Heath care and Hillary

[crockett]

Look at the VA hospitals and you'll see what government healthcare reform will bring to the masses. 

Are you on Crack? The VA hospitals and the crap that happened in the last few years was because Cheney let private contractors take it over. It was fine before they cut all the govt employees and understaffed it with private contractors.

[Eagler]

can't wait for the 16+ hour wait in the emergency rooms and the 4+ hr wait in the doc offices with all the sluggs with runny noses once they get their free ticket..as if it isn't bad enough now

please visit your local dmv on any given day for a preview of whats to come with "universal health care" ..

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Are you on Crack? The VA hospitals and the crap that happened in the last few years was because Cheney let private contractors take it over. It was fine before they cut all the govt employees and understaffed it with private contractors.

 

WRONG. My Dad was in the VA health care system BEFORE Cheney was vice President. It sucked then, it sucks now. Bush/Cheney didn't make it what it is, but no doubt they failed to fix it.

[crockett]

can't wait for the 16+ hour wait in the emergency rooms and the 4+ hr wait in the doc offices with all the sluggs with runny noses once they get their free ticket..as if it isn't bad enough now

please visit your local dmv on any given day for a preview of whats to come with "universal health care" ..

Last time I went to the emergency room after a car wreck.. I waited about a hour and a half just to get the Triage then another 45 mins before they took me in the back. Another hour and a half later the doctor checked me out and spent literally 5 mins with me. So I have no clue how waiting in a govt run hospital would be any diffrent than the wait at a private run hospital.

Now compaire that to my local DMV here in Daytona, the longest I've waited was about 20 mins.

[Elfie]

Are you on Crack? The VA hospitals and the crap that happened in the last few years was because Cheney let private contractors take it over. It was fine before they cut all the govt employees and understaffed it with private contractors.

Are you on crack?

    

The government hospitals, VA and military, have sucked for decades.

[Wayout]

Are you on Crack? The VA hospitals and the crap that happened in the last few years was because Cheney let private contractors take it over. It was fine before they cut all the govt employees and understaffed it with private contractors.

VA Hospitals started their downward spiral after WWI.  
  

[myelo]

Lastly, I don't believe there is an existing national health care system in any country where that healthcare isn't rationed.

Any health care system has rationing to some degree. Since there's generally a limit on how much money is available you have to have some control on the amount of health care you provide. This is true even with private health care insurance, which are neck deep in regulations regarding what they will and will not pay for. But in general, the more government is involved the more rationing you have. Even a true free market fee for service system has rationing to the extent that unless you're super rich, there is a limit on what you can pay for.

One other point: there seems to be a lot of confusion on the difference between a government funded health care system and a government run health care system. In a government funded system the government pays for health care provided by private hospital and doctors using taxes and/or payments.  These include Medicare and Medicaid in the US, and the Canadian system.

In a government run system the hospitals and doctors are government employees. Examples are the VA system and the UK system.

Most of the talk of reform in the US centers on government funded systems not government run systems.

[Toad]

So when it is rationed, should it still be available?

If anyone wants to have a balanced view on this I suggest:

The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html


Excerpts:

...Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the health-care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,” he fumed to the New York Times, “and in which humans can wait two to three years.”...

... M. D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.

That said, American health care is expensive. And Americans aren’t always getting a good deal. In the coming years, with health expenses spiraling up, it will be easy for some—like the zealous legislators in California—to give in to the temptation of socialized medicine. In Washington, there are plenty of old pieces of legislation that like-minded politicians could take off the shelf, dust off, and promote: expanding Medicare to Americans 55 and older, say, or covering all children in Medicaid.

But such initiatives would push the United States further down the path to a government-run system and make things much, much worse. True, government bureaucrats would be able to cut costs—but only by shrinking access to health care, as in Canada, and engendering a Canadian-style nightmare of overflowing emergency rooms and yearlong waits for treatment...

[AKIron]

Any health care system has rationing to some degree. Since there's generally a limit on how much money is available you have to have some control on the amount of health care you provide. This is true even with private health care insurance, which are neck deep in regulations regarding what they will and will not pay for. But in general, the more government is involved the more rationing you have. Even a true free market fee for service system has rationing to the extent that unless you're super rich, there is a limit on what you can pay for.

One other point: there seems to be a lot of confusion on the difference between a government funded health care system and a government run health care system. In a government funded system the government pays for health care provided by private hospital and doctors using taxes and/or payments.  These include Medicare and Medicaid in the US, and the Canadian system.

In a government run system the hospitals and doctors are government employees. Examples are the VA system and the UK system.

Most of the talk of reform in the US centers on government funded systems not government run systems.

Government funded will be government run within a couple of years.

[myelo]

I don't think that's necessarily true. Medicare and medicaid been going 40+ years, still not government run. Same for Canada's system.

[john9001]

Let's say the typical gun-and-knife club member goes to the local ED to have his face put back together because he was standing on the corner, minding his own business when two dudes (it's always at least two) jumped him for absolutely no reason at all.

hmm, in that case the two dudes (it's always at least two), might be the ones that need free health care.

ER doc" what happened to you guys?"

dudes, "some crazy neocon shot us and cut us up with a knife, all we wanted was his money"