tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21680780.post2895108515366332182..comments2023-10-25T04:06:39.650-06:00Comments on THE UTAH AMICUS: Don't believe claims of America's health-care superiorityRobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15268367840057258095noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21680780.post-84839603105426697922008-01-21T11:32:00.000-07:002008-01-21T11:32:00.000-07:00Go Google waiting times in Canada for healthcare.....Go Google waiting times in Canada for healthcare.... it's a very serious issue. There was recently an in-depth study done by the Canadian government on the wait times for diagnostic imaging and treatments... and the report was dismal at best.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21680780.post-51482804432020088892008-01-20T21:48:00.000-07:002008-01-20T21:48:00.000-07:00Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Cli...Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton announced a $110 billion health care reform plan Monday that would require all Americans to have health insurance. "People are dying because they couldn't get the care they needed when they were sick," says Sen. Hillary Clinton. Clinton unveiled her "American Health Choices Plan," during a high-profile speech at a hospital in the key campaign state of Iowa, surrounded by supporters, American flags and campaign banners.<BR/><BR/>A few questions need to be asked:<BR/>How can something be called a "Health Choices Plan" if it is mandatory?<BR/>Is that the same "choice" that the fetus has under a Democrat abortion?<BR/>Where in the Constitution does it say "mandatory health plan"?<BR/>Clinton's advisers are comparing "mandatory" provisions of health care plan to state requirements that "require all drivers to purchase auto insurance," yet not everyone drives!<BR/>Clinton's socialized plan sets maximum fees for health care providers to be paid; the natural question is this: Should she have a heart attack, or Chelsea, or Bill, would she be using this socialized medicine or would she be on her own private plan? Based on that, isn't what she is advocating government-funded discrimination?<BR/>What all these socialized medicine snake oil salesmen overlook is that simple fact that in a capitalistic system, the best care goes to the best money; with follow-on care on a sliding scale base don insurance and ability to pay. By attempting to make the government the provider, Democrats must be proactive in making some assurance that they would use such a system, which is a laugh at best... By exempting themselves, their plan is dead in concept. <BR/><BR/>Socialized medicine will not work in this nation; to attempt to try is to attempt to raise the Jim Crow laws; i.e., under Hillary's plan the poor would receive equal treatment to the rich in "seperate but equal" health facilities. And it would be seperate since no doctor that spent 12 years studying for his medical degree is going to work for anything less than the maximum he can charge. I don't blame them...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21680780.post-26420192422391245542008-01-20T15:20:00.000-07:002008-01-20T15:20:00.000-07:00The anonymous alleged Doctor is engaging in zombie...The anonymous alleged Doctor is engaging in zombie lies about the low quality of health care in Canada and Europe. Not surprisingly, he didn't/couldn't provide a single trackback tag or any other citations to support his wild claims.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21680780.post-90561804890934391472008-01-19T22:35:00.000-07:002008-01-19T22:35:00.000-07:00I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a...I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people.<BR/>My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.<BR/>Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.<BR/><BR/>I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic — with a three-year wait list; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.<BR/><BR/>Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province's population) can't find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who'd get a doctor's appointment.<BR/><BR/>Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled — 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren't available. And so on.<BR/>Single-payer systems — confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists and substandard treatment — are starting to crack, however. Canadian newspapers are filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care. Many Canadians, determined to get the care they need, have begun looking not to lotteries — but to free markets.<BR/><BR/>Politicians like Hillary Clinton are on board; Michael Moore's new documentary, "Sicko," celebrates the virtues of Canada's socialized health care; the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes big businesses like AT&T, recently endorsed a scheme to centralize major health decisions to a government committee; and big unions are questioning the tenets of employer-sponsored health insurance.<BR/>One often-heard argument, voiced by the New York Times' Paul Krugman and others, is that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health.<BR/>Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall or a car accident. <BR/><BR/>And if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50%; the European rate is just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma: 12% in the U.S., 6% in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation.<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>Like many critics of American health care, though, Democrats argues that the costs are just too high: health care spending in Canada and Britain, he notes, is a small fraction of what Americans pay. Again, the picture isn't quite as clear as they suggests. Because the U.S. is so much wealthier than other countries, it isn't unreasonable for it to spend more on health care. <BR/><BR/>Take America's high spending on research and development. M.D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.<BR/><BR/>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 to give in to the temptation of socialized medicine. <BR/><BR/>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.<BR/><BR/>But such initiatives would push the U.S. 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.<BR/>America is right to seek a model for delivering good health care at good prices, but we should be looking not to Canada, but close to home — in the other four-fifths or so of our economy. <BR/><BR/>From telecommunications to retail, deregulation and market competition have driven prices down and quality and productivity up. Health care is long overdue for the same prescription.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21680780.post-21087926851129910042008-01-19T22:24:00.000-07:002008-01-19T22:24:00.000-07:00Funny coming from a Craig, who has never held a re...Funny coming from a Craig, who has never held a real job in his life - and who doesn't understand the free market.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21680780.post-72312318538654087712008-01-19T12:32:00.000-07:002008-01-19T12:32:00.000-07:00Dr. Oz says to liev along and healthy life you sho...Dr. Oz says to liev along and healthy life you should take resveratrol supplements.Resveratrol Supplements can help you control your weight naturally<BR/>by increasing energy, reducing cravings, and limiting your appetite.<BR/>According to Wikipedia, Consumer Lab, an independent dietary <BR/>supplement and over the counter products evaluation organization, <BR/>published a report on 13 November 2007 on the popular resveratrol <BR/>supplements. The organization reported that there exists a wide range <BR/>in quality, dose, and price among the 13 resveratrol products <BR/>evaluated. The actual amount of resveratrol contained in the <BR/>different brands range from 2.2mg for Revatrol, which claimed to have <BR/>400mg of "Red Wine Grape Complex", to 500mg for Biotivia.com Transmax, <BR/>which is consistent with the amount claimed on the product's label. <BR/>Prices per 100mg of resveratrol ranged from less than $.30 for <BR/>products made by Biotivia.com, jarrow, and country life, to a high of <BR/>$45.27 for the Revatrol brand. None of the products tested were found <BR/>to have significant levels of heavy metals or other contaminants.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com