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I'm Canadian, and I don't really care very much what people think of our system here in Canada. In my opinion it is great. I think wait times are overstated, in
by mgrouchy 17y ago
I'm Canadian, and I don't really care very much what people think of our system here in Canada. In my opinion it is great. I think wait times are overstated, in situations where wait times matter. To espouse some personal stories to compare and contrast here, my girlfriends father had some pretty serious colon cancer, from the time it was found it took around a month to get the surgery he needed(including consults and whatnot) and to start treatment. Cost to him and his family 0$.
My uncle lives in Texas, (I love Texas Btw :P ) and he had some serious issues with his spleen. It took him about a month to get his surgery(including consults), he is fine now but still requires continuing monitoring.Cost to him and his family with his insurance coverage ~40K.
I honestly hope that everyone everywhere(not just in the US) gets free and available healthcare.
While there might be some hybrid model in the middle somewhere that may work. I think dealing with a teired model of healthcare will leave people who can only get the public healthcare the shaft.
- jfornear 17y agoTo counter your Texas anecdote... I live in Texas, and my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic melanoma (extremely low survival rate). The cancer doctors we have in Dallas are some of the best in the world. My dad had insurance and it covered an upwards of $200k. My dad's fine today, and has been cancer-free for 5 years. The only things that stood out as being broken was the doctors' paranoia of being sued.
- psranga 17y agoYou did not mention what your father's out of pocket expenses were. In the Canada example, out of pocket was $0.
- jfornear 17y agoI don't know, but it couldn't have been much since my dad makes less than $50k a year. In the Canadian example, you need to figure in taxes.
- nanijoe 17y agoI don't think your father's income has anything to do with how much he would have had to pay out of pocket. And since I understand you object to the government running things, do you have philosophical objections to the USPS delivering your mail? Or receiving Social Security benefits when the time comes? (These are serious questions, I really would like to know)
- jfornear 17y agoMy dad's income does have something to do with it because I didn't notice anything change for us financially despite all that he had to go through. Ergo, it couldn't have been that much. I know most doctors don't care how much you make when they bill you. Sorry that I wasn't clear. I can object to things on a philosophical level and still use them. We become reliant on programs that should have never been created in the first place.
- mgrouchy 17y agoI may pay higher taxes, but I get a lot of "socialized" service. Seems like a decent tradeoff to me.
- chrischen 17y agoResponding to below: Taxes are graduated so the largest increase in tax will be to the rich and uber rich, but to them it will be small pickings.
- 0ffworlder 17y agoEarned income goes up. Capital gains as far as I know is max 15%. Other tax laws for the really, really rich might change this though.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoAverage wait times in Canada are worse than the wait times for those Americans who can afford the Best Healthcare Money Can Buy ® - but they actually compare favourably with average wait times in the US (obviously not counting those 47 million Americans who will wait forever for procedures for which they don't have coverage and which they can't afford).