Filed under: Health Care | Tags: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Canada, Democrat, Democrats, Economy, Election 2008, Health, Health Care, Norm Coleman, Obama, Politics, Presidential Election, Republican, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, Saxby Chambliss, Socialism, Universal Health Care
As I’ve written in prior posts, today’s American health insurance companies have already adopted a socialistic method for funding your health care services. See Part IV here:
In order to receive insurance coverage, you are required to pay into a collective pool established by the insurer for the benefit of the whole group. Yet, these health insurance companies bilk billions in profits from its consumers and use it to pay shareholders, executives, and to cover their behinds in the latest corporate scandal (e.g., Unitedhealth Group). These billions of dollars would be better served remaining in the health care industry to insure the uninsured, providing better care and facilities, and streamlining the administration of claims. Instead, those billions are pulled out of the system and the money we all have paid is never returned to us in services.
Are their better options out there for the United States to emulate? Undeniably, yes. Today, there is only one industrialized country which fails to provide all its citizens with basic health care coverage. That one country also happens to be the wealthiest nation to have ever existed. That means the United States is only lagging Germany by about 125 years, as they were the first country in the world to mandate health insurance in 1883. Yet, Germany is certainly not alone. Countries with universal health care include:
Japan, Kuwait, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, Israel, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Singapore, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia (not the Georgia represented by Saxby Chambliss, of course), Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and many many more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
One country, Canada, in my opinion, has the best approach. I like Canada’s solution because:
- It is probably the most easily understood of all the universal health care systems. This is no small accomplishment when attempting to dumb it down for American consumption. In fact, I believe one of the great failures of HilaryCare, as it is now infamously known, was the fact it was impossible to understand and explain. If your target audience doesn’t understand what you are trying to do for them, they will think you are trying to do it to them;
- The Canadian system outperforms the American system in virtually any meaningful statistic used in evaluating a national health care system. Actually, this fact is not uncommon when comparing the United States’ health care system to any universal health care system throughout the world. I will analyze many of these statistical facts in future installments. So, I guess in the end, I like Canada’s system because it is so easy for this dumb American to understand.
The Canadians have implemented a single-payer system. It is basically socialized health insurance. Their government, as administered through each individual province, is the health insurer for each citizen. The government pays its private doctors and private and public hospitals on a fee for service basis. Essentially, think of Unitedhealth Group without the loss of billions of dollars to executives, corruption, and lobbying efforts. Canadians are not faced with health care coverage decisions tied to employment, so they may quit and accept another job or move across the country without fear of losing insurance for their family. Of course, this system is easily adaptable for use in America and the various states, which could model Canada andits various provinces.
I’m not alone in advocating a Canadian style single payer system in the United States. People a lot smarter than me have chimed in as well…and not all of them are your usual left-wing suspects, like me. Physicians for a National Health Program (“PNHP”) is a leading advocate of a single-payer system. PNHP has an organization of 15,000 members made up of physicians, medical students, and health professionals. These are the exact Americans who treat patients and witness the ineffectiveness and inefficiencies of the current system on a daily basis. I tend to trust their recommendations more than a Unitedhealth Group lobbyist, Rush Limbaugh, or Norm Coleman:
Over the coming installments on this issue, I will show how the Canadian system is superior to the American national health care system. Is a single payer system perfect? No. Can we improve upon the Canadian model? Probably. But, one thing I know for certain; a single payer Canadian type approach is infinitely better than the broken system currently utilized by the United States.
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