An article from some doctors who have worked on both sides of the border. They have no difficulty discussing problems with Canadian healthcare, such as some procedures that are less readily available than in the U.S. and some of the delays in some specialized services. But, overall, the lower systemic costs, the minimization of bureaucracy through streamlined billing, and the accessibility of all Canadians regardless of ability to pay are named as positives of the Canadian system. This is a good read for some thoughtful analysis of Doctors…

Overall, they indicated that although the Canadian model is not perfect, it is a good system in which patients generally receive timely and competent care and physicians have fewer practice hassles compared with their American counterparts.

“I think universal coverage works,” said Hesam Farivar-Mohseni, MD, of Ontario’s Brampton Civic Hospital, a Canadian citizen who spent nearly 11 years in the United States. Following a two-year fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he spent time working in New York and at West Virginia University Hospitals in Morgantown.

“Patients in Canada are not being denied anything,” he said. “People in the U.S. think that patients here [in Canada] are waiting outside the hospital, they have no access to the hospital, and they’re dying because this is government-sponsored health care. That’s not true at all. If there’s a serious disease the family doctor calls a specialist and the person is seen right away. If a patient has a kidney stone or something similar, they may wait for eight hours, but that’s true in the States, too. Such patients don’t get seen in the emergency room there right away, either.

read the rest of the article…

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He says Canadian single-payer “works really well if you don’t get too sick.” In fact, it’s the opposite – it works really well if you do get too sick, because you jump to the front of the queue for care… And yes, there is a queue -if it is less serious, you wait some, if it is more serious or life-threatening, you don’t.

The reason this story is unfair goes far beyond the apples and oranges comparison a U.S. ‘public option’ and the Canadian single-payer system. The real problem with the story is the implication that we Canadians are all waiting around for life-saving surgery, or we are heading to the U.S. to get some real care. They cherry pick a few stories that seem to prove their point, but these are people who end up absorbing huge medical bills if they go to the U.S., and thus is only for those with cash to pay for U.S. medical care. These ’sufferers’ in Canada would be suffering much more if they were uninsured or under-insured and in the U.S.

Looking specifically at one of Fox’s cherry-picked subjects, Foreign Affair to Remember comments on how Fox News just keeps bringing out Lin Gilbert from Vancouver. She is poor and had to wait for treatment for her chronic back pain:

So Fox seems to trot out this poor lady, Lin Gilbert, whenever they need a worst-case scenario to spook the population away from any sort of health care change. OK, if you want to talk horror stories, maybe Fox should interview Monique Zimmerman-Stein, who has been nearly blind for the last two years from Stickler syndrome. She recently decided to forego her own treatment to save funds to treat her two daughters, who also suffer from the condition.

And where in Canada does she live? Florida. Watch how the insurance companies treat her and tell me how proud you are of our system.

News Corpse has this to say about Ms. Gilbert back in July:

Lin Gilbert suffered from debilitating back pain that she says was untreated in an untimely manner in her native Vancouver… eventually she got the surgery she needed and is pain free today. It cost her nothing. She has no debt related to her medical treatment. An American with the same problem would still be suffering or would have racked up an unmanageable debt that would haunt them and their family for the rest of their life.

I can’t speak to what delayed the treatments in Canada for these women, but surveys show that they are the exceptions. Most Canadians are satisfied with their healthcare program, with an overwhelming 82% saying that they prefer their system to a private system like that of their neighbors to the south. Furthermore, a Gallup poll showed that Canadians are far more satisfied with their system than we Americans are with ours.

While there is no denying that there are waits in Canada, would Lin Gilbert have even been able to get care if she lived in the U.S.? Fox doesn’t say.

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But given how little attention single-payer is getting and given that we hear people will leave the country if single-payer is enacted, 82% tells us something.  And in Baucus’ state?  He shut Single-payer out of the Senate Finance debate in May, and isn’t even including a watered down public option in his bill.

And yet it is 82% – take it for what you will.

Here is the question from the Helena Independent Record:

“If there were a national referendum on single-payer health insurance for all, how would you vote? For, or against?”

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video of memorial on deaths from lack of insurance

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Here is a segment of his speech praising Obama to Conservative leaders last week:

50 years from today, Americans will revere the name Obama.  Because like his Canadian predecessors, he chose the tough responsibilities of national political leadership over the meaningless nostrums of sterile partisanship that we see too much of in Canada and around the world today.

It’s throwing me off a bit, as I am pretty sure this is the first time I have ever come close to agreeing with Mulroney on anything, though it appears this open declaration of love for universal health care is connected some kind of clash of egos between him and current Conservative leader and Prime Minister Stephen Harper (who won’t even weigh in on this issue at all).

And he is praising Obama who I am not quite as convinced is a visionary of healthcare with his public option.  But..still!

I think this really shows how mainstream an issue this can be – in Canada,  people from highly varied political perspectives recognize the value of universal healthcare.

To see some of the video of the speech on Canuck Politics, click here

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How corporate P.R. works to kill healthcare reform by Wendell Potter

It is easy to think of efforts to influence lawmakers as the exclusive domain of K Street lobbyists. Much has been said and written about the millions of dollars the special interests are spending on lobbying activities and the hundreds of lobbyists who are at work as we speak trying to shape healthcare reform legislation. Very little by comparison has been written about the millions of dollars that special interests are spending on P.R. activities to accomplish the same goal and that are vital to successful lobbying efforts.

One of the reasons I left my job at CIGNA, where I headed corporate communications and was part of the Legal & Public Affairs division, was because I did not want to be involved in yet another P.R. and lobbying campaign to kill or gut reform. I finally came to question the ethics of what I had done and been a part of for nearly two decades to influence decision making and bill writing on Capitol Hill.

read more…

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Physicians for a National Health Program has links to some of the key myths and has a link to the rest of the CHSRF’s myth buster series.   Some of the myths profiled and debunked include:  for-profit health equaling efficient health, private health reducing waiting times, ‘Communist’ Canadian health, etc…

link to the Mythbusters series

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