Hi jeff,
One of the things that we find very often these days, what with internet fact finding and the very divisive attitudes regarding healthcare, is that you can find some article that supports just about anyone's thinking. Just for laughs, here are some reports that counter the one's you've provided:
Canada’s Single-Payer Health System: What Is True? What Is False?
This report is from Kaiser Health News. KHN has established themselves as a premiere health care and study source.
Here's one from a physician:
A Canadian Doctor Explains How Her Country's Single-Payer Health Care System Works
This paper produced by Wharton University:
Is Canada the Right Model for a Better U.S. Health Care System?
So, it is often who you believe in a lot of these discussions. Personally, I can't foresee having any problems with a government taxed and paid for plan that cuts out a lot of the non-essential expenses found in our private system of hundreds of different insurers with a couple of dozen different plans. One plan pays for certain services and one plan doesn't. One plan has higher co-pays than another but costs less out of pocket each month, but pretty much every time you do go to the doctor you're going to have to cough up a bunch of money yourself because you took the cheaper monthly plan rather than the more expensive, better coverage plan.
I think it would be a joy not to have to go through a dozen different plan options each year with my employer offered plans. Every year I have to sit down and go over a slew of plans if I want to make sure I'm getting the best coverage offered to fit my circumstance as a retired AT&T employee. I have to weigh whether or not I want to pay more each month since I'm now needing more healthcare than in my younger days. Or do I want to roll the dice and save money and trust that I won't have a bunch of healthcare bills this next year?
I think there's a lot of good to be found in single payer systems. The greatest one being that they are they only systems around the world that cover the most of a nation's population...hands down!
You see, for me, I'm not interested in being able to empty my bank account with the pride that I have the gold standard of healthcare. I'm not even interested in having the gold standard in healthcare. All I ask for is 'reasonable' healthcare. I'm not interested in my body being kept alive at all cost. I know I'm going to die! I'm a sinner! There is no question in my mind of that. I am going to die!!!!! What I want is that if I break my leg, I can get it patched up. If I cut myself so deep that I need stitches to close the wound, I can get that. I haven't even been to a doctor for a check up in 15 years. I go in if I have some immediate external need, but all the stuff going on inside my body, I'm pretty much in the same boat as Abraham. I mayt be riddled with cancer inside and one day I'm going to lay my head down on my pillow and never get up...or I'm going to bleed out on some piece of pavement somewhere the victim of some terrible accident. One way or the other, I'm headed to a better place and I'm not particularly concerned about trying to stay here any longer than the Lord wants me to be here.
My motto is: If the Lord wants me alive tomorrow...I will be! If not...I won't. So, for a guy like me, just knowing that if I need to go get patched up I can go have that done, that's about all I'm asking for. BTW, years ago, I'm now 64 I had the discussion with my wife that if I'm ever in some situation where the doctors in the hospital have to keep me alive or bring me back from the brink of death...please tell them no.
God bless,
In Christ, ted
