Fellow Medical Students:

My name is Sunny Aslam and I am heading up our AMSA chapter. Please consider joining AMSA and coming to our first meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 4th, 2005 at 5:30 p.m. in the First Semester Classroom. Students in clinical rotations should consider joining AMSA also; they have even more chances to benefit from the financial services, networking, conferences and more, available from AMSA.

AMSA is the largest independent association of physicians-in-training in the USA. Students from any country can join. With approximately 50,000 members, AMSA is committed to improving medical training as well as advancing the profession of medicine. AMSA focuses on universal healthcare, disparities in medicine, diversity in medicine and transforming the culture of medical education.

Benefits of joining:

Insurance discounts, including health, accident, auto, life, dental, etc.
Discounts on medical equipment, books, PDAs
Travel discounts including hotel, air and rental cars
The New Physician Magazine
Numerous networking and conference opportunities
Chance to do community service with other med students on island
Build relationships and meet people who can help you in the future

For more info on benefits and to sign up online:

www.amsa.org

All this for $65 for 5 years!

Remember to join us on Jan. 4th, 2005, at 5:30 p.m. in the Histo Lab for our first meeting. We’ll be discussing any questions you have and our plans for the upcoming semester, including community service at the Saba Sacred Heart School.

I encourage you to consider running for officer positions. Come with ideas and an open mind. Until then email me with any questions: aslams@myway.com . Good luck!

Sincerely,
Sunny Aslam
Saba AMSA Chapter President

before you join take a look at their website and see their political agenda:


-universal healthcare. this will limit your earning power a great deal along with many problems for your patients. it takes months to get an appointment in UK, and canada has places with people who haven't been able to find a pcp in three to five years

-favor limiting access to IMG's

i know most of us want something that connects us to the US medical establisment in anyway but amsa is not the answer in my opinion...please look for yourself.

__________________
OBGYN PGY II
I see light at the end of the tunnel!!!...wait a minute its just another freakin tunnel!

please produce some evidence for your statements--I have studied these issues for years and disagree with what you say almost completely.

please see pnhp.org for my references, including the latest Harvard study on single payer health care.

if doctors, as the highest paid profession in the USA, think they are underpaid they have issues. that aside, moving to single-payer, would save the system millions if not billions of dollars of wasted money due to the bloated insurance industry and HMO administrative costs.

The Canadien healthcare system is far more efficient and effective, as measured by health care outcomes infant mortality and maternal mortality, etc. And Canadiens, as well as many Americans recognize the advantages of their systems. Please produce a credible source fr your PCP statement. Most Canadiens at our school are thrilled with their healthcare system. And at least Canada recognizes it ahs some problems and is adding med schools and looking at its problems.

There are delays for those who have less medically necessary problems--just as there is in the USA, but only for those with insurance. The rest just wait until they are so sick they use the ER.

No one favors limiting access to IMGs, except the AMA, which says Caribbean school should be shut down. Again, please share your sources.

But I do agree with your assessment to look for yourself. People should always question any claim and consider the facts.

If the Canadian system is so great, why are there tour buses full of Canadians going across the border every business day for imaging and diagnostic studies? Why are there more CT scanners in one small (125K population) city in Minnesota than in all of Canada (33M)?

And the limitation on earning is quite obvious - with controls on prices, the earnings are limited to the number of hours a physician can work, and the reimbursements that the government is willing to offer. Just like in Canada.

__________________
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

--Theodore Roosevelt

I'm not going to comment one way or the other on whether socialized medicine is better than what we have in the US, because I just don't know.

What I did think was funny was a news story I saw on TV the other day, where US citizens were going over to Canada and getting flu shots at Canadian clinics. The nurses were even walking out into the parking lot and giving US citizens shots as they sat in their cars! And it was cold outside!

And then their is the whole issue about prescription drug costs in the US for patients vs. costs in countries like Canada where the government has cost controls in place for prescription medications. I'm sure you know that the pharmaceutical companies are retaliating against Canadian pharmacies that sell prescription medications to US citizens by not allowing those pharmacies to buy prescription drugs anymore.

I don't know if the US system is better than the Canadian system, but we could sure use flu shots and cheaper drugs somehow.

__________________
Saba Forum Moderator
Saba University School of Medicine, MSIV
Interests: Pediatrics, Psychiatry

again, I would say please cite a source for these claims on Canada. the pnhp.org web site shows clearly according to real sources that few Canadiens come to the USA for healthcare. where are these buses exactly? are they passing the busloads of Americans on their way to Canada to get cheap drugs or vaccine shots? typical corporate media lies and distortions--just like WMD in Iraq, etc.

imaging is a real issue. my canadien friends say if it's an emergency they get their patients in for imaging. the other less medically necessary cases (no patient believes they are less medically necessary, of course) have to wait, that is true. but Canada has put huge amounts of money into the system, responding to these concerns. unlike in the USA, where Bill Frist gets up at the GOP convention and talks about the wonders Bush has done for American healthcare, clearly one of the worst systems in the developed world--except for the ultrawealthy.

I beg people to start to look beyond corporate media reporting which rarely ever challenges norms.

Did anyone ever think to ask that maybe we have wasted to many imaging machines in the USA? could we use less imaging and give more people insurance?

Do HMOs and Insurance companies limit doctors earnings in the USA? of course they do. there are certainly many ways to pay doctors and no good ones. but there are no salary caps in Canada anymore. it's fee for service--the more you work the more you get paid.

we spend 2x as much per person in the USA as Canada does--and they cover everyone. the sooner we get rid of the HMO/Insurance industry the better off we'll all be.

Here's a start:

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared...=pb&id=658

No, HMO and insurance companies don't limit a physicians income - the physician can opt out of the program. Nor are they capped, as was a FP physician I saw last year, in Kingston, Ontario on vacation. She told me that her income was limited by the province to about $80K cdn/year, and thats why she limited her patient base - no point in her incurring more work and liability for no increase in income. She was more than happy to bill me CDN40 for a quick visit and a script for a Z-pack. Since I am happily not a subject of Canada I had the option of actually getting a physician in Canada.

BTW, there are reports in the literature of diagnostic imaging studies in Canada taking more than three months - and finally physicians telling the patients to go across the border. Last summer I needed an MRI of my neck, that was on a monday afternoon, 10 AM the next morning I was having the study done - less than 18 hours, not 90+ days.

Your comment about too many, and wasteful machines is ignorant, immature and specious to boot. When a resource is artificially limited (as health care in Canada is, by the government) the natural result is shortages. The government has no particular interest in seeing that any one person has what they need, they limit the cost to everyone. The result is the situation in canada where even though health care is "free", 30% of the citizens have no primary care physician (the Fraiser study). So, they have to go to the ED for primary care - except, there are fewer beds and diagnostic equipment available than in the US.

The US system has problems, but making it the Canadian system will make it far, far worse.

And if you have any studies that refute that, show them.

__________________
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

--Theodore Roosevelt

My dad lives in ontario... his MRI took 6 months before he got it...

Val

One of my friend gave birth to a dead baby in Florida because she didnot have medical insurance and could not effort $5K in advance payment. Physicans refused her to take as a patient because she could not pay this amount in advance. She had to see a midwife (who is not a doctor) every few months. Even a year after the delivery, she could not find out why her baby was born dead. My friend was just one of 44.961 million people in USA who did not have medical insurance in 2003 and this number is one and a half times the total population of Canada.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p60-226.pdf (page 15)

I am not saying Canada's health care system is better than ours or we need to socialize medicine but something definitely needs to be done to fix it here.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/fraserinstitute/

Fraser is a common 'privatize everything, abolism minimum wage, flatten taxes' group, familiar to Americans.

again check pnhp.org for the studies and data on outcomes, the true measure of healthcare, not who got an MRI that was owned by the local doc so he could make a bunch of cash.

do physicians ever really opt out of insurance companies and HMOs? no note in reality, they are essentially the only game in town.

we ration health care in the USA; to those with insurance, all the rest can go to the ER. and the waits are still long. of course there are exceptions--if you are wealthy or have good insurance. but getting imaging doesn't necessairly mean anything.

and imaging is not all medicine--just look at the data on infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy, etc. certainly no system is perfect, but the solution is too get rid of HMOs and insurance companies and to start out with a new system and make changes as you go. the problem in Canada is not the system; it's the funding. the problem in the USA is a system that serves a small group of the population well and leaves the rest of the public in limbo.