Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

There has been some scary stories about the Canadian health system floating around. The idea is to make people think that Obama is trying to put in a single payer system and that it would be a disaster for America. This has made some Canadians upset as most of them think that their system is superior than ours. I will give my opinion on this subject today.

Statistically the Canadian system is better than ours. So are all the systems in the industrialized world. Canadians spend just a little over 50% of what we spend per capita on healthcare and their life expectancy and infant mortality rates are better than ours. There is no worry for any Canadian going bankrupt due to health problems. They go to the primary doctor of their choice and have very low copay. If they pay for their medicine, it is much cheaper than here. They do have trouble with access to doctors in rural areas but that is the case in this country as well. So it will not be a disaster for us to copy their system despite all the scary stories out there. They don't deny care to terminally ill people as some have suggested.

There are delays in nonemergency surgeries. A national health program is going to be tougher on specialists than generalists. The Canadian government pays the doctors according to a fee schedule. For primary doctors the discount compare with private pay in U.S. is acceptable because they have less paper work and less hassle of having to deal with only one insurance--that of the government. Specialists' pay will decrease more so there is less people going to various specialties and probably some who move to the U.S. to practice. I don't think that is necessary a bad thing. But for patients in the U.S. who are used to have their elective procedure paid for and scheduled quickly, this can be an annoyance. Of course if you don't have insurance, then it is not even possible to get elective treatments.

Two things that bother me about the Canadian system is that of low or no copay or deductibles. This drives up the cost as people will tend to use services more. It is human nature if say you can get anything you want at the grocery store and pay only $5, wouldn't you get more items? The other thing is that you can't buy private insurance unless it is for something your provincial government does not cover, such as optometry or dentistry. Why should a free country not allow people to purchase something they want? While it maybe true that if there are privately insured patients, some doctors would opt out of the public program and provide services to private pay patients only, that is not enough reason to deprive people of their freedom of choice.

Right now if someone does not want to wait to get nonemergency treatment in Canada, there is no private choice he can turn to. If he is rich enough, he can go to the U.S. and pay out of his own pocket. So it is not possible to have the same treatment for everyone regardless of income. In fact some of the government officials who support national healthcare, have bypass the system to come to the U.S. for treatment so they can be done faster. So why not allow for private insurance option so the middle class can bypass the public program if they wish? I am all for competition. So give us the public option in our reform. And give the Canadians the private option in their system.