Sunday August 16, 2009, 1:05 pm
The argument over which system is better at this point is like arguing whether or not global warming is real and human caused. Everyone knows the answer, but some people can turn a profit by denying it.


Who, in the eyes of Canadians, is THE most popular Canadian? Tommy Douglas, the father of the Canadian Medicare System. Watch this video.


http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1463312787?bctid=1463302784


(Also posted at www.lftwings.org.)

Remember, Canada didn't get UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE all at once; it happened Province by Province nd the government could no longer deny Canadians the health care they demanded.



COMPARE health care in:

Australia
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/Home
Canada
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/...

England
http://www.propertyshowrooms.com/...

USA videos
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...

From: "Health care system and health care reform in Germany"

http://www.bmg.bund.de/cln_160/nn_1169696/EN/Gesundheit/gesundheit__node.html?__nnn=true


This is the official website of the Ministry of Health and Social Matters in Germany

Quote:

"However, a health care system is not a "normal" market. After all, it places even more importance on care standards and service quality than other sectors do. Here, too, Germany scores high on quite a few counts:

* It is far easier to obtain out-of-hours medical attention here than in most other countries and, very importantly, this is so regardless of income or insurance status.

* Wait times for hospital care ... are shorter here than elsewhere.

Also, no such thing as "Preconditions" exists in Germany!

And

"Universal coverage

From now on, all citizens in Germany will enjoy health insurance coverage. From 1st January 2009, and for the first time in German social history, all residents are obliged to take out health insurance unless they are otherwise covered. Persons who had lost their insurance cover must return to their most recent insurer. This applies to the statutory and the private insurance system alike. "

Addendum: If someone cannot pay for his own health insurance (minimum wages apply), the state pays the premiums. This is a legalized RIGHT for citizens of Germany!

Don't opt for less, Americans! Don't let them tell you, it can't be done - because it can!

If we can, then you can, too. YES, YOU CAN!

Sunday August 16, 2009, 1:06 pm

WENDELL POTTER IS MAKING SENSE....
I wish Wendell Potter was a household name right now. His message and perspective is arguably as important as any in the country. Potter first came to public attention about a month ago, when he sat down with PBS's Bill Moyers. We learned that he's a former executive at a major health insurance company, who's become a whistleblower, explaining the way the industry "put profits before patients" and is doing everything possible to block health care reform now.

Slowly but surely, he's gaining more prominence. Last night, he spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper, who almost seemed surprised by what he heard.

"The way it works is that the [insurance] industry will hire big PR firms that create these front groups that have names that have no association with the insurance industry," Potter said." And it is these front groups that do the things that you're seeing right now that try to destroy health care reform by using terms like 'government takeover' of the health care system. Or we're heading down toward a 'slippery slope toward socialism.' Or we're going to 'kill your grandpa' because of this health care reform bill.

Cooper asked, "You're saying that language is written by insurance companies?" Potter responded, "Absolutely."

Asked about the right-wing activists, Potter explained that the industry has "very close ties with the conservative radio talk show hosts and commentators and editorial page writers and they feed the talking points."

Potter also spoke to Rachel Maddow this week. "I think that the health insurance industry deserves a great deal of the blame because they're very much behind the town hall disruptions that you see and a lot of the deception that's going on in terms of disinformation that many Americans apparently are believing," he explained.

Asked about a public option, and whether private insurance companies would be able to compete alongside a government-run non-profit plan, Potter added, "Well, they could, absolutely. I've seen the health insurance industry change its business models many, many times. The insurance companies who operate now are very different from the companies that operated a few years ago. They adapt very quickly. And the one thing they know how to do is make money."

Here's hoping that Potter, given his background and unique insights, gets a whole lot more media opportunities.

.....

So, thanks to Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Speaker Pelosi says she will bring a vote to the floor on single-payer after the recess. Are you all ready to make those phone calls and write those letters?


Nancy's contact info..http://speaker.house.gov/contact/

Send our speaker an e-mail of encouragement.

Sunday August 16, 2009, 2:03 pm
Brits should be outraged. So should Americans who are being constantly lied to.

Sunday August 16, 2009, 2:08 pm
The brutal truth about America's healthcare vs Stephen Hawking, who said, "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.." And a student who suddenly found himself unable to move and had to be supported by his wife would not have been able to get that sort of care in the United States at all, let alone be kept alive and allowed the time to think that made it possible for him to become *the* Stephen Hawking.

Sunday August 16, 2009, 4:29 pm
WHITE HOUSE STILL BACKS PUBLIC OPTION

Monday August 17, 2009, 8:01 pm
Great story. I hope a public option is included.

Tuesday August 18, 2009, 7:52 am
One must always put away the pointing of the finger... least that boomerang comes back to you

Tuesday August 18, 2009, 11:42 am


'Quarter of a million people waiting more than 18 weeks for NHS treatment'
A quarter of a million people are waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment on the NHS, new figures show.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6024086/Quarter-of-a-million-people-waiting-more-than-18-months-for-NHS-treatment.html

Woman gives birth on pavement 'after being refused ambulance'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1207151/Woman-gives-birth-pavement-refused-ambulance.html#ixzz0OYrwreVf

Thousands of surgeries may be cut in Metro Vancouver, leaked paper reveals

http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=1878506&sponsor








1,000 cancer patient 'refused treatment'


Charities warned that patients with less common forms of cancer were being discriminated against, while others condemned the system as a “scandal”.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6023407/1000-cancer-patient-refused-treatment.html



According to a study in Lancet Oncology last year, 91.9 per cent of American men with prostate cancer were still alive after five years, compared with only 51.1per cent in Britain.

The same publication suggests that 90.1 per cent of women in the U.S. diagnosed with breast cancer between 2000 and 2002 survived for at least five years, as against 77.8 per cent in Britain.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1206149/STEPHEN-GLOVER-I-deeply-resent-Americans-sneering-health-service---thats-truth-hurts.html#ixzz0OHJRvRXD


I deeply resent the Americans sneering at our health service - but perhaps that's because the truth hurts

President Barack Obama's political enemies are rounding on his controversial proposals to extend government involvement in health care. One way in which they are doing so is to hold up our own cherished NHS for ridicule.

His Right-wing critics accuse the NHS of putting an 'Orwellian' financial cap on the value of life by allowing elderly people to die without treatment.

The case of a dental patient in Liverpool who supposedly had to superglue a loose crown has been mentioned as an example of the appallingly low standard of dentistry in Britain.

At the wilder reaches of seemingly lunatic allegations is the suggestion that anyone over the age of 59 in Britain is ineligible for treatment for heart disease.

One leading Republican has also declared that the 77-year-old Senator Edward Kennedy, who is suffering from a brain tumour, would have been allowed to die in this country on account of his relatively advanced age.

In fact, President Obama's plans fall well short of the sort of state-run health service we have in this country. He wants to ensure that the 40 or 50 million Americans - many of them black or Latino - who do not have health insurance are able to receive the same standard of care as the majority who do.

Nevertheless, his proposals are characterised as 'socialist medicine', and the NHS is invoked as the living example of this abomination.

We may be sure, I think, that most of those who are cheerily dredging up British scare- stories do not really believe them.

We are merely providing the ballast in a domestic American argument that is getting dirty. Let's not take offence at this wildly overstated depiction of Britain as a sort of feral, failed state with Third World standards of health care.

The question that interests me is whether there is a grain of truth hiding amid these insults. I'd say there was. I'd say that under the present system which President Obama is hoping to improve, most middle-class Americans are liable to receive better health treatment than their British counterparts.

If I were a middle-income American living in Seattle or Chicago, I could almost certainly rely on superior care than if I lived in Birmingham or Newcastle.

This would probably not apply if I were poor, though there is a safety net for the sick and uninsured in the United States that is more effective than British critics commonly suppose. I accept, too, that American healthcare can be wasteful and unnecessarily extravagant. It suits vested interests to perpetuate this lavish system, which partly explains the attacks on President Obama.

Once, in America and suffering from bad earache, I visited a local doctor. In this country I would probably have been greeted with a weary smile, and, if lucky, offered an aspirin.

In the United States I was cosseted by a pretty nurse, and subjected to several exhaustive tests by an accommodating doctor, one of which involved me sitting in a sound-proof booth to have my hearing tested. At the end of it all I was presented with a bill for several hundred dollars - and the verdict that I had nothing to worry about.

But whatever the failings and excesses of the American system, the statistics suggest that it delivers better outcomes than the NHS when dealing with serious illnesses. I say 'suggest' because we should always be wary of comparing figures compiled in different ways in different countries.

In treating almost every cancer, America apparently does better than Britain, sometimes appreciably so. According to a study in Lancet Oncology last year, 91.9 per cent of American men with prostate cancer were still alive after five years, compared with only 51.1per cent in Britain.

The same publication suggests that 90.1 per cent of women in the U.S. diagnosed with breast cancer between 2000 and 2002 survived for at least five years, as against 77.8 per cent in Britain.

So it goes on. Overall the outcome for cancer patients is better in America than in this country. So, too, it is for victims of heart attacks, though the difference is less marked.

If you are suspicious of comparative statistics, consult any American who has encountered the NHS. Often they cannot believe what has happened to them - the squalor, and looming threat of MRSA; the long waiting lists, and especially the official target that patients in 'accident and emergency' should be expected to wait for no more than four - four! - hours; the sense exuded by some medical staff that they are doing you a favour by taking down your personal details.

Most Americans, let's face it, are used to much higher standards of healthcare than we enjoy, even after the doubling of the NHS budget under New Labour. Of course, the U.S. is a somewhat richer country, but I doubt its superior health service can be mainly attributed to this advantage.

Americans should beware of any proposals that might threaten their standards, though President Obama is right to want to extend them to the poor.

As for us, it is time we accepted that the NHS is not the envy of the world, if it ever was. Even though it may not deserve many of the brickbats being thrown at it by Right-wing American critics, the practice of rationing expensive cancer drugs and treatments is undoubtedly more widespread in Britain than it is in America.

The principle of equal healthcare for everyone regardless of income is a precious one. The fact is, though, that there are other, better ways to achieve this than through an increasingly inefficient, centrally planned leviathan set up over 60 years ago.

In our hearts many, perhaps most, of us know this. We all have horror stories to tell about the NHS, though we are likely to have good things to say about it, and its sometimes selfless medical staff, as well.

An increasing number of us take out private health insurance, and many others would like to do so if they could only afford to, which hardly indicates unbounded confidence in the NHS.

And yet, despite its shortcomings, we are reluctant to think about changing it, and any politician who suggested doing so might as well slit his own throat.

For all his admiration of the NHS as a result of the treatment it offered his severely disabled son, David Cameron is quite clever enough to recognise its deficiencies, but he will only dare talk about putting ever more money into it as it is. I doubt he will be any braver, or more imaginative, in government.

In view of the failure of President Bill Clinton's healthcare proposals more than 15 years ago, and the opposition he is now facing, the omens may not be good for Mr Obama.

If he really could preserve all that is good about the present U.S. system, while making it available to everyone regardless of income, I would wish him all the luck in the world.

The President is discovering that people are apt to want to defend and preserve what they have. The same is true of we British and our lumbering health service. The difference, though, is that what the Americans have is, for the most part, better than the NHS

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1206149/STEPHEN-GLOVER-I-deeply-resent-Americans-sneering-health-service---thats-truth-hurts.html#ixzz0OHJRvRXD

Tuesday August 18, 2009, 2:10 pm
Maria, I noted that you only show the life saving techniques/treatment for prostate cancer and breast cancer. Of course, the US would be better than the UK on prostate cancer it's, the US med. community is largely composesd of old white men. Go figure!