McDonald's to drop employee health coverage

[EPICVIEW]

EB,

Interesting, again I have thankfully not had to really experience our system here....the people around me here int he NY NJ area I would gather have no issue with the quality of treatment... I have friends dealing with cancer sadly and from all accounts treatments have been outstanding.. Sloan Kettering here in this area is amazing ...Like I said I have can think of 5 people in the last two years that have had  to battle cancer ( mostly girls sadly) and each has beaten the odds for now for sure.. so I can only really have my view formed by this..

maybe there is better .. but I will never experience it..

[EPICVIEW]

good article EB...RWJ is a great Hospital newtork..

[El Barto]

I lived in Canada and my wife is a Canadian permanent resident.  Why were friends of mine in their 20's unable to get surgery I could get in a week in the US?  That's an ACL reconstruction, and in Canada he would have had to wait at least a year to get it.  However he was already guilted by the system into believing if he had the surgery he would prevent someone from getting hip surgery.  Why were the news starting to jump on the fact that Canada was increasingly shipping patients to the US for rarer problems in order to save money and ease backups?

The reason is that because they'll make huge amounts of dough, doctors will line up around the block to do orthopedic work in Amerika.  It's a cash cow.  Doctors in Canada don't have the luxury of ass-raping BCBS for $33k a pop, so their aren't nearly as many willing to do the work.

[yorost]

I'm not sure what your point is.

The US can service demand, that is what you want in a system.  That is the benefit of the US system and a problem in many universal systems.  You can't call all doctors here greedy bastards, many of the same people that would become doctors in a universal system become them in a private system.

Some doctors are in it for money, probably a really good percentage here, but if you can't get enough altruistic doctors to satisfy demand, regardless of system, you're going to have to use external motives, such as money, at some point to get enough in.  If you don't, well, you have long lines and people lacking service.

Anyone advocating moving to universal health care should understand we're trading one set of problems for another.  Our system has major problems, but moving to another system isn't going to turn out better simply because it is based on a particular idea.  If you build it badly, it will still have major problems that will need correction.

[El Barto]

You asked very specific questions, which I answered.  My answered weren't intended to be the explanation for why Canada is better than the US. 

[yorost]

Oh, they were just rhetorical.

[Genowyn]

I've never had any of the problems with our healthcare system you're describing, and neither has anyone I've ever met in real life.

[yorost]

Things like longer wait time for tests and surgeries won't be recognized by individuals.  Unless someone is getting the same thing done many times in both countries how could one individual have any meaningful frame of reference to compare from personal experience?

Both my wife and I like the system fine enough.  It very well might be a better system overall compared to what the US has.  What it isn't is a holy grail for US health care.  You can find plenty of internal Canadian criticisms of it and other studies showing its weaknesses.

[El Barto]

With that, I totally agree.  I don't think there is a holy grail, and if there were, our politically charged system would prohibit it anyway. 

What I do think is that our system is pretty seriously screwed up, and that half the people here won't hear of changing it because patriotic arrogance has convinced them that it's the best in the world.  This is unfortunate.  If people could get over the fact that other countries might be doing things much better, maybe we could actually fix some things that are broken.