By the way, that was just Alberta I was talking about. BC is referred to as the left coast and is very liberal (NDP these days). Saskatchewan is the home of Tommy Douglas and socialized medicine. His party (NDP) is still very strong there. While Albertans would never vote out the Canada Health Act, they do tend to go their own way. Glad they stayed Progressive Conservative though, in their recent Provincial election.

I’m sorry to hear of the anti-corruption practises act of Montana being cast aside by the Supreme Court. Montana sounds like a place that really believes in strong, transparent, grass roots democracy. They really take democracy to the street. Very clean, transparent, elections for the last 100 years apparently. That’s a bloody shame. Take care montanabill.

I would say two things about any wait times. There are a number of walk-in clinics in every Canadian city where you can see a doctor any time (but you’ll have to wait your turn). If your neighbours are Albertans, I’m wondering about the tales you’re getting as they are somewhat less predisposed towards socialized medicine than any other Canadian Province or Territory. I think I can safely say that. They’re different. Not the same type of conservatism as in the U.S. exactly, but different by our standards.

In my examples, there would always be no wait time at all for emergency surgery and you’d be top priority for cancer treatments with little if any wait time.

Government bureaucrats? I once saw a U.S. doctor on a political show explain that he never has any dealings at all with bureaucrats for his medicare patients. He’s freed up to just concentrate on healing them. With private, he’s got an insurance industry guy in his face, constantly telling him what he can do and still expect to receive payment. He has to clear a lot with them first. There’s your difference. In single payer, the bureaucrats are much higher up, deciding things like… how many MRI’s should be for a given geographic location and that kind of thing. Once you see a doctor though, he/she can treat you in any way that they feel is best. No involvement from anybody else. There’s no profit motive.

Well, again, good talking to you montana. You’re really up on things and you always enlighten me as to how the American right sees the world.

That rationing of health care that I posed would change 100% for unfortunate people who aren’t able to benefit from the best of American medicine. Hell, some who believe that they have good private coverage find out later that they aren’t able to benefit in nearly the way that they thought they were going to be able to. There’s a private health insurance company bureaucrat between you and your doctor every step of the way, advising your doctor what they’ll pay for and what they won’t, regardless of what the doctor feels is the right course of action.

It’s all about profit and answering to shareholders. They’ll do anything to deny coverage. They don’t care because it’s an oligopoly. It’s not a true market and everybody’s doing the same thing. You can’t make health care insurance a true market. Private, for profit, is just utterly inappropriate for health care, even if it works so well in most other sectors of the economy. You forget who you’re talking to montana. That rationing of health care illustration that I posed would never, ever, happen in Canada, or with U.S. seniors on medicare (I think). We’re talking the chemo, fingers, etc.. However, those illustrations are routine in the U.S.

By the way, I may have been wrong about that second bill of rights. For some reason, I just assumed that it was semantics. I thought that it was a euphenism for a list of objectives. If he actually meant adding it to the constitution as some kind of addendum, that does put a little different spin on things. I was just thinking about that today. You would have to word it awfully carefully to prevent future constitutional issues. I mean, business people having a guaranteed constitutional right to be protected from unfair competition? Even your fictitious rhubarb farmer might possibly have a case, given that. I still love it. Just depends on how it’s implemented and done.

Lastly, why aren’t people moving to Norway? Ever seen Norwegian? Not sure even Rosetta Stone would help. The weather isn’t a seller either.

Humanitarian ideals shouldn’t be shelved because someone can see a possible loophole that may result in some extreme event. Extreme scenarios can be dealt with legislatively, proactively preferably, or retroactively. Nothing has to be necessarily taken to it’s conclusion but, rather, only so far as positive results warrant a continuation of the policy. Some of those proposals though, like a living wage, seem like a pretty good conclusion to me. No, life isn’t a fairy tale but wealthy economies can make themselves a hellhole through indifference and callousness, or they can be much better than that. There is a choice.

Someone doesn’t deserve the same health care, when it’s needed, because they didn’t work hard enough at their job? What? I buy the idea that some people can’t afford a luxury car, or as nice a tie, or as expensive a pair of shoes. That’s life. I get all that. Not for health care though. That’s one thing that’s completely different. You’re going to tell someone that they can only have one of the two fingers reattached from their accident, or that their chemotherapy will have to be discontinued, or they can’t have that badly needed surgery, because they ran out of money. That’s incomprehensible to me and we’ll have to leave it at that montana. We have very different values on that and there’s no middle ground there.

Private charity does have severe limits. It’s obviously a wonderful thing and it can fill gaps, but there’s only so much it can do. When Social Security first came in, it slashed geriatric poverty to a fraction of what it had been. Where was private charity prior to that? It’s not charity’s fault that it absolutely cannot handle medical care or senior’s support payments on a national scale. It’s not meant for that.