Quote:
Originally Posted by key
It's my understanding that the system in Canada is based on the US Medicare system. Do you Canadians know if this is true?
|
I don't believe it was but they were created within a year of each other so I wouldn't be surprised if there were discussions between the two countries. What I think is important to add to the discussion is that while Canadians pay for health insurance through taxes, as others have stated, and there are limited to no co-pays (there are some prescription co-pays but that's a different from all the doc visits/hospital/etc. and it varies from province to province), because the cost is spread out across the country, the per person cost is lower. It would be impressive if a similar thing could be done here. To be honest, I'd imagine that everyone would be covered and costs on a per capita basis would likely drop.
This link does a nice comparison between the two countries including costs (2006 figures were $1000 difference, with Canada on the cheaper end per person)