Indefensible.

You really ought to read the report instead of the one graf. Among the problems cited is:

Administration: Turns out thatwe pay $98 billion more than anyone else, $84 billion of it in the private sector. 64% of those costs come from insurer underwriting and advertising. Put simply, we're paying more than $50 billion dollars so the greedy bastards can talk us into buying plans under which they will deny us what they need.
You should also look at the parts about how doctors overcharge, too.
I tracked back Prairie Pundit. I detect now particular expertise in the issue of health care in the United States, let along other nations.
JR can take it from here.

 

Hey, if it's Halliburton or Blackwater . . . it's not a handout.

Commie.

Why do you hate America?

 

Fine.
I'm very happy to hear you say that.
Now, who runs health care? We going to run it like Wal Mart, Pay as you go? Who regulates it? How do we keep it from being the unequal, inhumane system we have now. (The McKinsey report seems to indicate that doctors are no more or less immune to overcharging than the insurance companies are.) Poor people just die? Vets just die? Employer health-plans revived? (Good luck with that one.)
Basic health care is a human right. FDR said so. I believe him. As such, it needs the involvement of the government -- i.e., all of us -- and a committment to what used to be called the common good. This is why SCHIp is a good, and very popular, program. Say what you will about Canada, and you will, but they seem to grasp this concept. So does Japan. So does France. We don't.

 

That's one blogger's opinion, an American who has no direct experience with the Canadian healthcare system but apparently has an agenda as wide as the Grand Canyon.

His isolated examples of missteps in our health care system are just that: anecdotal evidence which don't, in and of themselves, provide any evidence of a systemic failure.

For every incident of bad care or waiting times, I can provide you with 10,000 more that proves it 's a success.

And quite frankly, quoting some guy who figures the way to make health care work is to make it market-driven is, well, nonsensical.

And finally, the libertarian wingnut decides to draw comparables between healthcare and veterinarian services.

You'll have to try harder.

 

Oh, and since I did mention Dr. Michael Rachlis, here's his website with a series of articles on healthcare and public policy.

http://www.michaelrachlis.com/biography.php

Maybe it's just me, but I'd take his opinions and recommendations on our healthcare system about a gazillion times more seriously than Stossel who has no experience as a physician or a public policy advisor.

 

So you think making everyone a ward of the state and removing the freedom upon which this country was founded promotes the general welfare?

Sorry, but this country was founded to expressly avoid those.

 

Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick, Tony, how do you equate "promote the general welfare" with "ward of the state"?

 

Tony is right. This is a slippery slope. You start giving poor kids health care and some day everyone is gonna have health care.

I'm positive our founding fathers didn't plan for anyone to have free health care -- well, except their slaves, of course.

You tell 'em, old_t!

 

Jeebus, OT, you're really sounding like a tool now. So you think anyone who accepts government subsidized health care becomes "a ward of the state"? So you believe every single person in Europe, Canada, and Japan are wards of the state? Are you a "ward" because you accept govenment funded police, fire, school, library and postal services?

Most of your posts do nothing beyond parroting Rush Limbaugh style soundbytes and simplistic right-wing platitudes. My guess is you've read nothing on these issues beyond that which a few right-wing blowhard pundits have told you to believe.

 

I think Tony's venom is missplaced. He should really be railing against Tommy Douglas, former Premier of Saskatchewan who introduced universal health care to North America



His daughter is Shirley Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland's mother.

Oh, and he was voted "Greatest Canadian of All Time" in a CBC contest last year.

Don Cherry was in the Top Ten.

 

Yep, and wasting billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives on a needless war in Iraq while creating a bastion of terrorism and continuing to ensure that millions of Americans don't have healthcare is really promoting the general welfare.

The only thing that endagers "freedom" is that.