run healthcare system, the median wait time in the province of British Columbia for vascular surgery is 2.7 weeks. My paternal grandmother had major vascular surgery this past Monday. Her carotid (sp?) artery was 90% blocked. This was discovered by an MRI (something else you have to get on a waiting list for in Canada) a scant four days before the actual surgery was done. The only reason it took four days is because it's easier to get a surgeon on a weekday than on a weekend. So while healthcare can be quite costly in the US, thank God we can still get it in a timely fashion. Given how quickly her artery had clogged up, if she'd had to wait the 2.7 weeks, she likely would've had a stroke or heart attack and died.
If my fellow countrymen in their foolishness choose to implement a universal healthcare system, it will be a crime perpetrated upon our entire nation, and I shall never forgive them for it.
Well it’s what you’re going to get. Obama is about 80% to win the election. There might be a silver lining, though. After two years of socialist, liberal chaos, we might clean house and spark a truly conservative revolution (as opposed to merely a Republican revolution) and in the process purge the Republican party of many of the spineless weasels who currently inhabit it. Without something major happening like an Obama win, I can’t see anything that could spark such a political revolution. That being said, for the sake of the country right now, I still very much hope he loses.
>Without something major happening like an Obama win, I can’t see anything that could spark such a political revolution. That being said, for the sake of the country right now, I still very much hope he loses.
That is quite because you can’t see the future.
And it WILL kill you if BO has his way about it.
Hey, fewer honkies.
Don’t believe the hype. Obama is hitting a glass ceiling and this one doesn’t crack.
Actually, triage by attrition (see if people get better or die off on their own) is the only thing that allows socialist health care to maintain the illusion of functionality.
A few years ago my father needed to have one of his carotid arteries cleaned out after a sonogram detected 85-90% blockage. While cardiologists were imaging his carotid arteries, they decided to image his abdominal aorta on the way out through the femoral artery in his leg. The discovered a large aneurysm in the abdominal aorta. As a result my father decided to have the endarterectomy to clean out his carotid artery first, immediately, and then go back less than 2 weeks later to have the operation to fix his abdominal aorta. Had he not had vascular imaging performed prior to the endarterectomy, he probably would have died from the aneurysm in the abdominal aorta bursting. Fortunately both operations which were performed by a surgeon trained by Dr. Michael Debakey were a success and he avoided a major stroke and a burst aorta.
It's called "cost containment".
Thaddeus McCotter is my Rep. and we love him, too!
Good old England has a 3.5 YEAR waiting list for hearing aids. Something you can pick up TODAY in the US, you have to wait 1,278 days for in that wonderfully socialized medicine hole called England...
I wouldn’t hold my breath. I hope to god mccain can keep it close enough for us to still have 43-44 senators. Let them have their ruinous spending policies while we filibuster their most extreme proposals and we can hold the line in the senate and retake the house by 2012 (1 election cycle for like 40 seats is probably not going to happen).
http://www.OnTheFenceFilms.com/
“The Perils of Public Health Care”
Note: I posted a generic link here, because this gentleman has a number of links to click on.
This is a good post, but you are preaching to the choir here. Really want to help? Send this as a Letter to the Editor to your local newspaper. (BTW, I double-dog-dare you to keep it this strongly worded and not tone it down!)
No one can afford everything for everyone at all times. In a capitalist and free market system, as brutal as it can be, YOU control the money, and millions like us determine what products and services are rendered and even at what cost. YOU are a customer, YOU have rights and legal recourse. YOU ultimately define what health care looks like at a personal level and collectively by shaping the markets as millions of us consume health care. The decisions you make reference health care can make or ruin you financially if not cost you your life. Some people cannot come to grips with this reality. In a socialist health care system resources are still limited, only now the onus is no longer on you to make decisions. People collectively abdicate their only real power (control of money) in a socialist system, and this is handed over to the government which administers this health care on their behalf. You are no longer a customer, you usually have limited legal recourse (As systems become more socialist this is a trend too), and you receive conveyor belt health care that has little regard for your preferences, convenience etc. Innovation is stifled, customer service becomes discretionary, and your freedom of choice is limited despite what the liars advocating this sort of system preach. At the same time you get government pet projects and bureaucracy built into the system. You see this at the VA where millions are consumed on projects pushed by politicians pandering to their constituents may that be projects for women, blacks...whatever. Hell, the VA which is supposed to take care of veterans (some without vision, limbs, etc) spends millions on AIDS research, but I guess this served well in some political end at some point. The VA like all government administrations screams that it needs more money, but they pay people to sit and watch automatic parking lot attendants........ It's always that way, may it be Germany, Great Britain, Canada, France, Japan, even here in the US where we do have a classic social health care system providing care for our veterans. Once things become “social” efficiency goes out the window, as does innovation, personal choice and freedom, legal recourse, customer service....... but the Utopian concept of egalitarian health care is embraced and to a socialist this is the ideological end that defines success.
Some interesting facts: Included in the bloated figures of the “so called” uninsured are 11-12 million illegal’s, veterans covered under the VA, DoD personnel covered by the DoD (It does not count as a health care system), those who are independently wealthy and choose to have no insurance, those who are considered under-insured but still have insurance, and finally those who have the option to have insurance but decline it because they want a new stereo, chrome rims for their car, or whatever else. The crux of the socialist health care argument is the uninsured, and the statistics thrown around are rounded up, not really 100% accurate (An estimation), and includes vast numbers that frankly have health care or mooch on the system as an illegal does and I have little sympathy with.
Another problem is that the average American gets an MRI at every bump on the head. We demand rooms with TVs, we demand the newest in antibiotics, we expect all sorts of things, and when the bill comes in the mail, we scream and shake our finger at those greedy insurances, doctors, and hospitals. Truth is you don't need an epidural when giving birth, most kids don't need braces even when snaggle toothed, you don't need Lap Band, Lasik, and even when passing a kidney stone you don't need half of those meds given. I guess our perception changes once we're out of the hospital. As with your grandmother, you get absolute state of the art care, fast, and usually packaged even with good customer service, because you're still in charge of the purse, at least still for a little while.
I agree with your opinion.
However, there are friends of mine that don’t know anything
about politics, or economics, that say, “Well, what’s wrong with four years of socialism?”
“What would it hurt?”
They are incapable of being educated.
The government schools have done their job well.
This is an excellent point. I had a friend whose mother was rushed in for carotid surgery (endarterectomy I believe was performed). These are usually emergencies - hours can be critical, much less days. The good news was that she and I had been in a class together and knew the symptoms associated with Amarosis Fugax. Because her mom was going to “blow off” her little eyesight problem having no idea that it directly related to blood supply to the optic nerves.
Nothing new here. I've known that for decades.
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