NEJM: 63% of US Doctors support public option, 10% want single payer.

[Dinner]

Not surprisingly those most knowledgeable of actual health care in the US, I.E. Doctors themselves, overwhelmingly support a public option according to the most recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=1790&query=home

[DinoDoc]

Do you ever get tired of making threads based on logical falacies?

[Dinner]

Did you ever get tired of lying?

[Zkribbler]

IMHO, doctor's motivations are suspect because of their huge financial stake in the outcome. I put more trust in nurses.

In California, one of the major supports of a single-payor plan was the nurses.

[Ben Kenobi]

Nurses get screwed over bigtime here with single-payer.

Lower salaries, longer hours. Most of our grads vote with their feet and go south.

Why change what works? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Zkribbler]

Nurses get screwed over bigtime here with single-payer.

Lower salaries, longer hours. Most of our grads vote with their feet and go south.

Why change what works? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Canada's healthcare system is woefully underfunded. In California's single-payor system [which Schwartzenegger vetoed], California's per capita rate of spending would have been twice that which is spent on Canadians.

Even with this higher rate of spending, Californians would have still saved $10,000,000,000 the first year. The estimated cost of administering a single-payor system was estimated at 6%, as opposed to the cost of administering a system based on private insurance, which is around 33%. (Medicare and the VA are administered at around 3%.)

And, even as underfunded as Canadian services are, Canadians still live longer than Americans and have a lower infant mortality rate.

The World Health Organization rates health care in the U.S. as being lower than Costa Rica's but better than Cuba's.

The U.S. needs to fix its healthcare system because:
1) It is the most expensive per-capita in the world.
2) Americans have the shortest life spans in the industrialize world.
3) Americans have the highest infant mortality rate in the industrialed world.

[Guynemer]

I don't disagree with your position, Zk, but those infant mortality numbers are somewhat misleading.

We try (often unsuccessfully) to revive/maintain far more extreme premies than other nations, where such birth may (or may not, I honestly don't know) be chalked up as stillbirths or intrauterine feral deaths, which aren't included in infant mortality.

[ShaneWalter]

Nurses get screwed over bigtime here with single-payer.

Lower salaries, longer hours. Most of our grads vote with their feet and go south.

Why change what works? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Woah there.

"Most" of our grads? "Most" as in more than the amount that stay? Meaning at least 50% + 1 of the grads go south? My mom is a prof at the SIAST NEPS program (the 4 year degree program) and I can tell you that it is absolutely untrue to suggest that 50% go south. It isn't even close to that. I couldn't tell you the numbers, because I don't know, but I'd be surprised if more than 10% go south. Hell, out of my mom's NEPS graduating class, I'd be surprised if more than 30% left the province of Saskatchewan, let alone left the country.

Nursing salaries in Canada are fairly competitive. In fact, I believe there are more nurses per capita in Canada than in the USA (though I may be mistaken). While nurses often work long hours, this is a systemic problem that occurs not just in Canada, but world wide. As in just about any skilled profession, world wide there is a shortage of nurses. The difference between nurses and engineers though, is that if all the engineers in a small firm call in sick one day, no work gets done. If a couple nurses in a small hospital call in sick, the nurses currently finishing up their shift may have to stay on until coverage can be located (usually casual nurses are on call for these situations). This is where the long hours can come from, unlike other professions, medical professionals often are required to work beyond their scheduled time so that coverage can be maintained. These nurses are compensated (with overtime being double or even triple time).