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Trip Report: Mystic to St Thomas
Dave wrote:
On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 12:26:28 -0800 (PST), said: The U.S. delivers billions of dollars of free health care to low- income people... the problem is that much of it is "delivered" via emergency rooms & tertiary care centers, very very inefficient. And since it also unreimbursed, the provider has to charge everybody else more, or go out of business (it's happening... about a dozen big-city emergency rooms have closed their doors in the past year). In a way that's what happens up here, we pay pretty high taxes on everything we consume, particularly high on gasoline, tobacco and booze. Those with any sort of decent income also get to pay a particularly regressive form of tax called a "Health Care Surcharge", introduced by our LIBERAL provincial government a few years ago. For a single mother of two, earning 30k it's about 600 bucks extra on her provincial income tax, an increase of around 30%, for someone reporting 500k, it maxs out at 1200, a very small increase: Sound fair to you? Further to the point, since everybody is going to get health care, it behooves the Provinces to deliver it to the indigent in a pro-active, preventative manner. The Feds pay for the biggest chunk of the health care bill, they transfer billion to the provinces specifically earmarked for health care. Another issue is that a large percent of U.S. health-care dollars go to pay lawsuits and insurance against lawsuits. Our legal system makes more money off "health care" than doctors do; and we've substituted a winner-take-all lottery for sensible standard-of-care risk management. Interestingly, the average malpractice settlement/judgment in Canada is higher than in the US, but we have a lot less of them. And you will never, never, never, hear either of these issues (among many other root problems) addressed by politicians (who are lawyers themselves, remember) who want to "fix health care" for you. All good points all, Doug. (What's the world coming to that I'm agreeing with you on something.) Add to the above the fact that for the last 65 years we've been steadily throwing more money at doctors in the form of tax benefits and employer subsidies that remove any incentive whatever to treat a sniffle with chicken soup rather than a visit to the doctor's office, and you've got a recipe for financial disaster. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here Dave, very little of your health care dollar finds it's way into the hands of doctors, about 6%. Cheers Marty |
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