Healthy San Francisco notice is really interesting. This is San Francisco’s version of national health insurance. It’s like announcing openly that the product is inferior.
You should read the analysis of the SF health care program. It presents an interesting contrast with the purported “analysis” and commentary that dominates this blog. It describes the way the program operates; it describes the strengths and weaknesses of various features of the program, and discusses the side effects, both good and bad of the plan design. Most importantly, the analysis doesn’t seem to go out of its way to come to a specific conclusion, one way or another.
Most entries and comments on this blog seem to be based on an almost religious belief that any government involvement in health care is bad, that only completely unregulated free market solutions have any merit, that every aspect of our health care system is so superior to that found anywhere else in the world that even considering how other countries provide health care isn’t worth the effort, and when other systems are discussed, every metric that shows our system in a favorable light is valid, and every metric that shows our system in a unfavorable light must be invalid.
Oh, to Nancy. When Canadians are interviewed about their health care system, although they may complain about the delays, they like the fact that pretty much everyone waits. They think the egalitarian aspect of their health care system is one of its best features. Our health care system may be a lot of things, but egalitarian it’s not. We may aspire to a country where “all men are created equal” but we don’t think that applies to health care.
artk says: When Canadians are interviewed about their health care system, although they may complain about the delays, they like the fact that pretty much everyone waits.
They don’t mind waiting, so long as everyone else waits? Canadians are evidently easy to please.
But I suspect that not all Canadians wait the same amount of time.
I suspect some technology will come on board that will replace handwashing. Already, there is ultraviolent light for consumers to use in sanitizing personal items. Not sure how effective these are with hospital bacteria, but, certainly, there is a need for a one step quick and simple automatic hand sanitizer in healthcare.
(1) The Canadian system is not more egalitarian than the US system. This is a myth exploded by June and Dave O’Neill in their NBER paper here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13429
(2) Twenty years ago Gerry Musgrave and I explained in “Patient Power” that there isn’t much difference between public sector socialism and private sector socialism in health care. I believe that careful reading will reveal that all my blog entries have been consistent with that observation.
I don’t know of any stronger indictment of US health care than “Patient Power.” But unlike other critics (who merely want to substitute a public payer for a private payer) we called for a revolution in the way health care is delivered.
So, no. We are not apologists for private sector medicine in general or US health care in particular. We are among it’s strongest critics.
With respect to Canadian waiting times, those who impose them on others need not suffer themselves. To wit, the premier (first minister) of Newfoundland, whose office just admitted (after the media got too close) that he’ll be having cardiac surgery in the U.S.
I’ve written a lot about Healthy San Francisco, most recently last September: http://tinyurl.com/m4mqpk. Some economists argued that Healthy San Francsico did not result in job losses in the affected industries, an assertion which I challenged. Put simply, Healthy San Francisco is a way to increase funding for the public-health department by raising taxes on small business. But by sugar-coating it as a health plan, the government and its workers can dodge the word “tax”.
Canadians are so happy to wait that there are businesses in Canada that survive on the fees they charge for arranging care in the US.
They are so happy to wait that one can type the words Buffalo, MRI, and Canada into a Google search and get centers with pricing and advertisements aimed at cash paying Canadians. And they are so happy to wait thatthe province of British Columbia sends patients to Seattle hospitals for bypass surgery and Ontario sends some cancer and neurosurgical patients to Detroit and Buffalo.
Since at any one time roughly 4% of an industrialized country’s population needs advanced medical care, it is more than likely that the people who say they are satisfied with waiting are those who don’t need much health care to begin with.
Healthy San Francisco notice is really interesting. This is San Francisco’s version of national health insurance. It’s like announcing openly that the product is inferior.
Vicki, I’m sure it is inferior.
I think putting fellow sufferers together is an interesting idea. Who knows? It may work.
How do you suppose they monitor the hospital workers?
Cameras in all the restrooms?
You should read the analysis of the SF health care program. It presents an interesting contrast with the purported “analysis” and commentary that dominates this blog. It describes the way the program operates; it describes the strengths and weaknesses of various features of the program, and discusses the side effects, both good and bad of the plan design. Most importantly, the analysis doesn’t seem to go out of its way to come to a specific conclusion, one way or another.
Most entries and comments on this blog seem to be based on an almost religious belief that any government involvement in health care is bad, that only completely unregulated free market solutions have any merit, that every aspect of our health care system is so superior to that found anywhere else in the world that even considering how other countries provide health care isn’t worth the effort, and when other systems are discussed, every metric that shows our system in a favorable light is valid, and every metric that shows our system in a unfavorable light must be invalid.
Oh, to Nancy. When Canadians are interviewed about their health care system, although they may complain about the delays, they like the fact that pretty much everyone waits. They think the egalitarian aspect of their health care system is one of its best features. Our health care system may be a lot of things, but egalitarian it’s not. We may aspire to a country where “all men are created equal” but we don’t think that applies to health care.
They don’t mind waiting, so long as everyone else waits? Canadians are evidently easy to please.
But I suspect that not all Canadians wait the same amount of time.
I suspect some technology will come on board that will replace handwashing. Already, there is ultraviolent light for consumers to use in sanitizing personal items. Not sure how effective these are with hospital bacteria, but, certainly, there is a need for a one step quick and simple automatic hand sanitizer in healthcare.
artk:
(1) The Canadian system is not more egalitarian than the US system. This is a myth exploded by June and Dave O’Neill in their NBER paper here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13429
(2) Twenty years ago Gerry Musgrave and I explained in “Patient Power” that there isn’t much difference between public sector socialism and private sector socialism in health care. I believe that careful reading will reveal that all my blog entries have been consistent with that observation.
One more response to artk:
I don’t know of any stronger indictment of US health care than “Patient Power.” But unlike other critics (who merely want to substitute a public payer for a private payer) we called for a revolution in the way health care is delivered.
So, no. We are not apologists for private sector medicine in general or US health care in particular. We are among it’s strongest critics.
With respect to Canadian waiting times, those who impose them on others need not suffer themselves. To wit, the premier (first minister) of Newfoundland, whose office just admitted (after the media got too close) that he’ll be having cardiac surgery in the U.S.
I’ve written a lot about Healthy San Francisco, most recently last September: http://tinyurl.com/m4mqpk. Some economists argued that Healthy San Francsico did not result in job losses in the affected industries, an assertion which I challenged. Put simply, Healthy San Francisco is a way to increase funding for the public-health department by raising taxes on small business. But by sugar-coating it as a health plan, the government and its workers can dodge the word “tax”.
Canadians are so happy to wait that there are businesses in Canada that survive on the fees they charge for arranging care in the US.
They are so happy to wait that one can type the words Buffalo, MRI, and Canada into a Google search and get centers with pricing and advertisements aimed at cash paying Canadians. And they are so happy to wait thatthe province of British Columbia sends patients to Seattle hospitals for bypass surgery and Ontario sends some cancer and neurosurgical patients to Detroit and Buffalo.
Since at any one time roughly 4% of an industrialized country’s population needs advanced medical care, it is more than likely that the people who say they are satisfied with waiting are those who don’t need much health care to begin with.