You mean I'm not the only one????

Ticomaya wrote:

pachelbel wrote:
It is? Sorry, not eating me up at all, Tico.

Sure it is. The fact that anybody wants to come and live in this country and pursue the "American Dream," pisses you off.

I live in Canada - why should I care if they choose America? America is far easier to get into. You should read what an immigrant has to do to get into Canada. Usually they don't have enough money to qualify, or enough education.

As for the American Dream, you want to go there? We all know how many people are pursuing this 'dream' - the ones who work at Walmart and similar places who will never make quite enough to afford a home. I know plenty of white collar workers who are stretched to the limit, trying to afford their mortgage, college for the kids, car payments, etc. How many couples do you know, where both have to work to make ends meet? Not to mention the high cost of health care in the US. And gas to get to work. Can anyone afford to retire in the US? How much are you paying for health care? The American Dream, my friend, is a myth, as so many immigrants discover.

It would be good to remember that those illegal immigrants are the ones cleaning the toilets in the hotels you stay in, as well as doing all the scut work that Americans find so demeaning.

Quote:
Must be pissing you off, though. You sound very intolerant of 'immigrants' even though your ancestors qualify.

Yes, my ancestors and many of my relatives are immigrants, but my intolerance is reserved for illegal immigrants.

I don't care much for drug dealers and bank robbers either, if you're keeping score at home.

The drugs are coming from south of the border. Bank robbers? You don't have those in America?? Per capita I think America has more of each.

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nimh wrote:

pachelbel wrote:
Who wants to live in wondrous America? The Hispanics who were kicked out? [..]

Who else is beating down the doors to live in America? :wink:

Top Ten of countries of origin of the foreign-born US population, 2004: see here

Eg:

Mexico 9,600,000
China 1,900,000
Phillipines 1,700,000
India 1,600,000
Vietnam 1,200,000
Cuba 1,100,000
El Salvador 1,100,000

Total: 40,500,000

Interestingly enough you omitted, perhaps in consideration of pachy's feelings, Canada from your list. Must be all the money hungry Canuks.

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Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

dadpad wrote:
Finn d'Abuzz wrote:
I suspect that any drop in international tourism rates in America has more to do with the increased security measures since 9/11 than anything else. One needn't care for American foreign policy to enjoy New York City, Yellowstone National Park, or The Grand Canyon.

My opinion is that Americanisms are already exported world wide. Many people dont need to go to the country to immerse its culture. Just turn on the television or go to a shopping center.

What is an "Americanism?"

While it's true that American television programs and American products are a reflections of American culture, to suggest that they represent that culture in its entirety is silly.

Out of curiosity though, what are the centrals themes of American culture than you believe run through all of its television programs and all of its products?

Baseball, hotdogs, applepie and Chevrolet. Elvis, infantile sexual themes, the latest hollywood star (American royalty, sadly), happy endings, must haves, keep up with the Joneses, people with the attention span of a gnat, rampant consumerism, logos, credit cards (can't leave home without it, right?), marketing that is aimed at 2 year olds, propaganda thru TV, I'm sure I'll think of more...... Laughing

or someone else will.....

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pachelbel wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:
pachelbel wrote:
It is? Sorry, not eating me up at all, Tico.

Sure it is. The fact that anybody wants to come and live in this country and pursue the "American Dream," pisses you off.

I live in Canada - why should I care if they choose America?

That's a good question. Why do you care?

Quote:

America is far easier to get into.

Unfortunately that's probably true. We do need to do a better job of securing our borders.

Quote:

You should read what an immigrant has to do to get into Canada. Usually they don't have enough money to qualify, or enough education.

That's because they're all Democrats.

Quote:

As for the American Dream, you want to go there? We all know how many people are pursuing this 'dream' - the ones who work at Walmart and similar places who will never make quite enough to afford a home. I know plenty of white collar workers who are stretched to the limit, trying to afford their mortgage, college for the kids, car payments, etc. How many couples do you know, where both have to work to make ends meet? Not to mention the high cost of health care in the US. And gas to get to work. Can anyone afford to retire in the US? How much are you paying for health care? The American Dream, my friend, is a myth, as so many immigrants discover.

The American Dream, my anti-American neighbor, is being pursued by millions, and many more desire the opportunity to pursue it, but don't have the chance because they don't live here.

Quote:

It would be good to remember that those illegal immigrants are the ones cleaning the toilets in the hotels you stay in, as well as doing all the scut work that Americans find so demeaning.

Why?

Quote:

Quote:
Quote:
Must be pissing you off, though. You sound very intolerant of 'immigrants' even though your ancestors qualify.

Yes, my ancestors and many of my relatives are immigrants, but my intolerance is reserved for illegal immigrants.

I don't care much for drug dealers and bank robbers either, if you're keeping score at home.

The drugs are coming from south of the border. Bank robbers? You don't have those in America?? Per capita I think America has more of each.

Of course we have bank robbers in America. And prostitutes ... and pickpockets ... and quite a few other criminals, just like you do in Canada. And I don't care much for any of them ... because they're criminals.

Are you pretending to be this obtuse?

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Ticomaya- My first cousin briefly considered going to live in Canada---Windsor.

He did some research but was turned off by one finding( He is a health nut). He discovered the following:

SFGate News Web by

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Canada's high court opens door to sale of health insurance
Long wait for care in national system violates rights, it says
Clifford Krauss, New York Times

Friday, June 10, 2005

(06-10) 04:00 PDT Toronto -- Canada's Supreme Court struck down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance Thursday, in a decision that represents an acute blow to the national health care system.

The high court stopped short of declaring Canada's publicly financed health care system unconstitutional, but experts across the legal spectrum said they expect the decision to lead to sweeping changes.

Canada is the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. The Canadian health care system provides free doctor's services that are paid for by taxes. The public has strongly supported the system, which is broadly identified with the Canadian national character.

But in recent years, patients have been forced to wait long periods for diagnostic tests and elective surgery, while the wealthy and well-connected either have sought care in the United States or have used influence to jump medical lines.

The Supreme Court found that waiting lists have become so long that they violate patients' right to "life and personal security, inviolability and freedom" under the Quebec charter of human rights and freedoms, which covers about one-quarter of Canada's population.

"The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care," the Supreme Court ruled. "In sum, the prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services."

"The language of the ruling will encourage more and more lawsuits, and those suits have a greater likelihood of success in light of this judgment," said Lorne Sossin, acting dean of the University of Toronto law school.

Patrick Monahan, dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto and a critic of the national health care system, was even more emphatic.

"They are going to have to change the fundamental design of the system," he said. "They will have to build in an element of timely care or otherwise allow the development of a private medical system."

The case was brought by Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal family doctor who argued his own case through the courts, and George Zeliotis, a chemical salesman who was forced to wait a year for a hip replacement while he was prohibited from paying privately for surgery. Chaoulli and Zeliotis lost in two Quebec provincial courts before the Supreme Court decided to take their appeal.

At a news conference, Chaoulli predicted the decision will eventually apply to all Canada. "How could you imagine that Quebeckers may live," he asked, "and the English Canadian has to die?"

There was no immediate impact on the national system outside Quebec, since the justices split 3-3 on the question of whether the province's ban on private medical insurance violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada's bill of rights, as the two plaintiffs contended. However, experts predicted the decision will have widespread importance.

Margaret Somerville, professor of law and medicine at McGill University, said the ruling "is extremely important" in large part because "the provinces that want to run some form of a complementary private system would probably be able to do so now."

Alberta provincial officials have long suggested that they wanted to develop a private health care system, while private diagnostic and special surgery clinics have been cropping up in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario in recent years.

The federal government has threatened to hold back financial aid to provinces that press ahead with private health care, but Somerville said it will be less likely to do so now.

Prime Minister Paul Martin responded to the decision by saying that his government is making progress in shortening waiting times for medical services.

"What today's decision does do, however, is accentuate just how important it is to act immediately, how urgent this situation is," he said.

But he rejected the notion that the ruling will bring about fundamental change. "We are not going to have a two-tier health care system in this country," Martin said. "Nobody wants that. What we want to do is to strengthen the public health care system."

************************************************************

I understand that there were only three countries in the world which did not allow privately financed purchases of medical insurance-

CUBA

NORTH KOREA

AND

CANADA

CANADA? No thanks!!!!!

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Bernie,

No decision has been made yet about the two tier system for all of Canada.

Unlike America, each province has the right to decide if it wants this system in addition to our national healthcare. It is supposed to relieve wait times in the more crowded Canadian cities. Some provinces, such as Alberta, have clinics that just do hip surgery via the tier system, but you can get hip replacement at no cost if you want to wait a few weeks/months. In smaller towns such as I live in there are no wait times.
I pay no co-pay. I pay no deductible. We receive massage, acupuncture and physical therapy at no extra charge as long as we are referred.

I know millions of Americans are without any medical insurance. All Canadians have health coverage. It's in our Constitution. I'm glad you'd choose America over Canada, Bernie. You can pay the $800 + per month when you retire for mediocre health care, and that's probably cheap.

I have encountered the HMO's in the States and I can tell you - I'd choose the Canadian healthcare over HMO, or expensive Blue Cross crappola.

My health care costs a little over a $1,000 a YEAR for a couple. The scale adjusts according to income and age. And yours? Laughing

BTW: there's a thread somewhere on this forum about Canadians being healthier than Americans.......I'll look it up.......

I also read today that many Americans are too fat to get x-rays! Geez.

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read it and weep, Bernie.

Published on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 by Reuters
Canadians Healthier Than Americans - Study by Maggie Fox

Despite complaints about long waits for services, Canadians are healthier than their U.S. neighbors and receive more consistent medical care, according to a report released on Tuesday.

A telephone survey of more than 8,000 people showed that even though Americans spend nearly twice as much per capita for health care, they have more trouble getting care and have more unmet health needs than Canadians do.

The survey was done by Harvard Medical School researchers who include members of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a national health program in the United States.

"These findings raise serious questions about what we're getting for the $2.1 trillion we're spending on health care this year," said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard.

"We pay almost twice what Canada does for care, more than $6,000 for every American, yet Canadians are healthier, and live two to three years longer," Himmelstein added in a statement.

"Canadians had better access to most types of medical care (with the single exception of pap smears)," Himmelstein and colleagues wrote in the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health.

"Canadians were 7 percent more likely to have a regular doctor and 19 percent less likely to have an unmet health need. U.S. respondents were almost twice as likely to go without a needed medicine due to cost (9.9 percent of U.S. respondents couldn't afford medicine versus 5.1 percent in Canada)," they added.

UNMET NEEDS

"After taking into account income, age, sex, race and immigrant status, Canadians were 33 percent more likely to have a regular doctor and 27 percent less likely to have an unmet health need."

The researchers analyzed data from a telephone survey of 3,505 Canadian and 5,103 U.S. adults.

They wanted to see if there were any differences in health between Canadians, who have a tax-supported national health care system, and Americans, whose health care largely depends on private insurers, employers or the free market, with older Americans and the very poor cared for by Medicare, Medicaid and other joint federal-state health insurance plans.

The researchers found that U.S. residents had higher rates of diabetes, arthritis, chronic lung disease, high blood pressure and obesity.

"Most of what we hear about the Canadian health care system is negative; in particular, the long waiting times for medical procedures," Dr. Karen Lasser an instructor of medicine at Harvard who worked on the study, said in a statement.

"But we found that waiting times affect few patients, only 3.5 percent of Canadians versus 0.7 percent of people in the U.S. No one ever talks about the fact that low-income and minority patients fare better in Canada," she added.

"Based on our findings, if I had to choose between the two systems for my patients, I would choose the Canadian system hands down."

The researchers said the study population was representative of 206 million U.S. adults and 24 million Canadian adults but noted that only half the Americans contacted took part in the survey, and 60 percent of the Canadians.

©2006 Reuters
Laughing

too bad, Bernie. Canada looks better all the time! Laughing

Keep on reading your anti-national health care propaganda. Gotta run - got a doc's appt. :wink:

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Highest per capita rate
Cool

from wikipedia: Canada:
The highest per capita immigration rate in the world
In 2001, 250,640 people immigrated to Canada. Based on the Canada 2001 Census total population of 30,007,094 people, immigration represented 0.834% population growth that year. On a compounded basis, that immigration rate represents 8.7% population growth over 10 years, or 23.1% over 25 years (or 6.9 million people). This excludes the future children of those immigrants born in Canada, who, while also contributing to population growth, would not be immigrants. Since the 2001, immigration has ranged between 221,352 and 262,236 immigrants per annum. According to Canada's Immigration Program (October 2004) Canada has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world. The three main official reasons given for this are:

A. The social component - Canada facilitates family reunification.
B. The humanitarian component - Relating to refugees.
C. The economic component - Attracting immigrants who will contribute economically and fill labour market needs.
Immigrant population growth is disproportionally concentrated in or near large cities (particularly Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal). These cities are experiencing the strains that accompany strong population growth. Most of the provinces that do not have one of those destination cities have implemented strategies to try to boost their share of immigration.

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, under the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec has sole responsibility for selecting most immigrants destined to the province. Quebec has been admitting about the same number of immigrants as the number choosing to immigrate to British Columbia even though its population is almost twice as large.

Very Happy

Sorry Tico & Bernhardt. People aren't banging on America's doors. The humanitarian component seems to influence the decision to go north, as well as other factors.
I know, it's a blow to discover that America isn't the primary immigration destination. Folks around the planet just don't appreciate the American Dream and Way of Life :wink:

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Ticomaya wrote:

A minor, and largely insignificant, correction: Those are the numbers for 2010.

Quite right, thank you. Pachelbel, click the link and look at the column to the left of the one I quoted to find the numbers for 2004.

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

Interestingly enough you omitted, perhaps in consideration of pachy's feelings, Canada from your list.

Err.. I listed countries in order of number of immigrants, and stopped at 1,000,000. Seemed like a nice round number.

But yes, Pachelbel, also-rans are the Dominican Republic (thats the one that made me decide to stop at 1,000,000, actually - too long a name and I was tired of typing), at 941,000; Canada, at 920,000; and Korea, at 880,000.

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pachelbel wrote:

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:
Out of curiosity though, what are the centrals themes of American culture than you believe run through all of its television programs and all of its products?

Baseball, hotdogs, applepie and Chevrolet. Elvis, infantile sexual themes, the latest hollywood star (American royalty, sadly), happy endings, must haves, keep up with the Joneses, people with the attention span of a gnat, rampant consumerism, logos, credit cards (can't leave home without it, right?), marketing that is aimed at 2 year olds, propaganda thru TV, I'm sure I'll think of more...... or someone else will.....

Whoa, I think my (Dutch) mother and her ancestors can lay claim to applepie much more than Americans (must be their cultural imperialism! Laughing

) and hotdogs is just a "polictically rectified" (just like "freedom fries") word for Frankfurter sausage (which as the name indicates came from Germany). And wasn't keeping up with the Joneses invented by the class-conscious British?

Now if I were to consider American cultural influences that I observe here it would include rampant consumerism and fast food (both short term materialist goals), a focus on the superficial (the wrapping sells more than the content, special effects before depth of plot, cosmetic surgery and reality TV), an obsession with pubescent sex and with crime (nudity is sex (nipplegate!), sex is evil and (armed) criminals are heroes (gansta rap!)), a total disregard for those who do not win and, finally, a tendency to oversimplify complex issues and make them into black and white matters where there is no middle ground (i.e. the place where organisations like the UN can operate) leading to an inability to accept dissenting views ("they do/see things differently and therefore they do/see it wrong", "You are either with us, or with the terrorrists").

I guess that if I think hard I can come up with some more. One must add the footnote, though, that such tendencies exist in many cultures, but they do not have the means of transmission that the American economy and popular culture have.

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Quote:

Now if we could just get them to stop immigrating.

LOL!

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Good list, Paaskynen

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Pachelbel-- Your own supreme court severly critiqued the medical system in Canada. Do you know the case? The men who sued were SUFFERING from debilitating but non-terminal illnesses and they were unable to get a Physican to look at them in a timely manner. There can be no greater critique of the Canadian Medical System than this.

FROM THE CANADIAN SUPREME COURT--

(06-10) 04:00 PDT Toronto -- Canada's Supreme Court struck down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance Thursday, in a decision that represents an acute blow to the national health care system.

The high court stopped short of declaring Canada's publicly financed health care system unconstitutional, but experts across the legal spectrum said they expect the decision to lead to sweeping changes.

Canada is the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. The Canadian health care system provides free doctor's services that are paid for by taxes. The public has strongly supported the system, which is broadly identified with the Canadian national character.

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BernardR wrote:

Pachelbel-- Your own supreme court severly critiqued the medical system in Canada. Do you know the case? The men who sued were SUFFERING from debilitating but non-terminal illnesses and they were unable to get a Physican to look at them in a timely manner. There can be no greater critique of the Canadian Medical System than this.

FROM THE CANADIAN SUPREME COURT--

(06-10) 04:00 PDT Toronto -- Canada's Supreme Court struck down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance Thursday, in a decision that represents an acute blow to the national health care system.

The high court stopped short of declaring Canada's publicly financed health care system unconstitutional, but experts across the legal spectrum said they expect the decision to lead to sweeping changes.

Canada is the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. The Canadian health care system provides free doctor's services that are paid for by taxes. The public has strongly supported the system, which is broadly identified with the Canadian national character.

As I said in my previous post, the larger cities encounter wait times. That is not to say that everyone has a wait time; as the article I pasted points out, wait times are mainly for new patients. I have discussed with my friends here in Canada whether they have had to wait for any procedures. The answer is no, and they don't know of anyone who has had to wait. Canada is addressing the issue you allude to above in your quote by letting each province decide if they want to have the option of private insurance along with national health care.

You are mistaken; the province of Alberta does have the two tier system/private insurance that is available if people can't or don't want to wait. But then, Alberta is a wealthy province due to the oil exports and I imagine Albertans can afford private insurance along with national health care.

You're taking a handful of people and trying to make the entire system seem unworkable.

The point is - Canada is adjusting to increased demands on its system - we get immigrants too and have only 30 million or so living in this huge country; California has 38 million people. At least Canada does provide healthcare to its citizens which is much more than the US does, Bernie.

Would a hospital take you if you had no insurance? Call one up and see.

A friend of mine in New York had a brain aneurysm and could not get operated on because he had no insurance. We're talking about a life threatening illness. He finally got a doctor to operate on him, but by then the damage had been done; he's now blind in one eye. "Promote the general welfare' is in your constitution, isn't it? What happened here, and in countless other cases in the US?

Medi-Caid/Medi-Cal, whatever it is called in the States is only available if you own absolutely nothing. Many people in the US can't afford insurance but they fall between the cracks because they don't qualify for MediCaid either -

What your country spends on bombs and WMD's would buy insurance for every man, woman and child in the US. Whare are your priorities?

Also - Canadians can go anywhere in Canada - except Quebec - for treatment. I live in BC but went to Alberta (different province) for a medical procedure because the facility has an excellent world famous staff. The cost to me? Zero. Canada pays for plane or ferry to get to a specialist as well, if one is not in your area. Does the US do that?

Now, if you compare that with what you don't get in the States, go for it.
You need to address your problems there with lack of affordable medical care. As I said, you have no experience with Canadian health care, so talk about what you know.

I have no problem with my health care provider and feel I am receiving excellent care. So do my friends. I do not know of anyone where I live who has had to wait.

Given the choice and what I do know first hand of US medical care, having been on the receiving end, I'll take Canadian any day.

Medical care is a basic human need. At least Canada is trying to meet that need.

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Bernhardt, is this the story you are referring to?

Top court strikes down Quebec private health-care ban
Last Updated Thu, 09 Jun 2005 21:33:36 EDT
CBC News
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that the Quebec government cannot prevent people from paying for private insurance for health-care procedures covered under medicare.

In a 4-3 decision, the panel of seven justices said banning private insurance for a list of services ranging from MRI tests to cataract surgery was unconstitutional under the Quebec Charter of Rights, given that the public system has failed to guarantee patients access to those services in a timely way.

Rolling Eyes

Are you aware that Quebec has different laws from the rest of Canada? They have different immigration laws as well. In discussing Quebec the Supreme Court is ruling against Quebec banning private insurance, not all of Canada. The Quebec Charter of Rights is not the same as the other provinces in Canada. Thus, that is why Alberta has its own rules, etc. and can have private or two tier system if the citizens of Alberta want it thus.

Do you know all the Canadian provinces? Do you know how Canadian government works? Cool

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Do you know how the US government works?

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Here, this article might help you understand Canada's objectives when it comes to health care:

PROV - Top ten reasons against two-tier medicine in Canada: We should not run a wealth-care system for essential care
Print this page | News Home | News Archives

(Mar 13, 2006) -
March 13, 2006 - The Alberta government is proposing to allow doctors work in both the public and the private tiers.

They plan to create a two-tier system where people can pay doctors more to receive quicker treatment and can buy private insurance to cover these services.

They are doing so, they say, because the Supreme Court's Chaoulli decision has opened up the possibilities for more private funding of the system.

Here are the top ten reasons, based on the best research evidence, why Canadians should resist a two-tier system.

10. The Supreme Court decision in Chaoulli only looked at the Quebec law preventing the purchase of private health insurance. It did not strike down the law stopping doctors working in both the public and the private sectors nor did it speak to any law in any other province.

Many countries (e.g. Sweden) and nearly all provinces protect the public system by way of laws preventing doctors being paid both publicly and privately for essential services. The majority judgment in Chaoulli said that the law preventing doctors working in both the public and the private sectors is important to ensure the viability of the public system.

The Quebec government agrees with this and in its proposals is keeping this important law.

Thus the Alberta government is wrong to say that the Chaoulli decision either requires or enables them to allow doctors to work both public and private.

9. More private funding will not improve the sustainability of our system. Countries in which private spending is high spend more in total on health care, not less. The U.S. already spends more public dollars per person than Canada does, but leaves 48 million Americans uninsured. They don't get much more for all this extra spending, but they do pay higher prices for what they get.

8. We have a shortage of doctors and nurses. Most developed countries do. Wealthier provinces are luring doctors from poorer provinces. This problem will be exacerbated if doctors are allowed to top up their public sector incomes by doing less difficult work for higher rates of private pay.

If you were a doctor, wouldn't you? Doctors will spend more and more time in the private system.

In New Zealand, where doctors are allowed to do this, specialists spend less than 49 per cent of their time in public hospitals; the rest of the time they are working in their private clinics.

7. Countries that allow doctors to work in both the public and the private sectors at the same time have long wait lists, e.g. United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain. Why copy them?

European countries like the Netherlands and Germany are different, as they require the wealthy to fully insure themselves by buying private insurance and, even so, there is a lot of regulation preventing inequities. For example, in the Netherlands there is a law that doctors are paid the same fee by private insurers as they are by public insurers -- so they have no incentive to give better treatment to private patients. If Alberta is to have a fair system then it must enact a similar law.

6. In countries that have two-tier systems, only a relatively small percentage of the population holds private health insurance (for example 11.4 per cent of U.K. citizens); typically the wealthiest buy insurance.

In other words, the vast majority of Canadians would not benefit from being able to buy private health insurance as either they will not qualify for it, or they won't be able to afford the premiums.

5. From the perspective of a private insurance company, if you are on a waiting list you do not have an insurable risk. You don't have a risk of disease or illness, you have the disease or illness -- current needs that must be met. If you can't pay cash, the public system is your only option. People presently on wait lists will not be helped by privatization unless they can pay cash.

4. Don't buy the baloney that Canadian medicare is in league with communist states like Cuba and North Korea. We are third in the world in terms of the contribution of private health insurance to the funding of our system. Physicians are not employed by the state and hospitals are not owned by the state.

We already have more private financing and private delivery than many other developed countries. The real question is whether privatizing insurance for essential hospital and physician services will make our system better or worse.

NAFTA requires that we must compensate U.S.-based private insurers for denying them access to Canadian "markets" if we subsequently change our mind about the benefits of two-tier insurance.

2. Governments and health-care providers can fix wait lists. Together they have been able to achieve extraordinary improvements, for example, in cardiac care treatments in Ontario and with respect to hip and knee services in Alberta. There is now little or no waiting for diagnosis and treatment; most of these gains have been achieved as a result of better coordination of existing resources and talent. We can and will do it in other areas. We don't need a third way.

1. And the top reason why we shouldn't allow private health insurance for essential services?

Access to essential care should be based on need and not ability to pay. If resources are constricted we should revisit what is essential but not allow a two-tier system for what are core services.

We should run a health-care, not a wealth-care system, for essential care.

Cool

Notice the paragraph about NAFTA? Now you begin to see how it DOES NOT benefit Canada.

Colleen M. Flood, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, University of Toronto

Terrence Sullivan, President Cancer Care Ontario

Steven Lewis, President, Access Consulting Limited, Saskatoon

Noralou Roos, Canada Research Chair in Population Health Research, University of Manitoba

Dr. Tom Noseworthy, Director, Centre for Health and Policy Studies, Calgary

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Paaskynen wrote:

pachelbel wrote:
Finn d'Abuzz wrote:
Out of curiosity though, what are the centrals themes of American culture than you believe run through all of its television programs and all of its products?

Baseball, hotdogs, applepie and Chevrolet. Elvis, infantile sexual themes, the latest hollywood star (American royalty, sadly), happy endings, must haves, keep up with the Joneses, people with the attention span of a gnat, rampant consumerism, logos, credit cards (can't leave home without it, right?), marketing that is aimed at 2 year olds, propaganda thru TV, I'm sure I'll think of more...... or someone else will.....

Whoa, I think my (Dutch) mother and her ancestors can lay claim to applepie much more than Americans (must be their cultural imperialism!) and hotdogs is just a "polictically rectified" (just like "freedom fries") word for Frankfurter sausage (which as the name indicates came from Germany). And wasn't keeping up with the Joneses invented by the class-conscious British?

Now if I were to consider American cultural influences that I observe here it would include rampant consumerism and fast food (both short term materialist goals), a focus on the superficial (the wrapping sells more than the content, special effects before depth of plot, cosmetic surgery and reality TV), an obsession with pubescent sex and with crime (nudity is sex (nipplegate!), sex is evil and (armed) criminals are heroes (gansta rap!)), a total disregard for those who do not win and, finally, a tendency to oversimplify complex issues and make them into black and white matters where there is no middle ground (i.e. the place where organisations like the UN can operate) leading to an inability to accept dissenting views ("they do/see things differently and therefore they do/see it wrong", "You are either with us, or with the terrorrists").

I guess that if I think hard I can come up with some more. One must add the footnote, though, that such tendencies exist in many cultures, but they do not have the means of transmission that the American economy and popular culture have.

That's rather odd, not a single uplifting or sublime influence. Sort of brings your objectivity into question wouldn't you say?

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BernardR wrote:

Do you know how the US government works?

Yes. Are we talking about how governments work or about medical systems? I just posted a few interesting articles for you.

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That's strange. After reading some of your other posts, I rather thought that you were an expert on all things from the USA.

But, first of all, you are apparently unaware that, by law, no Hospital in the US can turn away anyone in need of care.

And, no matter what the location, the Canadian Supreme Court still found that the system was broken since it did not allow people to purchase their own medical insurance. The article was clear. There were only three countries in which one could not buy one's own medical insurance--\

CUBA, NORTH KOREA AND CANADA.

That's an interesting grouping!!!!!

But, I must say that I love to shop in Canada. Because the Canadians do not know how to handle their economy, the US dollar at present purchases $1.13 Canadian Dollars.

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You mean I'm not the only one????

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