AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Well for sure Obama is in a tight spot. He can either enrage the large part of freedom loving Americans who don't want socialism, including socialized medicine, or he can enrage the far left radical loonies of his party that he depends on to keep him in office. Tough choice.

SASKATOON " The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jbjzPEY0Y3bvRD335rGu_Z3KXoQw

Canada's population is slightly more than 10% of ours. They aren't advocating an American system, but if they are having so many problems on that small a scale, multiply that 10 times over to see the problems trying to put a population the size of ours under a system similar to that.

Something between 10 to 20% of the US population is currently on Medicare and the program is out of money and we are fast approaching a financial crisis on that one program alone. But those 'caring' folks on the Left want to put the remaining 80% at risk too.

Sorry, but to me that's looney.

For the past two years, the successive presidents of the powerful Canadian Medical Association have hailed from private enterprise, physicians who operated lucrative private medical clinics and openly espoused the need for more private care in the country's publicly funded health-care system.

But Brian Day is back working as an orthopedic surgeon at Cambie Medical Surgery Centre in Vancouver and, on Wednesday, Robert Ouellet will return full time to running five private imaging clinics in suburban Montreal.

Stepping into the role of CMA president will be someone from a very different background: Anne Doig is a family physician in Saskatoon who has operated solely in the public system for more than three decades.

The assumption, therefore, is that Dr. Doig's views will be diametrically opposed to those of her outspoken predecessors, but she refuses to be pigeon-holed.

“If I say my views are not markedly different from my predecessors that will be the headline. If I say my views are markedly different, that will be the headline.

“Here's the headline I want to see: Let's stop looking at the private/public care issue as an either/or question. We have to improve patient care. Period.” [... ... ...]

Great approval ratings for Medicare? You're kidding of course.

Indeed, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found 62 percent of Americans expressing support for "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans." Other pollsters describing the public option as "government administered" and "similar to Medicare" gauged even more positive reactions: 67 percent in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in April and 72 percent in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll.

So if Americans live in fear of government intrusion into health care, why does likening the public option to Medicare make reform more popular?

Consider some results obtained by the same Kaiser tracking poll. When asked how much they trust various health care players "to put your interests above their own," respondents rank doctors (78 percent trust "a lot" or "some") and nurses (74 percent) at the top of the list.

Among those insured through Medicare, however, "the Medicare program" (68 percent) scores nearly as high. Among those with private insurance, "your health insurance company" earns much less trust (48 percent).

Perhaps that result is just about perceptions of corporate interests and not about patient experience?

Approval ratings for a program that is threatening to bankrupt the nation in the near future? A program that was forced on the people and now can't be dismantled without causing extreme suffering?

If the insurance company loses enough money, it goes bankrupt.
So does the government, but the government doesn't lose its own money. It loses ours, and has the power to demand more and more of it just the same.

Foxfyre wrote:

If the insurance company loses enough money, it goes bankrupt.
So does the government, but the government doesn't lose its own money. It loses ours, and has the power to demand more and more of it just the same.

I should think that insurance companies don't loose their own money but that of their members. And when they do so, they demand more and more ...

Foxfyre wrote:

If the insurance company loses enough money, it goes bankrupt.
So does the government, but the government doesn't lose its own money. It loses ours, and has the power to demand more and more of it just the same.

I should think that insurance companies don't loose their own money but that of their members. And when they do so, they demand more and more ...

Foxfyre wrote:

If the insurance company loses enough money, it goes bankrupt.
So does the government, but the government doesn't lose its own money. It loses ours, and has the power to demand more and more of it just the same.

I should think that insurance companies don't loose their own money but that of their members. And when they do so, they demand more and more ...

If the insurance company 'demands' more premium than I feel is worth it to be relieved of whatever risk, I don't buy the insurance. So, the insurance company has to keep the premium low enough to be affordable and 'worth it' to the policy holder, and more especially low enough to compete with other insurance companies who also want my premium dollars.

BUT IF the Republicans now run on a platform to impeach Obama, AND IF they obtain a two-thirds majority in the House in the 2010 election as a consequence, THEN when the Congress reconvenes in January 2011 with the Republican tw0-thirds majority, there will be enough votes in the House to impeach Obama.

If the insurance company 'demands' more premium than I feel is worth it to be relieved of whatever risk, I don't buy the insurance. So, the insurance company has to keep the premium low enough to be affordable and 'worth it' to the policy holder, and more especially low enough to compete with other insurance companies who also want my premium dollars. It is the dual factor of the maximum amount the market will bear and the competition between competing interests that keeps insurance as affordable as it is. If insurance became truly unaffordable, no insurance company could afford to offer it.