Maverick, your sources do not support your conclusions. Again, perhaps you should read them first.
Your first source, http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=53B61670-E7F2–99DF-3E9FD5664899BF24
comes to mixed conclusions. We could start with the headline: “We’re Number Two: Canada Has as Good or Better Health Care than the U.S.” Congratulations. The story concludes Canada is Number Two in the headline, behind the U.S. Hmmm. . . doesn’t look good for your position yet. The article continues: Not all experts agree with the implication that the Canadian system is better than the U.S. system, however, or with the researchers’ methodology. Vivian Ho, who is the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy chair in health economics at Rice University in Houston and has spent time living and conducting research in both the U.S. and Canada, argues that the study’s focus on mortality could be misleading.
“When we look at health systems we look at other things than death,” Ho explains. In her own research on hip fracture, which was cited in Guyatt’s study, she found that the time a patient had to wait before surgery—which was significantly longer in Canada than the U.S. because of a shortage of operating rooms—made only a 1 percent difference in terms of mortality.
“But certainly if you ask people waiting in the hospital,” Ho notes, “They’re going to say I’d rather have the U.S. system…. Waiting means there’s a significant amount of distress for an elderly patient, and also higher complications for pneumonia because you have the patient immobile for so long.”
Ah. If “you ask people waiting in the hospital, I’d rather have the U.S. system.” In other words, the taxpayers paying for the care. So, no good for your position yet. Let’s continue: Patti Groome, an epidemiologist at Queens University Cancer Research Institute in Kingston, Ontario, said she believes that overall the paper was balanced. “But when you get into [the] meat of [the] paper they can’t sort out what’s going on…. There’s way too much heterogeneity in these studies to come to a conclusion about these systems.” In meta-analyses such as this one, “heterogeneity” in results corresponds to variations in the size of an effect across the studies being reviewed.
OK. So now a CANADIAN MEDICAL EXPERT (after all, you suggested we listen to people with experience, right? Are you Canadian? Perhaps? Are you a Canadian epidemiologist? Or a doctor? Or a health care provider? Because this CANADIAN MEDICAL EXPERT says that although the study you TRY to use as support for your position, while “balanced” (which I’m guessing means unbiased), the study itself is not able to “come to a conclusion about these systems.”
Ah. Which means the source YOU cite in support of YOUR position, is doing a pretty good job of saying that the study you hoped supported you, again according to someone WITH THE EXPERIENCE YOU SAY YOU VALUE, is not worth a whole lot. Let’s take a look at another trenchant opinion from your source: ”“Personally,” Ho adds, “my view is that the Canadian system is good for Canada and the American system is good for America. Neither side should switch, because the systems are a function of the population—the Canadian population believes much more in maintaining social safety nets.”
Ah. So YOUR source basically concludes that the study you hoped would support your position is either not useful, or that THE U.S. SYSTEM IS BEST FOR THE U.S. Well, thank you, Maverick, I always appreciate when someone makes a feeble argument that supports my position, not theirs. Shall we continue?
Your second source seems to be accurate: http://tinyurl.com/2layn8
Let’s see, the headline of YOUR second source says: “New Report Finds 89.6 Million Americans Were Uninsured during 2006–2007.” Sounds about right.
Hey, but wait a minute, Maverick. Are you sure you aren’t Michael Moore? Because you manipulated the evidence there. Now, I’m not going to accuse you of lying to us, maybe you just don’t understand the difference. Here, let me help. YOUR SOURCE talks about people WITHOUT INSURANCE. But wait, that’s not what you said it said. You claimed “89,600,000 people in the US HAVE NO ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE.” But wait a minute, I’m guessing you might be Canadian, and you Canadians do speak English, right? Is WITHOUT INSURANCE the same as NO ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE? Wait, I’ll ask my 10 year old. . .
Wow, she saw the difference right off the bat, Maverick. YOUR source doesn’t say what you claimed it said. In fact, let’s look at that article. Nope. NOWHERE DOES IT SAY ANYBODY WAS DENIED ACCESS TO ANY MEDICAL CARE WHATSOEVER. Hmmm. . . when Bush talked about WMD’s based on bad intelligence, everyone said he lied. By that standard, you Maverick ARE A LIAR. Yep. I’ll say it. You mislead everyone about the conclusion of that article. Makes you one of three things in my book: careless, ignorant, or a liar. You pick, I don’t know you that well.
Oh, but it gets worse for your anemic argument. The article continues to say: “more than half (50.2 percent) were uninsured for nine months or more.” Now, I know you’re bad with numbers, so let’s do some subtracting together, shall we? 100% minus 50.2% means that almost HALF, 49.8% of the people without medical insurance, were able to get insurance within 9 months.
And since you don’t live, here, I should probably explain to you that it is a violation of federal law for any healthcare provider providing emergency treatment to turn away anybody, American or not, who seeks urgent care, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. That’s right, Maverick, as far as emergency treatment, THE U.S. ALREADY HAS UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. Wow, looking kind of grim for your evil specter of the U.S. abandoning its citizens.
So, what we’re really talking about here is nonemergency treatment. let me share some logic with you, Maverick. In the U.S., we have about half of 89 million people who were temporarily without medical insurance for less than 9 months for nonemergency treatment. Now let’s keep in mind, some of those people COULD have had medical insurance, but chose not to allocate their resources to purchasing medical insurance. And none of the numbers in your source address whether those without insurance were able to pay out of their pocket for their health care. In fact, how about that very big number of that 89 million who were without medical insurance THAT DIDN’T HAVE ANY HEALTH PROBLEMS.
Hmmm, Maverick, where do you get these crazy assumptions 89 million Americans had “no access to medical care?” That’s not what your source said, nowhere close. If it looks like crap, smells like crap, tastes like crap, glad I didn’t step in it. More of your crap is the claim that these countries provide universal health care. Since you clearly didn’t bother to read any of my links, and since you want the experience of people who live in these countries like you, how about this quote from the Australian HealthCare News, quoting the UK Minister of Health: “Certain hospitals in the UK who have imposed a ban on smokers and the obese from receiving particular treatments have been defended for their action by the Health Secretary.
Patricia Hewitt says it is a perfectly legitimate clinical decision for primary care trusts (PCT) to set a collective policy to deny operations to certain patients.
Miss Hewitt’s comments were made in response to a survey which found nine PCTs refused joint replacements to obese patients and four blocked orthopaedic surgery for smokers.
The minister says hospitals are entitled to get together with their doctors on any particular area of clinical judgement and decide which guidelines are put in place, and the issue is one for doctors to decide.
Hey, how about that? You don’t know what you’re talking about. You claimed the UK had universal health care. THAT WAS A LIE, because evidently you can’t get some health care in the UK if you are chubby or smoke, ACCORDING TO THE UK MINISTER OF HEALTH, who I presume knows far more about this than you, Maverick. I know you won’t like it, but let’s keep using logic shall we? OK, so we don’t know how many Americans were genuinely unable to have medical access for nonemergency matters while they were without medical insurance. You still have done nothing to counter the very credible CANADIAN SOURCES I cited that indicated waits for this sort of nonemergency treatment in Canada is 2–3 years.
OK, so let’s do that comparison. In the U.S., some of these people were temporarily without insurance coverage. I agree with you, in Canada, they had coverage. WHICH DIDN’T DO THEM ONE BIT OF DIDDLY SQUAT BECAUSE THEY WERE DENIED ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE BY THE CANADIAN SYSTEM BECAUSE THERE WAS A WAIT FOR TREATMENT THAT EXCEEDED THE TIME THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN WITHOUT INSURANCE COVERAGE IN THE U.S. Yup. By the time that Canadian coverage would kick in, many of these people would have obtained insurance in the U.S., gotten their treatment and moved on with their lives. But you’d rather have every teenage girl wait 3 years for knee surgery than have part of the population wait 9 months or longer. How egalitarian of you. Nothing like sinking to the lowest common denominator, and then sinking the denominator further.
And your ignorant or lying manipulation of figures continues. You discuss the military portion of the U.S. budget above, and your numbers are largely accurate, but your presentation is either ignorant or misleading. You evidently did not read the sources I gave above explaining this information.
You said: “So that’s 41% of your 2006 taxes that were assigned for military purposes.” ANOTHER LIE. You see, a little earlier you had said: Its useful to note that “national defense” accounted for 52% of the total Discretionary budget ($438.8 Billion) whereas health services accounted for ~6%.” That portion of your figures was correct. But you see, you can’t say 41% of 2006 taxes were for the military when we are talking only about the DISCRETIONARY budget. If you had said 41% of the DISCRETIONARY BUDGET was for the military, you would have been closer to the truth, but you would have been ignoring that a very large portion of the nondiscretionary budget is for health care entitlements. So not only is the military not responsible for 41% of 2006 taxes, but far more than 6% of the total budget, including entitlements, is spent on health care.
Now I now you didn’t cook these figures yourself, you are merely repeating the misleading manipulation of cleverer minds than yours. But lets look at some more of your misleading figures. You state: That number ignores, for example, the amount that is allocated to pay for past wars, which is an additional 13% ($263.5 Billion).
Allocated by whom, pray tell? Actually, this is more manipulation of figures. You see, that interesting little “payment of historical war debt” figure is another lie. This little statistic is popular but based on a logical fallacy. You see, this calculation ASSUMES (yep, one of your “crazy assumptions”) that “past-war debt” is ALWAYS the last portion of federal debt to be paid. Well, it doesn’t work like that. National debt is national debt. There aren’t separate “account balances.” Why would we assume the budget funds the U.S. spends on interest on the national debt is solely incurred by military spending? That debt was also incurred for health care, education, Ted Kennedy’s pension, etc. But your little figure ASSUMES we pay that “good debt” first, and the leftover we can’t pay is all that bad “military” debt. Hmm. . . another big hole in your argument. I’m gonna stop here because I’ve already gone way long.
Hey, speaking of crazy assumptions, you claim “You say that you have an open mind, but when I suggested you watch “Sicko” so that I could save myself this discussion, you immediately shot back with all the reasons you’ve been told that you should not watch. Doesn’t sound very open to me.” Wow. Are you sure you’re literate? Because my post didn’t say anywhere I gave any reasons why I shouldn’t watch “Sicko.” In fact, I watched it about 8 months ago. Along with this great article by Christopher Hitchens (certainly no conservative): http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/. Subtitled “The Lies of Michael Moore.” And several documentaries documenting the lies of Mr. Moore. Hmmm. . . you only watched one side, I’ve studied both. You don’t “sound very open to me.”
Now I don’t have any hard figures for this, but I’d like to anecdotally address your general contention that the U.S. should learn from Canada, Japan, Germany, and a long list of other countries and spend more on health care and less on the military. Allow me to point out that Canada has two borders. One is the Arctic. Not much need for military there (since we’re protecting Canada with our naughty little satellites and bad, bad nuclear weapons). Not much need on that huge border with the U.S., because these stupid Americans are never going to be a military threat to Canada. Maybe the problem is the Canadians aren’t picking up a fair share of the military protections they enjoy from the U.S. The same could be said of Germany and Japan, other long time beneficiaries of our military protection.
Hmmm. . . sure, Canada helped in WWII, but I honestly don’t think it was the Canadians that took the beaches in Normandy. Don’t recall the French, Canadians or even the British repulsing the Battle of the Bulge. It wasn’t the Australians that retook the South Pacific. And let’s face it, the French were the first military the U.S. had to fire on in Africa. Seems like without those horribly miserly Americans ignoring their healthcare to sacrifice their resources and lives, you’d all be speaking German.
Maybe Mr. Paul is right. Maybe we should just shut our borders and stop defending the rest of the world. Maybe then we’d have the money for all the discretionary medicine every American wanted. Let’s start with cutting off the United Nations. Hey, why are we building a wall on our SOUTHERN border. In fact, since most Canadians live within a half hour of the U.S. border, why don’t we just annex that strip and leave you with the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Nunavut? Or we could take that money we saved on eliminating the military and just buy Canada, like we did Alaska.
But your “facts” and “sources?” “I call bullsh*t on that.” But see, Maverick, I don’t care whether you “think” you are right or wrong. I do care that the other people here recognize crap when they see it. But I know for you, it’s that sense of self-righteous and pious intentions that is more important than fact. And as you said “You will never convince me. . .” Nope. I’m sure you’re not that “open.” But I can try to keep you from getting away with lies, your own or another’s. I really don’t think you “know from experience” that I’m wrong. In fact, you have yet to show me you know anything, unlike, say, the credible sources I link to above.
For instance, you don’t seem to like the link to the article about Cuba, written by Larry Solomon, whose credentials are: “Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute. He is an authority on public utilities, public private partnerships, and regulation in Canada. He is a proponent of competition in municipal services through deregulation and privatization, and is a spokesman for efficient, high-density cities, which would result from the removal of subsidies which influence land use patterns. Mr. Solomon, now a columnist with the National Post, has been a columnist for the Globe and Mail, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, a syndicated columnist, and the editor and publisher of the award-winning The Next City magazine”
Hey, Maverick, did you catch that part that said Solomon is an authority on regulation in Canada? Written for the National Post, Globe, Mail, Wall Street Journal (not all American publications)? I think he might be just a tad more authoritative than you. I’m not asking anyone to choose between you and me. They should choose between you, me, and the experts I provide and you ignore. Maverick, you are so wrong it “is almost absurd to respond.” Good day.
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