Oh Canada, Oh Canada …

8/20 – UPDATE:  The new incoming President of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Anne Doig, says their system needs a complete overhaul.  It is not benefiting the patients … and basically all of their research from overseas says the only way to provide for a healthy medical system is to increase privatized competition.  Which is the exact OPPOSITE thing Obama is trying to do with our system. 

Someone tell me again why we aren’t learning from the mistakes of those who have gone before us down the road of socialized medicine?

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Given the President’s press conference tonight in efforts to plead with the American people to socilaize our medicine, I thought this video was extrememly enlightening. 
 
Bottom line, the health care in Canada is TERRIBLE.  And yet, that’s the model that Obama is trying to convince us to adopt.
 
The video is 20 minutes long, but very enlightening.  The people of Canada have quite a different perception of their health care system than we are led to believe in the States.

Click here to see the video:  http://www.youtube.com/stevencrowder

Having grown up in a military family where we used the “government health care” I can tell you that this kind of a system is certainly not the ideal. 

Can someone please name for me ONE government run program they feel is highly effective (more so than a privatized company)?!?
 
Here’s something that I found this morning that actually makes sense.  We are constantly told that “Republicans are just complaining but they don’t have any solutions.”  Here’s one I found that actually made a bit of sense.  All of this was from the website:  www.healthtransformation.net

 Six Straightforward Steps to Better Healthcare

To create a system that delivers more choices of higher quality health care at lower cost we need to take the following six straightforward steps:

1. Stop Paying the Crooks. First, we must dramatically reduce healthcare fraud within our current healthcare system. Outright fraud – criminal activity – accounts for as much as 10 percent of all healthcare spending. That is more than $200 billion every year. Medicare alone could account for as much as $40 billion a year. (Please visit HealthTransformation.net for the information about our latest CHT Press book, Stop Paying the Crooks, edited by Jim Frogue.)
2. Move from a Paper-based to an Electronic Health System. As it stands now, it is simply impossible to keep up with fraud in a paper-based system. An electronic system would free tens of billions of dollars to be spent on investing on the kind of modern system that will transform healthcare. In addition, it would dramatically increase our ability to eliminate costly medical errors and to accelerate the adoption of new solutions and breakthroughs.
3. Tax Reform. The savings realized through very deliberately and very systematically eliminating fraud could be used to provide tax incentives and vouchers that would help cover those Americans who currently can’t afford coverage. In addition, we need to expand tax incentives for insurance provided by small employers and the self-employed. Finally, elimination of capital gains taxes for investments in health-solution companies can greatly impact the creation advancement of new solutions that create better health at lower cost.
4. Create a Health-Based Health System. In essence, we must create a system that focuses on improving individual health. The best way to accomplish this is to find out what solutions are actually working today that save lives and save money and then design public policy to encourage their widespread adoption. For example, according to the Dartmouth Health Atlas, if the 6,000 hospitals in the country provided the same standard of care of the Intermountain or Mayo health clinics, Medicare alone would save 30 percent of total spending every year. We need to make best practices the minimum practice. We need the federal government and other healthcare stakeholders to consistently migrate to best practices that ensure quality, safety and better outcomes.
5. Reform Our Health Justice System. Currently, the U.S. civil justice system is the most expensive in the world-about double the average cost in virtually every other industrialized nation. But for all of the money spent, our civil justice system neither effectively compensates persons injured from medical negligence nor encourages the elimination of medical errors. Because physicians fear malpractice suits, defensive medicine (redundant, wasteful treatment designed to avoid lawsuits, not treat the patient) has become pervasive. CHT is developing a number of bold health-justice reforms including a “safe harbor” for physicians who followed clinical best practices in the treatment of a patient. You can learn more at HealthTransformation.net.
6. Invest in Scientific Research and Breakthroughs. We must accelerate and focus national efforts, re-engineer care delivery, and ultimately prevent diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and diabetes which are financially crippling our healthcare system.

The Last Thing We Need is a Plan That Raises Taxes and Eliminates Jobs

Clearly, the last thing America needs is more taxes on job producers, whether it is in the form of a national energy tax, automatic tax increases in 2010 when the 2003 tax relief measures expire, or a healthcare plan that will raise taxes, eliminate jobs, and allows Washington bureaucrats to make decisions that ought to be made by individual Americans together with their families and doctors.

President Obama has a choice tonight, as does America.

We can make health and healthcare into a major source of job creation, economic revival, and improved health and well-being for every American.

Or we can make it into a government-run system that will destroy our economy along with our health.

To learn more about our plan for reforming health without raising taxes, eliminating jobs or raising the deficit, please visit www.HealthTransformation.net.

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