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1. Try getting an MRI in Canada. Canada rations care via wait lists. 2. Your argument implies that there wouldn't be low cost schools in the absence of public

1. Try getting an MRI in Canada. Canada rations care via wait lists. 2. Your argument implies that there wouldn't be low cost schools in the absence of public schools. The evidence is overwhelming that the opposite is true. 3. I live in Panama. When I need something mailed here I use FedEx or DHL. The USPS is unreliable and takes far too long. If there weren't laws against private first class mail in the US they'd be undercut in that market as well.

forgetsusername 10y ago
>Try getting an MRI in Canada. Canada rations care via wait lists. Exactly. Health care in Canada is a crap shoot. If you're in a major centre and are able to get a family physician I'm sure you think the system is great. Try being sick somewhere where the only option is an over-worked ER staffed by locums.
parasubvert 10y ago
Canadian here. Firstly, diagnostic care is often privately managed throughout the provinces, so if you don't want to wait, you can often pay to expedite. It's about $900 for a joint MRI. Secondly, if you really need an MRI for a critical diagnosis, as I once did in 2012 as a hospital inpatient, I got it within 2 days. Canada's health system is a point of national pride.
- Randgalt 10y ago
  It depends where you live. I know many Canadians who've had different experiences. This points to a major problem with socialized products - how they perform depend not on merit or ability to pay, but where you live, how good your representative is, etc. That is much worse.
  - parasubvert 10y ago
    I really don't agree. I've lived in three Canadian provinces, and four U.S. states, from towns of 1000 people, small cities of 10k, medium cities of 100k, to large cities of 1m+. Having lived through the Ontario cuts in health care in the 90s ("the Harris common sense revolution"), I don't really think political reps Federally or Provincially had any say on quality of care or what hospitals we got, it was all redesigned top down (not all that different from an HMO really, in my experience). Did care access and waits times suffer at the time? Yes. Still wouldn't trade it for a private system. The difference in access and amount of supply between a rural market and a city in Canada is not too different than in the US. There's a lot of land mass to cover in either country if you're not in a major population centre. The Canadian system blows away the US system by an order of magnitude, IMO, in terms of what really matters - access and outcomes. Obamacare made the US a bit better, but that's not a tall order.
    - Randgalt 10y ago
      What's the worst condition (if you don't mind saying) you've had where you had to use the Canadian system? Generally, socialized medicine works fine for routine care but badly for catastrophic (i.e. expensive) care.
      - parasubvert 10y ago
        I don't mind saying. - Severe pneumonia (1 day in emerg, 9 days in ICU followed by 8 in an inpatient ward) - Total pericariectomy (2 days in postop ICU, 3 days in ward) Among other stays/issues prior to these. The latter surgery was the culmination of outpatient medical care over 3 years with multiple specialists (cardiologist, internist, and cardiac surgeon), along with multiple CT, MRI, cardiac catheterization, countless blood tests, many of which were sent to Winnipeg (the equivalent of the CDC) for rare disease scanning, and over a dozen echocardiograms ... none of which I had to wait for longer than a day or two ... And none of which I had to pay for (just my medication through private insurance). In fairness the surgery itself wasn't critical, so I waited 6 months. They were willing to expedite if my condition deteriorated (it didn't). And after regular cardiologist visits , after I was stable, it could take 8-10 months. If I had an issue they'd expedite me in though. I am not saying the Canadian system is ideal. Just that it is a reasonably functioning system. There are some cases where it is both very frustrating and inspiring. I have a dear friend who has a child with a congenital heart defect due to an extremely rare genetic connective issue disorder that is similar (but different) to Marfan syndrome. The Canadian system has been fantastic to senior levels of provincial administration in managing this case, involving international hospitals, breeding zebrafish to replicate the specific mutation, working to manage the treatment of this complex child who is close to turning 5 but likely would have died in the first few weeks after birth in another era. Keeping this child alive (he is in and out of the hospital about 50%) has easily cost a tremendous amount of public money, but the insurance system risk pool is designed to handle these sorts of outlier cases to ensure future cases can benefit and that this child can have (mostly) a good life in between and during hospital stays. This child gets world class care and has been kept alive due to the system mostly working. That's the good part. The bad part is that managing complex care in general is a mess as in many health systems, making it a full time job for at least one parent to juggle the various specialists, appointments, tests, medications, history, etc... Which is difficult if you're a single parent. It's almost easier to go on welfare than to work if you are a parent to a critically ill child. So you can get nursing staff to help at home but it's debatable what is covered and what is not, medical expense deductions have some arcane regs like you can't expense a trip under 40km, yet this child has on average 280 trips to the hospital or a clinic a year... Adding up to a lot of expense. Some things like specialized child formula weren't covered by health insurance either until recently (which can cost upwards of $1400 monthly, really sucks when your child can't eat anything due to esophageal issues and has a G-tube and needs this formula to stay alive..) So, not ideal... But Is this all socialized medicine ills? Sort of I guess? I can see the same problems in a private system.
lutorm 10y ago
I live in Hawaii. When I need something mailed to or from here, I use USPS. FedEx or UPS are an order of magnitude more expensive and, in my experience, not faster or more reliable.
DanBC 10y ago
> Try getting an MRI in Canada. Canada rations care via wait lists. Over-testing and over-diagnosing are seriously harmful things that eg the US does far too much of. http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/press-release/2016-04-06-public-dont-understand-overdiagnosis http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/press-r... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/cancer-survivor-or-victim-of-overdiagnosis.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/cancer-survivor-or...

forgetsusername 10y ago

>Try getting an MRI in Canada. Canada rations care via wait lists. Exactly. Health care in Canada is a crap shoot. If you're in a major centre and are able to get a family physician I'm sure you think the system is great. Try being sick somewhere where the only option is an over-worked ER staffed by locums.

parasubvert 10y ago

Canadian here. Firstly, diagnostic care is often privately managed throughout the provinces, so if you don't want to wait, you can often pay to expedite. It's about $900 for a joint MRI. Secondly, if you really need an MRI for a critical diagnosis, as I once did in 2012 as a hospital inpatient, I got it within 2 days. Canada's health system is a point of national pride.

Randgalt 10y ago
It depends where you live. I know many Canadians who've had different experiences. This points to a major problem with socialized products - how they perform depend not on merit or ability to pay, but where you live, how good your representative is, etc. That is much worse.
- parasubvert 10y ago
  I really don't agree. I've lived in three Canadian provinces, and four U.S. states, from towns of 1000 people, small cities of 10k, medium cities of 100k, to large cities of 1m+. Having lived through the Ontario cuts in health care in the 90s ("the Harris common sense revolution"), I don't really think political reps Federally or Provincially had any say on quality of care or what hospitals we got, it was all redesigned top down (not all that different from an HMO really, in my experience). Did care access and waits times suffer at the time? Yes. Still wouldn't trade it for a private system. The difference in access and amount of supply between a rural market and a city in Canada is not too different than in the US. There's a lot of land mass to cover in either country if you're not in a major population centre. The Canadian system blows away the US system by an order of magnitude, IMO, in terms of what really matters - access and outcomes. Obamacare made the US a bit better, but that's not a tall order.
  - Randgalt 10y ago
    What's the worst condition (if you don't mind saying) you've had where you had to use the Canadian system? Generally, socialized medicine works fine for routine care but badly for catastrophic (i.e. expensive) care.
    - parasubvert 10y ago
      I don't mind saying. - Severe pneumonia (1 day in emerg, 9 days in ICU followed by 8 in an inpatient ward) - Total pericariectomy (2 days in postop ICU, 3 days in ward) Among other stays/issues prior to these. The latter surgery was the culmination of outpatient medical care over 3 years with multiple specialists (cardiologist, internist, and cardiac surgeon), along with multiple CT, MRI, cardiac catheterization, countless blood tests, many of which were sent to Winnipeg (the equivalent of the CDC) for rare disease scanning, and over a dozen echocardiograms ... none of which I had to wait for longer than a day or two ... And none of which I had to pay for (just my medication through private insurance). In fairness the surgery itself wasn't critical, so I waited 6 months. They were willing to expedite if my condition deteriorated (it didn't). And after regular cardiologist visits , after I was stable, it could take 8-10 months. If I had an issue they'd expedite me in though. I am not saying the Canadian system is ideal. Just that it is a reasonably functioning system. There are some cases where it is both very frustrating and inspiring. I have a dear friend who has a child with a congenital heart defect due to an extremely rare genetic connective issue disorder that is similar (but different) to Marfan syndrome. The Canadian system has been fantastic to senior levels of provincial administration in managing this case, involving international hospitals, breeding zebrafish to replicate the specific mutation, working to manage the treatment of this complex child who is close to turning 5 but likely would have died in the first few weeks after birth in another era. Keeping this child alive (he is in and out of the hospital about 50%) has easily cost a tremendous amount of public money, but the insurance system risk pool is designed to handle these sorts of outlier cases to ensure future cases can benefit and that this child can have (mostly) a good life in between and during hospital stays. This child gets world class care and has been kept alive due to the system mostly working. That's the good part. The bad part is that managing complex care in general is a mess as in many health systems, making it a full time job for at least one parent to juggle the various specialists, appointments, tests, medications, history, etc... Which is difficult if you're a single parent. It's almost easier to go on welfare than to work if you are a parent to a critically ill child. So you can get nursing staff to help at home but it's debatable what is covered and what is not, medical expense deductions have some arcane regs like you can't expense a trip under 40km, yet this child has on average 280 trips to the hospital or a clinic a year... Adding up to a lot of expense. Some things like specialized child formula weren't covered by health insurance either until recently (which can cost upwards of $1400 monthly, really sucks when your child can't eat anything due to esophageal issues and has a G-tube and needs this formula to stay alive..) So, not ideal... But Is this all socialized medicine ills? Sort of I guess? I can see the same problems in a private system.

lutorm 10y ago

I live in Hawaii. When I need something mailed to or from here, I use USPS. FedEx or UPS are an order of magnitude more expensive and, in my experience, not faster or more reliable.

DanBC 10y ago

> Try getting an MRI in Canada. Canada rations care via wait lists. Over-testing and over-diagnosing are seriously harmful things that eg the US does far too much of. http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/press-release/2016-04-06-public-dont-understand-overdiagnosis http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/press-r... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/cancer-survivor-or-victim-of-overdiagnosis.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/cancer-survivor-or...