Michael Moore...Sicko (

[squirrley]

Anyone seen this yet? Wow, its incredible and enlightening to me. All about how other countries have universal health care and where do we stand? I knew Canada had it, one of our former members is from Canada and we chatted about it.

What do you think about having Universal Health Care in the United States? I say yes, and have thought yes for years. I know so many people running around without health insurance and I just nod my head. It makes me sad and pissed off!

[Illusional]

i've heard about universal health care in canada but i never really got into looking into it. i'm sure that they also have their bad sides, for instance the dr can probably rate people on a need to serve basis... but i'm not really sure how their system works.

raverboy

[squirrley]

I think its a great idea, because living in one of the most expensive cities in Sarasota, there are so many middle class people who arent offered health ins through work (employevers here are cheap charlies) or the premiums are just too high.

I acknowledege I dont have the details on how universal works other than a larger amount of taxes come out. Im still researching it.

[misombra]

it works partly because they don't have all the specialized medicine that we have. canadians usually have to come here for open heart surgeries and stuff like that. also there's a lot of prevention. in the u.s. the emergency room is primary care for a lot of people, so they don't go in until they're really sick and by then problems have been exacerbated.

but yeah, our health care system is terrible. along with our education system.

[vashti]

Universal systems also tend to have less specialty equipment on hand, getting a CT scan here is no big deal, but you may have to wait months for one under a universal system.

Although I agree that something needs to be done about the state of health care, I am worried about a reduction in quality of service. The parent of a friend of mine ended up losing toes in England because they had to wait so long to see a doctor for an infection on the foot, even though there was a history of diabetes (and as such, is automatically at increased risk of amputation).

[DoesntMatter]

Michael Moore is a dumb sack of shit with an agenda

but yeah, our health care system is terrible. along with our education system.

Yeah our health care system could use improving, but it isn't terrible when compared to South America, Africa, SE Asia, etc..

IF by our education system you mean elementary -> high school, then yeah we need improvement. I think the improvement is outside of the governments direct control though and lies in the hands of parents motivating their lazy bastard children to do their ****ing homework and emphasis getting a good education. Another problem is that looking at the average doesn't allow you to see the spread. The difference in courses being taken by seniors in high school last year was HUGE, from kids taking 5 AP classes and getting 4s or 5s on all of them and people taking HTML and nearly failing

But as for colleges/universities, the US has THE best. According to the better resources, of the best 20 universities internationally around 17 are American, the other ones being like Oxford and Cambridge

[squirrley]

I just had lunch with someone who spent most of his life in Toronto. He and his wife both agreed, the overall social system in Canada is better than here. They did say the healthcare although was good, if its not an emergency it does take awhile to get the treatment.

I'd like to see a healthcare system which everyone is able to afford treatment rather than people losing their homes etc to hospital or medical needs.

[misombra]

Michael Moore is a dumb sack of shit with an agenda



Yeah our health care system could use improving, but it isn't terrible when compared to South America, Africa, SE Asia, etc..

well i was comparing the u.s. to other developed nations.

and i also meant the education system in general. including colleges and universities.

[Mish]

Great Movie!! I really enjoyed it!

We have a different healthcare system here in Australia to US and it works betters for us I think. Medicare covers everyone for a lot of things, so you don't have to pay an insane amount of money if you have a problem. If you have a problem you just see a doctor without paying anything for it. There is a medicare levy that gets deducted at the end of the financial year, the fee depends on how much you earn. There are no big lines that I know off (Except for in the actual hospitals if you go there on the day you'll have to wait), it doesn't take long to get a CT scan though.

The problem with the US Healthcare system is that its very money centered. If you are rich and can offord the best quality of care then its good for you. You get a good quality of care quickly. If however you are a contractor or your employer doesn't provide Health insurance then things can be very grim for you. The waiting time no longer matters for you, you'll just not get any service all together and without helath insurance medical proffesionals will be more focused on how to get rid of you instead of providing you with quality service.

[vashti]

Mish, you don't know what you are talking about. When I was working in a county facility, the overwhelming majority of patients our clinical group took care of didn't have health insurance, and in fact, a very large percentage were illegal aliens.

Things don't appear to be much better where you are - I've been reading up on the Australian system on my nursing site. You guys are losing 10% of your nurses every year because of the stress of having unsafe nurse to patient ratios.

[url]http://allnurses.com/forums/f195/4200-australian-nurses-quit-every-year-271551.html[/url]

[Mish]

Mish, you don't know what you are talking about. When I was working in a county facility, the overwhelming majority of patients our clinical group took care of didn't have health insurance, and in fact, a very large percentage were illegal aliens.

You are saying that a country facility served patients without health insurance? Isn't that against the regulations in US? Wouldn't they get into trouble for doing that? And also, how would they get paid for looking after these patients without insurance? In Australia they get paid by the government via tax payer, how did they get paid in the states without such a system in place? I don't know, maybe you guys had a very altruistic director, but from what I read this is not the norm in the states.

Things don't appear to be much better where you are - I've been reading up on the Australian system on my nursing site. You guys are losing 10% of your nurses every year because of the stress of having unsafe nurse to patient ratios.

[url]http://allnurses.com/forums/f195/4200-australian-nurses-quit-every-year-271551.html[/url]

Yeh it's true, we've lost a lot of nurses for various reasons over the years. Partly due to the previous right wing party that introduced workplace reforms aimed at employer being able to take away all conditions previously protected by law from their employees and with power to cut wages and terminate employees unfarily. Many proffesionals simply didn't want to put up with that and left overseas, but now that this reform will be scrapped, hopefully we will be getting some of them back.

[misombra]

the australian social welfare system in general is quite similar to that of the u.s. australia doesn't fit into the whole european/canadian social welfare style at all. I don't think australians have any reason to boast about their health care system or any of their other systems either.

[vashti]

You are saying that a country facility served patients without health insurance? Isn't that against the regulations in US? Wouldn't they get into trouble for doing that?

Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985, hospitals are obligated to treat the uninsured without reimbursement. That's right; no reimbursement. Your sources are biased and have a clear agenda.

[Mish]

the australian social welfare system in general is quite similar to that of the u.s. australia doesn't fit into the whole european/canadian social welfare style at all. I don't think australians have any reason to boast about their health care system or any of their other systems either.

That's not true. We have Medicare that covers us for many things that in US you need to have Health Insurance for. Every citizen is automatically covered. In US it doesn't work this way.

So we have reasons to boast.

[Mish]

Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985, hospitals are obligated to treat the uninsured without reimbursement. That's right; no reimbursement. Your sources are biased and have a clear agenda.

There are a lot of stories that tell otherwise. And in Sicko Michael Moore showed a lot of examples where this wasn't the case at all. The people who came to hospitals for help were treated like garbage because they were uninsured.