It’s the Canadian in me I’m sure, but I just can’t fathom how affordable health insurance that will cover everybody is a bad thing.
I’m a 30 yr old, fit, reasonably healthy woman who’s never been hospitalized for more than a couple of hours. I got my hands on the “reasons for rejection” from a couple of California HMO’s, and I’d be denied on every single one of them… because I get migraines that I take medication for, and have been hospitalized for once in the last 2 years (a 3 hour stay in which they gave me better drugs than I could get by prescription).
Honestly, if I lived under those rules, I’d probably stay home and suffer, increasing my risk for strokes, because I wouldn’t want to have a “pre-existing condition” on my records just in case something worse happened. I don’t get how ANYONE can qualify for reasonable insurance.
The bullshit reasons that people give for why it’s terrible — especially when they point at something omg-awful about the CDN system — just makes me crazy. Yes, I pay higher taxes, but if I’m sick, I go to a doctor. I don’t worry about whether or not I can afford it, regardless of whether or not I’m employed, rich, sick, or not.
The arguments don’t make any sense to me. I’ve heard:
- “This bill doesn’t help me at all.” You selfish fucks. You’re not willing to spend a few bucks so that the people you pass on the street every day can get health care? You don’t care that there are CHILDREN who can’t get affordable coverage?
- “I worked hard to get my health coverage, you should be able to, too.” I’m going to stick with the, “You Selfish Fucks” argument. And lucky you that you’re immune to layoffs! Wow, what a wonderful place that must be in your castle in the clouds.
- “I’m not paying for something I don’t use!” But… what if you got sick? I honestly don’t understand this mindset. These are people who come right out and claim they have no health care, because they’re healthy. Well sure, you’re healthy NOW…
- “I can’t afford the tax increase.” Honestly… how can you not? And if you really can’t, how in the world will you be able to afford it when your insurance company cuts you off because of that unreported acne?
- “The quality of care will go down.” I love it when people point to Canada as having poor quality of care. No, we really don’t. Yes, we have long waitlists in some cases — for things that are not life or limb threatening. Because they save spots for people who NEED them. Example: My grandmother was having bad knee & back pain. They sent her in for x-rays, just to be on the safe side. As a total fluke, they discovered she was on the verge of having an aortic aneurysm. For the unwary: If that goes, you’ve got about 5-10 seconds before you’re toast.
They had us an appointment to see a specialist — one with a 3-4 month waitlist — within a few days. She was admitted to the hospital within half an hour of the specialist looking at her x-rays, and had surgery that week.
This gave us another year with Nana. Another YEAR. She was an eighty-six year old woman, a year was huge for us. Nana lived long enough to meet Carol Ann, her last grandchild, before having a heart attack two weeks later. (Oh yeah, another myth: death panels? No, that’s something HMO’s have, not us.)
And who knows, maybe she would have gotten the same care in the US. But you really think they would have sent her in for those “just in case” x-rays? Think an HMO would have approved it, if she’d had one? Or whatever passes for care for seniors? At the very least, she certainly didn’t get WORSE care.
So yeah, some people might have to wait longer to get their care, and that sucks for them. But we have a pretty darn good triage system, and quite frankly, I’d rather wait because that means I’m not too bad off. When they’re rushing you in ahead of everyone else, that’s when it’s time to worry.
- “Socialism is evil, just look at Nazi Germany!” Yes, that’s right, every other first world country in the world that has socialized health care is one step away from killing jews. Right.
And that plan? That ain’t socialized anything. That’s forcing private companies to stop fucking people. That’s it. It’s nowhere NEAR what I’d be comfortable living with, but it’s a decent first step.
Our system isn’t perfect, by a long shot. I disagree with some of the cuts they make. I think our paramedics are treated dreadfully. And heck, it’s the industry I’m working on getting into, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of complaints about it in the future.
But I don’t travel ot the US — even just across the border for a couple of hours — without making sure I have my travel insurance card with me. (Part of my extended health benefits through work.) If I was unemployed, I wouldn’t go unless I could pick up some temp benefits. Not much, just enough to get me home if anything were to happen… where I know I’ll be taken care of.
Anyway. I have to go call my doctor to make a (free) appointment for my yearly hoohaw checkup, safe in the knowledge that no matter what the results are, I’ll be okay financially at least. I’m sorry, what was that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my awesome health care.
For me, our Healthcare system in Canada is part of our cultural identity.
Now if only our elected officials would stop trying to emulate the ones south of our border…
As for what’s happening down there in the States, I sort of sum it up with the following:
People say they want change, but when noticeable change comes, they get scared.
heh, totally. Well, maybe the “Obama hasn’t done anything!” people will shut up now. Of course, it’s going to change to, “Obama hasn’t done WHAT I WANT” … :)
I just could NOT agree more.
I got surgery within 48 hours at a major trauma center in Toronto when I started miscarrying. The only wait? Neurosurgery had priority but if I deteriorated, i was in line for bumped service.
They said “tuesday or wednesday” and lo, wednesday it was.
Fantastic service. Fantastic care. Specialists! awesome ObGyn ward. I’m getting to see specialists with NO real wait, no bargaining with an insurer, something I highly doubt we could afford in the US, as like you, i’d be uninsurable, and any pregnancy I had in the future? high risk, no coverage.
I get that here. Next pregnancy I don’t even have to go to the GP, it’s pass go, direct to the big brains.
How awesome is that going to be? For the small amount we pay in tax? awesome.
Oddly, we’re more financially “upwardly mobile” because we have the freedom to move jobs without fear of insurance loss.
And like you, I don’t leave without my carecard, my extended travel benefits thru husband’s work and sometimes, extra travel insurance especially for the US. I’m extremely paranoid of running into issues there.
could we do better? Sure. But I think we are aware of issues, and I have seen vast improvements over my lifetime.
I work with some guys with dual citizenship (CAN/USA) who say that even though they’d get paid more to work in the US, they’re staying here for the healthcare. As am I, I’ve been contacted by companies to the south but I’m wary that I’d be denied health insurance because I was depressed once a long time ago.
I’m with you on about everything you said but I don’t see the point in arguing with the libertarians and right-wingers. I’ve never seen any of them budge from the statements you’ve repeated here. Just like you and I could never see things as they do on this topic.
I think it says something about our healthcare system, flawed as it is, that Tommy Douglas (the “father of Medicare”) was voted the greatest Canadian ever in 2004. Maybe we wouldn’t have seen his achievement as so great had we not had the US to compare ourselves to.
I would have had to wait about 10 months or more for my funded MRI, I had to wait 4 months to see my specialist, and another 8 months until my surgery. And I was okay with that, for exactly your point about triage. When our mutual friend with MS needed an MRI on her brain, she got it within a few days.
I couldn’t be paid enough to live in the States, even if I could afford to pay for the best care available down there. I wouldn’t want to walk down the street and wonder who I was passing that couldn’t go to the doctor when they needed.
Erin: I actually use you as an example when I talk about this. Yes, you had a really long wait. And yes, it sucked that you were in pain and that your life had to be put on hold a bit while you waited. But your injury, while totally shitty, wasn’t going to kill you or cause you to lose a limb. I don’t want to downplay it, because it IS a shitty injury… but then you’ve got people who are going to die if they don’t get that MRI, and I hope like hell that anyone I care about wouldn’t be so selfish as to complain about letting them go first.
bah, I say. Bah!
I don’t always agree with your views Donna, but on this, you’re bang on. I recently was faced with a very serious medical situation and got superb treatment from the start. I’m one of those people who went to the emergency room and got priority service. Within hours of getting there, I was diagnosed (via a CT scan) and in for emergency bowel surgery. Two weeks in intensive care, two months in hospital recovering and 3-1/2 months off work. And not only was my entire medical bill a non-issue, I have good coverage at work and continued to receive my paycheque while off. You just don’t appreciate this until it hits close to home. We estimate my bill would have been in the vicinity of $500,000 and that would have meant selling our house, and taking on huge debt. I *heart* Canada.
Oh, isn’t it wonderful to be a socialist….
My own story is that I had a recent (8 month long) bout with a kidney stone that was reluctant to leave on its own (which it finally did last week). But during that time, I saw my family doctor close to a half dozen times, a urology specialist at least 4 times (including for him to go looking for it during a day-surgery procedure), and I had an x-ray, an ultrasound, two CT scans, and a several sets of lab tests. Because of the symptoms, some of the procedures happened within a few days or at most a few weeks (and that had more to do with my own schedule than the medical system’s). And I didn’t have to pay anything directly – that’s why we pay taxes.
But, for my trip to the states, even though there were two work plans providing extended coverage during travel, I still purchased extra insurance. And, a colleague of mine told me of how the US medical system just about bankrupted his family during the late 60′s/early 70′s when his brother got seriously hurt during a family trip to Washington state. The USA can be a nice place to visit, but until they join the rest of the modern world in terms of universal health care, I will only visit briefly and even then only with insurance coverage bordering on paranoia.
*sigh* I miss my health insurance. It was still worse than what you all have, and probably still cost me more than what I would pay up there, but it was better than nothing.
I used to travel to the US frequently for work (Tacoma). And it made me realize just how much I love being a socialist. When I explained the ramifications of our health system to those co-workers, they were astounded and jealous that I was paying $50-odd per month, despite the fact that I partake in high-risk activities. Apparently that’ll boost your health insurance costs as well