Indiana Republicans and Universal Health Care

In the primary every Republican candidate said they were going to repeal Health Care. One of the favorite arguments is look what is going on in Canada. So here is a short version of an article posted by AARP with a few comments by me. Even if you are a Republican you should be very concerned about health care. A chest pain and not even a heart attack will set you back about $20,000 and that is for only 1-2 days in the hospital. Cancer about $60,000. One very interesting item was getting treatment in a hospital cost more than if you get it at your doctors office. My guess is the overhead at the hospital and part of the overhead are people who don’t have insurance and get “free” care at the hospital they then pass this on to everyone who comes in the door. If we had everyone insurance you no longer would have people just showing up for free care. Hospital bills would drop. How many Canadians come to the US for heath care: .5% for care electively .11% for emergency care* 99.39% stay in Canada for heath care *80% 0f these visits were to emergency rooms while on vacation. A lot of cold Canadians go to Florida during the winter. Are Canadian doctors taking U.S. jobs? Are they coming to the US? The USA has 800,000 physicians and in both 2005 and 2006 just over 120 Canadian physicians came to the USA. But at the same time more US physicians moved to Canada. Canada rations health care; that’s why hip replacements and cataract surgeries happen faster in the United States. Not so says the St Louis Post Dispatch that did a study on Canadian hip replacements and found 63 percent were for people over 65. So the Republican who claim that Canadians can’t get hip replacements is bunk. Wait times are longer in Canada and the answer is yes they are but not because of rationing but rather because of fiscal conservation policy to limit supply. While the US limits care by cost. In a study by Commonwealth Fund of Washington in the US 42% of Americans expressed an opinion they not be able to afford health care if they became seriously ill. About one third of Americans didn’t go to a doctor when sick or fill a prescription or skipped medication because of cost. Then 20% of people who had medical costs have to struggle to pay their bills. So we as a nation are also rationing health care but using cost as that tool. So when someone says we don’t want to be like Canada on health care maybe the answer yes we do. BTW- When someone says the Health Care Bill has death panels the real answer is that those who vote against it are the death panel. If 42 percent can’t afford to see a doctor or get care are we sending them to their death? Sure looks like it. One last note – How many Canadians does it take to screw in a light bulb? – The same as Americans. Then how come they have health care and we don’t.