Comments on: Steve Crowder on Public Healthcare in Canada

By: David

David — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:49:47 +0000

Alberta Physician again

I also wanted to mention the distinction between public and private clinics in Canada is not the same as in the US. There needs to be categories like: totally public where all employees and the Physician are paid by the government, totally private where all services are paid by the patient, and the employees and Physician generate income totally outside the universal system and finallp public private where the employees are paid for by the income that is generated by doing work for the public system. The physician in the public private clinic usually generates income from fee for service charge to the government and must follow the Canada Health Act but they own the clinic and pay the staff. The bottom line is that in your drive by shooting of our system you didn’t look at the private clinic as it wasn’t part of Universal Health Care….ooops.

The above is an important distinction because a private clinic that is charging $900/year to attend is likely a modified public private system. What the clinic does is try to generate more income from a fee that covers non essential service and it like a membership. I think even Crowder would agree that the clinic would go bankrupt treating patients for $900 per year. This membership twist came about in urban centers where the physicians feel poorly reimbursed for services so they came up with fees that walk the line of being legal.

In our clinic of fourteen physicians established in 1954 we are public private and do not use this membership twist because we make two to three times what US Physicians net before taxes.

So the video also failed to realize that primary care and many other physicians in the US are so badly renumerated by private insurance companies that they are leaving practise. So in the end only the wealthy will be able to see a physician in the US as your free market world will mean as the supply goes down the demand and price will go up.

In the end it is all about whether you want health care as a commodity. In a private insurance system the insurance company is all about profit. They don’t train doctors (Medicare does) and 20% of the money goes to overhead. In a government run system they don’t want to make a profit and only 3% of the money doesn’t go for care. So much for Crowder’s inefficeincy argument.

Mr. Crowder I hope you skateboard better than you report on issues.

By: David

David — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:04:47 +0000

Alberta Physician:
1. Quebec does have bad healthcare. They are the only province that didn’t sign the reciprocal billing agreement with the other provinces. Many in Quebec also want to leave Canada sort of like Texas wanting to leave the US. They tend to have Physicians that can’t leave the province due to lack of portable credentials. If you want to see Health Care at its worst in Canada go to Quebec. But I would still take their crappy system over your system even on Sundays.
2. This young punk thinks he is such a smart little conservative but:
a) The wait varies on triage scores because this is an ER department. Your friend said the triage system decides how important you are. I am sorry that he has such a self esteem problem. (is he unemployed as you said he has so much time on his hands?) Triage actually tells them how quick you need to be seen hence the 2 to 10 hours. b) What did you expect them to do with a fractured clavicle? In almost all cases of fractured clavicles you don’t need any treatment. c) Crowder has no idea what was wrong with the lady with the blocked arteries in her legs. Her daughter was ranting and there is no proof of what happened to the mother. They could have gone to the great US for care, probably by car, but they chose to stay in the Canadian system so your argument is crap. d) The mother with the baby is dead wrong about how long gastro should last in babies. She states it like a fact that a gastro in a baby should only last 12 hours. Gastro can last 9 days and peak at day four. She saw a nurse in two hours and the nurse would get a doctor immediately if the child was deathly ill. The rest of her story is totally unsubstantiated. In the US if they were uncovered she would either tuff it out at home and replace the baby with another pregnancy if it died or get seen and then get a bill for 20,000 for one week in the hospital and then file for bankruptcy. Even if they had insurance they could have been directed to a certain place for treatment and have been seen by a Physicians assistant or nurse practitioner. The clip also places doubts on the competency of Canadian Physicians in general. Hey Crowder, I and my collegues in our government funded clinic will go head to head on diagnosing/treating patients against any group of Family Doctors in the US. Wouldn’t that make for great viewing? Sort of like the health care Olympics. d) The young male with the acne actually sees a dermatologist for his acne?! Well the problem is that acne should be dealt with in Primary care and only the resistant cases should be referred to a dermapologist. His Pizza face didn’t look that bad….I would get a different hair cut though.
3. You mention California in your rant about what things cost in the US where the government recently was paying government workers with IOU’s?! How much is a Sub Sandwich in IOU’s? Your country is broke because of the Republicans and in part because of your Health Care System (or lack of). You talk of socialism yet your government owns a large share or is the main participant in your banks, auto industry, Medicare, Medicaid, VA, social security etc. You imply that things are better in the US and yet you have laws that let people carry handguns in public and in one state into bars. Your educational system is 25th in the world. People without insurance have a 40% higher risk of dying than those with insurance. Health Insurance in the US is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy. You send your brave soldiers away from their families and put them in harms way for oil and ideology. Guess what when they come back injured you give them the best Health Care in the US….Yes Government run Health Care. Of course if they come back dead you don’t want people to see the coffins as it is too upsetting for the population.
4. As a follow up why don’t you go to a stadium in LA and see the mass free Health Care that should be going to Haiti but is actually in The US because of your great Health Care system.

Crowder…sorry aboutthe punk comment above but you sound like a high school student who drives his dad’s (Sean Hannity being the dad) car and doesn’t have any idea of what is going on in your own country. You could use your time to do some real factual reporting but instead you are part of the problem as to why your country is in real trouble in many areas.

By: t

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:20:15 +0000

Why are you so against improving a lousy system? You’ve heard all the evidence if you’re still against the improvement one has to ask why?

By: Onlinenursing

Onlinenursing — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:17:01 +0000

This video was great! However, the wait times in the U.S. are getting that bad. Many patients with health insurance can’t get primary care providers due to lack of them (we currently have Blue cross blue shield and are on a 9 month wait list to get a primary care provider in our system). Waits for specialists are the same. To get a child with new onset seizures into a pediatric neurologist is 6-12 months in our area (we have 4 pediatric neurologists in a city about 250,000 people). This is no matter what your insurance. The charge we recently incurred for a simple chest x-ray, with health insurance was $1200 (WHAT?)…. All in America.

Likewise, our state recently went to HMO on medicaid and now independent clinics cannot refer these pediatric patients into the larger health systems for evaluation. Example, I had a 9 year old male patient with an arm fracture that needed the arm to be set, had medicaid HMO. Went to ER… waited 8 hours. Then told to go to primary care provider monday for a referral for the arm to be set. The primary care is a rural NP owned clinic (Because no one else would take the kid for primary care because of his medicaid). When the clinic attempted to refer the kid and of the two major health systems, one refused because the clinic was ‘connected’ or part of their system. The other, had not contracted with any Medicaid HMO’s so they would not have to take the kid! We looked for 7 days for someone to set the arm and finally had to send the kid 3 hours away for his broken arm to be set. WRONG! The system is so messed up and it is due to the government and to insurance companies…. let the free market and capitalism reign and costs will go down…

Example, if every insurance and the govt. quit paying for prescription medicaions the costs would drop like a rock because the drug companies still want to sell drug. Lipitor would be 10$ per month instead of 170$ (generic) per month.

Enough rambling. Great video. BROKEN system here and abroad.

By: Vocal Minority

Vocal Minority — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:03:57 +0000

This Won’t Hurt a Bit! Steve Crowder Vid on Canadian Health Care…

OK, you Obamacare supporters. Here’s a video created by righto-comedian Steve Crowder for PJTV on the Canadian health care system. [h/t RightGirl] Have fun!…