Conservative Cognitive Dissonance on Public Healthcare

First error, Americans don't go w/out healthcare because they can't pay for it. That's crap. Most cities (if not all) have public hospitals that are required by law to take patients regardless of ability to pay. And, ALL hospitals are legally responsible for life threatening treatments for all people that walk into them, regardless of financial compensation.

My baby daughter had a broken leg and they set it w/out any guarantee of payment. That required urgent treatment, surgical treatment and follow up work from the doctor. We were poor, destitute and had no way of paying the bills. The hospital and doctor did the work expecting to write off the entire expense and that was a private “for profit” hospital and doctor.

A friend of mine is an internist, and is required to do follow up work for any patient he receives in ER duty, which he has to do to keep privileges in the hospital for his insured patients. I know of one case where he had more than 50K in fees for a patient that couldn't pay his bills, and he was working to get other doctors to do work on him, which was also done without hope of receiving compensation.

SICKO took an opportunity to expose legitimate problems all Americans suffer and did what Michael Moore always does: sensatinalized propaganda.

Don't get me wrong. Insurance companies are not my friend. I've been stuck for tens of thousands of thousands of dollars in medical bills thanks to unscrupulous health insurance companies. But, I've never been denied healthcare, not even extremely expensive high quality care. Of all the poor and neurotic people I've known, I've never known anyone actually denied healthcare, even extremely expensive and advanced procedures.

America's biggest problem is a lacking free and public basic level healthcare system. We have a lot of mental illness suffering patients that clog the hospitals to seek drugs or attention, which would be far better served by wellness services and councilors. But, millions of them prefer dope and ER experiences.

In my home town we have a private for-profit hospital and a local humanitarian healthcare group that both offer virtually unlimited free services to the uninsured. And, if you live in America and you actually can't afford the $400 a month for family private health insurance, you can usually get on public insurance free. We have Medicaid fro children, disabled, poor and Medicare for anyone over 65.

People keep talking about America's for profit healthcare system. Who works for free? Do all the Canadian doctors, nurses, researchers and drug companies do all their work for alms? No. Everyone works for profit. In the US, providers often do work for which they're not compensated. In Canada, they state pays. Most people Iv'e talked to that use both systems prefer the US model.

It stinks. But, it's the best I've ever witnessed first hand.

Nu-uh. Your Canada facts are made of fail. Purely anecdotally, I've never had to wait longer than 4 hours (for something non-critical but painful, in the ER) in my entire life. My parents both had heart surgeries done in the same weeks they were diagnosed. And you forget to mention that the people who go down to the US for treatment were SENT THERE by their doctors, and that the tab was picked up by their respective provincial healthcare agencies. I can personally name at least three expat Americans who moved to Canada as they admired our system of government, wanted accessible, quality higher education for their kids, and wanted some of that delicious socialist healthcare of ours. I'm sure they're not the only ones!

I just like numerous other males out there hate this system, it can have its defects… get behind a day and really feel it virtually all year long, literally.