We have previously discussed the meltdown at airports due to the latest failure of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Passengers are being asked to show up hours in advance and many are missing their flights due to endless lines. Now, thousands of bags have been lost due to a “technical problems” at TSA. The lack of any accountability for the ongoing failures at TSA is the latest evidence of the disconnect between citizens and their government.
At airports like Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina lines are now commonly three hours. It is a disgrace and, on one day, some 600 passengers missed their flights. In Chicago’s Midway airport, passengers faced a line that stretched beyond sight and beyond the time for their flights. The reaction was not pretty.
Then there is the failure of TSA computer system. More than 3,000 checked bags were lost in Phoenix on Thursday because of a problem with a screening system at Sky Harbor International Airport. TSA spokesman Nico Melendez simply said “TSA is experiencing significant, unprecedented technical issues with its computer server allowing the automated screening of checked bags for explosives.” Despite a hearing this week, TSA continues to treat its obvious incompetence like people complaining about the weather. We have become accustomed to the lowest level of performance from the TSA and other federal agencies. It is the passivity of a public that no longer views itself as having any voice or expectation in good government. We just stand in lines of hours while paying billions for substandard government services.
If TSA were a private business, it would not last a month before being forced into insolvency. However performance is not a measure applied to the government. TSA is fast becoming the ultimate example of an agency that performs at a minimal level despite billions in federal funds. The only good thing is that, while standing around in endless lines, citizens have a chance to contemplate that question.
“Americans lose their homes, families, lives on a much more frequent basis than Canadians have to wait for some treatment.”
Based on what? Is there a statistical analysis of how many people die before their time because they had to wait 4.5 months for chemo? Where is the comparison between how many people went into medical bankruptcy, compared with how many Canadians had to pay out of pocket to fly to the US for health care because they didn’t want to wait 40 weeks to get to a pain specialist? How much is suffering for almost a year with a hip that needed to be replaced worth? What about the inevitable addiction to prescription pain meds because you couldn’t get your surgery in a timely manner? How is that a positive outcome?
Obamacare made it more likely you will go bankrupt because of medical bills. Most major cancer centers aren’t even in network, which means if you get cancer (or some other serious illness) you may have to choose between going bankrupt or dying. Premiums went up, deductibles skyrocketed, off formulary drug benefits dried up. And single payor systems have lengthy wait times and poor outcomes (like having to wait 5 days on a stretcher to get admitted to an ER).
Canadian health care isn’t free. They pay for it with taxes. Which, as was noted earlier, will have to increase exponentially to cover the rising costs. And now that the government handles it, you cannot vote with your feet. Have a 40 week wait time? Well, where else can you go?
My concerns are sincere. But if you are going to keep calling me names like ignoramus, then you are clearly unable to discuss the facts of the matter like a grown up. People resort to name calling when they are over faced.
But what else can you do when you have to defend a shameful 40 week wait time to see a specialist?
Karen
Americans lose their homes, families, lives on a much more frequent basis than Canadians have to wait for some treatment. By the way, the provincial health care systems pay for a substantial portion of any private convenient health care a Canadian might option. The difference is tax deductible. This places the ‘Canadian system-I use the term Canadian system for ignoramuses, way, way, way, out in front of the US system of pay if you can afford it or die; but first we’ll take your home, etc.
Philly
…i think their worth skyrockets because they always seem to be holding winning stock. Insider trading does not apply to them. Democrat or rebulli can. And they are the ultimate insiders picking winners and losers via “law” making. Of course you have the obvios stuff like reid and land-road deals. And you have delay, and the freezer guy from cali, the t guy from illinios….can’t recall but he got killed by a tractor. And the false prosecution of the alaska senator. And clinton she’s getting off bigtime. Lying and lining her pockets. I wouldn’t say its just a republican problem…i am sure they are all buying stock in the right “addiction” treatment companies before the opiod bill goes up.
Regardless the tsa had a computer glitch….a glitch that you can’t blame on underfunding. They also had allowed 73 ppl to work at airfields while being on the terror watchlist. Again you can’t blame this on lack of funding. …at some point competence matters.
How, exactly, is a link to a Canadian company that lists the wait times of every province in CA, which range from 13 weeks to 40, irrelevant to a discussion on socialized medicine? Or the existence of Canadian companies that facilitate trips to the US for faster and better medical care, or that you can pay to try to get around wait times?
How is the fact that these wait times represent debilitating, untreated pain for millions of people irrelevant or unworthy of discussion?
I am not so heartless that I would ever condone human suffering. Socialism inevitably slides into a cruel, nihilistic existence. The governments run out of money an become more confiscatory, and the care degrades.
I’d call a 40 week wait time for medical care pretty damn bad.
Let’s not forget that the express and implied goal of the regressive republican party in America is to prove how ineffective government is by running for office and then seeing to it that funding is cut, obstacles are raised, bad laws are written, and money is funneled off to insiders and friends. Mitch McConnell’s net worth has skyrocketed to more than $24Million since he took office, somehow on his meager $176K salary. And he’s not the only one.
The regressives don’t want to shrink government, they just want to take every dollar they can steal from the taxpayers and put it in their pockets and the pockets of their donor/owners. Witness the ever-unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the billions of dollars that simply vanished. Traitors all.
It is as if TPTB are trying to piss of the citizenry.
WTH? Did the lost bags end up at a hospital in canada?
And generally doesn’t the airline taxi them to you once they are found? But here if tsa lost them…..hmmm
Karen
You continue with your staccato of irrelevant snippets you have garnered from various newspaper clippings. Of course there is no health care system that is without fault. The system that exists in Canada has been adjusting since its inception. The difference between whatever it is you have to offer which is something between nothing and failure and the socialized systems is that the socialized systems can adapt. The American system is not adapting. It is continuing to put the screws to the American people to the tune of three times the cost for a place well down from those of the socialized systems. The fact that you may be missing is that when a system is failing and it is in 11th place it can make adjustments much easier than when a system is in 37th place. The fact remains that the American system is you pay three times as much for, per capita, much, much, less. Your ranting and raving reminds one of why Trump is leading the Republicans and not someone with some balance and foresight. Of course the socialized systems fall short but no where near as short as the American system which is, by the way, the last dinosaur on the block; not gonna work, been there, done that, not even worth another post. There isn’t one argument that you have surfaced that hasn’t been laid out before, solved, and exceeded. Read your history and then whine.
“We are able to facilitate virtually any medical procedure at one of our partner hospitals in the U.S.. Typical U.S. referrals include cancer biopsies/treatment, hip/knee/shoulder joint replacement, spinal surgery, sleep disorder studies, advanced pain management, cardiac procedures including angioplasties, ablation and by-pass surgeries. All of these procedures are available through Timely Medical, at first rate medical facilities in 22 American hospitals in 13 U.S. states.”
Hey, weren’t Nick and Paul called liars at some point for claiming that Canadians come to the US for faster health care?
Well, Timely Medical Alternatives is a company that coordinates that exact medical trip.
Check out this Canadian company, Timely Medical Alternatives:
http://www.timelymedical.ca
“If you are in need of a surgery and have been put on a long waitlist, contact us now for a free, no obligation quote, and you could be back on track to a normal lifestyle within two weeks.”
Yes, socialized medicine is so wonderful, you have to pay a private company in order to expedite your appointment to see a doctor. Because the wait times can be deadly in Canada.
“more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12 percent of that province’s population) can’t find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who’d get a doctor’s appointment.”
Are people actually serious that they want this to come to the US? Wasn’t the Obamacare debacle, (and geez, did it ever get the website running well and securely), enough to put the experiment in inserting the government between you and your doctor to bed?
http://www.city-journal.org/html/ugly-truth-about-canadian-health-care-13032.html
“Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled—48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months.”
We just read an article about the mess with TSA, and the fact that the government employees are unresponsive to complaints. We’ve all languished at the DMV at some point in our lives. Gotten mired in bureaucratic red tape at times, the stuff of Monty Python dreams.
That’s the stuff of bloated government. And, you know, a magic unicorn does not touch his horn to government so it can miraculously manage socialized medicine like a pit crew at the Indy 500. Nope, government acs the same, slow, bloated, inefficient way no matter what it puts its finger on, if it gets too big.
A lean government is more efficient, and manages a short list of priorities better.
I wonder how much faster we would run out of money on socialized medicine than Canada did? We have exponentially higher immigration, and with our stagnant economy, a huge percentage of our population is out of work or under employed.
Boy, Canadians are going to be so pissed that they’ve paid so much money in taxes and they’ll get worse care. It’s like us with Social Security. We paid into the system but it will run short of money when we need it ourselves.
Of COURSE Canadians don’t want to abandon socialized healthcare. They already paid all that money in taxes. Getting rid of the system means that money is just gone.
And running out of money in socialized medicine is hardly limited to Canada. In the UK (you know, where patients starve to death over the weekend), people get private insurance in order to get better and faster care. Combined with usurious tax rates, it now means that high quality health care is the province of only the rich.
Isn’t Socialized Medicine just grand?
And of course, there is this, “There needs to be a shift in our status-quo mentality; we must accept that we will have to work longer and pay more taxes”.
Because with socialism, they always run out of money and keep coming back for yours.
So be honest. If socialized medicine means you will have to retire 10 years later and pay far higher taxes, and even then it may not be enough money, would you be as eager?
“The rippling effects of this bottleneck situation will be felt by all. For the first time in history, as the outnumbered youth struggle to support their aging elders, their living standards will be significantly lower than that of their parents. Cutbacks in social services, coupled with an increased proportion of revenue being spent on healthcare will mean we won’t live as comfortably as the generations that preceded us. Paradoxically, the senior population will vehemently demand high quality health care services (isn’t that what they paid taxes for?) but inevitably find themselves utterly disappointed.”
Is this the trend now, dumping off our problems and bills on our kids, grandkids, and great grandkids so we can spend lots and lots of money?
“While Canadian provinces and territories are primarily responsible for their own health care delivery, the federal government provides funding support through the CHT. On Dec. 19, 2011, however, the federal government announced (under the radar, as usual) that they were going to significantly drop funding from the current 21 per cent to 14.3 per cent by 2037. As a result, Canadian provinces will have no choice but to impose severe cutbacks to other already neglected sectors (such as the arts, public transportation, infrastructure, education, social welfare, etc.) and put in force abrupt tax increases.”
Here are 31 million hits for “Canadian Healthcare Crisis”
https://www.google.com/?client=safari#q=canadian+healthcare+crisis
Oh, look, here is a HuffPo article on the matter:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/natasha-macdonalddupuis/the-future-of-canadian-healthcare_b_4429892.html
“Actuarial analysis of the Canadian health care system concludes that, at current growth rates, a staggering 97 per cent of total revenues available to provinces and territories will be spent on health care expenditures by 2037, compared to 44 per cent in 2012.”
Sounds like a great system. With 97 cents of every dollar spent on healthcare, they are going to have tons to spare on other programs.
My mistake.
When I become President, there won’t be any lines, because all TSA employees will be busy building the wall on the border with Mexico. Just like the slaves in ancient Egypt building the pyramids. They won’t get a lunch break until it’s half-way built. I will solve two problems at once!
The RepubliCons control the House and Senate. The majority of the House filed the Burwell case posted yesterday. The majority needs to pass a bill to create more TSA jobs. Plain and simple. RepubliCon fault again.