"Dr. Pete" is more of a right-wing nut than your average right-wing nut's go.

Here's a telling quote from him that I found on one of his Amazon.com book reviews in which he criticizes Newt Gingrich of being to "inside the box."

"I'm looking for Americans to TAKE OUT A contract on its federal government." -- Pete Stevens

That is pretty bad - I love the admonition to shop around for your health care provider. Great idea, except if you're in pain or if you forget to ask if each and every one of your doctors is in network or about the cost of each little pill and suture. It's not a free market when only the supplier has access to all the pricing information.

...connecting of his "grocery market" to the agri-business welfare system.

I too was going to say thanks for pointing out how screwed our grocery system is. Not to digress from the health care issue, of course.

Just seeing this guy's picture reminds me of Dan Aykroyd's character Fred Garvin--Male Prostitute. I don't know why.

the Dionne quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934, to a humble, French-speaking couple in a farmhouse outside of Callander, Ontario, Canada. They were identical sisters and for the first 10 years of their lives, the five girls were the No. 1 tourism attraction in Canada.

Then came free health care for all Canadians. Which is why the four identical Jepp sisters were born in Great Falls, Mont., instead of Calgary this weekend. The Canadian parents flew 325 miles to get to an American hospital. . . . I’m sure most Canadians like their health system. Just remember, though, that Canada’s backup system is in Montana. Americans spend 15% of their income on health care. That’s why Great Falls has enough neo-natal units to handle quadruple births — and a “universal health” nation doesn’t. After all, they didn’t fly Mrs. Jepp to Cuba, did they?

(link...)

The important point here is that the Canadian Health Care system actually sent that woman to Montana - and paid for it .

No, none of the so-called community columnists get paid in anything but a resume tweak. When they first announced it, I thought it was a great idea and planned to seek it out. Then I found out about the lack of money.

When you look at what they are doing with their employees overall, it's really not a surprise.

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

"If government stays out of the way, there will be charitable volunteer clinics in abundance. Some physicians will retire and then volunteer part time. Same with nurses and anesthetists. Catholic Charities and the like will help. Universal health care? No, but their charity clients will get infinitely better care than they would in Canada, where people die waiting."

But the government IS staying out of the way. Where's all the help?

A Canadian's view:

Saskatchewan spends $4 billion a year on health - 44% of the total provincial budget - on a population of under one million, and those dollars are increasingly directed to more centralized systems of delivery. While debate about "wait times" tends to revolve around diagnostics and scheduling of surgery (especially "elective" surgery such as knee and hip replacement), few consider the "wait time" facing the farmer in Val Marie with a crushed pelvis or severed artery.

For when it is decreed that your local hospital is no longer "economically viable" (a curious complaint to put forward under not-for-profit ideology), bureaucrats gather a few hundred miles away, debate the best way to release the bad news, and with a big red pen, draw a line through your town. They will apologize, quite properly, while they advise you, quite improperly, to be grateful that health care is still "free." You'll just need to start out a little earlier in the morning to get to it.

This is what I don't understand. It would be a mild understatement to say that most here don't trust George Bush. In fact, most here don't trust anyone with an "R" after their name in politics. And yet you advocate putting your lives and the lives of your loved ones squarely in the hands of politicians you don't trust, and to accept just as much health care as THEY are willing to give you.

Rikki in another post here suggested that for the annual cost of the Iraq war, we could have a universal single-payer health care system in this country. Let's assume that's true (which requires us to assume I think that the demand for health care consumption will remain static after it becomes "free", a highly unrealistic assumption). The Iraq war, as many here have complained, is wrecking the U.S. budget. Unlike Social Security, where there is a defined set of benefits, Universal health care would be funded with an annual budget. With those massive amounts of essentially discretionary funding sitting there in the budget each year, what do you think the first target of "cost cutting" will be the first time we have a budget crunch or the next time the politicians decide that a bit of tax cutting is in order?

I don't know much about Canada's system, either, but but the model you describe is not the model we are talking about. Premiums would go up and down depending on payment of benefits and the cost of covering one gigantic pool.

I suppose there would be some limits, just like you have now with any HMO or insurance policy or Medicare. But there would be supplemental insurance available for the gaps and extras (thus the "two-tiered system" argument against it, except we already have a two-or-more-tiered system).

This is all spelled out in HR676, which is pretty radical and therefore will never get anywhere, but it's a starting point for a true universal health insurance program.

...aren't you putting an awful lot of faith into a government that inevitably, from time to time, will be run by people you can't stand and do not trust, as has been the case for the past 6 years?

Excuse me. Only Republicans--and yes, mostly in the last 6 years but also to some degree during the Reagan admin--have had the hubris, arrogance, temerity, cruelty, etc. to meddle with and threaten federal programs that have been administered reliably and competently for decades to millions who have depended on social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and numerous other such successful programs.

There are some things that only government can do and should do, and hired federal employees perform these services honorably and efficiently. The politically appointed hacks and Republican leaders like Bush who appointed them, OTOH, threaten these programs because the programs came from the Democratic party, and this just galls to no end modern GOP architects like Grover Norquist, Tome DeLay, and Newt Gingrich. Most probably Pete Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife too.

Further, this bunch is on a warped crusade to let their rich cronies who put them in power try to divvy up the remains of these programs as "market opportunities" from which to reap huge profits. So if they had their way, your parents' Medicare benefits could be administered by a company like Enron or Halliburton.

That's why these bastards are so scary and so evil. Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg.

why would you put your trust in such people to provide you with medical care?

"Such people?"

I've worked closely with a number of "healthcare providers," medical facilities and insurance companies.

I assure you, "such people" aren't limited to government.

____________________________

I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!

Government wouldn't be providing medical care. Only veterans and government employees (at least some) get medical care from federal facilities and, save for some exceptions like the Walter Reed fiasco, it's generally considered to be of high quality.

We're talking about the government doing what the private sector won't: ensure that everyone has access to affordable health care. Via laws that ensure people can't get screwed just because they get sick. If government has to administer a new insurance program as well, they have a proven record with other programs showing that they can do it well and without trying to rip people off like the private sector often does.

At least up until 2000, I trusted our system of government and its constitutional checks and balances more than I did the "free market." Obviously the (non-)free market is not working with respect to health care. Problems in gov't., OTOH, CAN occur, but only when we allow it to be corrupted as badly as we have in the last decade or two. Those who corrupt it must be held accountable. It requires government, the entity you say cannot be trusted, just to hold corrupt corporations accountable anyway. So there needs to be some trust in government regardless.

Trust is unavoidable in life. It's whether you trust laws, constitutional rights/guarantees, and three branches of a democratic government, or an out-of-control profit-drunk industry gone berserk. I'll pick the former. Guess I'm a patriotic softy for the system devised by the founders.

On a related aspect to this, CBS Sunday morning had a good piece on yesterday about all the drug ads we're bombarded with. We're always told we may have some fancy new syndrome the drug marketers just invented and that we should "ask our doctor" about this drug. The report stated that drug companies make $4 for every $1 invested in these commercials and the drug companies call this "informing the public." (Uh, yeah...) People then go and demand these new drugs in order to feel perfect and wind up on multiple drugs which cost a fortune and may interact in unknown ways.

New Zealand is the only other country that allows such ads and they are about to ban them. Makes you wonder who really benefits from the ads and how it exacerbates our health care crisis.

The part on that CBS piece that I found most interesting was where the ad agency had a brainstorming session to come up with the name of a syndrome to go with the client's drug.

Ask your doctor.

Wearybottom Associates

We were surprised the ad agency allowed the TV cameras in there.

Also, I laughed at the clip of the ad about, "Your eyes may not produce enough tears without you knowing it." And that would be a problem how? I suppose it could be, but...

There was another horrifying reminder on that same program:

STEVIE NICKS IS 59 YEARS OLD.

Wearybottom Associates

Someone ought to sue these companies for their foisting upon us so many negative comments about our health and implanting suggestions about what products to buy. Just listen to the side effects they list. This is out and out brainwashing.

Ads for prescription drugs used to be banned in all print media, but Congress passed a law a few years ago that allowed it. The result has been catastrophic in my mind.

Who do you suppose influenced Congress to allow this?

Big PHARMA lobbyists of course.

What they produce are advertisements equal to any "Joe Camel" ad any day.

It's gratifying to finally see some focus being put on this. People should write all their elected officals and demand a stop to these health damaging ads.

Hey, I know this retard...

He used to teach Hospitality & Restaurant Management at UTK. He was such a damn flake he was the laughing stock of the dept. (at least from the perspective of the grad students). The idiot drove a Kia with a big sign in the back exhorting people not to buy from Kia...