Shots Across The Bow

Anybody still want to model our health care system after theirs?

SARS is a condition that can't be treated at all other than isolation, how does the system of health care have anything to do with anything? In the U.S., PUBLIC health officials are the ones that are in charge of containing the spread, by following up on suspected cases and asking people to quarantine themselves. Even if we assume that it is somehow the health care systems fault, Canadians still have a much higher life expectancy than Americans, so my answer is yes, I would like to live longer. Granted some blunders were made in containing the spread in Toronto, but I don't think that the source of financing of the health system had anything to do with them.

System includes public and private, as well as finance. Bottom line, SARS has not made an inroad in the US, whereas Canada has asked for US assistance (CDC) in order to prevent the WHO from stepping in. Can you imagine the reverse happening?

Attributing life span to the health care system alone is problematic, as there are a multitude of other factors (diet, exercise, environment, not to mention heredity) which play significant roles in longevity.

Well then, tell me how it's the "systems" fault? From what has been gathered to date, the spread in Toronto was largely due to some early mis-diagnosis (a fever and cough and be indicative of a lot of different conditions you know) as well as certain people breaking quarantine orders. Both of these can easily happen anywhere in the world. The rest of Canada wasn't hit and many other countries with socialized medicine didn't have any problems.

Health organizations around the world (including CDC, WHO, Health Canada, etc.) work on stuff together all the time. Canada asked for advice from WHO and CDC to help solve their problems(seems logical enough to me), but I'm not sure where you get this Canada has asked for US assistance (CDC) in order to prevent the WHO from stepping in business.

I got it from here
Quoting:
"The outbreak prompted WHO on Monday to put Toronto back on its list of SARS hot spots, though the agency did not renew its advisory to avoid visiting the city. It also led Canadian health officials to ask the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rush a team to Toronto to help in the investigation."

NPR reported that Canada asked for the CDC's help to prevent another travel alert from the WHO.

As for how the system failed, from the article quoted above, Dr's failed to recognize a new case, and didn't quarantine the victim, resulting in a new round of infections, and more deaths. The article also says that Toronto hospitals started lifting SARS controls in early May. It's possible that political pressure was applied to the health care system to quickly return to business as usual. After all, the original outbreak cost Canada a lot of money.

I have no evidence that this occurred, however, given human nature and politics, it seems at least possible, if not probable. When the state controls medical care, which interests are paramount, the medical or the state? It's an uneasy balance, and one I prefer to avoid.