The architect of Canada's health care system says their system is ruined and thinks it should move toward America's model. The US is behind the times with wanting to move toward socialism: Europe tried moving to socialism in the early to middle 20th century and is abandoning it now. America is about 75 years slow and not noticing that the entire project was a painful failure.

Let's see – you are all racists; you are greedy for wanting to keep your own money rather than turn it over to the governent who can use it for better things than you can; government workers are far better persons, much more compassionate and nice than eeevvviiilll insurance company employees; insurance companies ration healthcare by ability to pay (as they seek that vile thing called profit) and government does not ration it at all, even when they say you may not get treatment because funding for that care is not available (without more tax increases) or you do not fit the profile of a person who may receive it, or the budget for your area is used up for the year. Or some crap like that.

You missed my favorite part of that NY Times article, in which the defender of socialised medicine reduces doctors to the status of mere waiters:

David Furness, head of strategic development at the Social Market Foundation, a study group, said that under the plan, every general practitioner in London would, in effect, be responsible for a $3.4 million budget.

“It’s like getting your waiter to manage a restaurant,” Mr. Furness said. “The government is saying that G.P.’s know what the patient wants, just the way a waiter knows what you want to eat. But a waiter isn’t necessarily any good at ordering stock, managing the premises, talking to the chef — why would they be? They’re waiters.”

Outstanding!

A couple of other points:

This plan doesn't completely resolve the micro-management issue; services will be managed by a new set of “statutory bodies called GP Consortia – groups of GP practices that will manage the healthcare budget… [and] dentistry, community pharmacies and ophthalmic services that will be the responsibility of a new NHS Commissioning Board.“

Which isn't an indictment, but certainly something to keep in mind.

Perhaps the most important lesson, though, is that, contra “conventional wisdom,” nationalized health schemes are no better at controlling health care costs than our soon-to-be-replaced one.

Come on, man. You're robbing Pete Moss of his entire reason for existing!

At this rate he'll be in an existential crisis by the end of the day.

Wait, but I thought their system was cheap, efficient, and provided a higher quality of care than ours so we should copy them exactly?

So either they want to pay more for lower quality care or that was all a lie and in fact a private system is better. Or maybe what did not work for them will somehow magically work for us.

Putting aside the fact that most restaurant managers were once wait staff or cooks, this is just more evidence that the left thinks that government > everyone and everything.

“As America slowly moves towards full government run health care”

Bull feathers. We can't even pass a public OPTION!

Simple logic would say that we are either A) moving towards more government control of the healthcare industry, B) moving towards less or C) no movement in either direction.

Are you seriously saying that Obamacare either makes no difference in the role of government in healthcare or even reduces it?

Obviously not, so the answer is A, movement towards government controlled. Seems straightforward to me.

Democrats are incompetent, since they had 60 seats in the Senate for a long time and a majority in the House.

Inept is also a good word to describe you people.

Yes, I agree. Democrats ARE laughably incompetent.

I see that the only progressive liberal that showed up on this thread is Mahatma. I guess FBF, Fiza, Vega and perhaps hupupchuck know that they should keep their mouths shut on this one. But Mahatma doesn't have two brain cells to rub together that work.

oooooooooo, How exciting!

“NO BETTER!” HAH! WOULD that was all we had to worry about! SO LOL!

Unfortunately, that was one part of the “MASH” comedy sow that did NOT EXAGERATE at all.

Anything you don't use up, they'll make sure you don't get enough of, next time, and if you need twice as much as you got of something else, they make sure you get LESS of it, forever after.

And the forms are miserable. And someone has to spend all their time finding someone else to barter with for your essentials you are NOT allowed to have!

I remember when the GOVT decided we didn't need Polio vaccines anymore, and e saw people in Dr.s waiting rooms who had other strange afflictions, one was a weird eye infection, and they needed a polio vaccine for it STAT – and none were in the STATE!

And we had illegal aliens coming in then, as well. Months later, there was a small outbreak of Polio again.

Rush Limbaugh was telling last week that when he went for a check u0p, they checked his cholestrol level 2 or 3 times, in unbelief that his was right on the money, and on the LOW side, as it has always been, even at the height of his weight.

They kept trying to talk him into a prescription for Lipitor, because he was “SUPPOSED” TO NEED IT.

I've heard situations where people were ordered to take certain medications or their situation with Govt agencies was going to get nasty, and they did badly on the Prescripts, and did not want them.

When Hillary was Co-President in the 90's, they were ordering mandatory vaccines without regard to family or child medical history, even in cases where families had already lost two or more children to the same vaccine, they were threatened with having their children taken within a day of their set dates, even Birthdays, if the shots were not administered AND ON TIME. We herd several cases at that time where they were getting NO LENIENCY for any reason, including the deaths of older siblings.

Everyone is NOT alike and we do not DESERVE to be treated from a book of protocol made for ONE person.

The USSR did that with underwear, and shoes, etc, in their one size fits all with no design to the rote patterns ikn the Govt Stores – and it did not work.

We've seen Odrama Queen – and worse, we've seen Govt Union workers who don't care about anything but their time clock – PERIOD.

Is this AMERICA? Or NOT!

Ayn Rand: When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.

But we CAN tar and feather Marxists.

This is a good start for the YooKay, but they've a long way to go to restore freedom to the provision of health care there. Dismantling parts of the NHS bureaucracy is good (though to the extent that it will contribute to more unemployment, there's a downside to it); putting providers back in charge of directing patient care is good; providing patients with greater choice is good.

But continuing to collect national tax revenues to fund the whole enterprise still keeps the government entrenched in something which is essentially none of their business.

I have some concerns that overall health care will suffer even under this new regime. They're already talking about rationing more services than they already do as a cost-cutting move –

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7908742/Axe-f…

Since the health care results statistics already show the NHS to be mediocre at best in terms of life expectancy and success curing specific diseases when compared to other OECD nations, I think that rationing more services will bump them down to the bottom of the pack in more categories. That's not good news at all for the people who depend on the NHS for their health care. The only real good news on this front is that there's a high degree of uncertainty about the plans at present, so nothing's been cast in stone quite yet.

What's left to do there is to get the government out of the health care picture entirely, save for a regulatory function. As has been pointed out many times here, even the architect of Health Canada sees the need for privatisation of whole segments of the health care funding/delivery mechanism. Over time, he's come to understand that the inefficiencies and unproductiveness inherent in government have a deleterious effect on the ability of a fully socialised system to ever deliver a truly functional health care system.

Yeah, silly thing like the Us Constitution standing in the way of what you want huh?

Not sure if inept is what I would use to describe them so much as just not on the same page?
There is just barely enough of them concerned about actually disenfranchising their constituents and one or two others concerned with Constitutional Law that the rest of the herd of marxist lemmings can't drag America over the cliff with them the way they want.
But boy they sure are fucking us up trying.

higher quality except for the ones who actually need healthcare.
Then you take a number and wait your turn to be cared for by a low paid low skilled government employee.

Im still hoping that the US government realizes they are about to destroy healthcare and loose over 30% of the hospitals and at least that many healthcare professionals and repeals this batshit crazy bill

The UK and Canada's examples mean nothing to the self-anointed royalty in DC. They assume that we're all a bunch of idiotic lemmings that can't decide a single thing for ourselves, all they seek is more and more government bureaucrat intrusion and control in our lives!

The goal of lefty lib politicians: Acquisition of and keeping power over people's lives through their dependence!

Rose, go back on the meds, you nut.

Bullpucky. The 60th seat was held by turncoat Lieberman, you Dick.

OH, you mean JOE Lieberman, your Liberal standard-bearer and VP candidate? The one who supporter America winning the war, was stabbed in the back by the Democrats, ran as an independent AND WON, and then had the Democrats begging him to come caucus with them?

Is THAT the Lieberman you are discussing, Petey?

Here's what I read on this thread: “They assume that we're all a bunch of idiotic lemmings”….

No one assumes any such thing except when you act like lemmings and scream “death panels” and “Obama's a commie.”

The issue is one where we pay way more for health care than any place else in the world, per capita, BUT WE DON'T EVEN COVER EVERYONE ADEQUATELY unless you foolishly count access to emergency care, which is one of the factors that drive up our health care costs.

One of the reasons we pay more is because we allow private insurance to manage our coverage. Whatever profits they skim off the top come out of covering people's health care. Our entire health industry is profit driven. If people get healed at the same time then that's good, but profits are paramount.

Your side doesn't even want to discuss these issues, because you're even deeper in the pockets of the medical industry than the democrats are. All your side is capable of is to say “we have the best health care in the world” even though a preponderance of the evidence shows this to be false. We pay more and we cover fewer people. If that's all the “best” you can come up with, there are better answers.

As I've mentioned, travel to Australia and talk to people there about their health care, and you'll get a different perspective on what works.

Having your parents take you to dinner at Outback on your birthday is not the same as traveling to Australia, Petey. Stop with the lies about your world travel, no one is buying it!

Yes, how dare that “turncoat” dare not to be in complete lockstep with leftist groupthink? He thinks indepedently on one issue! Burn the heretic! (But only after buying carbon offsets from Algore Inc, of course.)

This and everything else this insane Marxist idiot, Odrama Queen, and Company, ever did to our nation, whether we know about it or not!

As I've mentioned, travel to Australia…

Which of course means that you're talking about their Medicare programme, not the NHS, the subject of the current posting. You'll also know then that Medicare co-exists beside a network of private health care facilities, programmes and providers.

Why am I not surprised you've conflated what happens in the UK with what happens in Australia. It fits perfectly with the general level of knowledge that you demonstrate on these pages almost daily.

Cheers, mate. Have a stupid day.

Ah, so now the attacks are personal instead of stereotyped attacks on groups.

The devolution of Petey continues, stooping lower and lower in his ongoing attempts to demean and slander everyone who doesn't see things his way.

Are you such a self-centred prick in real life, or do you reserve it all for us?

What do you think, another 2 months or so before he switches user names and starts the whole thing over again? I wonder if he'll be a programmer this time or a vp of some sort.

Who voted for every leftist scheme that was offered, along with the rest of the Democrats. He didn't stop any of it. He voted for TARP, he voted for the “stimulus” package, he voted for the Government Health Insurance Takeover Act.

What exactly was your point, again?

Careful throwing rocks around in that glass house.