O/T: What's Next?

[krw]

So, you'd rather have the incompetent crooks in Washington owning all corporations? Perhaps you'd be happier in the FSU?

[Doug Winterburn]

I'd rather have citizens owning corporations in privatized accounts. The current method of having government spend the money in retirement accounts and replacing it with government IOUs adds up to $4 trillion in debt with another $40 or so trillion to go. Our kids and grandkids are going to love being taxed a second time for the same thing we already paid taxes for.

[Mark & Juanita]

... snip

Morris, in your list above, you missed one that hits all of us on this forum (except for a few trolls):

Use of power tools

[Mark & Juanita]

A taste of the future: Note one of the primary drivers here for a death penalty for the living is to limit the impact upon the National Health Service; and this coming from a country that doesn't have the death penalty for even the most vicious of criminals just to add to the irony.

This is one of those countries that so many are wringing their hands that we aren't emulating by providing for everyone's health care.

[Mark & Juanita]

Good heavens! How much more regulation can we stand!? After Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley should have prevented anything like happened to Lehman what with all of its reporting requirements, transparency, and data collection down to the smallest project. How much more intrusive do things have to get? As Hank Greeneburg stated, "there is no amount of regulation that can save you from bad management."

The problem here has been the fact that with the government backing these loans and pushing by regulation or threat the requirement for "affordable housing" (code for loans to people with little or no ability to repay), the onus of responsibility was removed from both lenders and borrowers, leaving the mess at the feet of taxpayers.

[Morris Dovey]

Eh? Power tools are safe - it's the operators who're dangerous!

(I almost wish I hadn't said that right out loud.)

[Tim Daneliuk]

[Elrond Hubbard]

- If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

This is the the widely vilified opinion of one senile British loony.

It takes some tough logic to get from there to:

I think that providing health care only to those who are willing to support the insurance industry's shareholders is every bit as criminal as what Baroness Warnock is proposing. But it's the American way, no?

[Larry Blanchard]

Last I heard Tim, those were not industrialised nations :-).

[Larry Blanchard]

Same thing apples to motorcycles - I've been riding for 57 years without any adverse results other than a rare case of road rash when I screwed up :-).

[Tim Daneliuk]

OK. Fair enough. I happen to have direct experience with the healthcare system in Canada - a place where I have multiple family members who work in that system as nurses. They are not enthused by the system. By *their* testimony (not my opinion - theirs), the system is bloated, inefficient, sometimes ineffective, and nowhere near as cutting edge as that horrible profit-motivated system here in the US. So, I don't even want US healthcare to become the "equivalent" of the Canadian system.

Look, there is a simple calculus here: There is far more demand for healthcare than supply in the industrial West for the simple reason the people live a long time. No law, or other forceful action changes this fact. You can pass laws 'till you are blue in the face. All it will do is *lower* the level of care that people currently receive to benefit the people who currently receive little or no care. I do not want medicine reduced to a lowest common denominator. I would much rather provide care for those in real need by means of private charity - a vehicle in which US citizens excel - than to reduce everything by law to its lowest possible form.

Note that when people need the best possible care, they don't fly to Canada, Norway, Sweden, UK, or Germany. They come to the US most of the time. There is a reason for this. The reason is that the profit motive brings the best and brightest to the playing field.

I am happy to voluntarily contribute to causes the help the genuinely underprivileged ... and I do, as do millions of Americans. I am unwilling to see *my* care diminished to help those whose problems are repetitive and largely self induced. I speak as someone who had to massively change personal behavior to improve *my* health - which I did. I also, BTW, speak as someone who has not had healthcare insurance for extended periods of my lifetime but still managed, somehow, to get medical care when and as needed without going broke.

P.S. Given the option, would you rather see the doctor who drives a 1969 Ford Fairlane, or the doctor who drives a new Benz every year? I think I'd prefer the Benz driving doc because it signifies some level of financial achievement, and probably some level of skill. But that's just me ...

[David G. Nagel]

Tim;

A couple of years ago the premier of Alberta was bragging that the local health care service was down to only 400 people who needed bypass surgery. This was down from several thousand a few years before. They were making progress unless you were one of the 400.

My wife was diagnosed as requiring bypass surgery. The only reason she didn't go directly to the OR was because they were working on someone else. She was the first person the next morning.

Yes we did have insurance and she also worked for the hospital but that only affected the cost, which was on the order of one dollar. Don't know what that was for.

Canadian health care is not a panaciea, it has some serious problems that have to be worked out.

Dave Nagel

BTW; What does this have to do with woodworking?

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

[Doug Winterburn]

I am one who has been in need of medical treatment as well as my wife. I have medical insurance that I pay for from the long term investments I made during my working career in the US. Granted that my employers provided low cost health insurance when I was employed, however I decided early on that I should try to be self sufficient at the earliest possible opportunity - which meant putting aside 10% of gross all during my working career. By the way, this is less than the SS and medicare deductions made by me and my employers during a longer period and provides me with about 5 times the income that SS provides. I did all this on a middle class income while several of my fellow employees making much more than I lived paycheck to paycheck because they wanted everything now.

I have been treated and survived colon cancer and my wife has survived two strokes and carotid artery surgery as well as multiple stents. We had zero waiting periods for treatment.

Is there some reason Canadians can't save during their working careers so that they can afford medical insurance in retirement?

[Tim Daneliuk]

For life threatening situations, Canadian healthcare seems to work well for most people - though I doubt you'd find a state in the US with a backlog of 400 bypasses. OTOH, ask someone with kidney stones or gall stones how they feel about their "care" in Canada.

It's marked "OT" and ... is ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk [e-mail] PGP Key:

[Tim Daneliuk]

Utter nonsense. People at or below the poverty line get medical care on a regular basis in the US without regard for their ability to pay. Witness the many gunshot victims that are treated in ER trauma all over the US daily, for example. You don't know what you're talking about.

It is flatly better for *most* people but there are exceptions. I don't see a giant rush of wealthy Europeans and Asians going to Canada for treatment of serious illness. The Canadian system is good, but does not attract the best medical folk, acts very slowly for people whose problems are painful but not life threatening and places government bureaucrats in charge of the medical process.

It happens here all the time and people do get care. They just don't get the same care as, say, Bill Gates. So what? Your Candadian wealthy don't wait for the national healthcare system when they have a serious problem either. They come.... here.

Everyone ends up broke ... and dead.

How about drug abusers with HIV and AIDS? How about people who never exercise, eat a horrible diet, and then drain the system while they die by inches? The list of this sort of thing is endless and demonstrates one of the many reasons that communist healthcare punishes the responsible and rewards the irresponsible.

It would in the US. I am not wealthy, but I've certainly been treated by wealthy doctors here as have any number of friends and family. Profit motivated business rewards *everyone* with its efficiencies and economies of scale. It just doesn't reward them *equally*.

You are the clueless one here. I *have* seen exactly what you describe up close and personal. I have watched a great many people of limited or middle class means get excellent care in the US. The only people crying for nationalized healthcare here are those who either want something they have never earned or want a "get out of jail free" card for their personal behaviors.

[Upscale]

And as a Canadian so do I. My experience is and was directly on a professionally basis for many years and also for many years as a person in dire need of medical care. If I lived in the US, the only way I'd get sufficient medical care to actually survive would be for my living status to be reduced that of a person of abject poverty living totally on the welfare system. I don't call that living. Criticise the Canadian system as much as you and your relatives want Tim, but don't for one second try state that the US system is better until you've actually experienced multiple, long term, medical difficulties.

And, that profit motive limits that best possible care solely to those who have the money to pay for it. It certainly is not available to those of middle or lower income. Is that the kind of medical system you'd like to see in Canada? God help you in that kind of system if you become seriously ill.

And I say to you again, to benefit from that kind of system, you have to become genuinely underprivileged to benefit from it. Imagine, working all your life to achieve a certain level of comfort and then suddenly becoming sick or getting into a serious accident. In the US system, all you've worked for all your life is suddenly snatched away from you to pay for your survival and then what's next when you eventually wind up broke?

Those self induced problems as you state it are a matter of opinion. There isn't a person on this world who doesn't partake in some type of dangerous or unhealth acts, you included. Exactly who is to state what is dangerous and what isn't? Almost everything anyone does on a daily basis can be termed unhealthy at some point or another.

I'd prefer the Benz doctor too if I could get him to treat me, but that wouldn't be likely would it? I can tell from the way that you're talking that you've never really experience anything close to a long term, seriously affecting illness. Oh sure, maybe you've talked to people or read a bit, but until you've actually experienced what it's like to be on both sides of the fence, don't for one second think that you actually know what you're talking about.

I for one, am glad that I'm part of and benefiting from the Canadian medical system. Sure, like any other system it isn't perfect and there's always room for improvement. Am I being selfish? Damned right I am. I want to survive as much as the next person and I'd like being able to do so with a certain level of self respect. That wouldn't happen in the US system.

In the past, I've been offered well paying jobs in the US and I've always turned them down because of what it would cost to pay for my medical needs. The reality is that I'd be working to survive in the US while up here in Canada at least I can work to live with some hope. There's a big difference between the two.

[Tim Daneliuk]

Yes there is. When you subsidize something, you get more of it. Paying for healthcare via the taxman guarantees that individuals will *not* act responsibly in this area.

[Robatoy]

[snipped evaluation of Canadian healthcare system... sort of]

Healthcare varies quite a bit from province to province. Many of the people my wife and I socialise with are medical professionals. They are aware of the flaws. And many work on the US side as well, and they are aware of their flaws.

And people from all over the world also come to Canada for treatment, especially children.

There are weak spots in healthcare in Canada, but it is functioning.

Overheard on a golf course in Michigan:

Doctor # 1 : "Say, did you know Johnson the contractor?" Doctor # 2 : "Yes, I had my house built by him. Why?" Doctor # 1 : "Well, he was a patient of mine, he passed away. ." Doctor # 2 : "Really? What did he have?" Doctor # 1 : "Sixty thousand dollars."

[Upscale]

All Canadians automatically have health insurance. In Canada, there really isn't anything medical to save for. Yes, one can buy some types of extended health insurance for stuff like prescriptions, dental care, eyeglasses and stuff like that, but that's about it. You can't buy insurance that will let you jump the queue in an emergency room and you can't buy insurance to get an immediate hip replacement or similar stuff like that.

The closest you could come to this stuff would be to save for medical service in the US and I wouldn't exactly call that a type of medical insurance.

[David G. Nagel]

threatening. That still doesn't justify a 400 person backlog.

Dave