timesjoke
Active Members
I met a Canadian Doctor through my work last week (we are building him and his partners a new building) who moved from Canada to open a practice here in America.
With all this talk of single payer systems Obama is trying to create I decided to ask the gentleman if he would take the time to sit down with me and discuss things, he agreed and our families met up together at his home Saturday.
I can't begin to do justice in this post to cover all the things we talked about but a few details seemed to jump out at me and I thought I would share them with you guys.
First of all, doctors in Canada do not make much money, they are forced to accept whatever compensation the Government thinks is reasonable for each service. He told me his biggest reason for moving to America is to be compensated for his skills and knowledge.
The first step in the cause for very long waiting lines in the single payer system is the reimbursement. A doctor cannot get paid for certain procedures, take a simple urine test, some small things can be discovered right away if the doctor does the simple urine test but because the Doctor cannot do "all" tests on urine, the single payer system will only pay a hospital or lab to do any test on urine, blood is handled the same way. So the doctor office will not do the simple test if they cannot get paid to do it.
So everything is sent to a "specialist" who 'can' get paid to do the simple tests where the doctor cannot, but that slows down even the most basic treatments. Another great example is a throat culture to check for strep, in Canada it could take days to go through the process of getting something so basic treated properlly, here in America he does the strep culture in his office and the patient is getting treated right away.
I asked Him, other than the money, what to him was the best part of being a doctor in America compared to Canada and he said his ability to stay connected to his patients even through advanced medical conditions. In Canada a family doctor is more of triage nurse than a real doctor because the Government will not pay for a family doctor to do much of anything that would be called real medicine.
This doctor has two sons, one is about to start medical school and he is very proud of him. I asked all of them during dinner what they thought of Obama's medical plan and his wife spoke first (she runs his office), "What plan?" she said.
They all giggled a little and she described the same thing I have said, there are no specifics available for what Obama is trying to pass but the many examples comming out of all the seperate committies do not match up to the general outline Obama keeps promising so what is anyone to believe?
They are firmly against a single payer system because in their opinion, it hurts patients. The one detail that all of the different versions agree on is they will work tword eliminating all private health insurance. So they do not support Obama care.
He made a pretty good point about America and healthcare, we get the newest and greatest tools/treatments because the companies who design/create/invent these things are looking foward to making money. Canada and other Countries who do not allow a profit to be made in anything to do with medical treatments would never see new products if not for Countries like America paying for them to be created.
Once "ALL" Nations turn to socialist medicine, there will be no incentive for innovation in the medical fields.
With all this talk of single payer systems Obama is trying to create I decided to ask the gentleman if he would take the time to sit down with me and discuss things, he agreed and our families met up together at his home Saturday.
I can't begin to do justice in this post to cover all the things we talked about but a few details seemed to jump out at me and I thought I would share them with you guys.
First of all, doctors in Canada do not make much money, they are forced to accept whatever compensation the Government thinks is reasonable for each service. He told me his biggest reason for moving to America is to be compensated for his skills and knowledge.
The first step in the cause for very long waiting lines in the single payer system is the reimbursement. A doctor cannot get paid for certain procedures, take a simple urine test, some small things can be discovered right away if the doctor does the simple urine test but because the Doctor cannot do "all" tests on urine, the single payer system will only pay a hospital or lab to do any test on urine, blood is handled the same way. So the doctor office will not do the simple test if they cannot get paid to do it.
So everything is sent to a "specialist" who 'can' get paid to do the simple tests where the doctor cannot, but that slows down even the most basic treatments. Another great example is a throat culture to check for strep, in Canada it could take days to go through the process of getting something so basic treated properlly, here in America he does the strep culture in his office and the patient is getting treated right away.
I asked Him, other than the money, what to him was the best part of being a doctor in America compared to Canada and he said his ability to stay connected to his patients even through advanced medical conditions. In Canada a family doctor is more of triage nurse than a real doctor because the Government will not pay for a family doctor to do much of anything that would be called real medicine.
This doctor has two sons, one is about to start medical school and he is very proud of him. I asked all of them during dinner what they thought of Obama's medical plan and his wife spoke first (she runs his office), "What plan?" she said.
They all giggled a little and she described the same thing I have said, there are no specifics available for what Obama is trying to pass but the many examples comming out of all the seperate committies do not match up to the general outline Obama keeps promising so what is anyone to believe?
They are firmly against a single payer system because in their opinion, it hurts patients. The one detail that all of the different versions agree on is they will work tword eliminating all private health insurance. So they do not support Obama care.
He made a pretty good point about America and healthcare, we get the newest and greatest tools/treatments because the companies who design/create/invent these things are looking foward to making money. Canada and other Countries who do not allow a profit to be made in anything to do with medical treatments would never see new products if not for Countries like America paying for them to be created.
Once "ALL" Nations turn to socialist medicine, there will be no incentive for innovation in the medical fields.
