Is anyone else getting sick of dems lying over health care?

Obviously, I'm a trader and not a health care specialist. My observation is we in the US are hung up by ego or by propaganda that we have the best system in the world. This simply is not true... Reality is our doctors practice medical insurance billing and all treatments are as prescribed by the insurance companies.

For your leisurely reading pleasure follow this link to an excellent academic paper: http://www.globalpulsejournal.com/2009_dosani_rahima_lessons_cuban_health.html

and I submit a cut-n- paste:

Cuba's superior health system

Colin Hughes
8 June 2007


Having just visited Cuba — and as a former head of public health for the Perth east metropolitan region and former chairperson of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners — it was obvious to me that the 45-year US trade embargo against the island-state has seriously affected its ability to provide health services to its people.

Despite this, the facts speak for themselves. According to the CIA’s own website, Cuba’s average life expectancy is 77 years compared with the 78 for the US; infant mortality in Cuba is 6.04 per 1000 live births (better than in the 6.37 per 1000 in the US); and, HIV incidence is less than 0.1% (0.6% in the US).

Cuba has achieved these results with one of the lowest levels of health-care spending in the world — about US$250 per capita, compared to $6000 in the US and around $3000 in most First World countries.

Here of course is the rub. Higher spending on health care does not necessarily equate to better health care or a healthier society. Trying to get a hip replacement or coronary bypass in Cuba is restricted to those who need it rather than to those who can afford it.

In Cuba, you will not see a 75-year-old diabetic who still smokes getting coronary treatment that would be provided by private health insurance in Australia or the US.

A young student with whom I travelled previously to Cuba suffered a life threatening cerebral haemorrhage while travelling. Her emergency treatment and subsequent surgery in Cuba, which saved her life, was praised by her Australian neurosurgeons.

Patients with terminal cancer in Cuba are not forced to endure nauseating experimental and highly expensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy to give them a few months more of a terrible life. Yet, paradoxically, the incidence of diseases like cancer are considerably less in Cuba — quite possibly related to Cuba’s refusal to use pesticides and other chemicals in producing food.

The incidence of diabetes and obesity — which are lethal time bombs in the US and Australia — are considerably less in Cuba, perhaps because of the lack of junk-food outlets and a general decline in the consumption of unnecessary food. Yet Cuba has performed more than 4000 kidney transplants at no cost to the patient and dialysis services are available in all regional centres.

Childhood immunisation rates in Cuba are almost 100%, whereas in Australia they are 90%. Cuba is one of the world’s largest vaccine producers, and supplies many of its vaccines to the Third World. This is despite the efforts of the US government to block the supply of raw materials for vaccines to Cuba by
giant US drug company taking over European manufacturers in. (US legislation prevents any US company or its foreign-based subsidiaries from trading with Cuba).

The same US strategy applies to pharmaceuticals. Cuba manufactures the so-called 46 essential medications for supply to the Third World. These are drugs for the treatment of such basic conditions infections, hypertension and diabetes that have come off patent restrictions.

While these drugs are a bit out of date, from a public health point of view they will prevent over 90% of complications. The marginal 1-2% of improvement by newer, much more expensive drugs that are still on patent does not necessarily result in better health outcomes, yet doctors are easily persuaded by glossy brochures, dinners in top restaurants and slick drug company salespeople to try the newer versions — sometimes with dire results, for example, Vioxx and hormone replacement therapy.

Australia spends less than 1% on health promotion and illness prevention, largely subsidised by a tax on tobacco. In Cuba, by contrast, up to 10% of the health budget goes towards illness prevention.

Cuban GPs spend every afternoon doing home visits and health screening. Exercise physiologists and dieticians run neighbourhood- and school-based programs in physical exercise and nutrition.

These programs also form part of Cuba’s agreement with Venezuela to exchange health services for oil. Cuba supplies some 20,000 doctors and public health promoters to the barrios of Caracas and the rural towns of the Andes and Amazon. This program has been responsible for restoring the sight of more than 600,000 patients from Venezuela and Central America who are flown to Cuba for eye surgery.

Cuba also provides secondary health clinics that are better equipped with X-ray, pathology, endoscopy, and ophthalmology than any comparable rural town in Australia.

There are a further 10,000 health workers from Cuba in other Third World countries.

After East Timor won its independence from Indonesia, the first doctors to go into the East Timorese countryside were from Cuba. Over the past three years, a 350-strong Cuban medical brigade, made up of physicians and technicians, has been working and teaching young doctors in East Timor. In addition, 500 East Timorese young people are studying medicine in Cuba, as part of a Cuban government-sponsored program that will allow East Timor to meet its public health needs by 2012.

On May 24, newly elected East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta highlighted Cuba for its “unselfish” aid to his impoverished country. “I thank Commander Fidel Castro for his leadership and his vision, which shows that, although our countries are distant, East Timor has always been one of his priorities in the field of medicine and health”, Ramos-Horta told a seminar in Dili organised by East Timor, the UN, the European Union, the World Bank and Japan.

All Cubans have access to birthing services, which ensure a very low rate of infant mortality. Australian private obstetric patients who are “too posh to push” have Caesarean section rates approaching 40%, while Australian Indigenous patients in remote communities have no access at all to birthing services — a situation which I believe is similar in the ghettos of the US and in some states where medical litigation has just about caused the eradication of public maternity services.

In Australia, Aboriginal life expectancy is barely 58 for males and 63 for females — hardly evidence of a good medical system.

Yes, it may be hard to buy a headache pill in Cuba, but the country is well-resourced with traditional herbal medicine pharmacies that provide treatment for everything from period pain to migraines — treatments that are probably equally as effective and with less side effects.

Finally, there are around 70,000 young people from other Latin American and Caribbean countries being trained as health workers and doctors by Cuba — surely a better way to win the hearts and minds of the people than the US rulers’ policy of rampant exploitation by profit-hungry corporations backed up by threats of “pre-emptive” war.

 

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=193204

 

Find me all of these examples you have to prove this, i can show you atleast a few rich people from Canada who go to the U.S. for healthcare. They are not unspouted factoids you dumbass.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070914/belinda_Stronach_070914/20070914

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5h0QC7bditrEb3wYz_6_b-gsGGDxA

Please show me where i showed you any calculations for the amount of taxes canadians pay, you retard. Also i like how you chose Alberta for your example which is by far the richest province in Canada, and the most conservative. The government of Alberta also cut a cheque a couple years ago to all of its residents for a couple hundred a person if i remember correctly, since there was a budget surplus and there was not a bunch of stupid dems going around blowing it on entitlement programs.

While we are on that subject though, i will point out that you obviously never owned a house in either place. If you ever get enough money to buy a house in one of the two places you will realise you can write off interest rates on mortgages in the states and not in canada. That alone is a a 10k a year write off for the average homeowner in the United states, if not more,Not only that i can roll all my other loans into a home equity loan and write that off to, if i ever have the need to pay for something on credit, while i dont do that, the majority of Americans and Canadians are up to their eyeballs in debt, so thats another huge savings. If you ever actually become a trader with a taxeable income, you will know that futures trades are also taxed at half the rate in the u.s. then in canada in the top income bracket. I dont suppose taxes are a big issue for you though since you need to have an income to pay them.

 

What part about "If you have the money" do you not understand?

All of the richest people in the world flock to the U.S. for their doctors, provided they have the money, if you can afford to pay any price tag without insurance and you want to go to the place that has the best doctors in the world, you are going to the U.S. hands down. You are not going to Cuba. All you need to look at to prove this is how many billionaires in the U.S. fled to cuba for health problems, when i see buffest, clinton, or cheney flee to cuba to fix their health i will change my opinion.

Are you off your meds today or something?

 

Interesting Factoid:

In the realm of traumatic brain injuries and medical treatments for children with Autism. Virtually every nation except the USA recognize Hyperbaric Oxygen treatments improve recovery and quality of life of the patient.

In the US these treatments are rarely approved because 25 to 200 treatments are required at a medicaid reimbursement rate of $250 per session. Private hospitals charge $2500 per treatment and the insurance companies flat out deny coverage.

In third world countries the same treatment using the same Sequest equipment is available for $10 per session. In the US the FDA classifies oxygen as a drug which can only be prescribed by a physician with insurance approval.

The problem is our health care system fixes unreasonable profits without competition while denying coverage or threatening medical licenses or network participation for any doctors that fail to follow the prescribed insurance treatment guidelines.

 

I'm not much for the nanny state but there is such a thing as oxygen toxicity , so I'd be a little apprehensive if I thought my clinician had the equivalence of a cosmetology degree.

 

But in the free market is ok to have the doctor with high education put the 78 year old person on statin drug, anxiety drug, depression drug, anti inflammatory drug all of the same time.

 

Pharmacy make big money from old people. They are commodity to DERIVE more money from. You think they care how they feel?

 

Anecdotes are factoids. You claim that most foreigners travel to the US for the best medical care, which, naturally, you can't prove. I will, for devil's advocate purposes, say it's Switzerland since you can't post even a single national statistic in support of your claim. Meanwhile a 2008 report from Deloitte estimates the number of Americans traveling outside the US for medical care at six million by 2010.

So do the math -- take the number you claim are coming to the US and subtract it from six million.

You haven't shown calculations for any of the numbers you've posted.

Okay, let's take BC. Go to the same website I've already given you, and use the calculator to calculate the BC tax costs. Notice that for a family of four with $30,000 income (your example) the tax load in BC is lower than in Alberta.

In other words, you're wrong in Alberta, you're wrong in BC, and you're wrong about "socialist" Canada's tax burden for health care for a family of four with their $30,000. It's cheaper for them.

If you want to visit you can stay in my house in Canada.

That's true. What makes me laugh is the idea that your example, of a family of four with $30,000 income could afford a house.

Yes, rich people pay less in the US than in Canada. Most regular laborers pay comparable tax rates or less in Canada.

And Canada spends less as a percent of GDP than the US does for medical costs.

So tell us more about how pooling everybody together into a massive insurance pool is more expensive than smaller, more volatile pools.

 

So you think more people are going to fly across an ocean to the US for medical care than will drive an hour across the border to Switzerland for medical care?