The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care (& Other Refs)

It's not perfect, but if you ever need it, it's there...My best friend had cancer when he was young, started treatment right after it was found and went through 3 years of chemo. His family is well off but that would have bankrupted them...And they paid nothing.

I had some neurological problems a few years back, went into the emergency room when I suddenly lost the ability to speak and was weak on my right side...Waited a few hours, saw a doctor, and the next day I was having an MRI done, all for free. I've since had countless MRIs done, as has my sister (she has a brain tumour) and neither case has resulted in any charge, ever. I was even offered free Multiple Sclerosis medication, which is very expensive (and thankfully I refused, as I've been perfectly fine since).

Yeah, it sucks when you break your arm and you have to wait a long time, but you still don't have to pay anything. I get all my drugs, dentist visits, everything covered just because I'm a university student anyways, so I've never actually had to pay a cent for anything other than Tylenol.

Originally posted by finallianstallion

What does happen to people that really can´t afford healtcare insurance in US. I really would like to know.

Perhaps I'll try and seek out a balanced, at least more honest review of Sicko's Sicko. I wouldn't walk 10 feet to see the traitor's Ferrarai, much less his latest pack of globalist lies.

Folks can get basic care at any emergency room. It's bankrupting hospitals around the country but it's the law. There are also Shriner's hospitals that care for children for free. There's medicaid and medicare for elderly poor off. I would likely qualify. I get some veterans admin care.

And why . . . does UHC have to be compared to socialism and even to communism by someone?

Evidently you have not done your homework on Shrillery Klintoon. During her college summer years, if I recall the timing right, she worked eagerly for the biggest, highest ranking Communist lawyer in the USA in behalf of the Chigao 7. He Master's Thesis is a glorification of Communism. That's the reason it was locked away--illegally and unprecedentedly by her massively liberal UNIV during their election period and a long time after.

She got caught, in their first reign of power, trying to implement a draconion universal health care system in which the monitoring of individuals through their health care records would have been exceedingly tyrannical. It would have made her routine use of FBI files to intimidate, blackmail and otherwise threaten, control and use people look like kindergarten child's play.

Add in the plan to force folks to have an ID chip with medical info, finances and monitoring capacities built-in . . . Lenin and Stalin begin to look like slackards compare to Shrillery Klintoon, her plans, her globalist puppet master's plans . . .

What would you like to call it--Alice's Madhatter Tea Party with the Red Queen? Wellll, there is some merit in that.

Why does it have to be compared to socialism? Have you read a dictionary recently. I mean . . . I find the question preposterous.

It doesn't have to be compared to socialism--It IS socialism!!!

Patriotic yanks with flags and assault rifles ready to bomb the . . . out off USSR do that only, I hope?

Thanks. I'm flattered. I've long been interested in the survival of my culture over the tyrannical culture of the Soviet Union. Alas, too many patriots have either been asleep or too marginalized for too long and the creeping socialism, Communism and globalism have taken over rather wholesale.

Assault rifles? Do you watch Michael Moore 24/7? Goodness! That's DANGEROUS! Do they have cult debriefings where you live?

Why is it so hard to take best off the both sides?

So . . . what precisely would that look like in your well researched, studied wisdom?

Have UHC. Everyone has a right to have a healtcare.

Oh? Really? I suppose this new Constitutional RIGHT was granted by the same gods of Communism, socialism and globalism who granted

1. the RIGHT to infanticide?
2. The RIGHT to a big flat screen HDTV in every hovel?
3. The RIGHT to avoid being offended?
4. The RIGHT to shred the Constitution?
5. The RIGHT to monopolize the news media?
6. The RIGHT to monopolize the University classrooms and K-12 with globalist propaganda?
7. The RIGHT to scream and wail any time anyone refers to personal responsibility?
8. The RIGHT to eat, smoke, drink, speed one's self into an early grave while everyone else bears the costs of such excesses?
9. The RIGHT to imprison folks for non-abusive paddling while stabbing scissors in the back of the brains of viable children about to be born and calling that CONVENIENCE?
10. The RIGHT to sue anyone that has more money than you for whatever cock-a-maymee reason--especially MD's, evil corporations, men . . . that your greedy lawyers can dream up?

I'm not impressed with such appeals to rights.

Our Constitution granted the right to PURSUE happiness--not the right to demand it from one's countrymen.

Our Constitution granted the right to live unharrassed, unmangled, unsliced-diced-ground-up-and-spit-out by government.

Folks who work hard and manage their money well tend to do better than those who don't.

Folks who eat well, exercise and live sensibly tend to do better than those who don't.

There are consequences for life choices.

There is NO FREEDOM WITHOUT RESPONSIBILITY--Vicktor Frankel.

You seem to want to demand that all your neighbors help make up for the damage of living irresponsibly . . . at THEIR expense.

There are safety nets in the USA. They are not any more perfect than Canada's system. But it's far from as horrid as Michael Bore makes it out as.

You pay taxes to your country so you get healtcare. You dont have to sell your house to get treatment to cure you.

Yeah, life can be tough for lots of folks. However, as King David said . . . "I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his children begging bread."

Living like the devil and demanding to be taken care of like an angel is rather . . . cheeky to the max.

As I posted above, Pastor Henry W Wright's A MORE EXCELLENT WAY documents how to get healed from a long list of mental, emotional and physical diseases, ills. Of course, one has to learn, agree and DO things God's way. God has no interest or intention of ENCOURAGING rebels in their rebellions.

What is it so hard to get this kind of solution to US. Only thing that comes to my mind again is the fact of money. Insurance companies want profits and are lobbying as much as they can, and the average Joe suffers while your congressman etc makes big bucks...

Hello? Sounds like the old socialist/Communist THROW-MONEY-AT-PROBLEMS solution. Was supposed to cure poverty a lonnnnnnnng time ago. If I recall accurately, there's more than enough spent on such government largess programs to GIVE OUTRIGHT EVERY below poverty level person or family in the USA $40,000/YEAR.

Is BUREAUCRACY in your aged dictionary? Try BLOATED. The bureaucracy sucks up money from taxpayers MUCH MORE RUTHLESSLY AND MASSIVELY than do greedy corporations. And a lot more tyrannically and irresponsibly. Help yourself. Not my goal, preference nor reality.

HINT--history indicates that NO CULTURE SURVIVES WHICH TAXES FOLKS MORE THAN 30% OVER A SIGNIFICANT PERIOD OF TIME. We've been over that line for a very long time.

Originally posted by DazedDave
It's not perfect, but if you ever need it, it's there...My best friend had cancer when he was young, started treatment right after it was found and went through 3 years of chemo. His family is well off but that would have bankrupted them...And they paid nothing.

Yeah, it sucks when you break your arm and you have to wait a long time, but you still don't have to pay anything. I get all my drugs, dentist visits, everything covered just because I'm a university student anyways, so I've never actually had to pay a cent for anything other than Tylenol.

Thanks for your encouraging narrative.

But where are you--what country?

What are your philosophical perspectives on universal health care given your experiences?

What are your family members perspectives?

How would you change the system?

Originally posted by BO XIAN

Thanks for your encouraging narrative.

But where are you--what country?

What are your philosophical perspectives on universal health care given your experiences?

What are your family members perspectives?

How would you change the system?

I'm living in Montreal, Canada.

I'd say overall, the system is good. It's not perfect by any means, but it works...And if you have personally benefitted from it (as I and many people I know have) then you simply can't not be for it. I'd venture a guess and say that most people would not be able to afford years of cancer treatments or years of weekly MRIs. I know that here, you can have MRIs done privately for over $1300...And I've already had over 30 of them over the years. That's expensive, and I'd hate to see someone not be able to get the care and monitoring they need just because they can't afford it. Especially if you have something like cancer...As if having cancer is not enough, you have to take a mortgage out just to pay for treatments on top of that? It's horrible!

Granted, this isn't the case for everyone of course (due to medical insurence) but it still is nice to know you'll be safe either which way under UHC. Ideally you'll be healthy your whole life and never have to worry about it, but it could still happen. I'd rather have the peace of mind.

Personally, my family I would guess is quite pleased with the system due to mine and my sister's medical history. We're well off but all the medical care we've had would have easily topped $100k. My mom has had multiple knee surgeries as well, and she suffers from vericose veins and goes under the knife every few years to treat that...I can't imagine the cost of all that!

Then again we've had bad experiences...Mostly ER waits. My grandmother, 90 years old, broke her wrist during an ice storm and wasn't seen for 8 hours in the ER because only one doctor was on duty. I don't know if the wait times would be better under a private system, but when you're in the situation and having to wait it's pretty stressful...At the time I was very upset and felt I would have gladly paid for it to go faster but it's tough to say if I would really do it given the choice.

If I could change the system, I would allow private clinics (we have those) to treat more than just simple colds of flus or whatever...Let them treat things like broken limbs (as long as it isn't too serious) or cuts requiring stitches or things like that...I find that the ERs are always so full of people with relatively minor afflictions that could easily be treated at a clinic and don't require bogging down the system. I was at the clinic once, and a man with a broken arm was turned away and sent to a hospital...That's unecessary! These clinics have x-ray machines and should be able to treat a broken arm!

I would also give nurses the power to distribute medicine, as currently only doctors can give it out and you sometimes have to wait several hours before being seen by one. Even painkillers are subject to this rule...Although I did read that they are trying to change this.

Here's two more stories of happy Canadian health system users:

Over the last two years, my step-father suffered many health problems. He started with a double bypass and then got prostate cancer. When the cancer went into remission, he developed severe anemia. After so many blood transfusions that he was cured of Hep C, he got vertigo. After they finally got rid of the vertigo, the cancer came back and is now in remission again. He never waited for any of his treatments and had no out of pocket expenses.

I have been in the emergency room twice over the past 5 years for a broken foot. Apparently, walking isn't one of my strong points. Both times I was seen in what I considered to be a fairly quick manner (within an hour), patched up and sent on my way with a days worth of painkillers (which the doctor called 'a six-pack to go') and all I had to do was show my card.

Originally posted by JohnnyCanuck

Can't have it both ways.

Precisely why the plan shouldn't even be considered for America.. It may work grandly for others.. I don't know and really couldn't care less. All I know is that it spells disaster here in America.

Sorry if this has been posted before but the US health system costs around 15% of the US' huge GDP, while most other nations' are usually significantly lower.

you might of course argue that this helps the development of medicine, while other countries are starving their medical sector, but the real issue is whether other nations would be willing to afford a system which such an obvious shortcoming. horror stories can be found on both sides of the fence, mind you, and waiting for a visit beats not being able to afford it at all, doesn't it?

the control aspect needs much more attention, though, but so does rampant collection of personal data of everyone and the spread of biometrics (which are useless for security because the traits are freely available and can't be changed once compromised), which means that the control and dependency issue is not unique to the medical field.

from my POV, unconditional support for anything is wrong, but i can see why people would bash a system which takes a 6th of the US' enormous GDP.

Im from Finland and we have private medical centers and also the public medical centers/hospitals. And works pretty well. Like in all the Nordic countries.

I was just wondering if the healthcare is in such a bad shape that the M.Moore film sicko showed. No offence.
And if it is, damn shame. Worlds wealthiest country they say....




[edit on 1-8-2007 by finallianstallion]

And to BO XIAN. No, obviously I havent read my homework enough, because I still dont know what communism and UHC does have to with each other.
But this might be just a issue of a lack of better understandement. With UCH im just referring to everyone getting a freaking healtcare. Not involving the great evil communism in here....
Maybe you are involving money and politics to it? If not then sorry...


[edit on 1-8-2007 by finallianstallion]

Here in Waco they have new clinics opening called "Treat N' Go." They treat anything... An office visit only cost 49 dollars...I personally think this is the direction we should be going, not some "free" health care system.

I think what this country needs is AFFORDABLE health care, not to be taxed and the taxed again just so we can say that we have "free" health care.

[edit on 1-8-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Here in Waco they have new clinics opening called "Treat N' Go." They treat anything... An office visit only cost 49 dollars...I personally think this is the direction we should be going, not some "free" health care system.

I think what this country needs is AFFORDABLE health care, not to be taxed and the taxed again just so we can say that we have "free" health care.

[edit on 1-8-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Best suggestion I´ve heard yet.

We DO get overtaxed here in Finland. I wonder what kind of revolution would be in place there in US if you knew how much we pay for 1 gallon of gasoline because of the taxes
( thats 8.02$ a gallon... )
Yeah well thats because you yanks are fighting over there "defending your country"
Just a joke....

Originally posted by finallianstallion

We DO get overtaxed here in Finland. I wonder what kind of revolution would be in place there in US if you knew how much we pay for 1 gallon of gasoline because of the taxes
( thats 8.02$ a gallon... )

You pay 8.02 for a gallon of gas? Are you freaking serious??

I read some but not all those articles and I think that those are picking and choosing their stories. There are also lots of "feel good" stories in our medicare system. But the stories aren't the important part, what is is that neither of our HC systems are perfect. There are "horror" stories on both sides of the border. We could debate the pros and cons of each forever without coming to any real conclussions or changing anybodies minds. The fact is that both have good and bad points and and a mix of both would be ideal, imo.

And as stated earlier, ours isn't totally free, we do pay for prescriptions, Dental and Optometry. And, again as stated earlier, not all provinces are the same when it comes to drug coverage. There is a story in Nova Scotia right now about the coverage of Avitstan, which is covered in alot of provinces but not there. It is a quality of life drug and not part of a prevention treatment. Anyway, I digress. The point is that we as Canadians, feel that everyone has the right to basic health care and can't be denied it upon race, religion, sex,class/status. Here's our health care act and it's provisions.

I can also give you many personal experiences with our system, my mother being one of them. She had Breast cancer, which she fought bravely for 6 years. She lost her fight in 2001. If we had have been in America it would have cost us thousands and thousands of dollars for her to fight, here in Canada, it cost us nothing. Myself also, I had a spinal fusion done when I was a teenager. It took 5 years of surgeries and three years of physiotherapy to fix my condition. I have no idea what the procedures in America would have cost but here it cost my family nothing.

You also have to remember that Canada has only 33-34 million people. The US has , what , 330 million or so. That would be a huge difference in trying to implement a UHC program. And I really don't think it would work anyway in America. Like Bo Xian said, it would become another bureaucratic nightmare with way to many opportunities for abuse and there's already way to much of that going on on both sides of the border.

And please don't equate Canada with a communist country. We are very similar in many ways to America but differ in some very fundamental ways, our approach to Health Care being one of those.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth

Originally posted by finallianstallion

We DO get overtaxed here in Finland. I wonder what kind of revolution would be in place there in US if you knew how much we pay for 1 gallon of gasoline because of the taxes
( thats 8.02$ a gallon... )

You pay 8.02 for a gallon of gas? Are you freaking serious??

I checked gas price. Average was 1.367€ / litre. Thats $1.87/ litre.
1 litre is 0,26 gallons. So yes we do and actually many european countries have high gas prices.
And now that Im sober =) my new calculations tell me that the price is just above $7. Still high enough for you guys to go on a barricade and start revolution =D I bet there wouldnt be s that "big truck" culture if you had the same prices.
But this is offtopic.

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Folks can get basic care at any emergency room. It's bankrupting hospitals around the country but it's the law. There are also Shriner's hospitals that care for children for free. There's medicaid and medicare for elderly poor off. I would likely qualify. I get some veterans admin care.
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Folks can not be denied emergency care at the emergency room, ya know, like you break your arm or leg, they will do the xray to confirm it's broke, give ya a painkiller, put the broken limb in a splint, and send you home with the name of a specialist for you to contact if you would like the bone reset....
That specialist might want a few thousand upfront if you do not have insurance before he will set the bone.
Seems to me, that no taxpayer in this country should be faced with the idea of never having to walk again because the bank balance is only a couple hundred dollars, not when their taxes are helping to pay for the healthcare for that single mom with seven kids to have another kid!! and the mere fact that the government has granted that mom, and her seven kids free healthcare on the taxpayer's expense makes that healthcare a right to the taxpayer..in that if they can't afford it themselves, well, then the government should be including them into the programs that is providing to others.
By failing to do so, you are making that "safety net" into a playground that no sane person would want to crawl out of, since life gets much harder, and there's a pretty good possibility that you will end up having to go without a few necessities...like healthcare!

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You seem to want to demand that all your neighbors help make up for the damage of living irresponsibly . . . at THEIR expense.
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no, that is what we are doing now!! we will pay for the drunken alchoholic who couldn't keep a job is his life depended on it to treat his liver disease...but god help those who happen to fall into that net who have the audacity to try to crawl out of it and be responsible....they will be truly screwed in so many ways if they succeed in that task!

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Yeah, life can be tough for lots of folks. However, as King David said . . . "I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his children begging bread."
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maybe kind david was like king george, too busy enjoying his own little world of pleasure to go out and mingle with the peasants!! I am sure that the kids out there in our country that are missing school because their parents can't afford their medication and their school don't want them there without it are just little demons at heart!! that explains it all!!

I guess we don't want to compare infant mortality rates to test that US system, do we?

I'm a Canadian who has lived in several provinces and used their medical system on several ocasions. I pay my monthly fee and make use of the services offered when required.
We do have some problems with our system, but they are not insurmountable. Our largest being a shortage of trained doctors and nurses. There is a constant brain drain to the US for the higher wages that are being thrown about. US hospitals will actually send representatives to Canadian schools and clinics to head hunt our physiciansand nurses.
The lack of beds and operating rooms is a sign that the goverment is not expanding the system to keep up with the population. That and the over abundance of administrative staff that has been put in position to cut costs. What we need here is not a trip to US style medicine, but a cut in administrative staffing. Reduce the amount of goverance in the hospitals and use the funding to increase the amount of beds and operating room time.
There are cases where bad things happen to people in the health care system. I myself have to wait till I'm old enough to get my knees replaced. But in general these are the 'fall through the cracks' type of incident. If we could remedy the problems I have noted, the incidence of these events would drastically decrease.