[bootlegga]

fifeboy fifeboy:

Heard all this before. If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it) than Americans should have the best health care in the world. And that should translate into the best health stats in the world. For some reason it doesn't. The town of Podunk having more MRI's than all of Ontario means little if the good citizens of Podunk don't get any true benefits from them. If Podunk has more air ambulances than Alberta but it's citizens die from accidents at a higher rate than in Alberta who cares. One set of stats is impressive but the one that really counts (what is happening to people) is less so.

+5

Good points all - who cares if there are 20 million MRI scanners person in the USA if large parts of the population can't afford to visit the clinics that operate them?

Besides, the last time Bart posted this kind of stuff, I went through and posted stats noting that many of his numbers were erroneous. Hawaii does NOT have more air ambulances than all of Canada. Many of his other numbers are suspect too.

Basically, if the US health care system was as great as Bart contends, they would have longer lifespans than us, have lower infant mortality and beat us on a number of other critical care factors, but they don't.

As ShepardDog said previously, the US has the best care if you can afford it, and Canada has the best if you live long enough to get care.

Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages - neither one is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The ideal system would be a mix of the two that allowed citizens to access all/many the advantages and eliminate all/many of the disadvantages.

[andyt]

bootlegga bootlegga:

As ShepardDog said previously, the US has the best care if you can afford it, and Canada has the best if you live long enough to get care.

Except that implies that Canadians are dying waiting for care. That's not the case. We could and should do better for waiting times for non-emergency treatment, and before conditions turn into an emergency. Really just takes the political will of the people to hold the govt to account, instead of buying into the bullshit that we can't afford it.

In the US they have cases like the little girl that died because her mom took her to the nearest hospital. Unfortunately, that hospital was not part of her HMO coverage, and Kaiser insisted that she take the girl to one approved by them. By the time they got there, Kaiser saved itself a lot of money, because the little girl was dead.

[fifeboy]

andyt andyt:

Really just takes the political will of the people to hold the govt to account, instead of buying into the bullshit that we can't afford it.

Well said!