🚀 go-pugleaf

Nathan Newman <newman@garnet.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>Robert L. McMillin <rlm@helen.surfcty.com> wrote:

>>> Ra> 1) Do you really want a health care program like Canada's?

>Since state-run health care systems in Canada and Europe are less costly
>and serve more people than our health care system, the religious fervor is
>among those who claim that the government can't run health care efficiently.

Much of the religeous fervor involves ignorance among Americans left
and right that others' systems are entirely state-run, and don't work
out of uncritically accepted propaganda about Canada (which is near
the bottom of most Americans' consideration on the best of days).
Some are, like Britain's National Health Service.  However Canada,
France and Germany have mixes of only public and private insurance
(ranging from some to all medical treatments, but better amenities are
entirely private) paying out to private fee-for-service doctors and
hospitals.  Canada has suffered from geographic disadvantages relative
to the U.S., France and Germany which drives up our costs in many
areas besides health insurance and health care.  A Gallup poll
released on 9/13 and published only in UPI Clarinet had 96% (yes,
that's ninety-six) of Canadians of the opinion that our system up
north is better than that of America ... the difference lies in the
ways we do insurance, or sickness funds of you'd rather the more
appropriate German term, since the health infrastructures are the same
barring geographic differences (The U.S. has 10X population more
evenly distributed ... Canada only has 4 cities over a half million
west of the Great Lakes).  Only 2% of Canadians want the insurance
system changed over to an American approach, which is down from the
traditional 3% consistently polled by the conservative Decima Research
annually for Maclean's magazine.

The Economist is consistent with the post-ideological view in other
western countries that medical needs are not entirely commodity like
ownership of a VCR such as Americans see it; however, there are some
market-oriented or market-preserving ways to do it, and the best that
we've come up with so far are the three non-U.S. countries cited.

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare				Canada, 10/25: Liberals or
> gld@columbia.EDU 			Progressive Conservatives
> gld@cunixc.BITNET			ONLY ... just do it!!!