governmental Healthcare

[Sterlingfire]

Last night in a discussion with my inlaws... they said how great the world would be if we let the government provide our Healthcare. I told them they were mistaken, and our Healthcare system would not be better, but instead be far far worse. I used the va as an example. The idea behind them is to find any reason they can to not provide services and care for patients or potential patients. My fil responded by saying that is because they are under funded... well fucking duh, what makes them believe that a centralized healthcare system would be fully funded???
I can't believe i married into a family of socialists... in fact my mil is so naive that she then tried to tell me how anti government she is. Ha, what a laugh, anyone that presses for socialist ideals is far from anti government. Coming from someone who votes straight party lines, i know better.
Anyway, what say the fine peoples of the north? Is centralized Healthcare making your lives better, worse, or indifferent? Those in Canada already live it. Do they take good care of you, or do you have to push to get anything done?

[Scoobienorth]

I feel the usa is seriously messed up with it’s healthcare system. Going bankrupt from getting sick is BS. I’ve got family in the states that pay a fortune for healthcare and even with a good job might go under this year because 2 people are sick this year.

[Sterlingfire]

So how will government funding the Healthcare system be any better?
Obama forced the Obama care system on us, which changed regulations and guidelines for the worse(when it comes to people who actually work and pay taxes) and it's not getting any better. The whole system is underfunded, and frankly putting hospitals and health insurance into the hands of the government will make it worse. This is where socialism starts to become OK? When does that end? Should we be curtailing the profits of large corporations into social programs, because they've made enough money already? Then it becomes communism at a very rapid rate... why does the past not become a learning tool for the present?

[pointsnorth]

having spent a week in hospital last summer with a potential life threatening issue. In so much pain that the doctors let me have painkillers pretty much on tap. After two days being unconscious, once i was awake being pumped with antibiotics every two hours with an average of three blood samples taken before i took the pills. once I had the green light to leave I walked out with a bottle of hydro morphine and a piece of paper with the prescription for more antibiotics and more hydro morphine . prescription was 120 bucks and my wifes workplace medical coverage paid 75 percent.

yeah id say i like it. But me personally I have never known it any other way. and we pay into it monthy its not goverment funded per say. if a doctor is being d bag and refusing you treatment. you have the right as a canadian citizen to dismiss that doctor and demand to see someone that will treat you.

[Snowracer]

Better get the tin foil hats out, but i guess thats what happens when we let a few of you mericans on the site

Im all for it as have had to use it and much like PointsNorth it went smooth and didnt cost me a thing out of pocket. Yes of course there are people that abuse the system but thats with every system so cant really get away from that. Every time we come down across the boarder im worried about hurting myself in the truck and going bankrupt having to get some stitches ect. I do also have extra coverage with work and i checked and it does cover me if in another country and they say even covered it hurt at a race as thats normally not covered.

[Sterlingfire]

I think the biggest fear is that to become a Dr it takes years upon years of schooling that costs a mint. If you're going to take that kind of time out of your life, wouldn't you want to be able to make a real decent living off your chosen career path? If the gov takes over Healthcare, doctors would be paid what the. .gov says they will be paid. Does that then mean that post high school education would then need to be .gov funded so there would be no reason to worry about being in a specialized career would have no out of pocket costs to worry about? I just worry about the fallout of socializing one area of a capitalist economy creating more socialist programs to carry that one area... maybe I'm dumb American! Lol

[Scoobienorth]

I don’t think you would find very many people in Canada who has themselves or had A family member Who has been really sick or injured or spent extended time in the health care system who wished they were in the states. I think the opposite is very true for the USA.

[HMF]

From my experience up here doctors do quite well and are quite well off...

[Sterlingfire]

Maybe I'm seeing it all wrong then. That's why i started this thread here and not on pirate.

[HillBilt]

The one issue we have with public health care, well up north anyways, is the wait times for basic scans or surgeries. You could be waiting for a CT scan for 6 months sometimes. We also have private health care in Canada that I feel many people dont realize, and its not that terrible for pricing compared to the US. My wife had a botched sinus surgery through public health, was free but shitty to say the least. After was told she would have to wait 18months to have it again. We went private and had it a week after we were told 18months, got a waaay better surgeon and much better care, shes good to go now, and the price tag was totally reasonable. Anyways, what Im getting to is Free isnt always good, unless its dental work, then free is always good

[Mr.gutsy]

I have heard of a few people going the private route for healthcare when the wait times were way too long. I remember lots of news stories about doctors leaving the country because we apparently pay them squat compared to other places. Im suprised by that because i havent met a doctor or a surgeon that isnt living quite comfortably. As for me I have never had a family doctor i just go to the walk in when im in rough shape and dont worry about a bill. And being able to go to emerg at 10pm for stitches when i bashed myself with a hammer and walk out 20 min later good to go like its stopping for fast food is a nice peace of mind

[Provience]

I think the concerns that people have regarding bankruptcy and such over medical procedures are a good bit hyped up and i also thing the prices the hospitals charge is all made up bullshit

Feel free to call me a hypocrite or whatever, but the only health insurance policy i was ever willing to participate in and actually liked was my high deductible plan. Those were made illegal down here because any of the reasonably priced ones didn't provide the minimum required coverages :shaking:

I grew up without health insurance. only went to the doctor a couple times for stuff that was beyond 'drink water/run around outside'. in my early teens i got an ambulance ride and stay after hitting a tree i guess while snowboarding. it certainly wasn't cheap, but at the time it was still only a couple years of premiums.

When i started working, i flat out denied coverage. fuck paying for that nonsense

The company rolled out with a high deductible plan paired with a Health Savings Account. sold. cost ~$150/month, i paid for everything under like $10k/year, they would cover the rest. the health savings account was 100% tax deductible contributions and any sort of medical or self medical cause was also not taxed. Mind you, without the HSA you couldn't take a medical deduction from your taxable income until you spent over 7.5% of your income. So if you made $100k/year and spent $10K in the Dr office, you could only write off $2.5k of it, for a tax savings of like $300....with the HSA, the full $10k would be tax free, for a tax savings of about $1,200. Most doctors that i went to, of any specialty, were typically 50% of whatever the 'regular' rate or 'insurance' rate was compared to the cash rate. So not only could i save substantially on the tax side, there was also a huge discount on the front side and disaster protection. it was awesome.

fast forward a few years, and i wanted to have a kid with the wife as well as get a new career. joined the army because i figured it could easily cost $10k to have a kid and this was post obama-care so my high deductible plan was all for shit and they raised the tax threshold to 10% of your income and made it mandatory to have. Fuck that, fuck them, fuck you, fuck me. Well, the army with it's commune style medical care suddenly seemed like not a bad option. figured it would at least be a $10k bonus with the kid.

low and behold, the wife had to spend a week in the hospital, get emergency induced and the kid was a premie and got to live his first few weeks in the hospital....dodged that bullet i guess, full advantage of my $10k bonus. another couple years, kid couldn't eat solid or semi-solid food. ended up needed a couple throat surgeries and therapy and all kinds of other bullshit. yup, saved me another $10k at least there.

there are plenty of things that make military medicine different than public health care, but i still look at it as something i pay for through my low wages. just a tradeoff.

i absolutely despise the mandate. there is no chance that the states could pull off something like a european or canadian system. Certain states? yeah, sure. they are working on that if they want. federally? no, we aren't set up that way. every federal operation sucks ballsacks.

I would love to be able to call up and see a doc n a box in some strip mall for cheap to handle simple things. those places get crushed with every new mandate. it's easier to admin a hospital of decent size, but the small private practices can take a huge load off those things.

[Provience]

And being able to go to emerg at 10pm for stitches when i bashed myself with a hammer and walk out 20 min later good to go like its stopping for fast food is a nice peace of mind

see and thats another thing to, is you've got to use it to actually get some sort of value out of it.

i've had lots of things i could have had stitches for, only actually had them done once when it wasn't a part of surgery

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

The system in Canada costs a lot and is not as well run as it could be. There is people that abuse it. There is potentially long wait times for certain procedures, and because of that the condition of patients can deteriorate in the mean time, resulting in the procedure being less effective or more costly than it would be otherwise. There is areas of the country that are underserviced and staffing can be problematic.

That said, it generally holds together fairly well. Generally the level of care you receive will be acceptable and in a timely enough fashion to not result in excessive discomfort or further complications.

Looking at supposedly fully private care in the US there is a lots of evidence it's completely broken. Rampant billing discrepancies, to the point it could only be called fraud. Abuse from people who will never pay. Absolutely no guarantee that any insurance you hold is good for anything.

Doctors here are paid well ($200K+ a year no issue, lots in the $400K range, with many making more than that too). Nurses are paid well. Other care staff are paid well. Almost all (and specifically the doctors and nurses) have student debt forgiveness options for working in remote or underserved areas. There is also residency/citizenship fast track programs for qualified individuals who wish to come to Canada and are willing to work in these places.

I'm going to say that there is things that could be done better, but as a whole the system holds up well. There isn't funding to provide some advanced services, but that is more of a population density and wealth issue than because the system itself is broken. IE, I've been a long proponent of getting a helicopter air ambulance service out of PG, but it probably won't happen (at least not within the next 10 years) as there isn't the population to ever reasonably pay for the program, which is unfortunate because we have lots of deaths (specifically highway accidents) that an actual on standby air ambulance would likely have prevented. Kamloops has had one for a few years now, and it's been incredibly successful (something like 500 dispatches a year, and they don't send it out for anything that's not major trauma/time critical), but they've seen enough growth that it is justified now and can be afforded. Private health care wouldn't fix that, no insurer in their right mind would offer air ambulance coverage to enough people in such a remote setting that it would be viable for a private company to operate a dedicated ambulance, and there isn't enough people who can actually afford to pay for such a service (plus the complication of the operator receiving payment) to make it viable. It's also not super easy to get a family doctor here, the reality is most of them would rather live somewhere farther south, plus often they will either do their time to have their loans forgiven, or will just bail on Canada for the US and not worry about the loans. IMHO they should have to pay foreign student prices for their medical education if they leave the country within a certain time frame, as the domestic student prices are subsidized with the intention of training these people so they stay here, but that's a bit of a different subject. That said, it's certainly possible to get one, and lots of them do wind up living here and staying here. Making north of $200K a year you can have one hell of a mansion on the hill here, as opposed to some major city centers where you might get an apartment.

If all else fails there is private care options here, there is just some catches on what they can or can't offer. The current government is trying their best to run these businesses out of the country though, which is completely counterproductive. There is also the option of going to the US or other places. These are negotiated transactions and pay up front though, which is something that I can't see being possible with actual EMS (you're not negotiating from a good position when you're bleeding out, comatose, etc), which is why at the end of the day I don't think a fully privatized system would ever work.

Australia has a very similar model to Canada. Service there is better, arguably some of the best in the world, but again that is because of the increased population.