Think Canada is good with healthcare?

[cryowizard]

http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/6640081051001?r=2370025051001#2370025051001

DISCLAIMER: Snopes diagnosis on this is "MIXED", meaning some things here are more likely to be true while some are not. You be the judge.

Subject: A letter from a Canadian.

Please take the time to read it so you can do whatever you
wish....research, verify, etc., but please read it.

I saw on the news up here in Canada where Hillary Clinton introduced her
new health care plan. Something similar to what we have in Canada. I also
heard that Michael Moore was raving about the health care up here in Canada
in his latest movie. As your friend and someone who lives with the Canada
health care plan, I thought I would give you some facts about this great
medical plan that we have in Canada.

First of all:
1) The health care plan in Canada is not free. We pay a premium every month
of $96 for Shirley and I to be covered. Sounds great! What they don't
tell you is how much we pay in taxes to keep the health care system afloat.
I am personally in the 55% tax bracket. Yes 55% of my earnings go to taxes.
A large portion of that (I am not sure of the exact amount) goes directly
to health care our #1 expense.

2) I would not classify what we have as health care plan, it is more like
a health diagnosis system. You can get into to see a doctor quick enough
so he can tell you "yes indeed you are sick or you need an operation" but
now the challenge becomes getting treated or operated on. We have waiting
lists out the ying yang, some as much as 2 years down the road.

3) Rather than fix what is wrong with you the usual tactic in Canada is to
prescribe drugs. Have a pain- here is a drug to take- not what is causing
the pain and why. No time for checking you out because it is more important
to move as many patients thru as possible each hour for Government
re-imbursement.

4) Many Canadians do not have a family Doctor.

5) Don't require emergency treatment as you may wait for hours in the
emergency room waiting for treatment.

6) Shirley's dad cut his hand on a power saw a few weeks back and it
required that his hand be put in a splint - to our surprise we had to pay
$125 for a splint because it is not covered under health care plus we have
to pay $60 for each visit for the dr. to check it out each week.

7) Shirley's cousin was diagnosed with a heart blockage. Put on a waiting
list . Died before he could get treatment.

8) Government allots so many operations per year. When that is done no
more operations, unless you go to your local newspaper and plead your case
and embarrass the government then money suddenly appears.

9)The Government takes great pride in telling us how much more they are
increasing the funding for health care but waiting lists never get shorter.
Government just keeps throwing money at the problem but it never goes away.
They are good at finding new ways to tax us, but they don't call it a
tax anymore it is now a user fee.

10) A friend needs an operation for a blockage in her leg but because she
is a smoker they will not do it despite paying into the health care
system all these years. My friend is 65 years old. Now there is talk that
maybe we should not treat fat and obese people either because they are a
drain on the health care system. Let me see now, what we want in Canada is
a health care system for healthy people only. That should reduce our health care
costs.

11) Forget getting a second opinion, what you see is what you get.

12) I can spend what money I have left after taxes on booze, cigarettes,
junk food and anything else that could kill me but I am not allowed by law
to spend my money on getting an operation I need because that would be
jumping the queue. I must wait my turn except if I am a hockey player or
athlete then I can get looked at right away. Go figure. Where else in the
world can you spend money to kill yourself but are not allowed to spend money to
get healthy.

13) Oh did I mention that immigrants are covered automatically at tax payer
expense having never contributed a dollar to the system and pay no premiums.

14) We now give free needles to drug users to try and keep them
healthy. Wouldn't want a sickly druggie breaking into your house and
stealing your things. But people with diabetes who pay into the health care
system have to pay for their needles because it is not covered by the
health care system.

I send this out not looking for sympathy but as the election looms in the
states you will be hearing more and more about universal health care down
there and the advocates will be pointing to Canada. I just want to make
sure that you hear the truth about health care up here and have some food
for thought and informed questions to ask when broached with this subject.

Step wisely and don't make the same mistakes we have.

Comments

[tim-z.livejournal.com]

Лень идти по всем пунктам, но автор сильно искажает действительность и часто просто врет. Чего стоит хотя бы заявление о налоговой ставке в 55%!

На сайте http://www.ey.com/GLOBAL/content.nsf/Canada/Tax_-_Calculators_-_2007_Personal_Tax любой желающий может увидеть, то даже с зарплаты в 1 млн долларов платится от 38% до 47% налогов, в зависемости от провинции. С более реальной зарплаты в $100,000 уже платится от 27.5% до 34.5%.

Желающие сравнить обьективные данные двух медицинских систем могут зайти сюда:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems_compared

Цитата:
"In terms of population health, life expectancy in 2006 was about two and a half years longer in Canada, with Canadians living to an average of 79.9 years and Americans 77.5 years. Infant and child mortality rates are also higher in the U.S.[75]. Some comparisons suggest that the American system underperforms Canada's system as well as those of other industrialized nations with universal coverage. For example, a ranking by the World Health Organization of health care system performance among 191 member nations, published in 2000, ranked Canada 30th and the U.S. 37th, and the overall health of Canada 35th to the American 72nd.

[cryowizard.livejournal.com]

>> Лень идти по всем пунктам, но автор сильно искажает действительность и часто просто врет. Чего стоит хотя бы заявление о налоговой ставке в 55%!

Well, don't be lazy then :)

This is a very easily made statement. Please be specific (anything that snopes diagnosis didn't catch?). And yes, I will give you he may have exaggerated the tax percentages.

However!

Let's look at it from a patient's point of view.

I care a lot more about waiting times and access to ER and specialist care at a moments notice, which the wiki articles confirm are better in the US.

See my previous post from today -- I would have to wait weeks in Canada to see a pulmonologist I saw this morning after calling him at 6pm yesterday. If that isn't an option I don't care where WHO places the US on its list.

Let me elaborate a bit.

You are talking to someone who had been to ER twice this year, once with a life-threatening collapsed lung condition that required immediate surgical procedure and immediate access to monitoring and a well-equipped hospital bed. It also required instant CAT scans, Xrays, blood work, you name it.

Now, the fun part: before I caught an ambulance ride, a third-party doctor detected my condition and then sent me to a pulmonology specialist immediately, the same hour. So I went to see a specialist without ANY wait at all. He also did an instant Xray right there in the office to confirm the suspicions.

If I couldn't see the specialists right away, I was running a big risk of dropping dead on the street of pulmonary arrest.

So, as you can see, as far as I am concerned, minimal wait times and immediate access to specialist care and hospital beds matters a ton more to me than our 37th place on the WHO list, for a good reason - it kept me alive.

Now, the fun part is -- the hospital bill was 35K, but insurance only paid 5.5K, and hospital was fine with that. This is brings us to a question: so how much does health care actually cost? That's something that we have to find out first, before we start spending taxpayers dollars.

Dont get me wrong. We in the US absolutely MUST reform our health care system. But throwing tax money at it is not going do fix it, like it didn't in Canada -- more tax money does not mean less wait times.

What we have to look at are things like skyrocketing malpractice insurance costs (frivolous lawsuits) which doctors pass on to patients, the government's legislative meddling in the health industry (eg mandating "All accept" laws in New York), the gigantic cost overruns in Medicare and Medicaid, the 10-year wait time for FDA to approve a new drug, and a ton of other things. I refuse to believe that Uncle Sam taking money out of my pocket will give me or anyone else a better coverage than a fair, free market, multi-tier private insurance. Let's face it - government in this country fucks up almost everything it touches. Healthcare will be no exception.

[vavchuga.livejournal.com]

Agree. When I requested my phycisian to send me to MRA of the brain and Stress test (I won’t go to the details, why I wanted that), it was some waiting time (2 weeks) , but it was only because, I wanted to be first one on the morning, and all of that time was already taken for couple of weeks.

p.s. For those who is not following both of the tests cost $6-8K.

[tim-z.livejournal.com]

I think the Snopes gives a fair point by point examination of the often ridiculous claims made by the author. However, I would agree that the biggest concern that Canadians have about their health care is wait times. Having said that, people with life-threatening conditions usually get access to all the required procedures IMMEDIATELY. I cannot speak from my own experience, but I have several friends who had serious issues (like appendicitis) and got operated on within hours of getting to the hospital. If this was not the case, I don’t think Canada would have had a better life expectancy than the US.

Another important aspect of private vs public healthcare is the cost of products/services. Theoretically, private industries should be more efficient than public or government controlled industries. However, I have all the reasons to believe that when it comes to healthcare, this principle does not work.

For example, it is a well known fact that Americans pay a lot more for the same prescription drugs than Canadians. Millions of Americans drive across the border every year to buy cheap “Canadian” drugs. Those drugs are made by the same multi-national pharmaceutical companies, so how come they are more expensive in the US? (Keep in mind that most consumer goods in the US are cheaper than the same goods in Canada).

Let me give you another example. When I just came to Canada and did not have insurance (it comes into effect 3 months after arrival), I had to visit a doctor with my daughter who had flu. That visit cost me about C$110 (or less than US$80 at the then current exchange rates). A year later while on vacation is Seattle I took my daughter to a local walk-in clinic. Same symptoms, same level of service, same antibiotics prescribed. The bill was US$150.

I work with a guy whose brother is a surgeon in oncology. He makes close to half a million bucks a year, which is not bad. But he keeps complaining that in the US he would have made two or three times more.

The statistical data supports that the same healthcare services cost a lot more in the US. Canadian federal and provincial government spends 16.7% of its revenue on health care, which covers 69.9% of total healthcare costs. The US government spends 18.5% of its revenue, but only covers 44.6% of total healthcare costs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada

I believe that the explanation to this anomaly is that health is the most important thing to most people. “You cannot put a price on your health!” – I did not come up with that, this is an ad from a US clinic in Detroit inviting Canadians to come for services. And it is true - you cannot. When it comes to heath of the loved ones, people would pay anything.

And the private businesses would fully exploit this inelastic demand and charge astronomical amounts for everything related to healthcare. The whole healthcare sector of the US economy operates on totally different principles than the rest of it (the same is true for the military industry). It starts with medical schools that charge their students several times more than any other universities. Fresh grads leave with the universities with hundreds of thousands of student debt. It continues with family doctors making millions of dollars, whereas in other developed countries these numbers are usually limited to hundreds of thousands. It goes on with thousands of dollars a day for staying at the hospital (versus $200-250 for private hospital room in Canada) and inflated prices for prescription medicine, etc.

Finally, there is a social aspect to all of this. Personal bankruptcy rates in the US are several times higher than in Canada, and the main explanation is universal healthcare. Millions of people go bankrupt in the US when they get in car accidents or develop serious illnesses while not having private insurance. This does not happen in Canada, which helps to lower crime rates and avoid US style ghettos in large Canadian cities (it is obviously, not the only factor, but it is an important one).

Don’t get me wrong. The Canadian healthcare system has a lot of problems and requires many changes. But I think it is a better system than what you currently have in the US.

[(Anonymous)]

Somehow I have a hard time to believe that in Canada you'd be treated differently in the kind of emergency situation that you had.

And very often in NYC's ERs you have to wait for hours before they'll take care of you.

Looks like two systems are more or less comparable...

-LT