Obama's Health Care Overhaul: Your Opinions

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Jess

I have a question regarding the buy a policy or pay a penalty thing. I'm serious, because I haven't seen or read it anywhere.

If you can't afford the insurance and instead opt for paying a penalty.. what do you do for healthcare? Continue on as folks have done going to an ER for a cough due to cold? Wait for an astronomical bill to come that you can't pay and let it get taken from your state taxes?

Jess,

I suspect you havent seen the particulars because they have yet to be worked out. As with most big legislation....the idea is in the bill, the particulars are a whole different ball game.

Here in Mass with our mandatory health insurance, you are penalized, this year, at approx $1,100 if you are not in one the exclusion categories. If you are without insurance and seek medical care, you are billed for the cost of the care provided.

Each year the penalty increases.

Here, I have found, the subsidized insurance is a heck of a lot cheaper than private insurance even tho the coverage is a little less and there are co-pays for everything including hospitalization.

If memory serves, Canadian health care is not totally free i.e there are some minimal copays.

I would love to see a socialized system of health care in this country. Aside from getting care when it is needed, there would be greater flexibility in employment. How many of us have turned down jobs we want because the health care benefits were subpar?

But the socialized plans are not without pitfalls that are incongruent to the American lifestyle. In socialized medicine, you get good and timely primary care but there are waiting lists for specialists and surgery. Americans wait???
And there are some exclusions i.e. if over a certain age, they will not do certain types of care like dialysis. These vary from country to country.

Maybe this will be a stepping stone to something new and different and more cost efficient.

[Soon]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Jess,

I suspect you havent seen the particulars because they have yet to be worked out. As with most big legislation....the idea is in the bill, the particulars are a whole different ball game.

Here in Mass with our mandatory health insurance, you are penalized, this year, at approx $1,100 if you are not in one the exclusion categories. If you are without insurance and seek medical care, you are billed for the cost of the care provided.

Each year the penalty increases.

Here, I have found, the subsidized insurance is a heck of a lot cheaper than private insurance even tho the coverage is a little less and there are co-pays for everything including hospitalization.

If memory serves, Canadian health care is not totally free i.e there are some minimal copays.

I would love to see a socialized system of health care in this country. Aside from getting care when it is needed, there would be greater flexibility in employment. How many of us have turned down jobs we want because the health care benefits were subpar?

But the socialized plans are not without pitfalls that are incongruent to the American lifestyle. In socialized medicine, you get good and timely primary care but there are waiting lists for specialists and surgery. Americans wait???
And there are some exclusions i.e. if over a certain age, they will not do certain types of care like dialysis. These vary from country to country.

Maybe this will be a stepping stone to something new and different and more cost efficient.

Canadian Health Care

We don't have co-pays.

It isn't *free* b/c we all pay into it. We just don't pay anything at the point of service.

From the above link:

Public health care is governed by the Canada Health Act. It's designed to make sure that all eligible people in the country have reasonable access to insured health services on a prepaid basis, without direct charges at the point of service.

Simply put, if you break your leg chasing the Canadian dream, you have the right to get fixed up without opening your wallet – except to pull out your provincial health insurance card.

The act is also designed to make sure that the delivery of health care is pretty consistent across the country. Ottawa has found that the best way to do that is by attaching conditions to the cash it transfers to the provinces to cover health care.

Among those conditions are that health care must be:

Portable.
Universal.
Accessible.
Free from extra charges (for insured services).
By portable, Ottawa means if you move from one province or territory to another, you won't lose your coverage. This doesn't mean you can go looking for health services in another province or country because the waiting list at home is too long for your liking. It does, however, mean that your out-of-province in-laws will be covered if they suddenly fall sick while on their annual visit.

Under the universality criterion, all insured residents of a province or territory must be entitled to the insured health services provided by the provincial or territorial health care insurance plan. Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. You can't buy your way to the front of the line.

By accessible, the CHA means "insured persons in a province or territory have reasonable access to insured hospital, medical and surgical-dental services on uniform terms and conditions, unprecluded or unimpeded, either directly or indirectly, by charges [user charges or extra-billing] or other means [e.g., discrimination on the basis of age, health status or financial circumstances]."


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Another tidbit: Through all entities in its public-private system, the U.S. spends more per capita than any other nation in the world, but is the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that lacks some form of universal health care.

One More Interesting Article: U.S. health care lies about Canada

[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?

Also, when Taiwan and South Korea went shopping around the planet for the best system to replicate in their country guess which system they chose? yep, you go it, the US Medicare system. So sad that other countries can see how great our single payer system is and want to use it as a model for their country, yet we can not simply extend this to all of our citizens.

We are one twisted country.

[Soon]

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?

Also, when Taiwan and South Korea went shopping around the planet for the best system to replicate in their country guess which system they chose? yep, you go it, the US Medicare system. So sad that other countries can see how great our single payer system is and want to use it as a model for their country, yet we can not simply extend this to all of our citizens.

We are one twisted country.

From what I read, and even on the gov't website, Medicare is actually the unofficial name for our publicly funded universal health care system. It is governed by the Canada Health Care Act..."Framed by the Canada Health Act, the principles governing our health care system are symbols of the underlying Canadian values of equity and solidarity."

Canada's Health Care System (Medicare)

Wiki:
Medicare (French: assurance-maladie) is the unofficial name for Canada's publicly funded universal health insurance system[1]. The formal terminology for the insurance system is provided by the Canada Health Act and the health insurance legislation of the individual provinces and territories.
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.[3] Most doctors are self-employed private entities.

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Note: When I wrote no co-payments, I meant we don't pay out of pocket for doctor visits/surgeries. We do pay minimal out of pocket for Prescriptions. (I've never paid more than five dollars for any prescription). Rx, dental, vision is usually covered via employer.

[Linus]

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)