I always enjoy coming to this site because you offer great tips and advice for people like me who can always use a few good pointers. I will be getting my friends to pop around fairly soon.

With Universal HC (and beware, there’s not one accepted working definition), at least it would be rational rationing, based on clinical need and not by “wallet biopsy” as is the case now in the U.S..

If we had Improved Medicare for All (or something to that effect) we could collectively decide as a civilized society what services would be covered FOR ALL.

Let’s get with the program!! Every other industrialized country in the world spends FAR LESS MONEY, GETS BETTER QUALITY CARE AND BETTER OUTCOMES and COVERS EVERYONE with some version of guaranteed universal coverage with comprehensive benefits for all residents.

Check out the national organizing project called HealthCare-Now.org to learn more about this reform and to help make it happen. Thank you.

FYI the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report Called for Universal Health Coverage by 2010 from Press Release Jan 14, 2004 (and things are finally ramping up now…in Feb. 2007)

The IOM Report and its “5 Priniciples to Judge, Compare Proposed Solutions for Universal Health Care” might be of interest and of use to folks who are following (and maybe even participating actively in) health reform on the state and/or national levels.

Offers 5 Guiding Principles to Judge, Compare Proposed Solutions:

1. Health care coverage should be universal.

2. Health care coverage should be continuous.

3. Health care coverage should be affordable to individuals and families.

4. The health insurance strategy should be affordable and sustainable to society.

5. Health care coverage should enhance health and well-being by promoting access to high-quality care that is effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient-centered, and equitable.

(side note: when these priniciples were announced in 2004 they were celebrated but it did seem to many advocates that Principle #5 cheats somewhat, in that is tries to wrap quite a few principles into one). MassCare has been using the IOM Principles in their work as have many other groups in MA and across the country.

The full IOM Report is very good and well worth a look at this link

http://www.liberty-page.com/issues/healthcare/socialized.html/

Just read through that web site and see what this country will head for if this is carried through. By the way the Bush administration is probably pushing these companies to get this through making it look like it is their agenda. People are so dumb! I know, just send the 20 – 30 million Mexicans back to their country! That would be 20 to 30 million less Mexicans to take care of, then send back all the Other Than Mexicans, perhaps another 10 million and bingo! That’s more than enough to cover the uninsured. Problem solved! The only ones left will be the American Citizens and I don’t think the American Citizens would mind picking up the tab for the Citizens the U.S. Note: While we debate this Mexico is in the process of setting up Universal Health care in their country. Now when the Mexicans go home they can get all the free health care they need! Do you really think that Mexico and the U.S. trying to push this through at the same time is a coincidence? NOT!!!!

Still waiting for you to compare how this system is ‘worse’ than our current one. What ‘wait times’ do we already have for all of those Americans that get zero health care?

(10 years to fine tune an already “fabulous” system? How surprising? I wonder how a population 8.5 times larger than Canada will manage wait times. Hmmmm……. Comment by valiant venus — February 7, 2007 @ 10:11 pm

Are you suggesting that health care plans don’t ’scale’? What basis do you have to assume that? Why do you believe it would be worse than the 50 million Americans that get little or no healthcare, while our country spends twice as much as Canada?

Dear twiggy, please don’t confuse our correcting your disinformation with a glowing analysis of Canada. It’s woefully underfunded, yet Canadians nationally experience better health care than americans.

You also have yet to demonstrate that there’s a waiting list for life threatening illness.

Who’s Jason, there’s no post by Jason on this thread. Is that maybe you posting to yourself, but getting removed in the filter? You’re way to Anorexic to afford a split personality little Mizz Sunshine.

When you get done posting disinformation, and smears against Canada, would please do your homework and explain how 50 million people without health care is better than this horrible Canadian system? Or is your sole complaint that rich people can’t buy better healthcare? How tiresome…

Whew! It’s good to see there’s always room for improvment – I’m just surprised anyimprovement is necessary given the glowing reviews by proressives. (10 years to fine tune an already “fabulous” system? How surprising? I wonder how a population 8.5 times larger than Canada will manage wait times. Hmmmm…….

While you may not like the answer I provided, I answered your question. I am waiting for your response to my question regarding tax rates acceptable to you. Another question in response will not suffice.

Note to Molly: I appreciate your note to TP. Realize that poor Jason is not very imaginative. However, I am not interested in having anyone censored, unlike the number of progressives here who rallied to eliminate anti Semitic plunger, lefties Susan the debtonator, btruthful, Ryan Neat, and right wingers, IRI, etc. An assortment of ideas, whether legitimate debate or intellectual reflux, demonstrate the First Amendment amid the consorous claptrap of political correctness.

ValiantVenusGrewFromUranus

It is mischaracterizing someone elses name in a bad light.

Your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

ValiantVenusGrewFromUranus needs to be BANNED!

This is one of my favorite big lies! It’s actually the US that spends the most in the OECD, not Canada.

Canada isn’t even near the top, but as is often the case among right wingnuts, they can’t get a simple fact straight. Here’s the 2006 data:

http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm

And dear mizz tic-tac, if you really want health statistics, why don’t you do yourself a favor and use the ones from the canadian government.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss/qual/acces/wait-attente/index_e.html

Or the OECD statistics:

http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,2340,en_2649_37407_2085200_1_1_1_37407,00.html

Although I’m sure you prefer just to pre-form your opinion, and ignore the abundant information that disproves your preconceptions.

Isn’t conservative hypocrisy just a crackup?

It’s almost as funny as quoting the Fraser Institute as a ’source’!!!!!!

And yet -here you are, discussing me.

Welcome back, MA.

Thanks for demonstrating your incapacity to answer the question about health care.

You’ve once again given statistics on ‘elective’ care. And I know you aren’t very worldly, so stating the Saskatechwan wait times is like referring to health care access living in the Yukon of Alaska! Would you care to guess how much time someone from there might have to wait to see a doctor – assuming there even is one in their area?

Besides, quoting the Fraser institute on health care issues, is like quoting Ted Haggard on Homosexuality. Sorry little miss sunshine, but you really show your ignorance when you use them as a resource. Might I suggest you go to the Canadian statistics websites? They have the unfiltered statistics, that don’t include the most rare, remote and isolated of countries!

I so enjoy your self reflection, even when it’s unintentional!

In the the narrow world of progressives, the most vulgar word known to collective comrades is PROFIT. Honorable progressive employment is often found working for non-profit organizations, unions, and assorted government bureaucracies. But the one thing NEVER mentioned – all of those entities would DRY up without PROFITS. PROFITS to be taxed – PROFITS for grants and donations, etc.

Universal health coverage means rationed health care – Period. The wait might be down as many of those on lists come to Detroit through Windsor and Seattle and Portland via BC.

“A July 2004 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, Paying, More, Getting Less, concluded that after years of government control, the Canadian medical system is badly injured and bleeding citizens’ hard-earned tax dollars. The institute compared health care systems in the industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found Canada currently spends the most, yet ranks among the lowest on such indicators as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes.

One of the major reasons for this discrepancy is that, unlike the countries in the study that outperformed Canada–Sweden, Japan, Australia, and France, for example–Canada outlaws most private health care.

If the Canadian government says it provides a particular medical service, it is illegal for a Canadian citizen to pay for and obtain that service privately. At the same time, the Canadian government bureaucracy rations medical services. According to another Fraser Institute survey, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada (13th edition, October 2003), a Canadian health care patient, on average, must wait 17.7 weeks for hospital treatment. Those who live in Saskatchewan waited an average of 30 weeks, those in Ontario a relatively expeditious 14 weeks.”
Rober Chiak, MD, July 2004, Healthcare News

Even smaller minds hide behind changing screen names, and packs of lies about themselves. Did it really take you this long to come up with that quote?

You are so lame. And so busted, MA.