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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (7617)	7/18/2009 1:25:20 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Obama Care in 60 seconds or less Cliff Thier I saw the most effective commercial I've ever seen. The commercial, very quickly, puts forward the best argument against government-controlled health care. If this commercial gets a wider audience it could be the nail in the coffin. americanthinker.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (7617)	7/19/2009 10:28:39 AM
From: gg cox	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

<<And the way to do that is to talk about the truth; the only way to make government run health care work is by rationing services. >> So lets talk about the truth. Below is a quote from the Denver Post Article previously posted.I can vouch for the truthfulness regarding single payer Canadian system. """Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians.In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be. There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost. """ denverpost.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (7617)	7/19/2009 11:47:29 AM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42652

That article concerning a supposed "dialysis crisis" in the UK was pretty bad even for the mis-named "American Thinker". The article wants you to think that tens of thousands of patients needing dialysis are unable to receive that treatment. More than 100,000 people have kidney disease but only 34,000 are receiving dialysis or have had a kidney transplant. However, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is classified into five stages. Only when a patient reaches Stage 5 is renal replacement therapy required, in the form of either dialysis or a transplant. The goal of therapy is to slow down or halt the otherwise relentless progression of CKD to stage 5 en.wikipedia.org Levels of Renal Replacement Therapy (RRT) About 40,000 patients in the UK are receiving dialysis or have functioning kidney transplants, which are grouped together as Renal Replacement Therapy, RRT. The take-on rate for patients onto RRT has risen progressively to about 110 per million population per annum (get the latest statistics from the Renal Registry). In some areas the take-on rate seems to have plateaued in recent years. However the survival of patients already on RRT means that even without further increases in take-on rate, the number of dialysis places needed will continue to rise. In fact take-on rates will need to rise because of the increasing number of elderly individuals in the population (there is a dramatic rise in risk of requiring RRT with age), and because of the age structure of some high-risk groups (diabetes, some racial minorities). Although there continue to be intermittent severe stresses, particularly with adequate growth of haemodialysis provision in some regions, it is now generally true that long term dialysis is available for all those who need it in the UK. It is some decades since the elderly or patients with comorbid conditions were automatically refused, or simply not referred to renal units. renal.org

To: Brumar89 who wrote (7617)	7/19/2009 6:50:52 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

All dialysis patients over the age of 50 were sent a letter that had the following statement regarding the lack of treatment available: "We recommend you put your affairs in order." Apparently quite a few older kidney disease patients in the U.K. are not required to "put their affairs in order" See: ageing.oxfordjournals.org In the past, at least in the UK, dialysis tended to be restricted to younger patients. This is no longer the case and the median age for starting dialysis in the UK is now 65 years, which is similar to other western countries, including the USA and Japan. About 7% of all patients starting dialysis in the UK in 2003 were over 80 years old (13% in the USA). There are approximately 2,500 dialysis patients over 80 years old per million population over 80 years old in the UK. In the USA, this prevalence rate over 80 years was 3,400 [1, 2]. The prevalence rate for dialysis in both the UK and USA peak at around 75 years. Also see: age-net.co.uk CURRENT SITUATION IN THE UK Patients suffering from Established Renal Failure have three options to choose from when faced with making their treatment choice: transplant, hospital-based dialysis or home-based dialysis. 41,776 people in the UK now receive some form of Renal Replacement Therapy according to the most recent Renal Registry Report. But the Registry also reveals that just 22% of dialysis patients now receive their treatment at home with Peritoneal Dialysis (PD), and the discrepancy widens depending on your age or even where you live. Over 65's account for nearly half of all patients currently on dialysis but they are only half as likely as younger patients (18% to 36%) to access a home based treatment such as PD.