|
|
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 12,359
Campfire Outfitter
|
Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 12,359 |
My first introduction to the Canadian health care system involved the husband of my wife's best friend who had a history of heart problems.
At age 38 he began suffering severe Angina. He called to make an appointment with a doctor and was told to be there in 2 weeks.
He was dead in a week. history and chest pain should equal ER visit, eh?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2011
Posts: 151,807 Likes: 17
Campfire Savant
|
|
Campfire Savant
Joined: Apr 2011
Posts: 151,807 Likes: 17 |
Fast service, no emergency rooms there?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2010
Posts: 24,273 Likes: 11
Campfire Ranger
|
|
Campfire Ranger
Joined: Mar 2010
Posts: 24,273 Likes: 11 |
I have no idea if the political will to take this on exists. But if it did, here's what I would prescribe, in the broad brushstrokes.
1. Initiate a NHS (national healthcare system) that all citizens would be eligible for. Make a quarterly premium, based on income, mandatory to participate in the system. This token payment has been proven time and again to be necessary for people to value the system, because if healthcare is free, it's worthless.
2. Require all state-funded hospitals to accept NHS patients and NHS fee schedules. These would be negotiated, not just set by Medicare/Medicaid decree. Scrap the current Medicare/Medicaid administration. Bureaucracy is choking the system out.
3. Require private hospitals to be self-funding. No state money goes to them, but on the other hand they don't have to waste money/resources on the BS that currently clogs the hallways of ALL hospitals. If all their patients are funded, they can provide fast top-notch care at a lower price because they don't have to inflate their prices to compensate for the lousy Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement model, which only pays pennies on the dollar.
4. Revamp healthcare insurance legislation so all plans must be available nationwide. Make the companies compete in a true free market rather than the protected regional/state markets they now enjoy and profit from.
5. Establish nationwide tort/liability reform so frivolous and greedy lawsuits don't continue to destroy the system from the bottom up. States that have enacted such laws have benefitted enormously. At the same time, you have to enact meaningful patient compensation systems for folks who have bad medical outcomes, such as the Wisconsin Patient Compensation Fund.
6. Establish financial incentives to encourage our best and brightest to go into medicine. We are currently losing our smartest kids who want to study medicine because the cost of a medical education is enormous and the level of payment for medical practice continues to shrink, relatively speaking. We need AMERICAN kids who can speak English and love America to be our next generation's doctors, not immigrant doctors who are unable to function effectively in what is, to them, a foreign country.
Etc, etc, etc. Thanks for taking the time for your input as there are many fallacies held by Americans who dream of a socialized healthcare system in our country. I have a friend who is nurse/dietician from Alberta. She is working in the US the past 15 years because of low pay and inability to find a job in Canada. She is really a caring and very competent healthcare worker and has a heck of a work ethic. Like other natives up north she advised the healthy like Canadian healthcare and it helps if you live in an populated urban area as the rural areas are really underserved My primary care Dr went to med school in England and worked there a few years and left because of the bureaucracy and the immigrated to Canada and experienced the same. She told me she was not allowed to practice healthcare, again bloated bureaucracy, as she wanted and came to the US. I really like her
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 3,891
Campfire Tracker
|
|
Campfire Tracker
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 3,891 |
Not sure it's inferior to the US insurance model where someone works for 35 years where he and his employer paid in probably $200k in premiums with minimal useage. Then at age 58 he gets down sized and after 18 months of cobra if he can afford it he can't get coverage because he has developed some chronic health problem or just can't afford the premiums .
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 329
Campfire Member
|
|
Campfire Member
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 329 |
Dwayne:
Thank you for your kind greetings. Spring is starting to peek out from under the snow of the last few weeks here on the Island. I'm anticipating a slightly early bear hunt than last year as last year I think we left it too late.
Regarding health care systems, I think that they can be improved for both the US and Canada. Nurses could be handling routine cases like stitches and flu bugs making more resources available for more serious cases. The US could use a more universal system. As DocRocket pointed out, a bit more user pay could be implemented in Canada to encourage people to not use the ER for non-emergency situations as well as to ease the strain on the public resources - as long as it can increase the number of practicing physicians rather than remove them from the public system. Both countries could learn from New Zealand on how to keep pharmaceutical costs down.
You make an excellent point on the vastness of the country compared to the population. Rural areas face a lot of challenges in terms of recruiting medical professionals, and that would be a problem no matter what kind of system was implemented. Canada could immediately improve it's system by creating a faster track system to verify skills and/or update training of immigrant doctors as well as to increase the funding for medical schools to train more doctors.
Hopefully Spring has started to show up in your neck of the woods as well.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 7,699
Campfire Outfitter
|
|
Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 7,699 |
I've had both. Three major surgeries in the states while I was playing hockey. I can't compare that to ours though. We had team doctors that got me in right away. All I know for sure is you won't find too many happy people around here about parts of our health care system. Saskatchewan has one MRI machine in the entire province. THERE ARE NOW PRIVATE mri MACHINES IN bc AND aLBERTA so much for cap lock on mt puter 
There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle----Robert Alden .
If it wern't entertaining, I wouldn't keep coming back.------the BigSky
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 7,699
Campfire Outfitter
|
|
Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 7,699 |
My first introduction to the Canadian health care system involved the husband of my wife's best friend who had a history of heart problems.
At age 38 he began suffering severe Angina. He called to make an appointment with a doctor and was told to be there in 2 weeks.
He was dead in a week. THATS when you call an ambulance go into ER and you get immediate Care , you jump the line get hooked up to all the analizing gear and blood tests. been there done that,, ambulance ride is cheaper than DEATH and does not last as long. norm DOC Rocket have you submitted your reviue to the house and Senate???????????????????????????????????????
There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle----Robert Alden .
If it wern't entertaining, I wouldn't keep coming back.------the BigSky
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 3,017 Likes: 2
Campfire Tracker
|
|
Campfire Tracker
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 3,017 Likes: 2 |
There have been studies on how long people with serious diseases (cancer, heart disease etc.) live in the USA and Canada. The average survival times are longer in the US and this includes those without health insurance. The studies I looked at were done prior to Obamacare. The Canadian system is probably fine for routine issues but if you are really ill or have an uncommon problem it appears that the US system works better. This is likely because there is more medical infrastructure (MRI machines etc.) per capita in the US and because wait times are much shorter.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 8,514
Campfire Outfitter
|
|
Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 8,514 |
a year or two back, I had a severe sore throat, went to my local clinic, they sent me to the hospital emergency room, for mri, blood test, etc.
I figured I was going to pay a thousand or two.
bill was $50.
insurance plan was ER was is 100 % paid, after $50 deductible.
**********************
[the member formerly known as fluffy}
|
|
|
|
|
580 members (1234, 007FJ, 17CalFan, 160user, 1beaver_shooter, 12344mag, 63 invisible),
2,456
guests, and
1,242
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
Forums81
Topics1,192,659
Posts18,493,524
Members73,977
| |
Most Online11,491
Jul 7th, 2023
|
|
|
|
