Canadian Heathcare system sucks!!

[Rolfe]

I think I can add something to that, look at the interview that Zig linked to: http://www.pjtv.com/video/Washington_Watch/Socialized_Medicine_Through_the_Eyes_of_a_Recipient/2169/
(Never mind that the very link shows a political bias.) This is another example of the "anti-UHC" advocates simply being dishonest in their description of other UHC systems.

For example she has apparently made the claim that she had never even thought of asking for anesthesia when having her teeth drilled in the UK because it wasn't "standard" when she was living in the UK, and the interviewer repeats this. That is simply untrue.

Darat, I'm at work and I haven't yet watched it. However, every single one of these "testimony of denied care" videos I've watched has been a pack of lies. I'm not expecting this to be any different.

I mean, you know and I know and anyone who has lived here for that length of time knows that dental anaesthesia has been standard since at least the 1950s. Although you can refuse it if you think the needle is more painful than the filling, as some people do.

So if this woman is claiming something different, she's lying.

(I know that misunderstandings can occur. My mother was one of those who "didn't take an injection", and this was understood in the dental practice. This led to her getting root canal work done without anaesthesia on one occasion. I still think the dentist was an idiot for not suggesting to her that she'd be better off with an injection, but this is hardly an indictment of universal healthcare!)

Rolfe.

 

[Alt+F4]

Who are the Manhattan Institute, and why are they lying?

It's a conservative think-tank. They lie because they assume that folks won't bother to research if dentists use novacaine in the UK.

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/

 

[volatile]

Darat, I'm at work and I haven't yet watched it. However, every single one of these "testimony of denied care" videos I've watched has been a pack of lies. I'm not expecting this to be any different.

Do watch it. It shows what kind of bald-faced lying we're up against. She claims her grandmother had a stroke on Friday and was refused treatment "until Tuesday", she claims she wasn't allowed to go for private treatment, she claims that "many people in England go without treatment that is routine in the USA", she claims that dentists don't use anaesthetic... and that's only in the first 5 minutes.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I have had all my fillings without anaesthesia, but that was because none of them needed drilling very deep and the dentist said the injection would hurt about as much as the drilling.

 

[Darat]

Wow. Diana Furchgott-Roth is a lying douchebag. "Many people don't get the services [in the UK] that are routine here [in the USA]", huh Diana? I think you have that just about as ass-backwards as possible.

ETA: I also now understand where the "people's expectations" line that Ziggurat is parroting comes from. Directly from her mouth. It isn't true. In fact, as Darat explained, it's entirely the opposite.

I've just forced myself to listen to the entire interview and she is simply a liar. Apparently her grandmother had a stroke and she took her to a hospital on the Friday and was told that her grandmother wouldn't be seen by a doctor until Tuesday. Even during the worse periods of underfunding there is no way there wasn't a single doctor in the casualty department and since when do you take someone who has had a stroke to hospital?She'd have rang for an emergency ambulance!

Whilst there are many, many terrible but true anecdotes about the failings of the NHS this woman is simply making things up.

 

[Darat]

I have had all my fillings without anaesthesia, but that was because none of them needed drilling very deep and the dentist said the injection would hurt about as much as the drilling.

So have I, but that is because there was no requirement for anesthetic. Her "anecdote" isn't about that.

 

[volatile]

Whilst there are many, many terrible but true anecdotes about the failings of the NHS this woman is simply making things up.

Indeed - and as Rolfe is keen to point out, NHS failings are failures to provide care the patient is entitled to, by law. Failings of the US system are built into it, almost by design.

 

[Rolfe]

So have I, but that is because there was no requirement for anesthetic. Her "anecdote" isn't about that.

I had some like that when I was younger, because that was what Mummy did, and at that time Eric, our dentist, was into a bit of overkill about the amount of local he injected. However, I moved to England and found myself being treated by Eric's daughter Jane. She recommended I have the local, and afterwards I commented that it wasn't so bad because she used about a quarter of the anaesthetic her father did. Jane rolled her eyes and said "oh, Daddy!"

This was really the background to my mother ending up having the root canal work without anaesthesia. She'd just always declared she "didn't take a jag", and Karen, Eric's successor, didn't think of recommending anything different for that procedure. It was apparently extremely painful, but mother didn't think of asking for an anaesthetic even while it was going on. Afterwards, when she told me what had happened, I denounced both her and Karen as idiots.

Neither of us started campaigning for the dissolution of the NHS though.

Rolfe.

 

[volatile]

Ziggurat - you posted a link to that video, presumably to support your case. Do you believe it? Do you take it seriously? Do you honestly think that she was telling the truth?

Here's the truth, without the spin: Here's the NHS stroke strategy, which explains that everyone who has a stroke will be assessed by a specialist (Diana makes out that she was simply turned away at A&E!), and, if their need is judged to be high-priority, they will be MRI'd within 24 hours. Lower priority patients (presumably Diana's mother was in this category) will be MRI'd within a week. This is based on the clinical judgement of a physician. Everyone gets seen, free at the point of use, at a level of urgency balanced by their clinical needs. Diana's mother was most resolutely not, as she claimed "left to die".

What Diana seems to want is unnecessary care, unnecessarily soon. Well, if she wants to pay for that, she can (that she couldn't is another lie). Otherwise, everyone gets (well, is entitled to get) the healthcare they need, when they need it. How would the current US system, or the system you prefer, deal with stroke victims?

What happens if an uninsured party has a stroke in the USA?

 

[Delscottio]

I've just forced myself to listen to the entire interview and she is simply a liar. Apparently her grandmother had a stroke and she took her to a hospital on the Friday and was told that her grandmother wouldn't be seen by a doctor until Tuesday. Even during the worse periods of underfunding there is no way there wasn't a single doctor in the casualty department and since when do you take someone who has had a stroke to hospital?She'd have rang for an emergency ambulance!

Whilst there are many, many terrible but true anecdotes about the failings of the NHS this woman is simply making things up.

What gets me more annoyed is the fact the NHS spent a fortune on warning the public of the dangers and symptoms of stroke and the actions to take. How someone can have the front to talk this sort of rubbish is beyond me.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

What Diana seems to want is unnecessary care, unnecessarily soon. Well, if she wants to pay for that, she can (that she couldn't is another lie).

...snip...

And a very strange lie to give since it is more than likely that any consultant that her grandmother would see under the NHS would also have a private practice so why would someone say to her you wouldn't trust a doctor you had to pay for?

 

[volatile]

What gets me more annoyed is the fact the NHS spent a fortune on warning the public of the dangers and symptoms of stroke and the actions to take. How someone can have the front to talk this sort of rubbish is beyond me.

Read the stroke strategy I linked above. You could JUST ABOUT spin it into Diana's version if you had a particularly ideologically-driven mendacious streak. But you'd need to be stupid or lying to actually understand that "You're fine, but we'll give you an MRI in a couple of days just to make sure" means "Go die in the street, old lady!".

Diana isn't stupid.

 

[volatile]

And a very strange lie to give since it is more than likely that any consultant that her grandmother would see under the NHS would also have a private practice so why would someone say to her you wouldn't trust a doctor you had to pay for?

Exactly.

It's a rhetorical (and ideological) flourish.

 

[Rolfe]

I'd prefer to start by decoupling health insurance from employment. And tort reform.

I was trying to find some positive proposals from Ziggurat, rather than the wall-to-wall negativity of most of his posts, and this is all I could actually find.

So, you would like to make it illegal for an amployer to offer health insurance as part of an employment benefits package?

News flash, we don't even do that in Britain. It's not uncommon. Archtect's wife has it. Do you really, seriously, think this is a proposal likely to be politically acceptable in America?

Also, I think you need to say a bit more what you mean by "tort reform". I imagine you are referring to the astronomical damages US physicians can have awarded against them if negligence is proved. Do you favour not compensating the victims of medical negligence, then? Do you think this will free up enough money to have a significant effect on the way the system operates? How are those who are disabled or require continuing (expensive) medical care because of a physician's negligence going to manage for the rest of their lives?

Rolfe.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think the health care industry is keen because it sees a lot more custom coming its way, if those potential customers who are at present unable to consume its product are no longer excluded due to lack of funds.

I think the insurance industry is in a flat panic.

Maybe maybe not. There are certainly people making a lot of money off of all the unnessacary tests being done.

Well, that's back to my comments on that lying bitch with Cushing's who's making these dishonest and deceptive commercials on behalf of the US health insurance industry. I've been trying to discuss that for about 24 hours now without any takers.

Rolfe.

Sure there is an intentional missinformation campaign and I can tell you it is working.

 

[ponderingturtle]

How can this woman, with a straight face and a pink shirt, lie and lie and lie again?

She is being paid very well.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I have had all my fillings without anaesthesia, but that was because none of them needed drilling very deep and the dentist said the injection would hurt about as much as the drilling.

I have found that to be true, but I couldn't avoid flinching from the vibrations of the drill, it didn't hurt just was suprising and felt strange enough that I couldn't not react.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I was trying to find some positive proposals from Ziggurat, rather than the wall-to-wall negativity of most of his posts, and this is all I could actually find.

So, you would like to make it illegal for an amployer to offer health insurance as part of an employment benefits package?

News flash, we don't even do that in Britain. It's not uncommon. Archtect's wife has it. Do you really, seriously, think this is a proposal likely to be politically acceptable in America?

Also, I think you need to say a bit more what you mean by "tort reform". I imagine you are referring to the astronomical damages US physicians can have awarded against them if negligence is proved. Do you favour not compensating the victims of medical negligence, then? Do you think this will free up enough money to have a significant effect on the way the system operates? How are those who are disabled or require continuing (expensive) medical care because of a physician's negligence going to manage for the rest of their lives?

Rolfe.

Tort Reform is largely a lie as well. It assumes that a large percentage of the increase in the cost of health care is based on increasing costs of malpractice insurance. As a percentage of the total health care buget this has been a stable percentage. Now there might be individual areas were this is an issue, but broadly it has nothing to do with health care cost rising.

But as it targets lawyers and people getting large payouts it has an emotional appeal to many.

 

[Rolfe]

Maybe maybe not. There are certainly people making a lot of money off of all the unnessacary tests being done.

I'm not clear that the proposed system is likely to put much of a crimp in unnecessary tests in the short term. What it is likely to do however is increase the numbers of necessary tests.

Now I can see this is where Zig was coming from, but I don't view it in the same way he does. I think many US healthcare providers can see that more and more people are being priced out of there market, the way things are going, and take a considered view that getting state subsidy in to pull in these customers is in the long term better for business than continuing to milk an ever-decreasing number of milch cows.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Sure there is an intentional missinformation campaign and I can tell you it is working.

She is being paid very well.

No doubt. However, Canada and Europe and Australia and New Zealand and probably even Japan and Taiwan are absolutely crawling with people who have had extremely good care from universal systems. Most of them wouldn't even want more than their out-of-pocket expenses to tell everyone about it. Try Stephen and Gillian Hall.

I can see that air time is expensive and so on, but I would have thought something might be done. Even a little bit of digging into the real circumstances of some of these lying fairytales would make Joe the Plumber look like a model of straightforward honesty in comparison.

Rolfe.