OP: I admit the title sounds alarmist, but it's also true. I'm posting two articles, one of which is older, in my own personal effort to do my bit to publicize the effects of the so-called reforms (both implemented and planned) by the current right-wing Conservative federal government in Canada (i.e.
good friend to U.S. Republicans,
among other
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After I retrieved my eyeballs and put them back in my head, I gave him a quick picture of what "health care" in America actually entails--mostly that it's the best health care in the world if you're rich enough to afford it (or to afford really really good insurance that doesn't try to fuck you over), otherwise you have to pray the insurance company picks up the tab or you'll either have to deal with the hassle of trying to get them to cover it or face ruinous debt and yes technically if you don't have insurance you can go to the ER but if you don't have insurance they're highly motivated to get you out the door--and his eyes got wider and wider and at the end he admitted that our system is bullshit and suddenly having to wait longer to see the doctor didn't seem so bad to him ( ... )
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Mind you, I say that as somebody who lives in a urban centre in a province that is fairly well funded, so I buy that wait times could be a lot longer in other locations with fewer resources. But I expect that's also true in the US, wait times in New York or LA are going to be shorter than places with smaller populations and fewer hospitals.
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Now that's an interesting tidbit - I had always heard that costs were going up because of more sophisticated medical techniques and longer lifespans. Good to know that's not the case.
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...And another tidbit in relation to that one: the increasing costs of medications IS NOT driven by research & development, it's driven mainly by marketing costs (and possibly profit margins). (I gave a LOT of references on this in this ONTD_political post: http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/11009918.html)
Hence the tag: capitalism fuck yeah.
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Where I live (province of Quebec) there is almost NEVER any mention of the fact that income tax revenues have decreased since the 1990s -and not because budgetary needs are less. (Mostly, it's because of pressure by various lobby groups which sum up to the fact that the rich and well to do don't want to pay their fair share.)
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