What do you think of Canada free medical policy?

[AdminOnline]

Under the terms of the Canada Health Act, all "insured persons" (basically, legal residents of Canada, including permanent residents) are entitled to receive "insured services" without copayment. Such services are defined as medically necessary services if provided in hospital, or by 'practitioners' (usually physicians).[2] Approximately 70% of Canadian health expenditures come from public sources, with the rest paid privately (both through private insurance, and through out-of-pocket payments). The extent of public financing varies considerably across services. For example, approximately 99% of physician services, and 90% of hospital care, are paid by publicly funded sources, whereas almost all dental care is paid for privately.

- [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_%28Canada%29]Medicare (Canada) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/url]

Seriously, i don't want to retire with all my money go into the medical fee here in asia.... unless you are filthy rich.

Poorer people tend to end up no where if illness hit you when you are old...

What are the good & bad points?

Can our canadian friends share your views?

TIA.

[AdminOnline]

Found this... another friend told me i will die waiting in the queue.. this article mention one too.. x_x

Canada's Medical Nightmare - by Robert J. Cihak, M.D. - Health Care News

For decades, Canadians have cast pitying glances at us poor American neighbors who actually have to pay for our medical care while they get theirs for "free."

Yet the major candidates in Canada's recent national election both agreed the country's health care system is failing. They made the usual socialist diagnosis of "not enough money." None of the candidates mentioned government control as what ails the Canadian system.

On this side of the border, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), with presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, also from Massachusetts, in tow, promotes Canadian health care to U.S. voters, in the hope we too can have "free" medical care.


High Costs, Low Quality

A July 2004 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, Paying, More, Getting Less, concluded that after years of government control, the Canadian medical system is badly injured and bleeding citizens' hard-earned tax dollars. The institute compared health care systems in the industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found Canada currently spends the most, yet ranks among the lowest on such indicators as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes.

One of the major reasons for this discrepancy is that, unlike the countries in the study that outperformed Canada--Sweden, Japan, Australia, and France, for example--Canada outlaws most private health care.

If the Canadian government says it provides a particular medical service, it is illegal for a Canadian citizen to pay for and obtain that service privately. At the same time, the Canadian government bureaucracy rations medical services. According to another Fraser Institute survey, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada (13th edition, October 2003), a Canadian health care patient, on average, must wait 17.7 weeks for hospital treatment. Those who live in Saskatchewan waited an average of 30 weeks, those in Ontario a relatively expeditious 14 weeks.


Dying in Queues

In 1999, Dr. Richard F. Davies, a cardiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, described in remarks for the Canadian Institute for Health Information how delays affected Ontario heart patients scheduled for coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In a single year, for this one operation, the doctor said, "71 Ontario patients died before surgery, 121 were removed from the list permanently because they had become medically unfit for surgery," and 44 left the province to have the surgery, many having gone to the United States for the operation. (According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, 33 Canadian hospitals performed approximately 22,500 bypass surgeries in 1998-99.)

In other words, 192 people either died or became too sick to have surgery before they could work their way to the front of the line.

In a May/June 2004 article in the journal Health Affairs, researcher Robert Blendon and colleagues described the results of a survey of hospital administrators in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. Fifty percent of the Canadian hospital administrators said the average waiting time for a 65-year-old man requiring a routine hip replacement was more than six months. Not one American hospital administrator reported waiting periods that long. Eighty-six percent of American hospital administrators said the average waiting time was shorter than three weeks; only 3 percent of Canadian hospital administrators said their patients had this brief a wait.


Bare-Bones Health Care

Barring epidemics and other disasters, fewer than one out of 10 people in prosperous societies will face a major medical crisis in any one year. Those suffering people, however, are the ones who need help the most, and the aging of the baby boomers in the United States makes it likely more serious illnesses will afflict more Americans in the next couple of decades. The kind of minor health care services the Canadian system provides well are not what America's aging Baby Boomers will need most urgently in years to come.

America's health care system already includes too much Canadian-style bureaucratic delay and inefficiency. For example, the slow acceptance by Medicare and Medicaid of medical innovation, their exacting paperwork requirements, delayed and low payments of claims, and the threat of overzealous prosecution by health care bureaucrats are driving doctors out of business and giving patients fewer medical options.

Fixing those flaws would seem to be a much more promising prospect than a further move down the road Canada has followed to high costs and low quality of health care.

[NeoSeminole]

I guess I'll chime in. I was trying to avoid this thread b/c I can see a storm brewing.

from what I understand, the Canadian healthcare system has several problems. It's not truly free. In fact, it's costing the tax payers more than what we pay for taxes in the US. Universal healthcare means more patients seeking medical attention which results in a shortage of clinicians, which in turn means longer waiting lines and/or poorer service. Also, there is not as much incentive for successful physicians to practice in Canada due to their healthcare laws, which is driving away talent to the US and other countries where they can earn much more. This depletion in the talent pool means, again, poorer healthcare.

[Lipp]

So essentially it's whether poor healthcare for everyone < good healthcare for some.

[vashti]

I think they should limit health care services to people who have lived past their life expectancy. No more full codes, no more extraordinary measures.

Brutal, I know, but it would save a fortune - money that could be spent in preventative care for the poor.

[Lipp]

I think they should limit health care services to people who have lived past their life expectancy. No more full codes, no more extraordinary measures.

Brutal, I know, but it would save a fortune - money that could be spent in preventative care for the poor.

And before you know it -



But yeah, can't help but think about it sometimes, might be morally wrong but economically very sound.

[IndiReloaded]

I've made much longer posts about this topic already LA. But to sum it up: its not free, we pay hefty taxes for our healthcare system and its close to breaking with the load of the aging baby boomers present and coming. Its really a two-tier system here: basic coverage and then extra for better quality care. My extended affords us better drugs, post-care treatment, counselling, physio, eyecare, dentistry, etc. The terrible reality is you go sick as a dog to your doc and she asks "You have XXX extended care, right?" so she can prescribe the designer drug @ > $12 per pill to kill my bug. Not too different from the US in that measure.

[vashti]

But yeah, can't help but think about it sometimes, might be morally wrong but economically very sound.

It's not morally wrong to allow an old person to die. It's natural. It IS wrong to do some of the things we do to prolong their lives, though...

[SirWagginston]

I think they should limit health care services to people who have lived past their life expectancy. No more full codes, no more extraordinary measures.

Brutal, I know, but it would save a fortune - money that could be spent in preventative care for the poor.

You pretty much summed up the logic of the Canadian system. Overall, it guarantees a higher life expectancy than in the United States, precisely because it doesn't work for those suffering the most. It provides coverage to people with minor problems, who would simply ignore those problems if they lived in a private health care system. Growing up in Washington D.C., my friends in public school would not really understand if I told them I couldn't hang out because I had a doctor's appointment. They didn't have check-ups, because their families couldn't afford them. Canadians will die waiting for surgeons, but they will all get check-ups.

Still, I think private health care should be allowed under the law. I'm just libertarian like that. Who's the government to tell me I can't pay for a surgeon if I really want to?

[Asip4u]

Besides the waiting times i wouldn't want to be anywhere else. The quality of care is very good and i honestly don't care what happens to me after i hit 70. As vashti mentioned, the drugs they give to keep old people going is just wrong anyways.

[irrelevant_89]

I think the reasonable choice is free health care, but only as much as it is affordable, and priority to life-threatening situations and younger people. The minor problems, and old people with more/less terminal diseases, would not be covered unless the money was available - with the increasingly older population of course this is hardly possible, all over North America and Europe social security institutions are under great stress, and some of it has to be relieved somehow. So, the governement should cover as much as it can, and always leave the option for those who have the money to go seek private health care to complement it. After all, one's free to do whatever one wants to with the extra money right?

This is more/less how it works in Portugal and other European countries. The aging population is sucking all the money out though so some revisions are needed.

[bluesummer]

I've had some health issues in the past six months, and I've been in and out of specialists offices. I think nothing of it, because I don't pay for it.

Healthcare isn't FREE, we do pay monthly premiums for it, but you pay based on your income......you get more and more of a subsidy the less you make. In my case, my company pays for everything, so my healthcare IS free. Criticize it all you want, but I won't be the one having to save thousands of dollars to go into the hospital to have my future children.

Stupid baby boomers are going to make it MORE expensive though.

[NeoSeminole]

how are the baby boomers at fault? They deserve access to medical attention just as much as you.

[girl68]

She's not placing fault. She didn't birth them she's simply saying we're going to be paying more for their health care as they grow old.

And while our system isn't perfect I'm glad I wouldn't be refused emergency care like I would in the states should something bad happen (and didn't have insurance).

[NeoSeminole]

she called them stupid. I was wondering how come? By the way, I don't know where you heard (or if you just made it up) but in the US, the ER cannot refuse to treat you.

here's a little something to stimulate your brain: what is one of the top reasons you think healthcare in the US is so expensive?