Ex-Hospital CEO Battles Reform Effort

Source: Washingtonpost.com

Ex-Hospital CEO Battles Reform Effort
Ads Cite Long Waits In Canada and Britain
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 11, 2009

The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment.

"Before government rushes to overhaul health care, listen to those who already have government-run health care," intones Rick Scott, founder of a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights. "Tell Congress to listen, too."

Scott, a multimillionaire investor and controversial former hospital chief executive, has become an unlikely and prominent leader of the opposition to health-care reform plans that Congress is expected to take up later this year. While disorganized Republicans and major health-care companies wait for President Obama and Democratic leaders to reveal the details of their plan before criticizing it, Scott is using $5 million of his own money and up to $15 million more from supporters to try to build resistance to any government-run program.

The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the "Swift boat" attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the "Harry and Louise" ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051002243.html?hpid=topnews

a former hospital chief executive using five million of his own money to battle reform - that tells us everything we need to know about what is wrong with the current system :puke:

get it - but what about the masses? Are *THEY* smart enough to get it?

:(

People will eat it up and truly believe that people with universal healthcare in other countries don't get to use it because of delays, or only get access to cheap shitty service because it isn't run for a profit.

and using the Swiftboat ad people to boot. Idiots. I had a discussion with a co-worker recently who asked about the "socialism" in Canada when I lived there and the problems with the health care there. I told her point blank that she needs to stop listening to the right wing cranks. We were happy with the health care system there and the very low cost of medications. Also, my very conservative in-laws like their system and don't want it to change or to become for profit. There are problems with every system, but I don't believe that it is to the extreme that those profit obsessed jerks would like to make it out to be.

Every right winger I know can quote this or that person they supposedly know from Canada or Europe who claims that "socialized medicine" is a mess and they have to wait for months for "rationed care". What they don't say is that the person they know is very well off and was pissed because they couldn't get their face-lift as fast as they wanted it.

I happen to work with someone who lived in France for 5 years. He was extremely happy with the healthcare system there.

What would help, I think, would be to make as much information as possible available so we can counter the right wing propaganda with facts. Maybe links to statistics about the quality of care in single payer systems vs. the US. Links to personal stories from people who have experiences with Canada's system. Maybe if each of us can convince a handful of people who are on the fence, and do it quickly before the right wing lies get out, we can help win this fight.

Frankly, I'm surprised anyone watches corporate sponsored TV, it provides misinformation for the masses.

the British is the result of almost three decades of right-wing governments - starting with Thatcher - incrementally underfunding their NHS.

These right-wing politicians (all three parties), liars that they are - as well as thieves from the public purse - always claim that record sums are being spent on the NHS, when the real comparison they should point to is with the average percentage of the national income of the other Western European countries, as cited in this article:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn21.pdf

It is now a few years out of date, but the relatively low expenditure on health from the public purse in the UK, in comparison with the other countries of Western Europe, is surely likely to have deteriorated, rather than appreciated, notwithstanding Brown's pledge to the contrary, given NULab(c)'s neo-conservative "ethos".

In fact, at the time that article was written, the author states that

The reference to the high expenditure on health in the US obviously mostly relates to private medicine.

See if you can identify the monster and the human being in this article:

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/health/healthcare-spending-may-have-to-slow--$1242320.htm

those without insurance who must rely on the ER for various ills wait literally for hours. I once went to the ER for numbness in my left arm, thinking it might be a symptom of a heart attack. It was 5 HOURS before I was seen (nobody even hooked me up to a monitor or anything--luckily it did turn out to be nothing, but what if ...), and I waited about another hour in a cubicle, then another 3 hours after that while I was seen sporadically between other patients. While I had been waiting to begin with, I called the other hospital in town to see if the wait might be shorter and was told some patients had been there for EIGHT HOURS without being seen.

So I'll take my chances with "socialized" medicine.