Re: Tort Reform

On Oct 11, 1:54 pm, El Castor <No_...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:33:22 -0700 (PDT), Graham <garekm...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:





On Oct 11, 1:08 pm, El Castor <No_...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:52:49 -0700 (PDT), Graham <garekm...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Oct 10, 1:43 am, Matthew Scott <sco...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
The Washington Post reports that the CBO Says that tort reform Could Save $54 Billion.

Congressional budget analysts said Friday that lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits -- 10 times more than previously estimated. New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but also would spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to  Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).

The CBO report lends credence to Republican arguments that substantive limits on malpractice lawsuits will reduce health-care costs. However, President Obama opposes one of the chief proposed changes the CBO studied, caps on jury awards, and analysts give the measures little chance of passage.

"These numbers show that this problem deserves more than lip service from policy-makers," Hatch said in a statement. "Unfortunately, up to now, that has been all the President and his Democratic allies in Congress have been willing to provide."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/09/AR200...

In Canada, medical malpractice suits are almost non-existant, and
that's not good either because the Canadian Medical Association (more
or less the Doctors union) has a lot of influence.

Canadian society is far less litigatious than the USA to begin with,
but not having sufficient and credible malpractice suits can be
equally bad as having far too many.     I understand that malpractice
insurance for doctors in the US can be enormous, which adds to the
over all cost of health care.

As in the USA, Doctors in Canada are private practitioners, they don't
work for the government.

Is it possible to buy healthcare insurance in Canada which would, for
instance, guarantee timely access to an MRI?

Timely access for critical needs is guaranteed under the Provincial
health care plans.  And yes, there is insurance that can get you to a
private clinic as well, or you can pay a small fee.

I could have moved my recent colonoscopy up by three months if I paid
my specialist an extra $40.  He has his own clinic.   But because a
colonoscopy is every 5 years, there is no reason to hurry.

I had a recent Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging work up booked, and
I had an appointment the next day.

There was no bill for it.

The shortage of MRI technicians has been put to the front of the
priority list, it has little to do with a shortage of machines.

One thing that I see from Americans is that it's easy to criticize
Canada's health care waiting times, mainly because there are loads of
data and benchmarks.    No such data and benchmarks exist in the US
private health care system.    Wait times where I live in Toronto are
non-existant because Toronto has more hospitals than most cities in
North America, Europe or Asia.

However, if you live in Ditchwater North Ontario, you will probably
have the same wait times as someone living in Ditchwater North
Dakota.   However, your HMO system doesn't provide statistics like
ours does.

My wife has been MRI'd so many times, she is practically magnetic.
Locally (a few miles North of San Francisco) the wait time for what
for her would be a routine non-emergency MRI would be 1 - 2 weeks.
When they are in a hurry -- as in a few years ago when a surgeon
insisted on a new MRI before performing a scheduled back surgery, it
was (as I recall) two days.

On the subject of private health insurance in Canada, could you
explain how that works? I've read about "universality", as well as the
Quebec lawsuit demanding the right to purchase insurance, so I'm not
sure I understand.

"It was only in 2005 that a Quebec court ruled that private health
insurance was legal, and only in that state. This ruling paved the way
for private care. Facing long waits and substandard care, private
clinics are proving that Canadians are willing to pay for treatment.
Private for-profit clinics are permitted in some provinces but not
allowed in others. Under the Canada Health Act, privately run
facilities cannot charge citizens for services covered by government
insurance. A network of technically illegal private clinics and
surgery centres has opened in British Columbia, copying what happened
in Quebec. In October, the courts will be asked to decide whether
these clinics are legal, illegal, or can operate in a restricted way.
More than 70 private health providers in British Columbia schedule
simple surgeries and tests with waits as short as a week, compared
with the months it takes under the public system."http://www.imtjonline.com/news/?entryid82=161735

True?


I can answer.

Yes.

One of the biggest critisims of Canada's provincially run health care
program is that the Canada Health Care act (a Federal statute)
prohibited second parties being competition for the system.

Thankfully, that has changed. But it isn't an endorsement of the
private health care system as seen in the USA, it's room for
improvement. No one in Canada wants the US version of health care,
if they did they would be living in the USA. The private system has
fundametal flaws, and so does Canada's system. But France and
Norway, for instance, have the two best systems in the world, with a
core of single payer health care as the foundation with private health
care along with it.

Please, do not consider the idea that Canada has augmented its system
with private clinics (they don't perform heart transplants or brain
surgery) with the idea that Canadians are willing to throw away their
system in order to be like the USA. There isn't a country in the
developed world who wants the US system. Why should Canada want it?



.

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