Comments on: Off Topic : Go See Michael Moore’s “SiCKO”

By: MichaellaS

MichaellaS — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:58:40 +0000

tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!

By: kevin

kevin — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:39:27 +0000

“Can you really walk into any hospital and get the medical care you need for no cost?” – In Canada, almost true. There is a false impression amongst Canadians that we have a true public, one tier health care system. Not entirely true. It is a two tier system that does ask for a credit card when you show up at Emergency. Most of the entitlement people think is part of the health care system actually comes from employer benefits and health insurance. We don’t have enough GP’s and most now live at their local walk in clinic. Our system is actually pretty messed up. The biggest difference between the Canadian health care system and the US is that in Canada it’s heal first pay later. In the US, it’s most often pay first heal later.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 02:34:55 +0000

I have to ask..

How many theaters in Salt Lake are showing it?

Considering the very small liberal population in metro Salt Lake, I’d be surprised if it was playing at more than two.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:33:40 +0000

To Dr Brown.

You wrote “I’m most familiar with the system in Canada, and doctors only make about 50k.”

What was the last time you actually came to Canada? 1968?

I don’t where you get that 50K number, but my brother in law, who’s a last year resident makes close to 100K.

By: Jason Brower

Jason Brower — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:45:44 +0000

If you look at countries that provide free healthcare you get a people that abuse it. For example, I was sick, infact, I felt I could die. So I had to WALK to the hospital, and wait 5 HOURS before getting in. They don’t let you make an appointment unless it is a private (paid) doctor. And the people that get to go ahead of everyone else? The drunks, the get picked up by the police and put in wheelchair, the nurses are required to help them sit on the toilet to pee. And best of all they don’t need ID to be helped, I do. If that is free medical care, I don’t want it. I want to go back to the states where they take care of you. I have never been denied help when I had no money. Even when I needed medicine for an illness, the hospital paided more than half right away, and let me pay back the bill on my own time. But hey, if Mike wants to show all the bad people in his country to make everyone hate his own country, he is free to do so.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:25:57 +0000

Hmm. To join the plague of people answering your question, in Canada, (to be more specific, Ontario, because I don’t know about the other provinces, it varies), You can basically walk into the hospital and get “free” health care. Of course, you pay for it threw taxes, etc. The downside: waiting lists are looong… couple months, usually classified by priority. If someone just came in from a car crash and bleeding like crazy, they get priority, and it bumps everybody down. OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan, aka, government health care) sadly doesn’t cover dentistry, but the NDP (New Democratic Party) is vying to change that on the idea of “If you have an infection in your foot, you can get it fixed for “free”, So why should you have to pay to get your infected tooth healed?”. Until the government fixes it, people will have to rely on personal dental insurance.

By: Maxo

Maxo — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:13:03 +0000

I can attest that in my personal experience with the health care system that there are long waiting lines in America too. I had to wait over 2 hours to be seen by a doctor for him to make me wait even longer, give me a shot that ended up having nothing to do with my problems and then paying over $400 (I wasn’t insured at the time) for the worthless work.
When I went in a was puking everywhere and could barely breath, yet that gave me absolutely no priority.
I have also tried these free clinics. There are two in town. One is awesome, the other one is as worthless as doing nothing. In the poor one you wait for a very long time, you get seen by an LPN who doesn’t listen to a word you say, tells you to take over the counter medication that doesn’t help and then sends you on your way.
My wife once got a doctor who actually prescribed her medication for the problem she was having. Once the meds where out and she needed more it was impossible to get another doctor who would prescribe the meds. All she could get was LPNs who would promise that someone would contact us even though nobody would.
And according to Dr. Brown this is all so that people like him can live luxorious life styles. Most people I know that work in the medical profession (my mom is a nurse) is in it for the people, not the money, though I’m sure the money doesn’t hurt any.

By: Pham Nuwen

Pham Nuwen — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:19:43 +0000

HEALTH CARE IS NOT FREE!!!!!

I don’t care where you live it isn’t free. In Canada we pay through the nose for it, it may be in the form of taxes, but we pay for it in spades.

And what kind of service do we get, great service, if you don’t mind waiting weeks, months or years, or for that matter survive the wait.

I broke my foot 6 months ago, it took them 5 weeks to do a bleeding bone scan. All they were ever able to give me was Advil for the pain, and six months later my foot still hurts, they are still unwilling to actually do anything, even though I have on good authority that a simple surgery likely would solve my pain, and let me walk normally again.

Next month I’m flying to Mexico and paying for said surgery. It’ll cost a fraction of what it would in Canada and I don’t have to wait Years to have it.

Moore is a twit in my opinion.

By: Dr. Brown

Dr. Brown — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:08:50 +0000

The thing is, the government manages the salary of the doctors and controls it in the Universal healthcare system. That means the doctors don’t earn nearly as much. I’m most familiar with the system in Canada, and doctors only make about 50k. If someone is a good doctor, they should be able to earn more money. If they can’t, they’ll go someplace where they can. Universal healthcare tends to push the good doctors out of the country as they can’t earn more money for being good, REMOVING competition.

I know it might be a lot, but yes, when you are getting insurance, I expect people not to lie as their medical history is important to being treated, and lying only furthers the problems, and ends up screwing everyone over. You are stealing from everyone else when you commit fraud in addition to committing a crime.

The healthcare system in Canada does nothing to encourage better doctors and competition between them. Every doctor performing procedures earns the same amount. A doctor who is better at performing a procedure is not able to charge more. Yes, people can request him, but that means there likely would be a long line and no priority system for this doctor.

I realize that I gave the defintion of facism, but I believe it IS a part of life in a free society, and without some level of facism, you can’t have democracy or capitalism. This has always been true and has nothing to do with healthcare. A great example of this is computers. Computers allow YOU to have more fun and live a better lifestyle, while it takes away some opportunity from someone in this world who is starving. The people researching and building your computer, power, and everything else for it could be working to help stop anyone from going hungry, but personally, I’d prefer that they don’t, as if they did that, it’d be likely we’d end up with communism. Being a doctor makes you quickly realize that some people need to suffer and die for the better of EVERYONE else.

I know that I would be forced to start investigating other places to live if universal healthcare came to the US, as I didn’t spend all my years in education to not have an opportunity to make a good amount of money working as a doctor, and I’m sure many other doctors who are better then me will believe the same thing. Thankfully, I think even if we implement universal healthcare, it will just be an expansion of free clinics, and everyone will need to get a secondary insurance anyways so they can see a decent doctor and not have extremely long lines. (And free clinics are available in most parts of america, so if you want free healthcare, it usually is available, although you have to wait)

By: Warbo

Warbo — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:47:42 +0000

To Brad and those with similar opinions: Yes there may be long waiting lists for some things in countries like the UK (which, along with Sweden, has the most socialised health system. The rest are slightly closer to the health insurance model) but I am guessing that’s because more people are getting the operations, less people are dying young with organs healthy enough to transplant, etc. If you have bothered watching the film it describes at the beginning the guy who had to choose which finger because he had no insurance, etc. but then says that the film isn’t about those without insurance, it is about those with. For instance there was a woman who passed all of the ridiculous checks and got her long-term treatment payed for, but then had it retroactively taken away because she had failed to declare a previous medical condition (which, by the way, was a yeast infection!), and a woman who’s child needed emergency care which wasn’t available from the closest hospital because the insurance didn’t approve, so after arguing with and begging the staff to help her child they still refused and she had to go to another hospital further away which was approved by her insurance company (apparently the biggest one out of them) and her child died on the way. This is what the film is about, and whilst I do not blame it on the doctors with their hippocratic oath (since there are many cases of doctors treating people and charging other’s insurance) it IS to blame on the insurance companies. I mean, come on, if the point of a health insurance company is to help people who are sick then they should be jumping at the chance to insure diabetics, people with long term illnesses like cacer, etc. But due to the post-war “Socialising is evil because that is communist” attitude in the USA there is instead a system designed to make money which shuns those who need it most. Even the fact that health insurance is profitable shows that it is a waste of money, since people are paying for these profits and not for healthcare.

In the UK the government is for some ridiculous reason trying to mess around with the NHS, which has caused massive protests from NHS workers, and they constantly go on about deficits within the NHS and things, which is ridiculous, since like the postal service the government seems to think that EVERYTHING needs to be making a profit, and doesn’t think for a moment that actually spending a bit more on stopping people dying and getting messages delivered will make the REST of the economy more profitable overall. I just want to see what Gordon Brown does about this, because at the moment New Labour seems nothing to do with Labour and even seems more Conservative than the Tories.