Key Quote:
"(Canadians) have to understand that the system that we have right now - if it keeps on going without change - is not sustainable," said Doig.
This is the whole point of why conservatives have been fighting so hard against the public option which is a key element of Obamacare.
Government run healthcare is not sustainable.
While America has this national free for all, debating the pros and cons of taking the first step into socializing our healthcare system, with the controversial "public option", Canada, who is already on a socialized system, is now saying they need "private health-care delivery" introduced into their system because it is ready to implode.
The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.
"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."
Canada is not the only example shown in the recent weeks of countries running a system that Obama wants here in America, and finding the care is substandard on a government run system as well as being unsustainable.
Recently, Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP, said this about the National Healthcare Service (UK). (Video of him saying that and much more, at the link)
"I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. We have a system where the most salient facts of it you get huge waiting lists, you have bad survival rates and you would much rather fall ill in the US."
One of the Democrats and Obama's favorite arguments is to point to Medicare as a government run healthcare system and claim it works well and that is what his public option would offer everyone.
Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, arguing for the public option:
A leading player in the party's liberal wing, Dean said in a nationally broadcast interview Monday he thinks providing a government role in insurance coverage is fair. He likened it to Medicare and the Veterans Administration, which he called "two very good programs."
Let us take a look at that claim by Dean, shall we?
We will start with May 5, 2007, Washington Post, Page A16:
THE RELEASE last week of the annual report of the Medicare trustees underscores an unavoidable fact that too many politicians have nonetheless been avoiding for too long: Of all the entitlement programs, Medicare is on the most dangerously unsustainable financial course, squeezed simultaneously by rising health-care costs and an aging population.
Now we will jump to 2009, "Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs" from the SSA.gov website itself:
The financial condition of the Social Security and Medicare programs remains challenging. Projected long run program costs are not sustainable under current program parameters.......
Take a look at one of the most recent Congressional Budget Office reports, which speaks to the rising cost of Medicare as is:
Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt stems from the three largest entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. For decades, spending on Medicare and Medicaid has been growing faster than the economy. CBO projects that if current laws do not change, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid combined will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by 2035. By 2080, the government would be spending almost as much, as a share of the economy, on just its two major health care programs as it has spent on all of its programs and services in recent years.
In CBO’s estimates, the increase in spending for Medicare and Medicaid will account for 80 percent of spending increases for the three entitlement programs between now and 2035 and 90 percent of spending growth between now and 2080. Thus, reducing overall government spending relative to what would occur under current fiscal policy would require fundamental changes in the trajectory of federal health spending. Slowing the growth rate of outlays for Medicare and Medicaid is the central long-term challenge for fiscal policy.
The monies it takes to fund Medicare, right now, without shoving every American on a system just like it, is on a path that cannot be sustained.
Now, Obama, Democrats and liberals throughout the country and in the blogosphere, insist there be a "public option?"
Anyone else see the skewered logic in all of this, or the irony?
I guess others see it to, because Obama's numbers are sinking faster than the Titanic did.
Rasmussen's daily presidential tracking poll reports that only 29% strongly approve with Obama's performance, while 37% strongly disapprove. The presidential approval index, calculated by subtracting those who strongly disapprove from those who strongly approve, leaves Mr. President with a Presidential Approval Index of (-8).
Overall, only 47% somewhat approve of Obama's performance, the lowest level of total approval to date, while 52% disapprove.
This might be one reason the White House, while not giving up on the public option, has been testing the waters and backing away from their insistence that it must be part of the final Obamacare bill.