The Border Line

By Canadian

May 9, 2008 6:41 PM | Link to this

Great idea. Build it so the US isolates itself from the rest of the world once and forever.

By Campbell

May 9, 2008 7:25 PM | Link to this

A fence does not prevent people from going from one country to another. There are legal ports of entry in every country. The purpose of the fence is to prevent illegal entry. Fences and locks are for honest men.

By JERRY JOBES

May 10, 2008 8:43 AM | Link to this

If we are still a soverign nation in 2012, Tancredo president.

By anthony pace

May 12, 2008 12:46 AM | Link to this

As a Canadian, please make sure the fence hasa small holes in it. We would appreciate the guns smuggled in from the USA being blocked. Also, please remember to cut holes for our oil pipelines as forgetting this would cripple your coutry. P.S. How many Canadians do you have on your corners looking for work?

By anthony pace

May 12, 2008 12:46 AM | Link to this

As a Canadian, please make sure the fence has small holes in it. We would appreciate the guns smuggled in from the USA being blocked. Also, please remember to cut holes for our oil pipelines as forgetting this would cripple your coutry. P.S. How many Canadians do you have on your corners looking for work?

By Paul

May 12, 2008 6:54 PM | Link to this

Sounds like a great plan. Hopefully it will keep morons like Tancredo out of Canada.

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 6:22 AM | Link to this

[‘P.S. How many Canadians do you have on your corners looking for work?’] They’re too buisy waiting in a very long line for “free healthcare” in Canada.

With ‘universal’ health care, we all wait Link - http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56522 With ‘universal’ health care, we all wait
[‘As the primaries loom closer, we can expect the Democratic presidential hopefuls to start singing their usual sanctimonious song about the health care system. You probably know the lines:

40 million citizens turned down;
No insurance to go around;
Emergency wards on hold;
Poor kicked out in the cold.;
America … immoral … immoral … immoral!

Taking their cue from Michael Moore, these do-gooder Democrats are also sure to sing the praises of Canada’s health care system.

But I’m here to tell you their song sheet has some serious omissions – somehow they fail to mention the brain-drain, the bloated bureaucracy and a waiting lists so long it has become a driveway to the morgue.

Big government advocates tell us Canada’s system is public, accessible and free. And many Canadians believe them. In fact, some stake their national identity on it. It is, we are told, what distinguishes Canadians from the brute reality that is American individualism.

Raisa Deber, a professor at the University of Toronto, says Canada’s system is one of the world’s finest. “I don’t understand how [the U.S.] got to this worship of markets, to the extent that they’re perfectly happy that some people don’t get the health care that they need.”

Granted, Canadians have swallowed this medicine like some kind of metaphorical aphrodisiac. It helps some of us feel superior and certainly makes for fantastic fabrication, not to mention huge box-office sales for a guy like Michael Moore, but take it from real Canadians: state-controlled health care doesn’t work. (to be continued)

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 6:26 AM | Link to this

(continued; With ‘universal’ health care, we all wait)

Jane Pelton lives in Ottawa. She has a teenage daughter, Emily, who tore a ligament in her knee. Her case sheds some very sad light on Canada’s health care system. Pelton was told that her daughter would have to wait three years before the country’s “free and accessible” system could provide the necessary surgery. “Every day we’re paying for health care, yet when we go to access it, it’s just not there,” said Pelton.

That gets us to one of the salient points. The finances.

For a system that’s supposedly “free,” Canadians sure pay a lot. The average Canadian family pays about 50 percent of its income in taxes each year, of which the lion’s share goes to health care. In tangible terms, that’s $3,300 for every man, woman and child. And that, in turn, works out to about 10 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Comparatively, the U.S. spends more – about 14 percent of its GDP. But when you consider that the U.S. has 300 million people compared to Canada’s 30 million, and that health care expenditures in Canada topped $100 billion in 2001 alone, you know what the real sicko is: Canada’s health care system.

Ms. Pelton did what every good mother would – she jumped the queue. She spent $3,300 to fly her daughter to a private clinic for the arthroscopic surgery. That amount for immediate surgery sounds like nothing, I know. But in Canada, it is against the law to use your own money to bypass the waiting list and get private treatment.

And that is why a landmark lawsuit was filed against 12 Quebec hospitals in 2004 on behalf of breast-cancer patients who were forced to take “patience” to new levels. They were forced to find treatment abroad, because they weren’t allowed to pay for private treatment in Canada. One woman flew to Turkey, and another – who had been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer – traveled to Vermont on a four-hour bus trip every week with her 5-year-old son to get access to her treatment.

“The experience was humiliating,” she said.

Waiting for treatment has become the hallmark of – and really the only truly universal thing about – Canada’s “universal” health care system. And it underscores the pervasive injustice of the system, because we are told that “two-tiered” health care will create unfair advantages for the rich.

As far as I can see, there are serious flaws in building a health care system on the principle of envy. And it underscores one of the main differences between our two systems. In America, some uninsured patients get turned away; that is unfortunate. In Canada, everyone is put on a waiting list until they either leave the country for their treatment or die waiting.

And that’s no joke.

As a letter from a hospital in New Brunswick to a heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram made clear, the appointment would be at least three months off. And the letter added this rather opaque line: “However, if the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies.”

There is something very unjust about not being able to pay for treatment when you live in a supposedly advanced country and you have the means to pay for the treatment yourself. (to be continued)

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 6:43 AM | Link to this

[‘P.S. How many Canadians do you have on your corners looking for work?’]
They’re not here looking for work, they’re here looking for medical help.

(continued; With ‘universal’ health care, we all wait)

As for the presidential primaries, it is also immoral to be talking about making 260 million people who can afford their own insurance suffer potential health care hardship so that 40 million can be signed on to a big collective waiting list.’]

Link - http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56522

Free Health Care?
Link - http://www.cato.org/pubdisplay.php?pubid=2753

[‘Let’s start out by not quibbling with America’s socialists’ false claim health-care service is a human right regardless of ability to pay and that it should be free.

Before we buy into this socialist agenda, we might check out just what happens when health-care services are “free.” Let’s look at our neighbor to the north — Canada.

Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. More by Walter E. Williams

The Fraser Institute, a Vancouver, B.C.-based think tank, has done yeoman work keeping track of Canada’s socialized health-care system. It has just come out with its 13th annual waiting-list survey. It shows the average time a patient waited between referral from a general practitioner to treatment rose from 16.5 weeks in 2001-02 to 17.7 weeks in 2003. Saskatchewan had the longest average waiting time of nearly 30 weeks, while Ontario had the shortest, 14 weeks.

(to be continued)

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 6:46 AM | Link to this

(continued; Free Health Care?)

Waiting lists also exist for diagnostic procedures such as computer tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. Depending on province and diagnostic procedure, the wait can range from two to 24 weeks.

As reported in a December 2003 article by Kerri Houston for the Frontiers of Freedom Institute titled “Access denied: Canada’s health-care system turns patients into victims”, in some cases, patients die on the waiting list because they become too sick to tolerate a procedure. Miss Houston says hip-replacement patients often end up non-ambulatory while waiting an average of 20 weeks, and that’s after waiting 13 weeks just to see the specialist. The wait to get diagnostic scans followed by the wait for the radiologist to read them just might explain why Cleveland, Ohio, became Canada’s hip-replacement center.

Adding to Canada’s medical problems is the exodus of doctors. According to a March 2003 story in Canada News, about 10,000 doctors left Canada in the 1990s. Compounding that exodus is the drop in medical school graduates. According to Miss Houston, Ontario has turned to nurses to replace its bolting doctors. It is “creating” 369 new nurse practitioner positions to take up the doctor shortage.’]

[‘Some patients avoided long waits for medical services by paying for private treatment. In 2003, British Columbia enacted Bill 82, an “Amendment to Strengthen Legislation and Protect Patients.” On its face, Bill 82 is to “protect patients from inadvertent billing errors.” That’s on its face. But according to a January 2004 article by Nadeem Esmail for the Fraser Institute’s Forum and titled “Oh to be a prisoner,” Bill 82 would disallow anyone from paying the clinical fees for private surgery, where previously only patients were forbidden to do so. The bill also empowers the government to levy fines of up to $20,000 on physicians who accept these fees or allow such a practice. That means it is now against Canadian law to opt out of the health-care system and pay for your own surgery.

Health care can have a zero price to the user, but that doesn’t mean it’s free or has a zero cost. The problem with a good or service having a zero price is that demand will exceed supply.

When price isn’t allowed to make demand equal supply, other measures must be taken. One way to distribute the demand is by queuing — making people wait. Another is to have a medical czar who decides who is eligible, under what conditions, for a particular procedure — for example, no hip replacement or renal dialysis for people over 70 or no heart transplants for smokers.

I’m wondering just how many Americans would like Canada’s long waiting lists, medical czars deciding what treatments we get and an exodus of doctors.’]

By George

May 14, 2008 9:28 AM | Link to this

thanks for the info.

By James Ryan

May 14, 2008 2:59 PM | Link to this

The fact is we do ration healthcare - if you don’t have any money or insurance you don’t get treated except through the emergency room - longterm problems, chronic problems - too bad for you and too bad for the hospitals which have to absorb all those extra costs to treat the flu in the emergency room. What seems to bug Americans the most about Canadian (and indeed any govt. run health plan) is that the real cost aspect is simply not hidden - there is a real cost/benefit analysis working - so, kids get treated first, then people up to the age of about 70 and then people over 60. You are right - over 70 hard choices get made - and I’ve got news for you - if you can afford private care to get a hip replacement you can afford to take a flight to the US. However, because so much of the population gets regular healthcare the societal cost is significantly less than that paid in the US. RE: 50% tax rate - when you count all the local, state and federal taxes in the US, the marginal rate here is 46% - not much difference.

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 3:37 PM | Link to this

The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
[‘Socialized medicine has meant rationed care and lack of innovation. Small wonder Canadians are looking to the market.

Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.

When Aucoin appealed to an official ombudsman, the Ontario government claimed that her treatment was unproven and that she had gone to an unaccredited clinic. But the FDA in the U.S. had approved Erbitux, and her clinic was a cancer center affiliated with a prominent Catholic hospital in Buffalo. This January, the ombudsman ruled in Aucoin’s favor, awarding her the cost of treatment. She represents a dramatic new trend in Canadian health-care advocacy: finding the treatment you need in another country, and then fighting Canadian bureaucrats (and often suing) to get them to pick up the tab.

But if Canadians are looking to the United States for the care they need, Americans, ironically, are increasingly looking north for a viable health-care model. There’s no question that American health care, a mixture of private insurance and public programs, is a mess. Over the last five years, health-insurance premiums have more than doubled, leaving firms like General Motors on the brink of bankruptcy. Expensive health care has also hit workers in the pocketbook:’]

This is a long article, if you’re interested in the rest of the article click;
Link - http://www.city-journal.org/html/173canadian_healthcare.html The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care by David Gratzer, City Journal Summer 2007

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 4:11 PM | Link to this

Some folks still cling to the idea that “Universal Health Care” is a bad plan that’s too damn expensive. Still there are others who still cling to the archaic notion that individuals are responsible for themselves, not an all-powerful nanystate.

[‘UHC is bogus and resolves NO problem, just creates more. Canadian doc on UHC: “…Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the health-care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,” he fumed to the New York Times, “and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. Day’s clinic, for instance, handles workers’-compensation cases for employees of both public and private corporations. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80 percent of government-funded diagnostic testing. In Ontario, where fealty to socialized medicine has always been strong, the government recently hired a private firm to staff a rural hospital’s emergency room.

(to be continued)

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 4:19 PM | Link to this

(continued; UHC is bogus and resolves NO problem)

This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain’s government-run health care dates back to the 1940s. Yet the Labour Party—which originally created the National Health Service and used to bristle at the suggestion of private medicine, dismissing it as “Americanization”—now openly favors privatization. Sir William Wells, a senior British health official, recently said: “The big trouble with a state monopoly is that it builds in massive inefficiencies and inward-looking culture.” Last year, the private sector provided about 5 percent of Britain’s nonemergency procedures; Labour aims to triple that percentage by 2008. The Labour government also works to voucherize certain surgeries, offering patients a choice of four providers, at least one private. And in a recent move, the government will contract out some primary care services, perhaps to American firms such as UnitedHealth Group and Kaiser Permanente.

Sweden’s government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80 percent of Stockholm’s primary care and 40 percent of its total health services, including one of the city’s largest hospitals. Since the fall of Communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany: increasing co-pays, enhancing insurance competition, and turning state enterprises over to the private sector (within a decade, only a minority of German hospitals will remain under state control). It’s important to note that change in these countries is slow and gradual—market reforms remain controversial. But if the United States was once the exception for viewing a vibrant private sector in health care as essential, it is so no longer.” http://www.city-journal.org/html/173ca…

(to be continued)

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 4:32 PM | Link to this

(continued; UHC is bogus and resolves NO problem)

Hillarycare exists in Taxachusetts. Here’s how that stupid plan is panning out—as everyone who knows anything about the actual system predicted would be the result: “Massachusetts announced that spending on its health care plan would increase by $400 million in 2008, a cost expected to be borne largely by taxpayers.” http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/200… Last modified: January 29. 2008 5:03AM That article explains how CA could not even launch UHC it’s so damned expensive.’]

Another long article, here’s a link for those seeking more than the “MSM” provides, the rest of the story:
Link - http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080328211152AAUEUgD Socialized healthcare? - Yahoo! Answers

By L1M89

May 14, 2008 4:35 PM | Link to this

Cautionary Healthcare Tales From California and Massachusetts By Trudy Lieberman

March 25, 2008

[‘The collapse of health reform in California and ominous signs from Massachusetts spell big trouble ahead for reforming the nation’s healthcare system no matter who is elected President. The lessons from those states, which have tried hard to bring insurance coverage to all residents, are worth heeding for anyone sitting in the White House next year. They also raise the question of whether it is possible, either fiscally or politically, for states to do the job. Indeed, failure in California and troubles in Massachusetts indicate that the underlying problems that bedeviled reform efforts fourteen years ago are still with us, and could doom yet another attempt to change the American way of healthcare.

Although Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama try to distinguish between their plans, both are variants of the Massachusetts model. That scheme requires everyone to get health coverage, and it imposes tax penalties on people who don’t—the so-called “individual mandate.” In both Obama’s and Clinton’s plan, people do not have a right to health insurance, as is the case in truly universal national health insurance systems, such as in France and Canada, where everyone is guaranteed coverage, with care paid for through a broad-based tax. Instead, both candidates have used the word “universal” to describe a potpourri of options that could bring coverage to some portion of the population currently not covered while keeping commercial insurance in the game. Clinton’s plan includes an individual mandate. Obama would require coverage only for children and touts cost-control measures that he says would lower premiums so much that the uninsured could afford them, obviating the need for a coercive mandate. Clinton would boost coverage by requiring large employers to cover their workers, giving incentives to smaller ones to do the same. Obama would make employers provide “meaningful” coverage or contribute to a public plan. Both proposals call for some sort of public alternative that people can buy into if they don’t like the market choices, and both try to control medical costs with weak remedies like improved information technology and better care coordination.

Significantly, the premium subsidies and tax credits that Clinton, Obama, and John McCain support to help low-income families buy insurance are a traditional Republican strategy that President Bush has pushed for years. But at least 55 percent of the uninsured already pay no taxes, so unless the credit is made available to non-tax filers, this approach would leave lots of people without coverage. To be useful, subsidies must be high enough to help families pay the annual premiums—now averaging about $12,000—but low enough so the government doesn’t go broke. And therein lies the devil that killed reform in California and could do in the much-hailed Massachusetts plan as well: the money just wasn’t there.’]

The money isn’t there at the federal level, all taxpaying American Citizens are at the breaking point.

The rest of the story: Link - http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/lieberman Cautionary Healthcare Tales From California and Massachusetts

By Pete

May 16, 2008 11:31 PM | Link to this

I do not doubt that Canada’s system has its own problems. However, where some of the post are disingenous to the point of being dishonest is in their implication that these problems do not exist in our, the U.S. system. From personal experience I can report the following. Altough I make well over the national average and have employer supported health insurance, I cannot just see a doctor, nor can I see just any doctor, not at a reasonable price, that is. The time between calling for an appointment and the appointment is usually measured in weeks, not days. I also do not have free choice of medicines or procedures, again, unless I am willing to pay a very steep price. When I travel “out of network,” I bear I high financial risk in case of illness or accident and, in theory at least, I need prior approval to get any contribution from my insurance. My insurance does not include vision or dental, although my share for my wife, my son, and me, is almost $6,000/year. Although the employees therefore pay a fair portion of our insurance, we have no represention on the board that determines who insures us, thus, we cannot be sure that our interest are looked after. This is not an atypical situation in the U.S. I could go on, and so could many covered by similar plans in the U.S.