US Healthcare System Failing

The author makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims in this anti-Republican polemic, but even those un-insured Americans have faster access to better health care than any Canadian. Canadians are going South and overseas for health care because they can't take the suffering, Americans aren't doing that, there's more compassion built into their system. Their 'failing health care system' is still better than our 'failing health care system', we're number 30 on the list of developed nations for health care, ours is really failing.

Yup, a system where someone decides to <a href="http://rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=34002">send themselves to jail</a> just to get treatment is really great, don't you think? Mike

My boss has friends who live in Indiana; she says it costs $11000/day or something to go to the emergency room if someone is uninsured, and there is a record number of uninsured people in the US. How many are uninsured in Canada? With all the problems our system has, making it private, for-profit will make things much worse.

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"George Bush has declared the war on terrorism to be the cause of his generation. The cause of Canadian sovereignty will be ours." - John Godfrey, MP for Don Va

You're just kidding us---right?

Canada is at the bottom of the list of developed nations when it comes to health care and there are Canadians travelling to places like India and Germany because they can't get their operations here, so Canadians are only kidding themselves, especially when they set up the US system as a straw man and try to knock it down. Besides, the American health care system is the American health care system, who cares what they do, there are a lot of countries with worse health care than the US, but, whatever. It's the Canadian health care system that needs reforming because it's the one we're stuck with.

Privatisation is definately not the solution for improving the healthcare if that is what you are implying because the only first place rank the US healthcare system has achieved among developed nations is in the category of cost.

I would maybe beleive you if you'd cite some sources. OECD says that canada has 2 years over americans in life expectancy, our infant mortality rates are half, and has the highest cure rate for lukemia and above average for most other cancers. Wait times vary a lot by province and procedure, so you cannot throw such bullshit blanket statements without anything to back them up.

On a per-capita basis, Canadians are healthier due to a universal, public system. 45million Americans don`t have any health coverage, and many of them look at Canada and say we would be nuts to privatize. But don`t slam the system- slam the corporate/ US friendly governments in Canada who have slashed budgets and implemented NAFTA, paving the way for higher costs and privatization! If our levels of government ever grew a backbone again and restored public health care to what it was, instead of deliberately trashing it and telling us it`s 'not sustainable' then it would once again be the envy of the world!!!

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Dave Ruston

If you compare the for-profit dental industry to our health care, you'll find that many people do not have dental coverage and therefore do not visit a dentist. So some say big deal, well actually it is, there are many preventable diseases which could be dealt with early. Heart disease is affected and sometimes caused by tooth decay, the decay gets into the blood stream and causes other problems. A dental exam, with xrays and a cleaning once a year is between $150.00-250.00(or more), if you have two children and two parents in a family that is about, $600.00-$1,000.00 a year, and for many that is more than they can afford. I don't have hard facts on this, or stats but I worked in the dental industry for about 8 years and saw how people wanted to see a dentist but could not afford to, others in excruciating pain, that treated the minimum to relieve the pain,again because they had no money.

Once you privatize the healthare, you'll see people not seeing the doctor because they can't afford it, so illness which could be prevented or treated early, won't get caught, same with epidemics, they just won't be seen until people are dying.

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If I stand for my country today...will my country be here to stand for me tomorrow?