The Cellar - Come and Get it! Free Healt Care for All!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 375633)

That suggests that's a regular everyday occurence that every hospital should be ready to deal with. When in fact you are dealing with an extremely complicated birth and very likely post natal complications for the babies.

Which brings me to: No. Hospitals in Calgary were not at full capacity. southern Alberta's only neonatal intensive care unit was, however, full. The highly specialised care needed was not available for four babies in one go. For the kind of care those babies were likely to need, we are looking at a serious spike in numbers with 4. Fortunately, they were near enough to the states to drive across. Presumably had they been further in the other direction they'd have driven to Montreal or something.

Sorry to come back into the thread so late ... I had to go out of town. Shouldn't have posted and then left, but ... some familiarity with the geography of the region would be helpful. Calgary IS the referral center for half the province of Alberta (which is huge). It's the equivalent of Montreal in Quebec. If there aren't 4 neonatal ICU beds in Calgary, there's a big problem. The problem is that the federal and provincial governments don't fund the facilities, technology, and services that current populations require.

The tax burden in Canada is extremely high (maybe not comparable to the UK, but much higher than in the U.S.), and there isn't a lot more room to meet costs that way. The other way of containing costs in a single-payer system is to limit access. There are many studies and reports on Canadian Medicare that make this statement; it's not an opinion. The Canadian system is unique among government-funded health care systems in that Canada is the only country that outlaws the provision of private medical services. The UK, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, and every other country I've read about that has taxpayer-funded health care allow parallel private systems. The private systems take the pressure off the public ones and allow innovation and competition.

The U.S. already has government-funded health insurance, as some others have noted - it has Medicare and Medicaid. It also has a private insurance system. While I think increased government oversight of private health insurance would be a good idea (to prevent cherry-picking and unilateral dropping of insurance, which looks to me like breach of contract), I think a private system is necessary to prevent what's happened in Canada. Canada is starting to think so, too - in spite of the Canada Health Act (the law that makes it a crime to provide health care privately), private clinics are finding loopholes and springing up more and more. In response, governments are de-listing more and more services and procedures, and allowing them to be picked up by private clinics. Unfortunately, this means that some important services go completely uninsured (eg. physiotherapy for most people; eye exams except in children; and dental services have never been covered).

I grew up in the Canadian system, have been a patient in it, and trained and worked in it as a physician. The most important thing to know about a single-payer system is that insurance for all does not translate into access to health care for all. People in the U.S. may have (sometimes voluntary) gaps in insurance coverage, but laws such as EMTALA provide for evaluation and needed care; people in Canada have access to insurance (though there are gaps and limits there too), but their access to care is limited, and there is no EMTALA.