Posted on 05/26/2002 11:28:10 AM PDT by LarryLied
Rather than force uninsured Americans into a flawed program that puts bureaucrats in charge of health-care decisions, President Bush has suggested a way to help these families get affordable insurance that meets their needs. His solution: refundable health-care tax credits.
Simple is usually better, right?
So it's not surprising to hear some members of Congress agreeing with syndicated columnist Molly Ivins on how to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance. "The answer is universal health insurance, a single-payer system," she writes. "Every other industrialized nation manages to do this better than we do."
Tell that to Ralph Smith. The 57-year-old Canadian suffers from prostate cancer, a condition that can prove fatal if it's not treated promptly. He's doing better now, but no thanks to "the answer." After waiting nine months for treatment in Canada's single-payer system, he went out and found his own care, at his own expense.
Smith's case isn't an exception, either. Lengthy lines for healthcare are common in Canada. A September 2001 report from the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based think tank, found that the average waiting time for surgery in Canada (between a doctor's referral and treatment) rose from over three months in 1999 to four months in 2000-2001.
Things are worse for the people stuck waiting for care in Britain's National Health Service. A recent report published by the London-based Adam Smith Institute notes that some 1 million are on NHS waiting lists. "One in four cardiac patients die while waiting, and one in five lung cancer patients wait so long they go from being treatable to untreatable," notes London's Guardian newspaper.
At least British patients can opt to pay for private care (if they can afford it). Most Canadian provinces have made it illegal for patients to pay out of their own pockets for medical services that are covered by the government-run system. As Mark Steyn, a columnist for Canada's National Post, wryly notes, Canada's got "all the coerciveness of the Cuban system..."
Fortunately for Ralph Smith, he had the means to help himself. But many in Canada -- and other countries with single-payer systems -- don't. And neither do the millions of Americans who would, under various proposals being considered by Congress, be forced into Medicaid, the federal government's own "single-payer" health-care program for poor people.
The fact is, Medicaid's ailing -- and adding the estimated 40 million Americans who lack health insurance at any given time would make matters worse.
State-run Medicaid programs are in big trouble. Last year, 37 states spent more on Medicaid than they had budgeted -- $410 million in Indiana alone -- and 20 states anticipate shortfalls in this year's spending.
If Medicaid rolls expand, the federal contribution grows, but so does the state contribution. To many, spending more on Medicaid means less for education, law enforcement or a variety of state services. States have begun responding to these financial shortcomings by making cuts to Medicaid. They limit services, cut back on medication, curb treatment options and reduce payments to doctors.
The result, of course, is substandard care. Take breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute reports that women on Medicaid are three times more likely to die from it than women who aren't on Medicaid. The Institute also found that women on Medicaid were 41 percent more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer "at a late stage" and 44 percent less likely to receive radiation treatment.
Rather than force uninsured Americans into a flawed program that puts bureaucrats in charge of health-care decisions, President Bush has suggested a way to help these families get affordable insurance that meets their needs. His solution: refundable health-care tax credits.
He proposes that low-income uninsured families and individuals who don't have employer-based coverage receive a subsidy worth up to $3,000 a year for families and $1,000 for individuals to help cover premiums. Providing these subsidies through refundable tax credits will give these families and individuals the credit "up front" when payments are due, not make them wait for reimbursement at year's end. Under such a system, even those who owe no taxes would get the help they need.
Perhaps most importantly, it would put uninsured Americans in charge of their own healthcare -- a claim neither Medicaid nor the Canadian system can make. Is it worth it? Ask Ralph Smith. The fact that he's alive today may have everything to do with the fact that he gave up on "single-payer" in time and did what all Americans could do under President Bush's plan -- take control of their own health care.
-- Nina Owcharenko is a health-care policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based public policy institute.
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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