Here is what I know about managed health care in places like communiss Vietnam and China and also in Canada.
In Vietnam and China health care is uiversally bad and universally available. The elite of the society pay their way, get the best medical care, and often end up in places like the Cleveland Clinic or the Mayo Clinic for big surgical procedures.
Big shot Arab oil people show the same pattern….
In China, I investigated the SARS outbreak in China more than four years ago.
SARS is a deadly viral infection know by its full name as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
We learned that China lacks sufficient medications, medical staff and hospital facilities to properly service their own population.
The World Health Organization estimated that only about 4% of China’s medical professions were prepared for a disease like SARS.
The most interesting and surprising thing we learned was this. Although China trains enough high quality doctors and competition is keen for medical school educations, many of the best doctors find ways to get out of China to a place where they can earn more money. The Chinese government system is actually holding back good medicine; while it thinks it has a system far superior to that in the U.S.
The situation in Vietnam is much the same.
The recent tracic death of Natasha Richardson and the timely treatment given subsequently to little Morgan McCracken brought this all back to me.
Natasha Richardson’s Story Saves Girl’s Life
Michelle Malkin asked the question, “Could Canada’s Medical Sysytem Have Killed Natasha Richardson?”
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/0
3/27/did-canadacare-kill-natasha-
richardson/
That’s a question every American should ponder some before we launch pell mell into a wildly expensife effort of health care reform.
We also noted someone who commented on that article in Michelle’s blog.
“My wife who’s a doctor and Canadian citizen graduated from McGill University went to school with a friend who became a neurosurgeon and just like the article states, he left Canada upon graduation and now practices in Texas. He is well renown and has published many articles in medical journals and such.”
“Why did he leave his country? The same reason my wife did, why go to school for 7 years do a residency, be taxed heavily and in the end only to make as much as someone with much less education, responsibility and commitment.”
“By the way my wife left Canada right after graduation also and did her residency in New York. It’s called the “brain drain” in Canada and is very common.”
The brain drain is a real problem for Vietnam, China and Canada…..
Of course, whean all of President Obama’s fixes are put into American life, nobody will want to leave….
Related:
China’s Effort to Resolve Food, Product Safety is Questionable
(Medical system and SARS)
Peace and Freedom Global Future 
March 28, 2009 at 1:55 pm |
Does your measurement of healthcare quality have anything to do with preventing preventable deaths? Because, didn’t I give you a reference showing that Canada does a much better job of that than the US?
As for the others, why do you ask nothing more of the US than that its performance exceed that of third world countries?
March 28, 2009 at 2:29 pm |
Most American doctors say we Yanks do a very poor job of disease prevention.
As for the rest, I am sharing my experience only…
March 28, 2009 at 2:51 pm |
So don’t you think it’s likely that a part of the reason for that bad performance on prevention has to do with people putting off going to their doctor to save money? And do you realize that the failure of prevention results in higher costs of treatment because problems are treated at a later stage?
March 30, 2009 at 4:16 pm |
Having insurance itself doesn’t guarantee medical care either. The hospital I went to for a breast biopsy (1992) decided my insurance wasn’t sufficient enough and insisted that we pay $5000 before they would even do the biopsy. My deductible was $500. Then they stated on the medical records that I was predisposed to cancer because my mother had been treated for breast cancer at the same hospital. Which made me ineligible for coverage-even though mine was not cancer. Their viewpoint was that I already had it when I was born. Without money for attorneys, we gave up. We paid the rest of the expenses out of pocket and then cancelled that insurance. We cannot get insurance for less than our house payment now. And no, we cannot get medical care either. I broke my wrist last year and did not go to the ER because we didn’t have the money to pay up front. Where is the middle ground?? We are not people that run to the doctor for everything, but COME ON! I haven’t had a pap in 15 years, or a mammogram for 11. If I get cancer, or hubby gets cancer, we die. If we have ANY life threatening condition, we can do nothing. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
March 30, 2009 at 4:16 pm |
Having insurance itself doesn’t guarantee medical care either. The hospital I went to for a breast biopsy (1992) decided my insurance wasn’t sufficient enough and insisted that we pay $5000 before they would even do the biopsy. My deductible was $500. Then they stated on the medical records that I was predisposed to cancer because my mother had been treated for breast cancer at the same hospital. Which made me ineligible for coverage-even though mine was not cancer. Their viewpoint was that I already had it when I was born. Without money for attorneys, we gave up. We paid the rest of the expenses out of pocket and then cancelled that insurance. We cannot get insurance for less than our house payment now. And no, we cannot get medical care either. I broke my wrist last year and did not go to the ER because we didn’t have the money to pay up front. Where is the middle ground?? We are not people that run to the doctor for everything, but COME ON! I haven’t had a pap in 15 years, or a mammogram for 11. If I get cancer, or hubby gets cancer, we die. If we have ANY life threatening condition, we can do nothing. No ifs, ands or buts about it.