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Originally Posted by Ustwo
...And Ben, I scoff at how awful your health care system really is, how obnoxiously expensive, and how American liberals see it as somehow a wonderful thing.
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American health care, over all, costs more per capita than our Canadian experiment.
You see, what we did was take out all of the private insurance companies. They need to make a profit, and we take all of that slack in the system and put it back into patient care.
Did you know that if the US were to get rid of private insurance, you could afford Universal Health Care tomorrow?
It takes political will to do that. "Everybody is insured. No more paperwork, no more co-pays. No more HMO's."
Instead of bottle-necking demand for health care at the insurance company, we do it at the point of referrals to a specialist and wait lists for surgeries and other medical procedures.
American (insured): Have chest pain. Go to family doctor. Present proper insurance. Get expensive test. Get referred to expensive doctor. Get expensive diagnosis. Get very expensive surgery very quickly. Laugh at other health care systems and how inefficient they are. Eventually die.
American (uninsured): Have chest pain. Save up money to go to family doctor. be informed of cost for expensive test. Walk out of doctor's office, with chest pain. Die much faster than insured person.
Canadian (universal): Have chest pain. Don't worry about a family doctor. Present yourself to emergency room, because they are open all the time. Wait in the waiting room. Have physician see you. Wait for test. Have test done. Test shows nothing wrong. Have expensive test scheduled for 6 weeks later. Get expensive test done eventually. Doctor refers you to a specialist. Make appointment for specialist for 6 weeks. Specialist books surgery for 2 weeks, comments how horrible it is that you had to wait for so long. Have surgery. Cry at how if you were a rich american, you could get the surgery done weeks ago. Eventually die.
We each choose our own path. The Canadian path just treats everyone the same, regardless of their financial status.