Posted on 05/26/2002 11:28:10 AM PDT by LarryLied
I don't know. I've never met any. I don't think I've ever met anyone that has met any .Have you?
And why should someone else have to pay for that?
I guess that's why you pay insurance premiums. So you don't have to pay the final bills and someone else does.
As far as I know the MRI was not a gubmint invention. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating single payer. With what I pay in health insurance premiums (plus deductibles and co-pays) on top of what I pay in county, state, Federal, and sales, and the companies I hold stock in pay in taxes, I get half-way decent health care and an underfunded (well not as bad as in Canada)military and a bunch of worthless bureaucracy. I think the Aussies pay less than we do in taxes and they at least get some kind of national health care and their military is fairly decent. My comment was only attempting to compare value for the tax dollar paid - something that'll never be able to be done scientifically but something worth thinking about IMHO.
Wish I could remember the source, I think it is the Fraser Institute, calculates "Tax Freedom Day" each year, IOW the date each year when one stops working for Big Nanny and starts working for oneself. It is based on the percentage of one's income paid out in all forms of taxes including income, sales, excise and payroll taxes. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in my previous post that in Ontario the "free" health care system is financed in part by a hidden 5% payroll tax. Last year Tax Freedom Day was sometime in June for Canada, May for the US. Ten years ago it was the first week of July for Canadians.
Yes. In Canada there are only two ways to avoid a waiting list:
1. Have friends in high places. Our federal health minister needed prostate surgery and got it in a couple of days, while the rest of us plebes wait 2-3 months for the same treatment.
2. Go south. This option is normally only available to the wealthy because it has to be paid upfront; insurance won't cover it because it's illegal to sell health insurance to Canadian residents.
We have them, but not enough. The ones we do have are rationed. It's actually faster to get an MRI for your dog than for yourself because humans aren't allowed to pay for their own; several hospitals run the MRIs for human patients during the day and top up the budget by doing scans for veterinarians at night. BTW there's a clinic in Buffalo that advertises only in Southern Ontario; they make a bundle from patients who would prefer to shell out a grand or so instead of waiting six months.
I think that's true all over Canada. If you want to see your Canadian doctor, book a cruise out of Florida at the end of the year (Nov. & Dec. for sure; sometimes as early as Oct) They get free cruises for themselves and their spouses by acting as the ship's doctor. I've met several fine Canadian doctors this way - I even met one on an Aug. cruise who was trying to decide if he wanted to go back (he was leaning against it).
The Canadian medical system is a boon for the cruise lines!
Where to start?
Kitzhaber would give a salmon a heart transplant, before he got a dying girl one. What a joke.
I don't want a "plan" I don't want a CREDIT. I want to eliminate so many taxes, that I can affort to BUY what I WANT. I want to be able to pool with other business people so we can BARGAIN with these frigging gangsters in the health care system... nurses going on strike because 35-40 dollars an hour is NOT enough for the greedy little greenback grabbers.
I want government OUT of healthcare, so REAL competition emerges. And life saving treatment centers and regimens get rewarded, instead of subsidized. I want foreign, unqualified quacks from third world countries OUT of medicine... and OREGON with its attempt at socialized coverage and fixed remuneration for proceedures is driving competition and innovation out of the state.
I heard the stories... they make me sick, something that I cannot afford to do, because I LIVE here.
By the way, California's "lower income" health program, where the resident pays a reduced premium for socialized health care, ain't much better.
We need to once again, privatize the health care system. Senior health care as well.
Oregon and health care, in the same sentance... oxymoronic indeed. Pass me the salmon.
From the same people who want to make it illegal to wash your own car?
Or rinse down your driveway after mowing the grass?
Or kill gopher and rodent infestations, that carry rabies and plague, to placate the greenies?
Sure, let 'em have a whack at health care... the bigger the government program the better!!!
I sure hope so. The Canada Health Act exists and an elected Canadian Government will never abolish it. That is a fact. However, as Klein in Alberta and Harris in Ontario did and now Campbell in BC is doing, with changing attitudes and perspectives private health care is slowly creeping in or at least being considered. It is also fact that it works fine and when health care is critically needed anyone, and I mean anyone, could give a damn how it's paid for. That was my original point. Because it's government funded does not make it a failure. It is also a fact that the trend of doctors leaving ,realizing the grass is not always greener in the US, reversed itself in 1997-8 and increasingly more are coming back each year.
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