Protect Your Freedom of Choice in Health Care

[Mr Ontario]

* Ensure your fundamental right to manage your own health is protected.

* Protect your access to effective and affordable Natural Health Products.

* Help create the Ministry of Wellness within Parliament.

http://www.charterofhealthfreedom.org/petition.php

[faller]

Hey thanks for that link :)

[Bowlcut]

I thought Canada is the best in healthcare because it is "free".
That's right folks, it doesn't cost a cent.

[Seth]

Tell that to the missing 44% of my income. When things are free, people abuse. Hypochondriacs, smokers and bacon eating couch potatoes clog the system and we pay for it. I'm all for paying for genuine illnesses and diseases, but we need some kind of system to prevent abuse; like a small fee per visit. Ridiculously small amount. Make it 10$ flat rate per consultation. It won't severely dent the budget of anyone, yet people will think twice before going to the emergency when they have a cold. Problem is that as soon as you mention fee and health care in the same sentence, lower middle class just burst out in outrage claiming free health care is being take away.

Then the lifestyle related diseases have to be addressed. Treat people for free once, then advise changes in the damaging behavior; change diet, exercise, stop smoking. If they come back 5 years down the road still stuck in their self-destructive habits, then make them pay for treatment or at least part of it. I understand we could fall under that category, but I don't understand why people should pay for me if I made a decision to destroy my body.

There's also something to be said about a two speed health care system with a salary cap for doctors. That way the public system doesn't lose all the good doctors, and we alleviate some of the burden on the public system by having some people willingly pay for treatment.

[faller]

Only problem with you're suggestion's is it become's subjective, who decides, what sevarity will constitute payment or outright denial of coverage.. I am not a fan of our univercial health care, it's an albatros, a white elephant, a failure of astronomical proportions. But it's an Canadian institution and it won't go away anytime soon and the ony thing that will save it is if we accept a two tiered system.

As for capping doctors salaries they already are. Capping a salary only magnifies the problem, where is the insentive to go to school for years, incur huge debt before you collect your first paycheck, only to have your salary capped when you do join the workforce? I know what i'd do, cross the border and get paid according to my ability, not have some Gov. agency tell me we all get paid the same no matter what.

[Seth]

As for capping doctors salaries they already are.

Just to clarify, I mean cap the private sector as well. I understand it's not necessarily a good thing for the doctors themselves, but it's a good way to counter the main argument against private health care; it will be more lucrative so all the good doctors are going to leave the public system.

As for denial of coverage, it really is a big problem. As you say, it won't ever happen because anyone being refused would just turn around and go see another doctor for a different diagnostic for the same treatment. But this society has a big problem with people not being accountable for their own lifestyles.... we need a way to rectify this because its not getting any better. I don't know for you, but it seems the most I ignore the situation of north america, the happier I get. The system is so flawed it's not even funny anymore

[pinhead]

Thanks for the link.

[faller]

Just to clarify, I mean cap the private sector as well. I understand it's not necessarily a good thing for the doctors themselves

Here's where i have to disagree. I think it's a bad thing for us, not necassarly the doctor's. We will, and are, looseing a lot of good doctor's for that very reason. Any mandatory and comprehensive plan will finish off quality medicine —because it will finish off the medical profession. It will deliver doctors bound hands and feet to the mercies of the bureaucracy.

Lets pretend that instead medicine it's haircuts.

"Haircuts are free, like the air we breathe, so some people show up every day for an expensive new styling, the government pays out more and more, barbers revel in their huge new incomes, and the profession starts to grow ravenously, bald men start to come in droves for free hair implantations, a school of fancy, specialized eyebrow pluckers develops—it's all free, the government pays.

The dishonest barbers are having a field day, of course—but so are the honest ones; they are working and spending like mad, trying to give every customer his heart's desire, which is a millionaire's worth of special hair care and services—the government starts to scream, the budget is out of control. Suddenly directives erupt: we must limit the number of barbers, we must limit the time spent on haircuts, we must limit the permissible type of hair styles; bureaucrats begin to split hairs about how many hairs a barber should be allowed to split.

A new computerized office of records filled with inspectors and red tape shoots up; some barbers, it seems, are still getting too rich, they must be getting more than their fair share of the national hair, so barbers have to start applying for Certificates of Need in order to buy razors, while peer review boards are established to assess every stylist's work, both the dishonest and the overly honest alike, to make sure that no one is too bad or too good or too busy or too unbusy. Etc.

In the end, there are lines of wretched customers waiting for their chance to be routinely scalped by bored, hog-tied haircutters, some of whom remember dreamily the old days when somehow everything was so much better".

By Leonard Peikoff, Delivered under the auspices of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine at a Town Hall Meeting on Health Care in Costa Mesa, California, on December 11, 1993

He say's it so much better than i ever could.