rruff

I do have a cell phone... I pay $25/mo and I *don't* have a land line.

I paid for health insurance for 15 years until I hit 45 years old. Never had a single claim. I paid $1800 a year for a policy that had a $2500 deductable and a 20% copay after that. When I hit 45 it jumped up to $2800 (that is almost 10x what the phone costs), and I said the heck with it... it is only going to keep going up from there. I can't afford to use our medical system... if I get really sick I guess I'll have to go to Mexico or India.

rousseau

They are effectively the same for residents, more or less, in terms of the care you are covered for. The details of the funding may vary between provinces.

If you move to a different province you have to switch over your health care--a minor bureaucratic matter of signing a few forms and waiting for your card to arrive in the mail.

kukusz

And nowhere am I saying that the US system is good as it is. I just don't think that socialized medicine in its current form is the answer either.

Obviously, health care is an issue that hinges on $$$ just like everything else. Socialized medicine as most see it means "equal health care for all" which is neither equal, fair, or possible. Those with means should not be punished for having them. A perfect system would continue rewarding those that deserve it while evolving the current system to the point where it is no longer "barbaric", as you say.

I almost started my own business this year and am well aware of the health care costs. I was also self-employed for 5 years and had to manage my own health care during that time. Had I become seriously injured, I would probably still be paying off the medical bills. However, that would be acceptable to me. If my house burnt down, should the government build me a new one even if I was not insured?

Fixing health care will require fixing health care costs. I'm also not against some forms of government subsidized health care, I just think that it does not mean it covers everything. Children, for instance, should probably always be covered, as well as the elderly. My problem with socialized anything is the abuse of it - from welfare to unemployment benefits to bank bail outs. I understand that unemployment benefits and welfare serve a good purpose, both economic and social, but I also see how they can be easily abused. Same with socialized medicine - do we really need to go to the doctor for a flu or a cough? I have no idea what kind of rules would work, but waste, excess, and abuse are pitfalls to almost every government program. This is similar to saying you have a free market while imposing regulations that effectively freeze parts of the system and contribute to the wacky behavior that ensues. The blind endorsement and praise of socialized medicine should be fully understood before jumping on the bandwagon.

Grumpy McTrumpy

What form is that?

Fat Boy

I don't know if this helps either of the 2 people that asked, I sincerely hope it does. Keep in mind, I'm not an insurance salesman and I don't know any of the pros/cons to one carrier vs. another. I do know it's an important thing to have researched.

https://www.insurance.com/article.asp...ance_/artid/43

Grumpy McTrumpy

been there, done that, not eligible.

There's only one plan available for me if I go through their process, and it sucks and costs $423.35/month. No Dr visits covered. No labs save the hospital lab. Essentially it is a catastrophic medical policy for a hell of a lot more than a phone bill. No thanks, I cannot pay five thousand dollars for something I hope never to use. Even if they did pay for Dr visits I don't think I could easily afford paying an extra 5k.

And by the way, those rates don't STAY that "low". They go up every year.

rousseau

Yep. Thing is, we don't look at it like a business. Rather, it's a service.

A two-tier system is probably the way to go.

Specious analogy. We choose our housing, but we don't choose our bodies.

Things can be abused. But you Americans have a fundamentally perverse view of society. There's this myth, patently false (obviously so to anyone not an American), that you're cowboy pioneers with an independent spirit making your own way. But that's moronic and ridiculous: we're all in this together, fer crissakes. Even the leathery-skinned guy in Montana getting as far away from "society" as possible by raising sheep, or whatever, has to sell them to somebody.

Everyone's involved, in other words. What good is your product if a guy can't afford it because he went bankrupt after having an accident and wasn't insured because he had a congenital condition? And if you sneer and say you've still got lots of buyers anyways, let the guy starve, well...too many starving people make for wealth inequities and social chasms that become cancerous. Look at Detroit. Hell, look at ten thousand places in the United States. That's good?

I'm not talking about wealth redistribution, though. All I'm saying, is think how your society would be if you could guarantee a modicum of good health, if your citizens didn't have to worry about starting up new companies or switching jobs or leaving abusive husbands, or what have you, because being uninsured for health care is prohibitive. Yes, there will be abuses, but if your greatest fear is that a couple of hypochondriacs are going to go running to the doctor every time they have the sniffles, then I'd say your priorities are greatly out of whack.

Holy crap: I'll give you waste, but excess and abuse are the very hallmarks of the medical scene in your country. Only, they're being committed by the insurance companies. Along with outright fraud.

Again, if you have to choose between the blatantly unethical behaviour of your private medical insurance companies and the potential abuse of the system we have up here, where hypochondriacs are calling doctor's offices day and night, what would you choose? And you have privately insured hypochondriacs down there calling doctors day and night, anyway. Or are you suggesting that socialized medicine breeds hypochondriacs? If that's true, then why are Canadians and Western Europeans so much healthier than Americans?

challaday

As an economist type, I find all of the various arguments over healthcare to be really the two sides of the same coin. In reality, all of the discussion is simply over a resource allocation issue. Deciding how and who gets any scarce resource is difficult. Either you let prices fluctuate to market conditions and have the market clearing (efficient) quantity produced, or you purposefully manage either price or quantity and don't have the appropriate quantity for the market.

The sad irony is that it is because we are so smart as humans and have discovered so many cool ways to extend life and improve health that our ability to decide on their allocation hasn't kept up.

uke

Keep in mind not all Americans are so blinded by selfishness. At least a few of us of us at any given time are well aware of how poor things are here, and how well they could be. It's just really hard to convince enough of the rest of the population that America Isn't The Best At Everything enough to have them vote with us for progressive, and not regressive, policies.

MDcatV

that summarizes a huge problem in the US healthcare system. the confusion that emergency care = health care, which results in an absence of preventive medicine like having an annual physical, going to the dentist every six months, receiving proper medical treatment when you have a cough, cold, etc.

last summer my infant daughter was admitted to the childrens hospital center via ambulance on 4 different occaissions. we're an upper middle class suburban family, and going to the washington dc hospital center in the wee hrs. of a friday in the summertime is an eye opening experience. there were multiple times we observed families with children seeing ER docs for things that if these folks had access to preventive medical care would never have happened.

my opinion on healthcare changed forever on one of those trips when a 10-ish yr. old boy who was wailing in pain and holding his mouth had an ER doc look at him after hours in the waiting room. ER doc looked in his mouth, when the mom asked if they could just get some antibiotics and go home, ER doc looked increduously and asked last time kid had been to the dentist. mom said never, cant afford to. ER doc admitted the kid, called dental consult immediately. I remember her saying that the kid needed IV antibiotics and likely surgery to remove absesses ASAP, and that people lose parts of their face or die from things like this. We were next, she told us she sees cases like this several times each week, and stated that if these folks just had access to proper preventive care their lives would be so much better.

that sticks with you. I dont know what the details or solutions are, but there is no argument on this earth that can convince me that a country as affluent as the US should have one person that doesnt have adequate healthcare.

by the way, my wife and daughter are on kaiser permanente (reason I opened this thread in the 1st place). Cost/ambulance ride was $150, ER admittance $100/admittance. That's it. for us, a very difficult time was made less difficult by a simple payment arrangement between wash. hospital ctr. and kaiser, I was very grateful for that and have nothing but good to say about Kaiser.

WTF does this have to do with road cycling anyway?

Grumpy McTrumpy

nothing at all. But please don't move the thread since these things need to be said.

MDcatV

I guess you could say that from my prior post "i'm part of the problem, not the solution"

Grumpy McTrumpy

That is because a vast number of Americans are not making their own decisions. They are making decisions based on stuff they hear from political pundits who really do have a motive to maintain the status quo.

The vast majority of Americans would clearly benefit from tax-based health care. The fact that they don't know this is simply due to the fact that they have been convinced that it is not true. Those doing the "convincing" have the unfair advantage of TV networks, radio networks, and newspapers to amplify their voices.

Grumpy McTrumpy

I think you will find that many of us do not. However, I will admit that those who do have that perverse view might speak more loudly than the rest of us. Certainly they get more television airtime.

kudude

This myth is how you deal with America's self-righteousness with your own self-righteousness.

....and you can't say them in P&R?


Personally, I feel that if people could look past the end of their nose on this issue, things could see some improvement. No system is perfect, and misguided nationalism isn't the answer.

Val23708

feh. healthcare prices are skyrocketing b/c of those hambeasts that dont ride bikes.

cparekh

For what it is worth, according to the very good economist Tim Harford's book, The Undercover Economist, UK and US citizens are both about equally dissatisfied with their health care systems. He does not cover Canada, but his analysis of NHS versus the US private-payer system essentially concludes that both systems have huge fundamental problems.

He points to Singapore 's system as one that fundamentally minimizes most of the problems with both systems. This is a bike forum and not an economics forum, but his plan (generally agreed upon by economists, if they could totally start over) gets rid of insurance and provides everyone with tax credits that you can use on healthcare at your discretion. If you choose not to spend it, it accumulates, and whatever is left over, can be bequeathed.

The Singapore system reduces many of the major problems with both systems:

1) Elective care
2) Portability
3) Universal coverage
4) Adverse selection / moral hazard

Singapore has faster treatment, better outcomes, overall better health, and MUCH MUCH MUCH lower per capita cost.

It's a great book, if anyone cares to read it.

kukusz

R-e-a-d i-t?

rruff

It seems to work very well in some countries... Scandinavia especially.

But I don't favor socialized medicine either. I'd prefer more deregulated medicine (ie no AMA), with some government sponsored programs for those who are particularly poor. A good way to save money and improve service is to greatly modify the requirements for becoming a doctor, and also limit the litigation environment in the US. It is each person's responsibility to find a good doctor, and trust them to do their best work, rather than look to sue if anything goes wrong. Many doctors pay $100K a year in malpractice insurance!

Free health care for old people (but nobody else) makes no sense. Retired people in the US are the wealthiest segment of our population! Plus most of them have paid far less into the system than they are getting. Typically a person will get a disease or illness at some point in their old age that costs many hundreds of thousands to treat... and then they die anyway... because they are old. Plus a bunch of them go to the doctor on a regular basis just for fun.

kukusz

Scandinavian countries like Finland are moving towards more privatization, obviously they are finding room for improvement.

Trust doctors 100% with no liability? Wow, just wow.

Your solution to the elderly made me fall out of my chair laughing.

kudude

+1

neurocycler

Indeed.

Grumpy McTrumpy

all right we pipped slovenia at the line!

neurocycler

Finally someone with a sense of humour.

Grumpy McTrumpy

shh, you'll ruin my image