"Sqwertz" > wrote in message
...
> On 4/10/2016 11:20 AM, graham wrote:
>> On 10/04/2016 11:15 AM, Sqwertz wrote:
>>> On 4/10/2016 11:07 AM, wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 10 Apr 2016 11:58:08 -0400, Ed Pawlowski > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 4/10/2016 9:17 AM, Dave Smith wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I spend 4 days in ICU and another 3 nights in the hospital. I was
>>>>>> billed
>>>>>> nothing for all that.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> How much does the average Canadian pay for free medical? Based on
>>>>> income?
>>>>
>>>> Based on spending - a sales tax gets it so the more you have to spend,
>>>> the more you support it. Someone like me who buys a Mazda 2 pays much
>>>> less than the person buying a Merc.
>>>
>>
>>> According to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, as
>>
>>> The Fraser Institute of Canada
>>
>> Neither of those sources is credible! They are far RW "Think tanks" that
>> want to privatize everything and take us back to Victorian times!
>> Graham
>
> LOL, your partisan BIAS is showing again, assbag!
>
> Here, read on:
>
> http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-...us-health-care
>
> A top Canadian politician attracted national attention when he decided to
> abandon his country’s health care system, which has been suggested as a
> model for reforms in the United States, to cross the border in seeking
> treatment for a heart condition.
>
> Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams traveled to the United
> States in February to undergo heart surgery. The 59-year-old millionaire
> is set to spend over three months in America recovering from the
> operation.
>
> Not Surprised
>
> Sally Pipes, president of the San Francisco-based Pacific Research
> Institute, calls Premier Williams’ decision “no surprise.”
>
> “[Premier Williams] is a medical tourist; he went where he obviously felt
> he would get the best treatment and where he would not have to wait. He
> did not follow [political film documentarian] Michael Moore’s advice. He
> came here because in the United States we have the latest and best
> technology and treatments and very good health outcomes,” Pipes said.
>
> Opposition politicians in Canada have raised questions about why Williams
> decided not to seek heart treatment in Ontario or Toronto, the heart
> surgery hubs of the Canadian health care system. Some are wondering
> whether Williams' decision to leave Canada for treatment in the United
> States reflects an indictment of Canada's health system. He is not alone
> in his preference for American care, however, Pipes says.
>
> “[Premier Williams] is not the first. Belinda Stronach who opposed opening
> the Canadian health care system, came to America for treatment when she
> was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2007. Robert Bourassa, twice
> former Premier of Quebec, when he was diagnosed with multiple melanoma,
> came to the United States as well,” Pipes said.
>
> http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/11/re...-care-in-2011/
>
> The nonpartisan Fraser Institute reported that 46,159 Canadians sought
> medical treatment outside of Canada in 2011, as wait times increased 104
> percent — more than double — compared with statistics from 1993.
>
> Specialist physicians surveyed across 12 specialties and 10 provinces
> reported an average total wait time of 19 weeks between the time a general
> practitioner refers a patient and the time a specialist provides elective
> treatment — the longest they have ever recorded.
>
> http://dailysignal.com/2010/02/09/th...go-to-america/
>
> A study by Steven Katz, Diana Verilli, and Morris Barer in Health Affairs
> examining the Ontario Health Insurance Plan from 1987 to 1995 found
> “evidence of cross-border care seeking for cardiovascular and orthopedic
> procedures, mental health services, and cancer treatments,” although not
> widespread. Examples include the governments of British Columbia and
> Quebec sending patients to the United States for coronary artery surgery
> and cancer treatment. Shona Holmes, a Kingston, Ontario resident in need
> of an endocrinologist and neurologist, crossed the border when she was
> told to wait “four months for one specialist and six months for the
> other.” Karen Jepp delivered identical quadruplets in Montana “because of
> a shortage of neonatal beds in Canada,” with the Calgary health system
> picking up the tab.
>
> Perhaps Canadians’ health care migration patterns are a result of their
> own centralized system of government health care planning and “free care”
> crashing into the government’s budget constraints.
>
> http://www.city-journal.org/html/ugl...are-13032.html
>
> The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
> Socialized medicine has meant rationed care and lack of innovation. Small
> wonder Canadians are looking to the market.
>
> My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way to
> one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital
> emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute. Swinging open
> the door, I stepped into a nightma the ER overflowed with elderly
> people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had
> waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began
> to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.
> I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs.
> Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure,
> such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we
> referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman
> needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced
> a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four
> months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.
Yep! The sleep apnea thing. Pretty much what happened to my friend. Then
they sent her off to another part of the country to an unfamiliar hospital.
Flew her on a hardship plane ticket as she had no other way to get there.
Only for her to be stranded for the weekend with nothing but the clothes on
her back. Thankfully she had an online friend nearby who put her up and fed
her for the weekend. She had to wait until Monday to get another hardship
ticket to fly back home.
And all for what? The result of the test was that she had insomnia. She
already knew that. She has had one more sleep study since. Still hasn't
gotten help for her problems. At least that study didn't require the two
year wait and it was much closer to home.