Healthcare Poll

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Yeah I may not be totally right but it seems like this Obamacare thing is just giving Insurance providers more power and more government support or something like that.....which does not actually help anything. Another funny thing is people will sit there and say Universal Healthcare is bad because doctors wont be paid as much as they should be but are perfectly ok with endless amounts of money flowing into insurance companies...not the doctors the health insurance companies.

I owe my life to it's passage.
I'm a tad biased, but I tend to view it as positive, as do the many others whose lives have been saved as opposed to being considered expendable underclass refuse.

Actually those of us who are lower class or below are still considered expendable, underclass, refuse.

So far, it looks like we've got 6 to 11 for the U.S. (good and fair vs. poor) and 9 to 1 elsewhere. I realize that this is a silly little poll - very unscientific, but clearly there seems to be a pattern. Why should we ignore the successes seen elsewhere? Why not build off of a working framework as opposed to a broken one?

^ Because big, rich corporations run America, and health insurance companies are big and rich.

The U.S. government is the biggest richest corporation in the world.

ruveyn

I have nothing but lint in my pockets,
and that's more than the US government has.

All I've seen about US healthcare is the worrying states.

But Canadian Healthcare, or at least Manitoba healthcare (as there's differing qualities of healthcare across the Provinces, as it's a responsibility shared by the federal and provincial governments) is pretty decent. I've been diagnosed with Diabetes I, Asperger's, Celiac, and Asthma by the system, and none of those conditions have excluded me from care. Given that I have a serious condition, in the one emergency situation I've been in (a car-crash) I was bumped ahead in line. When I was young, waiting for a family Physician in a walk-in clinic could result in a fairly long wait, but I've found that (with a regular family physician right now) that's not as much of a problem.

Not true. You don't have a monopoly over the issuance of currency, something the Federal Government of the USA has (when it comes to US currency).

But the question is how long the Fed can continue churning out paper money and getting people, corporations, and nations to pretend it's backed by anything.

Wrong. The U.S. government can counterfeit money legally and force people to take as payment for goods, services and repayment of loans. It is called the legal tender law. You can't do that.

ruveyn

Very satisfied with our system here in Canada

I had to have my gall bladder out last year and I think I had a quality surgeon and decent care. The room was just adequate. I think I recovered quickly mostly because the surgeon did such a good job.

I was insured at the time and still owed about 6,000. The actual total was probably closer to 30,000.

Now I really appreciate the surgeon's skill, all the equipment like the MRI, as well as the room and meals, but that still seems really expensive. Somehow I feel like over time the influence of insurance companies has caused a lot of waste on medical coding or administration.

In general America basically has a good system but people have been working hard for a long time to make it a big mess.

I am from the United States, and I decided to rate our system as "other".

Our medicine is excellent. There is no doubt that we have high quality medicine. Our access to medicine is horrible.

The lack of access for people who desperately need it is so bad that I think it contradicts the clause: "the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness" in the Declaration of Independence.

It is almost impossible to directly compete when it comes to medicine and hospitals. So the benefits capitalism is supposed to provide the consumer are largely unavailable. And there is not enough incentive to make medicine cost efficient for people. When people are about to die, they will pay to live no matter the cost.

I was lower functioning autistic and my family, with both parents worked hard, but still could not afford anything for my treatment since the costs were so high. Fortunately, there was state funding available in Massachusetts and California to help offset the medical treatment for people with autism. If it wasn't for this socialist based program, I would have been left severely disadvantaged in life.

We are not lacking in quality in the States. I find the services provided for my insurance excellent, and I have choices on which doctors I can see. If I don't like a doctor, I have a choice to see a different one. My specialists are truly the best, and I love the services they provide. It isn't cheap, but I thought the free market would make provide an incentive to make it cheaper.

Yet I see things that just strike my moral compass. Hardworking, taxpaying middle class families go bankrupt if one of the family members develops cancer. A lower income child in Los Angeles died of a very preventable disease. The reason being no one knew she had the disease because the family could only afford to go to a facility which had inferior testing equipment.

Stay healthy and do not require an MRI diagnostic.

ruveyn

I am Dutch and would rate our system as good, even though privatisation is making it go more and more towards the American system. I think it's of vital importance that everyone should have access to good health care and think it is sad that, in countries where it is easily possible to give good health care to everyone, it is simply not provided or so expensive that the disease of one family member ruins the lives of all the others as well.