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Originally Posted by BigBen
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.
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That's semi true. Most uninsured do wait too long before they do anything because of cost and then when they have to do something, the cost is outrageous because what they had, had gotten worse because they didn't do anything.
But I recently went, I go every year to the ER for my Bronchitis, usually costs $500 but I do that because 97% of doctors here won't see you without insurance and the 3% who do are either just as expensive or so back logged that I wouldn't see them for 3-4 months.
Anyway, when they found the swollen lymph nodes on my chest x-rays, because a doctor cared more about me than the cost, they did everything extremely fast. From the tests to the surgery.
(Had I had insurance, I probably would not have gotten the speedy treatments I had gotten. As they would have waited for approvals and referrals and God forbid if I had gone to the wrong hospital...... so in some ways it is nicer NOT being insured.
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However, it has left me over $20,000 in debt with more bills coming in (as I have yet to recieve the surgeons bill and the bill for everything concerning the surgery.)
So no they didn't let me die, however, I will be in debt for quite sometime.... and the taxpayers and insured are the ones truly paying for mine and others like me who can't pay and make too much (if you can call $11,500, too much) to get any help.
Just trying to set the record straight. As some people here, wrongfully believe you in Canada and other Universal Healthcare countries have to wait on lists as you die, which is not true, people outside the US feel the uninsured die before they get help.... that is not true, we mortgage our futures and destroy our credit but we can get the help, depending on the medical facility. Private hospitals can require insurance only, any hospital accepting Medicare and Medicaid MUST treat anyone presenting and have a program in place to treat the poor, which is ...... government funded and they probably pay 3-4 times what the Canadian or any other Universalized healthcare country's government pays.