And it seems to be very varied, too. A Canadian citizen has very few situations where there are any out-of-pocket payments. In every situation I have seen or heard of personally, the care you need is the care you get, especially in an emergency. When my husband cut off several fingers in a table saw accident, he was taken by helicopter from our little island to the hand unit at Vancouver General, and his fingers sewn on again. It took a long haul of physio to get the hand back in use, but he’s got 90% use back, just a bit of stiffness where the joint was severed. The ONLY charge we had, through both the surgery and the physio, was a nominal $85 for the helicopter ride.
I had a severe viral infection in both eyes, and by the time the virus was under control, I needed corneal transplants. I got them and have my sight back. No charges.
My dad eventually died of A-plastic leukemia. All treatment and care that was needed was given. No death panel and no charges.
Our healthcare is paid for by our taxes, which are based on our income.
You’ll have to forgive us for being passionately defensive of this system, especially when it is so persistently put down for being “socialist”. I don’t care what words people want to assign to it, I just know it works.
Universal medical plans can be done well or badly; unfortunately the discussion is often hostage to established interests & politics (health unions or health insurance companies). Both Canada, and the US could improve care delivery at (much) lower costs if they opted for almost any other country’s plan (France, Germany, Italy, Japan that I know from personal observations). But my experience (17 years management/40 years practice) found few who would look outside their sandbox.
I’ve been following these recent messages with interest. Australia’s medicare system is rather like Canada’s, although ours seemingly privatises more of it.
We have a public system and a private system. The former rations out resources by waiting time, the latter by price. One can purchase private health “insurance” but it’s complicated and could be a lot more efficient. We don’t face the massive premiums that US residents do.
Taxpayers pay a Medicare levy as a small % of their income, and that funds a great deal of the public system. The attitude here is that we are happy to help share one another’s burdens. For us the US sickcare system is the go-to example of how NOT to do it. For our neoliberal, market-obsessed Federal government, the US system is THE goal. We’re a l-o-n-g way from it, I am glad to report.
Any Australian resident (with a Medicare card) will be treated in an emergency at no charge regardless of the expense of the procedures and regardless of income level. Years ago my brother was raced into hospital with an appendix ready to burst (he was OK). Cost: nil. A while back I spent a night in hospital in an emergency. Outcome: good. Cost: nil. Recently I had a colonoscopy as a public patient. Same-day procedure; results: all clear. Cost: nil.
In mid-October I will be fitted with a pacemaker. My cardiologist is alarmed at my condition and was able to get me onto the public list months earlier than I was expecting. It involves the surgery and an overnight stay. Cost to me: nil. A friend of mine had his done as a private patient, with 2 nights in the hospital. Cost: $42,000. He was able to afford it because he’d been paying regularly into his health fund.
If this is “socialised” medicine, I support it enthusiastically.
People in the US cannot be turned away from the emergency room in a hospital even if they can’t pay.
VShelford-years ago, in the mountains of Quebec, I had a serious injury and got compassionate outpatient care free of charge, as an American. That was an incredibly positive experience and in retrospect remarkable as I was allowed care as a visitor.
Many doctors support single payer (who cares who pays really they all pay much the same). Still, our population is much larger than Canada’s by almost a factor of 10 and densities vary greatly; the issue of state versus federal funding and massive opposition by the insurance industry keep us from getting to the point of single payer. The health insurance industry is a big percentage of our index funds as well, that is the bottom line here imho and the main reason we won’t see it unless the private insurers “manage” single payer.
Socialized medicine varies a lot from country to country imho. It means one thing in China, another in Canada, and another in the UK etc…the delays for specialty care in the UK that I hear about worry me. The low to no out of pocket costs are awesome. Still I think applying the Canadian model here would necessitate centralized funding and planning by the federal government, to properly distribute services, staffing and funding. There are people who live to do that kind of work but they get left to collect unemployment as the for profit model gets more and more distorted with respect to providing care for patients. Sadly.
Centralized funding and planning by the Federal government is exactly why there are treatment delays in Great Britain. Having worked in government medicine here in the US, I’ve no doubt that paucity of tertiary care along with treatment delays would be the rule here. Of course, those with sufficient wealth would not be so impacted.
You got your pacemaker “months earlier” than expected? Here, you would have a wait of possibly several weeks but certainly not months. How long do you wait for joint replacements? Are you even eligible after a certain age? Many Canadians come down here for that I’m told. Many people hate the for-profit system here but while not perfect, it’s far far preferable to the expensive, rationed care of some other countries. No one is denied care here despite the propaganda.