Where the far left and far right overlap for fun and enlightenment

Single payer health care would make the debate over Planned Parethood funding moot.

In the United States, health care costs twice as much per capita as in the second-most expensive country for health care, according to the National Center for Health Studies. Yet we rank 37^th in the World in health care quality and 42^nd in adult mortality rates.

The people who profit from this system are the major shareholders in health insurance companies. In the meantime, the rest of us die sooner than we should. I pay nearly $1,000 per month for health insurance. I am self-employed. Many insurance policies are tied to employers. Why do we have health insurance tied to employment? That puts businesses in the United States at a disadvantage in their competition with businesses from other countries. Health insurance here is a big chunk of over head. Companies from countries with national health care do not have such worries.

Lawrence O’Donnell made a good point last night about single payer—i.e., national health care, like every other industrialized nation in the world has. Funding of Planned Parenthood by religious organizations would not be at issue. There is the thing about religious institutions already providing such health insurance for their employees (e.g., DePaul University in Chicago). Did President Obama cave to the Republican Party on single-payer? Did President Obama, and a lot of members of Congress, receive very nice campaign contributions from the health mega-industry? On the latter—yes.

The debate over Planned Parenthood and the Komen Foundation is one of those splinter issues Karl Rove loves to exploit. And here I thought that, with disagreement over gay rights fading into the sunset, splinter issues were gone and we could concentrate on the real issues of the campaign, like building colonies on the Moon.

If we had single-payer, I am confident I would pay less than a thousand dollars per year in taxes that would go to health care. Even if the amount were as high as it is now, I would rather pay the government that money for health care. Instead, I pay for private health insurance so that the CEO of the company can invest her bonuses overseas. If my money stayed here at least the bureaucrats my money employed would be more likely to spend their money on American soil. There would be jobs created here.

And maybe our World ranking in health care would move up a few notches and we’d all live a few years longer.

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Comment by Bob Haiducek on February 12, 2012 at 1:25am: About Wait Times

Mr. Small: Another point to which I had not replied was Nicolas' reference to wait times, as per his reference to a 2009 U.S. News article titled "Statistics Show Canadian Healthcare Is Inferior to American System" Unfortunately, I suggest that the title is erroneous from the standpoint of its content, which documents no inferiority in my opinion. The article's ONLY focus is wait times, which I respectfully observe has nothing to do with a most important measurement: whether Canadians are living or dying within their health care system. To cover that we could add just one more statistic --- the number of deaths due to preventable causes under age 75 (called "amenable mortality") --- for which Canada excels nicely: 6 of 19 countries compared to the United States' performance of being in last place: 19th out of the 19 countries.

By adding only that one more set of data (and much more closely aligned with the health of patients) one might conclude that Canada's system is superior, not inferior.

However, getting back to wait times, please note that Nicolas' 2009 article refers to the Fraser Institute's 2008 data.

Let's jump forward to the Fraser Institute's 2011 report, which references 2010 and 2011 data. One's interest in the fact that more recent data is available can be far over-shadowed by the lack of credibility of that data. A careful review is available.

You and Nicolas might both want to read that one-web-page PNHP.org review about the Fraser Institute 2011 report and the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) 2011 report. One can learn some "interesting information" (some might say a shocking kind of surprise) that questions the Fraser report's credibility.

Also from that same review comes this: "The much more credible study from the Canadian Institute for Health Information confirms that Canada is doing quite well in delivering care within medically recommended wait times." ... and ... "At least 8 out of 10 Canadian patients are receiving priority area procedures, such as hip replacements, cataract surgery and cancer radiation treatment, within medically recommended wait times, according to a new study from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). The study provides the first comprehensive national picture of how long Canadians wait for care in priority areas as compared with evidence-based benchmarks of acceptable waits."

Additional information is available at our Wait Times page. We provide a set of articles about the United States' problems with wait times. It's definitely a problem in the USA.

- Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate

Comment by Bob Haiducek on February 11, 2012 at 10:52pm: Okay, Mr. Small. Thanks for your note. That being the case, you probably want me to have a more complete response to Mr. Martin.

Here is our reply about fraud ...

Fraud. How will it be controlled (with improved Medicare for All)? Answer. Please review both the answer and the Fraud web page that is provided.

- Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate

CLARIFICATION: FYI: I wrote "our" above because many Americans have been and are contributing their time and effort to the development of the Medicare for All website. It's been and is a teamwork effort

Comment by Mark Small on February 11, 2012 at 9:08pm: Dear Mr. Haiducek,

I find you responses to Mr. Martin informed. I want to check research before I post to both yours and Nicoalas's poases.

Comment by Bob Haiducek on February 11, 2012 at 5:09pm: As you (Nicolas) implied, a satisfaction poll indicates a degree of satisfaction, not the measured values of factors in a society's health care that may be indicators of why a satisfaction level is high, as for Canada.

Apparently you want to see some of those measured values. Here goes some of the measured reality (mostly based on bar chart comparisons of the U.S. to six other countries) that goes into the overwhelmingly high support of health care for all across free-market countries:

- paying 40% of what we pay per person today

- keeping millions of job by having low health care costs

      (in our case, recovering, adding and keeping millions of jobs)

- zero bankruptcies due to medical bills

- saved lives per year due to preventable causes under age 75 (called amenable mortality)
      We have 101,000 unnecessary deaths per year compared to the top 3 countries.

- longer, healthier lives as indicated by life expectancy and percent elderly

- saving mother's lives, as seen by the maternal mortality ratio
       (Women generally care most about the topic of health care. This chart of maternal mortality will reinforce their degree of interest.)

- eliminating unnecessary hardships from an unmeasurable number to zero

- higher rate of going to the doctor: physician visits

- the unmeasurable factors related to peace of mind How can one measure the extremely high level of comfort from being able to show your United States health care card and get care without having a bill come to your house? ... and know that you will never go into bankruptcy or lose your home? ... and be able to have new freedoms ... (well, that's a start ... for the whole list go to peace of mind ).

I am so glad that you asked about the value, but I had already communicated about peace of mind and jobs, so this might be my last post, especially with some of your not so civil discourse.

- Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate

P.S. Check out Massachusetts, where MANY people dislike Obamacare and have provided some strong proof of their interest in single-payer health care, improved Medicare for All. And anytime you see Medicare for All think of IMPROVED Medicare for All; the LATTER is what we want.

Comment by Bob Haiducek on February 11, 2012 at 12:29pm: When I lived in Canada for 4.5 years with two children in elementary school, I learned that Ontario's plan does not have dental care. That is not much of a choice; it was a restriction. As you can easily tell from my comments about not being single-payer, I hold up our plan for view, not Canada's. Yet Canadian's like their plan to an overwhelming degree of around 90%: you can see the data yourself: Canada. And there are at least two Canadian-American families in Canada who describe themselves as exiles in Canada whose wives state that they cannot move to the USA due to the hardships.

Since almost all other free-market countries have health care for all ... and ... since the majority of those FREE-MARKET countries implemented health care for all between 1883 and 1972 ... and ... since you apparently have not yet done a careful read of the experiences in the testimonials of Americans in those other countries ... I must conclude that you need to please do some careful reading. Then you might not make such extreme statements against single-payer health care, improved Medicare for All. The United States is a bare minimum of 50 years behind in this cost-reducing job-generator profit-generator action that has the incredible side benefit of the peace of mind of no major medical bills and some new freedoms of choice and action that most Americans will experience with awe when they get them.

Answers to your other questions:

1 - No.

2 - Efficiency gets incredible results; something I learned solidly from my decades with a global corporation. Explanation

3 - I have an opinion about public schools, but the topic here is health care. I want the millions of jobs that will be recovered and added. I want the peace of mind that I felt and saw in the faces and the freedoms of my Canadian neighbors.

- Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate

Comment by Bob Haiducek on February 11, 2012 at 11:22am: To Mark Small: Single payer health care would also impact the debate about abortions, which will drop naturally from a caring society, as per this data ... mforall.org/p/Abortions

To Nicolas Martin: I don't consider Canada as single-payer, because there are actually 13 plans and 13 payers. However, ours will be single-payer with 1 plan and 1 payer. The best health care for all in the world will be ours: mforall.org/p/Best

To all: Take a closer look: mforall.org/p/Explanation
and learn from experiences of Americans: mforall.org/p/Testimonials

- Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate