Stossel on socialized medicine in Canada and Britain- we want that here?
 

Now I see why it seems so many in England have such bad teeth. Long lines to even see a dentist. Veterinarians do well though since see as many people as animals for medical care. Make sure you live close to a good vet. Only complete bozos want this idiocy.

ABC’s Stossel Slams Socialized Medicine, Finds Obama Expressed Interest in Single Payer System

By Brad Wilmouth (Bio | Archive)
August 1, 2009 - 01:28 ET

On Friday’s 20/20 on ABC, co-anchor John Stossel exposed the flaws in the Canadian and British government-run health care systems, and even showed viewers a clip of President Obama as he once expressed a belief that single-payer health care would be an acceptable system, even while taking the position that he would not pursue it, during one of the Democratic party presidential debates in 2008. During the January 21, 2008, debate on CNN, Obama said:

It's fine for us to have a debate about how the best way to get there is, but to suggest somehow that I'm not interested in having everybody covered, or to suggest, as Hillary just did, that I was in favor of single payer, I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single payer. What I said was that if I were starting from scratch, if we didn't have a system in which employers had typically provided health care, I would probably go with a single-payer system.

During the six-minute, 20-second segment, Stossel informed viewers of the long waits patients must endure in countries with government-run health systems – like Canada and Britain. He recounted that some patients – including world leaders and wealthy celebrities – come to America for treatment of serious conditions, and relayed the case of one Canadian woman who came to America to treat a clogged artery whose American doctor told her she would not have survived waiting a few more weeks for Canada's government health care. Additionally, Stossel found that even patients waiting in emergency rooms in Canada have to wait an average of 23hours for service.

Stossel recounted the case of a Canadian town with so many people waiting in line to be assigned to a family doctor that each month a lottery chooses four lucky residents. And in England, the shortage of dentists leads some Britons to pull their own teeth or try to repair problems on their own.

The 20/20 co-anchor summed up the importance of a profit motive for the health care industry to function adequately as he recounted that in Canada, private veterinary clinics provide health care for animals much more rapidly than the government-run system provides similar services for human patients:


JOHN STOSSEL: You want innovation and fast treatment? That often comes from people pursuing profit. And you see that in Canada because, even here, there is one area where they do offer easy access to cutting edge technology-

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN: -CT Scan, endoscopy, thoracoscopy, laporoscopy-

STOSSEL: -available all the time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN: -24 hours, seven days a week-

STOSSEL: Patients rarely wait.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN: If I see a patient that’s torn a crusciate ligament in that patient’s knee, we can generally have that patient scheduled within probably a week.

STOSSEL: But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Want a CT Scan in Canada? Private vet clinics say they can get a dog in the next day. For people, the waiting list is a month.

Below is a complete transcript of the segment from the Friday, July 31, 20/20 on ABC:

JOHN STOSSEL: Some in Congress say they’re moving closer to a plan that will make health care cheaper and better. Sounds great. But when government takes charge, it can also mean innovation stops, and you may not get the breakthroughs and care that you need to save your life.

BARACK OBAMA IN FRONT OF AUDIENCE: -affordable health care for every single American, that’s what we’re called upon to do.

STOSSEL: Care for everyone, for less money. Critics say that just isn’t possible.

SALLY PIPES, PACIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE: The only way they can get costs down under a government-run system is to control the amount of money that is spent on health care. But there is much more of a demand for health care than the government is willing to pay for. We will have long waits for care just like they do in Canada and in Great Britain.

STOSSEL: Those countries do have problems.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The nationwide shortage of NHS dentists-

STOSSEL: In England, people wait just to register for a dentist. Waits are so long, some people do it themselves. He used superglue. Some pull their own teeth. Dental tools – pliers and Vodka. Patients protest because the health service won’t pay for drugs they say they need. The President says he doesn’t want that.

OBAMA: -you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.

STOSSEL: But once, he did say that if he were starting from scratch-

OBAMA, FROM DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY DEBATE: I would probably go with a single-payer system.

STOSSEL: He says he doesn’t want government-run health care.

PIPES: He does want government health care. He just wants to go about it in a slow way so people don’t realize what’s happening to them.

STOSSEL: Many pundits and economists agree, saying Obama’s plan will build "a bridge to government-run health care."

PIPES: -and we’re all going to face long waiting lists and have lack of access to the latest care.

DOCTOR DAVID GRATZER, AUTHOR OF THE CURE: People line up for care, some of them die, that’s what happens.

STOSSEL: Canadian Doctor David Gratzer thought Canada’s government health care was great until he started treating patients.

GRATZER; The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting for radiation therapy, waiting for the knee replacement so they could finally walk up to the second floor of their house-

STOSSEL: People wait in line?

GRATZER: You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem. You just have to wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem. Free as the air. You just got to wait six months.

STOSSEL: But Canadian doctors told us their system is cracking. This man had a heart attack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE DOCTOR: What did they tell you about when an ICU bed might become available?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE PATIENT: They’re waiting for the chance that somebody may be transferred so that I can get that spot.

STOSSEL: In America, people wait in emergency rooms, too, but in Canada, if you’re sick enough to be admitted, you wait an average 23 hours.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE DOCTOR: You can’t send these patients to other hospitals that have capacity because there is no other hospital in the area that has capacity.

STOSSEL: There was no bed for this little girl, and she had no pediatrician that her parents could take her to to monitor her seizures. In fact, 1.7 million Canadians say they can’t get a family doctor. Some towns, like this one outside Toronto, hold a lottery. Once a month, the town clerk gets this box out of the closet. Inside are names of everyone who wants a family doctor. She pulls out four slips and then calls the lucky winners.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN ON PHONE: I just wanted to let you know that your name has been drawn for Dr. Keel’s patient list. Oh, you’re quite welcome.

STOSSEL: Others in town must wait. Businessman Rick Baker makes money from Canadian rationing. People stuck on waiting lists like Shirley Healy pay him to get them to America for treatment. Healy had a blocked artery that kept her from digesting her food.

RICK BAKER, CANADIAN BUSINESSMAN: She was starving to death. She’d lost 50 pounds.

STOSSEL: She hired Rick to help her get to this hospital in Washington state where she saw an American doctor.

HEALY: The doctor said that I would have had only a very few weeks to live.

STOSSEL: Yet the Canadian government calls her surgery elective.

HEALY: The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live.

STOSSEL: When this Canadian woman was about to give birth to quadruplets, she was told, "Sorry, all the neonatal units are too crowded." She had to fly to Montana.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE ANCHOR: Actress Natasha Richardson is said to be in critical condition-

STOSSEL: After Natasha Richardson fell while skiing in Montreal, she needed a high-tech trauma center but there wasn’t one within hundreds of miles. And there were no med evac helicopters to take her to one.

STOSSEL: So, yes, our profit-driven system is expensive and sometimes wasteful. But it’s that pursuit of profit that’s given us inventions that save lives.

GRATZER: This is the country of medical innovation. This is where people come when they need treatment.

STOSSEL: Thousands come here from countries with government health care. When this Spanish tenor got cancer, he came to America. So did this sheikh from the United Arab Emirates, Italy’s prime minister, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

GRATER: Literally, we’re surrounded by medical miracles. Death by cardiovascular disease has dropped by two-thirds in the last 50 years. You got to pay a price for that type of advancement.

STOSSEL: Breakthroughs like birth control pills and robotic limbs wouldn’t have happened without the possibility of big profit, says Grace Marie Turner of the Galen Institute.

GRACE MARIE TURNER, GALEN INSTITUTE: I want companies to come up with cures for Parkinson’s, cures for cancer, cures for Alzheimer’s. And unless there is a reward for them to do that, we’re not going to have those new medicines.

STOSSEL: Well, government has researchers. We have the NIH.

TURNER: Government is responsible for four percent of the drugs on the market today.

STOSSEL: She’s right. You want innovation and fast treatment? That often comes from people pursuing profit. And you see that in Canada because, even here, there is one area where they do offer easy access to cutting edge technology-

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN: -CT Scan, endoscopy, thoracoscopy, laporoscopy-

STOSSEL: -available all the time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN: -24 hours, seven days a week-

STOSSEL: Patients rarely wait.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN: If I see a patient that’s torn a crusciate ligament in that patient’s knee, we can generally have that patient scheduled within probably a week.

STOSSEL: But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Want a CT Scan in Canada? Private vet clinics say they can get a dog in the next day. For people, the waiting list is a month.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wi...ressed-interes

I feel sorry for all the Canadians who won't be able to get quality care in America once ObamaCare forces them into the same long lines to get care here.

My physician has already told me that if/when America adopts this, he plans to retire. He'll be forced to go through all the same costs, all the same paperwork, all the same directives and some bureaucrat will be telling him how much he'll be paid and when he might expect a check in the mail. Plus, he'll still be forced to have massive malpractice insurance because the ambulance chasers who line the pockets of the Democrat Party are not going to see their business curtailed at all.

Why would any doctor want to practice under such a system if he had an alternative?

My supervisor has a daughter is who marrying a French physician. Get this! He's not allowed to practice medicine in France outside the government-run system and he can't earn a living that way so he spends his weekends driving to Italy and seeing patients on a cash-only basis in order to make ends meet.

That's the sort of socialist plan the Democrats want to bring here. We will have doctor shortages and the best doctors will flee to somewhere else. There are already countries hoping to cash in on setting up medical centers for American patients fleeing Obama's health care system.

I know this will get torn apart by many on this board, but this is very similar to what I have heard from co-workers and friends in Europe. Some places are better than others, like Germany seeming to have much better dental care than England, but the root problems are the same.

Last year, I was talking with a German dermatologist who had just finished her residency and I asked her if she was going to work for the German version of NHS (national health service) and she said no. She said as a government doctor, she would be lucky to get a few minutes per patient. Even though it was going to be hard, because like in England, people are just starting to choose private insurance INSTEAD of free nationalized medicine, she was going to start a fee for service practice so that she would have time to actually treat her patients right.

Not only that, but those goddamn socialists are going to euthanize granny.

If LABS was around WPR and saw a conservative post that he would be screaming, "Strawman, strawman, straaaaaawwwwwmmmaaaaannn!!!"

Do you have anything to actually add in regard to the serious issues Stossel's report raises, or just want to continue being a partisan hack, that deflects truth with BS? Just curious?

If you don't think Stossel has an axe to grind you are so naive you should have a big "N" tattooed to your forehead. Stossel is a hard core libertarian dogmatist.

Munch on this, cupcake:

http://media.gallup.com/GPTB/healthcare/20030325_1.gif

In all three countries, there is great variation of opinion within the population on both the quality of medical care and the availability of affordable healthcare. It is a testament to national health systems that people in Canada and Great Britain are significantly more satisfied with availability of affordable healthcare than their American counterparts are. http://www.gallup.com/poll/8056/heal...in-canada.aspx

I actually feel sorry for you guys. The health care insurance industry and big pharma are spending over two million dollars a day to make sure you think the way you think. Kind of sad.

How many people from Europe have YOU spoken to about their health care system?

Here's a nice "data and fact based analysis" if you would like to leave the hyperbole of Stossel, the insurance industry, and the Rightard Fear machine and actually venture out into the reality based world.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/20...ersal_heal.php

In fact, aside from Canada, we were least likely to be able to get an appointment on the same day, and most places could provide access to a doctor in an ER faster than in the US. So is access really worse in universal systems? It would appear that in most universal systems, doctors in clinics and the ER are more available than in the US.

Of course, if you find ideological dogma more alluring than the truth, nobody can help you.

Well, here's one Brit's take:
A lot of us British people have been bewildered by the attacks on the NHS from right-wing Americans given that we are a healthier nation than you are, live longer, and pay less money for the privilege in spite of having generally higher costs of living than you do in the States.

Having said that, as SLC points out, there's no guarantee that switching to a more modern system would work in your country.

For me, the thing that bewilders me about U.S. politics, is why you're not out on the streets marching - both parties - over the ridiculous amounts of money your government spends for so little benefit. Any reconstruction of the U.S. health system needs to begin with the simple question: "Where the **** is all that money going." Unless you can answer that and stop the rot, you'll have the same problems regardless of having universal health care or not.

I'm sorry, I missed the answer to my question in your above quote.

What every American should be asking themselves:

Why is the Right turning everything, including the health care debate, into an ideological fight? What does political ideology have to do with fixing health care?

And in true leftish fashion, spin, spin, spin. Answer a simple question? Not a chance. Throw up a smoke screen of spin? Yep.

Sure, I've talked to plenty of Europeans about health care. Half my family is still in Ireland. You're trying to make a point where there is none. Read the article I posted. As it states, anecdotes and data are not the same thing. For every person you dig up who says they don't like their health care I'll dig up one who says they do. Anecdotes are like statistics; They can be made to say anything. Read the data.

All you are doing is protecting your ignorance and ideological partisanship. Discuss the facts.

Ask the Cubans how satisfied they are with their health care. I'm sure 98% are very satisfied. Or else.

Satisfaction isn't a proper barometer when comparing systems because, if all you know is one system, you'll be satisfied with insufficient care because you've been told that's all there is. Maybe they feed you Michael Moore propaganda to make you think your socialist health care is peachy keen.

Imagine a lottery in U.S. where once a week you get to find out whether you are ***allowed*** to see the doctor!! And wait until these fascists decide that you are too obese or too old or smoke too much, etc, to be given treatment.

There is one elemental truth at play here. You can't have universal coverage unless you reduce costs and the only way to reduce costs is to deny care. Period. You can show me all the charts and graphs you want, but it won't matter. The Democrats are lying through their teeth about what they plan to do with this because they know you won't like it when it is actually put in place but, once they seize control of 1/6th of our economy, you won't have any other choice but to go along with it.

And you'll be satisfied with it. Or else.

Discuss the facts? Like this crack was discussing the facts?

Oh, and Cuba, France, Britain and Canada are all the same. Are you really that completely out of it? Read my thread on French health care. It's a wake up call.

You'll have to ask your party about that one. I can't take credit for their fear mongering. If that's something you want to fall for, be my guest.

My god, you communists are shameless. You spent the last eight years turning every ****ing thing into politics, including supporting our troops in a time of war, and you have the NERVE to ask such a question?

You can have CommieCare all over the ****ing world but that's not enough for you. Leave your communist hands off my body and my health care!

You're a ****ing moron. But at least you live in Texas where you belong. :~ohyah!:

When our President, from your party, rushes through a stimulus bill to prevent economic armagedden (and breaks his promise of transparency, posting critical bills on the web before voting, etc.), says that if we don't reform healthcare, the economy won't recover, etc., it isn't fear mongering?

It's funny that when one side does it it is fear mongering, but when the other side does it, well, it's just ok.

Strange. Wasn't Obama just continuing Bush's stimulus efforts? Oh, and BTW, if health care continues to climb at 20% per year (like it's been doing) it will sink this economy, especially small businesses that are already stretched to the breaking point by health care costs.

No, because the stimulus bill rushed through under the gang of three, wasn't about stimulus. It was rushed through under the 'guise' of Stimulus. Anyway, same old same old with trying to have discussions with you libs on here.

LOL at the bedwetters ........ Notice how Italy and France are by passed ......
and you bedwetters wonder why you are the butt of so many jokes .......
How can you tell if a Bedwetters ( aka a Right wing person ) is lying ?
His lips start moving when he speaks .........

Yep, those facts are a pain in the ass when all you want to do is squeal about your ideological dogma and parrot the rightard talking points. :yayaya: