At a convention in Minneapolis a couple of years ago, a guy was telling me about the time he was ill and had to be picked up by an ambulance. “Cost me $1100 just for a ride to the hospital,” he said.
Clearly I hadn’t had enough experience with the American system of healthcare. “Those rides cost you a grand?” I asked. My late Dad had to go for some ambulance rides himself, and they never passed $100.
“See?” said the guy to the woman beside him as he pointed to me. “He’s from a civilized country!”
I was reminded of this incident when reading Reddit this morning and saw the most-commented item in their list today: it’s a link to an article titled Has Canada Got the Cure?, an article from Yes magazine whose thesis is that while the Canadian taxpayer-funded system of universal healthcare has its problems, it clearly runs circles around the American system.
Here’s the intro:
Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That’s a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t already have a fundamentally public–that is, tax-supported–health care system.
That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans’ mortality rates–both general and infant–are shockingly high.
Some points from the article:
I’m sure I’m going to get all sorts of comments from people who’d rather switch to an American-style system, from those who just don’t want to bear the burden of living in a society to those who say “it says so right here in the Bible: I am not my brother’s keeper!…or soemthing like that.” Feel free to fire away in the comments.
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BTW, something about the page layout is causing Firefox 1.5.0.7 to hide the verification picture. I had to right click and "View Picture" to post this comment.
I love the Canadian health care system. Can't immagine a better place to live to be sick. However, Canadian's fear of privitization is a little silly as well. I forget whom thethe author was, but a quote I found in the the Star put it best, "Canadians are happy to eat sawdust so long as no one is allowed to eat steak."
As a real life example, I present my dog, who one fine Tuesday night, managed to get a bone solidly lodged around her jaw. I call the vet emergency number, meet the vet at the office at 11:30pm, they put her under, cut the thing off with bolt cutters, pay them $130, and everyone's happy. (actually, I was annoyed at the dog, but very happy with the vet care.)
If I need medical attention at night however, unless it's life threatening, I'm out of luck. If I drag my self to the emergency room at midnight with severe eye irritation (some kind of unidentified infection), I get to sit it out in the waiting room until 7Am when the doctor comes in... I assure you, I would have been happy to pay someone $150 to take care of it at night.
The US system is infinitely better if you have money: you can get diagnostics and treatment when you need it, not after it's too late to correct the problem (e.g. with physical injuries like major ligament tears that need to be operated quickly, or not at all).
Actually, if you really have money, it doesn't matter either way: you can afford to go to BC or Quebec for some private care, and out of country for everything else. If you don't have that kind of money and don't know the chief of staff socially, bend over.
The Ontario medical system, at least, is an abject failure, I believe in large part due to the greed of MD's who want it to fail so they can start charging privately.
Remember Dalton McGuinty's $600 a year MD tax, which he introduced at the same time he delisted a bunch of services from OHIP?
How about those of us who are okay with paying for ordinary single-payer health care but want prompter service on occasion? I have been in Anon 1:17's shoes a few times and would have been happy to shell out a little extra to avoid the six-hour wait in the ER. When you are dealing with non-life-threatening but painful injuries (like say a bone fracture), waiting several hours for treatment is no walk in the park.
It's not always about greedy conservatives objecting to opening their wallets for the other guy, you know.
See Australia for a good system currently being undermined by a constant pressure towards privatization. You can get surgery done on Medicare and pay virtually nothing (although your choices of doctor and time are limited), or you can pay huge premiums to private insurers who give you a choice of doctor but still don't cough up enough dough to cover the cost (which means that it's the insured people who often end up being out of pocket after a procedure).
The US system is infinitely better if you have money: "If you have the money" What if you don't? That's why its important always to think of the little guys before you inject a political agenda. And no I am not a card carrying liberal, just an average middle aged person who belong to the sandwich generation. My late dad spent his last days in a pallative care unit and when it was over, not a single cent was billed to us. Is that an abject failure?
Hm. Having experienced both, I think I like the system better in Canada, but have received better care (once I got it, regardless of how much I paid out of pocket) in the States.
What bothers me recently about the medical system in Canada is I work for a company that tracks medical devices and part of the govt mandate from FDA is who have to know how to reach a patient and a doctor after the case if there ever is a recall. We had a recent case where the patient is in Canada but came to US for an operation. The hospital listed who the following doctor is in Canada and listed a city, but no other contact info. I have spent many hours trying to track down a way to contact the Doctor in case we need it, went through every health care and phone book site without success. I have been online for 12 years. You would think I could find one doctor and I never have such trouble with US cases. It just made me wonder how crazy the system must be for folks in Canada if I can't find one doctors contact information.
As for the numbers I recall the fine words of Mark Twain "lies, damn lies, and statistics." I take them with a grain of salt.
I live in upstate NY, about 20 min from Canada. One of my friends from Ottawa was telling me that she had to wait in the ER forever--with an appendix that burst--before a doctor would see her. She was also telling me that many doctors move to the states because they can make more money here. That had always given me the impression Canada still had to get a few of the kinks out of the system. :X
I wonder why that guy had to pay $1100 for an ambulance ride. It can't be that the ambulance companies are making a fortune, or there would be lots of them and prices would have been driven down. Could it be that they get sued a lot? My impression is that in the litigation-happy USA the medical industry is a particularly popular area. If so, that could explain a large part of why the USA spends so much on healthcare without getting its money's worth.