Canadian Medical Association: Canadian health care system is imploding, is not sustainable

[rebeccajo 14]

As long as med students graduate with debt burdens of 100K and don't get to be real doctors till they're near 30 (4 years of pre-med + 4 years of med school + 2/3 years of residency), they will "need" to make a lot of money to make their investment worthwhile.

I don't know why I just got this image in my head of some sort of Peace Corps for medical students. Like rather than doing a residency in the US they go to some back-jungle $hithole and 'earn' their way out their of student loans.

Oh wait - they could just send them to New Jersey............

[Kathryn41 3,205]

I actually have no problems with doctors being fairly reimbursed for their services nor will you find any Canadian who feels differently. It isn't the doctors, however, who are getting the bulk of the money in the US - it is the middleman - the insurance companies. Doctors in countries such as Germany, Canada, France, England, Australia still earn a good income and also have to pay off their educational debts - which they do. Their overhead is often less than in the US as well - don't have to hire all of those people to deal with all of those insurance companies - so they have room for even greater profit.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Kathryn41

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

As long as med students graduate with debt burdens of 100K and don't get to be real doctors till they're near 30 (4 years of pre-med + 4 years of med school + 2/3 years of residency), they will "need" to make a lot of money to make their investment worthwhile.

I don't know why I just got this image in my head of some sort of Peace Corps for medical students. Like rather than doing a residency in the US they go to some back-jungle $hithole and 'earn' their way out their of student loans.

Oh wait - they could just send them to New Jersey............

You'd have to pay them a lot, wages are high here. And we already have way too many doctors. Better off sending them to rural parts of upstate NY where doctors are few and far between.

[natty bumppo 297]

As long as med students graduate with debt burdens of 100K and don't get to be real doctors till they're near 30 (4 years of pre-med + 4 years of med school + 2/3 years of residency), they will "need" to make a lot of money to make their investment worthwhile.

I don't know why I just got this image in my head of some sort of Peace Corps for medical students. Like rather than doing a residency in the US they go to some back-jungle $hithole and 'earn' their way out their of student loans.

Oh wait - they could just send them to New Jersey............

wait ... can we make this a TV show and call it .... northern exposure

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

As long as med students graduate with debt burdens of 100K and don't get to be real doctors till they're near 30 (4 years of pre-med + 4 years of med school + 2/3 years of residency), they will "need" to make a lot of money to make their investment worthwhile.

If you nationalize the system, med school and residency are at the convenience of the government. You let the prospective doctors worry about getting through pre-med. Once they qualify, they can spend the rest of their careers on a government salary, working at government institutions.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

As long as med students graduate with debt burdens of 100K and don't get to be real doctors till they're near 30 (4 years of pre-med + 4 years of med school + 2/3 years of residency), they will "need" to make a lot of money to make their investment worthwhile.

If you nationalize the system, med school and residency are at the convenience of the government. You let the prospective doctors worry about getting through pre-med. Once they qualify, they can spend the rest of their careers on a government salary, working at government institutions.

Given that they don't start making a real salary till they're near 30, you'll have to pay them more for the late start. Most of us start working by 21-23 after 4 years of college.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

As long as med students graduate with debt burdens of 100K and don't get to be real doctors till they're near 30 (4 years of pre-med + 4 years of med school + 2/3 years of residency), they will "need" to make a lot of money to make their investment worthwhile.

If you nationalize the system, med school and residency are at the convenience of the government. You let the prospective doctors worry about getting through pre-med. Once they qualify, they can spend the rest of their careers on a government salary, working at government institutions.

Given that they don't start making a real salary till they're near 30, you'll have to pay them more for the late start. Most of us start working by 21-23 after 4 years of college.

It's not just a job, it's an adventure! This way they get a stipend going through med school, instead of having to fend for themselves. I am thinking Army here. The US Army Medical Corp was medicine in the US for almost two centuries.

[Danno 1,228]

An additional part of the article I did not excerpt above, but might be interesting in light of another conversation happening right now in another thread:

[Ouellet] ... has also said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This "activity-based funding" would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said.

and then there is this gem.....

<<His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that "a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it's possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.>>>

[Krikit 1,165]

I actually have no problems with doctors being fairly reimbursed for their services nor will you find any Canadian who feels differently. It isn't the doctors, however, who are getting the bulk of the money in the US - it is the middleman - the insurance companies. Doctors in countries such as Germany, Canada, France, England, Australia still earn a good income and also have to pay off their educational debts - which they do. Their overhead is often less than in the US as well - don't have to hire all of those people to deal with all of those insurance companies - so they have room for even greater profit.

Not to mention the high premiums to insure themselves against crazy lawsuits.

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.>>>

There already is one.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

As long as med students graduate with debt burdens of 100K and don't get to be real doctors till they're near 30 (4 years of pre-med + 4 years of med school + 2/3 years of residency), they will "need" to make a lot of money to make their investment worthwhile.

If you nationalize the system, med school and residency are at the convenience of the government. You let the prospective doctors worry about getting through pre-med. Once they qualify, they can spend the rest of their careers on a government salary, working at government institutions.

Given that they don't start making a real salary till they're near 30, you'll have to pay them more for the late start. Most of us start working by 21-23 after 4 years of college.

It's not just a job, it's an adventure! This way they get a stipend going through med school, instead of having to fend for themselves. I am thinking Army here. The US Army Medical Corp was medicine in the US for almost two centuries.

Can't support that statement. Turns out we didn't even have a full time medical corp until the later half of the nineteenth century.

[luckytxn 2,265]

I actually have no problems with doctors being fairly reimbursed for their services nor will you find any Canadian who feels differently. It isn't the doctors, however, who are getting the bulk of the money in the US - it is the middleman - the insurance companies. Doctors in countries such as Germany, Canada, France, England, Australia still earn a good income and also have to pay off their educational debts - which they do. Their overhead is often less than in the US as well - don't have to hire all of those people to deal with all of those insurance companies - so they have room for even greater profit.

Yeah I guess we will not have to hire the same people and even more for the cumbersome bureaucracy that a federal would require. Of course the feds will just write checks and not need any accounting so we are all good.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I actually have no problems with doctors being fairly reimbursed for their services nor will you find any Canadian who feels differently. It isn't the doctors, however, who are getting the bulk of the money in the US - it is the middleman - the insurance companies. Doctors in countries such as Germany, Canada, France, England, Australia still earn a good income and also have to pay off their educational debts - which they do. Their overhead is often less than in the US as well - don't have to hire all of those people to deal with all of those insurance companies - so they have room for even greater profit.

Yeah I guess we will not have to hire the same people and even more for the cumbersome bureaucracy that a federal would require. Of course the feds will just write checks and not need any accounting so we are all good.

Dose of reality or is it too early for that?

Dr. Diane Normandin learned that the hard way.

A graduate of Montreal's McGill University, Normandin moved to Clearwater in 1994 because she thought U.S. doctors had more freedom. But she spent an inordinate amount of time trying to tell whether a patient's insurance covered visits to a particular lab or specialist.

"You had maybe five minutes with the patient but 20 minutes of paperwork and the ridiculous sorting out of where the patient could go,'' says Normandin, who needed six employees to handle the workload. "It was crazy.''

In 2003 she went back to Canada and opened a family practice near Montreal. Now she has one employee.

Six employees to handle the ridiculous bureacracy - private insurance bureaucracy - in the US vs. one employee to handle the bureaucracy of a single payer system. Is that making the fcuking waste that goes on around here clear enough for you?

[My Name Is Nobody 3]

While the Canadian system isn't perfect it is far superior to anything that currently exists in the US. Canada is at least willing to address any problems that may exist in its social services - such as it did for its equivalent of social security a few years back so that now it is totally sustainable - and address them to keep them viable. Any good system is not going to be static - it will evolve and address the real needs of its users. It needs to be responsive enough so that when problems develop they are addressed and resolved so that they no longer become problems. Here in the US the objective seems to be 'let's bury our heads in the sand and say that everything is perfect because it is the USA' while thousands go bankrupt each year because they have no insurance, their insurance decides to cut them off or they do have insurance and their medical costs far exceeds their abilities to address. The only winners in the US are the insurance companies themselves who reap in obscene profits from the pockets of the US citizens while making a pretense of providing any type of real service. The solution I see so many here promote seems to be "if they can't afford it, then they should die". The lack of compassion is appalling and I find myself believing that only when these individuals find themselves in the same shoes as their less fortunate citizens they might possibly begin to understand. It seems Ebeneezer Scrooge is alive and well in the good ole' USofA.

Yeah the bad old companies so lets just Socialize everything. After all I come from another country and we do it all that way so I demand we do it here since I now want to live here.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I actually have no problems with doctors being fairly reimbursed for their services nor will you find any Canadian who feels differently. It isn't the doctors, however, who are getting the bulk of the money in the US - it is the middleman - the insurance companies. Doctors in countries such as Germany, Canada, France, England, Australia still earn a good income and also have to pay off their educational debts - which they do. Their overhead is often less than in the US as well - don't have to hire all of those people to deal with all of those insurance companies - so they have room for even greater profit.

Yeah I guess we will not have to hire the same people and even more for the cumbersome bureaucracy that a federal would require. Of course the feds will just write checks and not need any accounting so we are all good.

Dose of reality or is it too early for that?

Dr. Diane Normandin learned that the hard way.

A graduate of Montreal's McGill University, Normandin moved to Clearwater in 1994 because she thought U.S. doctors had more freedom. But she spent an inordinate amount of time trying to tell whether a patient's insurance covered visits to a particular lab or specialist.

"You had maybe five minutes with the patient but 20 minutes of paperwork and the ridiculous sorting out of where the patient could go,'' says Normandin, who needed six employees to handle the workload. "It was crazy.''

In 2003 she went back to Canada and opened a family practice near Montreal. Now she has one employee.

Six employees to handle the ridiculous bureacracy - private insurance bureaucracy - in the US vs. one employee to handle the bureaucracy of a single payer system. Is that making the fcuking waste that goes on around here clear enough for you?

That is something I don't understand - why they need so many people to push papers. To employ half a dozen people you're looking at paying out (at least) $150,000 on wages (assuming those office clerks get really $hit money), before you even factor in the cost of equipment and the rental on the office space.

[Danno 1,228]

I actually have no problems with doctors being fairly reimbursed for their services nor will you find any Canadian who feels differently. It isn't the doctors, however, who are getting the bulk of the money in the US - it is the middleman - the insurance companies. Doctors in countries such as Germany, Canada, France, England, Australia still earn a good income and also have to pay off their educational debts - which they do. Their overhead is often less than in the US as well - don't have to hire all of those people to deal with all of those insurance companies - so they have room for even greater profit.

Yeah I guess we will not have to hire the same people and even more for the cumbersome bureaucracy that a federal would require. Of course the feds will just write checks and not need any accounting so we are all good.

Dose of reality or is it too early for that?

Dr. Diane Normandin learned that the hard way.

A graduate of Montreal's McGill University, Normandin moved to Clearwater in 1994 because she thought U.S. doctors had more freedom. But she spent an inordinate amount of time trying to tell whether a patient's insurance covered visits to a particular lab or specialist.

"You had maybe five minutes with the patient but 20 minutes of paperwork and the ridiculous sorting out of where the patient could go,'' says Normandin, who needed six employees to handle the workload. "It was crazy.''

In 2003 she went back to Canada and opened a family practice near Montreal. Now she has one employee.

Six employees to handle the ridiculous bureacracy - private insurance bureaucracy - in the US vs. one employee to handle the bureaucracy of a single payer system. Is that making the fcuking waste that goes on around here clear enough for you?

That is something I don't understand - why they need so many people to push papers. To employ half a dozen people you're looking at paying out (at least) $150,000 on wages (assuming those office clerks get really $hit money), before you even factor in the cost of equipment and the rental on the office space.

IF you think that paperwork is bad, try to do something through the Govt, like immigration for example.