Right to Life

Papal Knights wrote:

This exactly.

Socialised medicine is an abject failure. It isn't free. Everyone may be covered just don't expect to get care.
We have literally thousands of women in Calgary on waiting lists for breast cancer surgery. Woman die waiting.
Socialised medicine is rationed medicine. No way around it.

Do you really want the grey faceless bureaucrats who run the DMV to decide what care you get?
Canadians are leaders in the health tourism department. Thousands leave the country every year to the U.S, Mexico, and India to buy healthcare they can't get here without sometimes years on waiting lists.

No socialist is smart enough to decide my healthcare.

America has a bureaucratic agglomeration known as the Department of Veteran's Affairs which by description, is suppose to aid our former servicemen in providing medical care. As with all socialized medicine, you have everyone covered, but the care and efficiency of providing those services is severely strained. You had veterans, men who I respect more than anything, perishing while waiting in line to be seen and dismissed by doctors even if they had serve health problems.

The issue was the providing of a monolithic service, not offering other options to retired servicemen, which was changed recently, permitting to seek private alternatives if they wish to do so.

Papal Knights wrote:

The VA is a perfect example of socialised medicine. Dirty hospitals, rationed care, wait lists, etc. Do you really want ALL your healthcare like that?

My family is split between America and a country with socialized medicine. The ONLY major drawback we've experienced is waitlists. No debt, no gouging, and better care. Lol the hospitals aren't "dirty"

Washingtonian Republic wrote:

Canada healthcare is administered by the provinces, it’s more geographic, but same inefficiency as would be expected with socialized medicine.

It's literally not inefficient. It's that more people go because they won't be forced into medical debt for going.

I think this conversation is swinging between two extremes, single-payer on the one hand and full for-profit on the other. There are other options in the middle, which can still give universal health coverage without being "socialized medicine." There are many countries that operate in this middle while delivering vastly better outcomes than the current American system.

For example, I have a family member on a certain Medicaid program, which in this case is a government funded, privately delivered healthcare system. So there's an insurance card, she's not personally billed for her care, and there's no wait time or anything different from normal private care aside from her not footing the bill.

Quebecshire wrote:

Lol the hospitals aren't "dirty"

Unfortunately, they are here, https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/dirty-hospital-rooms-a-top-concern-for-canadians-1.1321668

The question is what's to blame? The article mentions privatization of the cleaning services within the hospitals, but it was a problem before than too. The hospital where my mom grew up, long before privatized cleaning, had infection rates so high the university of western Ontario revoked its teaching licence for nurses, so not even nurses could be trained there. Top it off with the fact that the hospital got to the point where you more likely to die of a disease picked up from the hospital, than from any complication due to childbirth and I think you can call this a reoccuring problem. Heck, even in my own life I had a friend get minor knee surgery at a local health centre close to my university and he picked up a staph infection that plagued him worse than his previous knee injury. He mentioned to me later that he had been warned to get his surgery at a bigger hospital, like in the city where I live now, but he didn't want the extra wait times so took his chances, he would live to regret it. But, he did recover thank God.

I will also say that there are serious overcrowding issues in our system here in New Brunswick, that are worse than other provinces. For example just three years ago, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/georges-dumont-hospital-overcrowding-doctor-1.4188340

This sounds cavalier, "if they're safe to go home." But I can tell you these measures have forced out people who really need to be in hospital, but are deemed just safe enough that they won't die at home. For example, my old Sunday School teacher's cardiologist nearly strangled a non-specialized doctor when they sent her home after delicate heart surgery. The doctor figured she had been in the hospital the normal amount of time, and her numbers were good, so leave. What he didn't realize (probably because he didn't read her whole chart, hence the cardiologist nearly killing him) was that her heart was weak and if she moved the wrong way, overexerted herself, or something fell on her, she could die very quickly. So, the cardiologist had to call her and give her a very strict set of guidelines that left her bedridden at home for weeks, which while similar to the hospital guidelines brought significant risk as failure to do so meant inviting a potentially fatal cardiac emergency.

Now all that being said, I support public healthcare and I wouldn't vote to privatize it. However, the discussion I find too often turns into utopia vs. distopia. "public healthcare is terrible, and will introduce dystopian health care scenarios." vs. "Public healthcare provides better care to all cheaper!"

Neither is true, there are pros and cons to both, and quality of care suffers in different ways under both. I prefer our public system, but it's not perfect and its constraints mean it will probably, in some ways, never be able to compete with private healthcare. However, the positives easily overwhelm the negatives for me, and I'm happy we have our public healthcare, I wouldn't privatize it for the world, but I do hope it gets better in the future.