Obamacare

[Kurt]

I crack up every time I hear the media here in the US trash the Canadian system...

:giggle:

Never had a problem with the care up there.. top notch and I'm paying the same amount of taxes down here as up there [aside from capital gains/consumption which is a bit higher]

 

[Ron B]

I crack up every time I hear the media here in the US trash the Canadian system...

:giggle:

Never had a problem with the care up there.. top notch and I'm paying the same amount of taxes down here as up there [aside from capital gains/consumption which is a bit higher]

My friends up in the great white north echo your sentiment. But from articles and some news outlets, it looks like people are dropping dead while waiting in lines...in the snow...uphill...both ways!

 

[Kurt]

My friends up in the great white north echo your sentiment. But from articles and some news outlets, it looks like people are dropping dead while waiting in lines...in the snow...uphill...both ways!

It's the maple syrup in the blood you see... too much Hockey, Tim Hortons and the cold weather, blammo.. you keel over dead.

I guess that would be a pre existing condition down here. I mean Canada's got it all wrong. What a dumb country.

Doing surgery in igloos....

 

[3Hummers]

One of my employees is Canadian as is his wife. Both sets of parents come to the US for medical treatment, supposedly due to the wait times for treatment under the Canadian healthcare system. I don't have any first hand knowledge of the Canadian system but Keith's parents and in-laws are down here fairly often for medical/doctor visits.

 

[Ron B]

I have heard of this happening -- if you can afford to bypass the wait then why not? A friend from Canada had to come here for something big once and he was reimbursed for it. My friend in Australia says there's additional "insurance" that can be purchased to significantly cut the wait time (a few hundy a year) maybe they don't have that in Canada?

There can also be significant waits here especially when it comes to the hoops one has to jump through (not even going to mention flat out denial) if you don't have/can't afford primo insurance. My friend was turned away from a local hospital in LA when she though she had appendicitis (her insurance recently had lapsed). They told her it was nothing and to go home. It burst the next morning and they still wouldn't touch her until her mom called with a credit card (her limit was not high enough). It ended up being $60k because of all the damage that was caused.

I count myself lucky that I have very good insurance (for now).

 

[MaxPF]

I have heard of this happening -- if you can afford to bypass the wait then why not? A friend from Canada had to come here for something big once and he was reimbursed for it. My friend in Australia says there's additional "insurance" that can be purchased to significantly cut the wait time (a few hundy a year) maybe they don't have that in Canada?

There can also be significant waits here especially when it comes to the hoops one has to jump through (not even going to mention flat out denial) if you don't have/can't afford primo insurance. My friend was turned away from a local hospital in LA when she though she had appendicitis (her insurance recently had lapsed). They told her it was nothing and to go home. It burst the next morning and they still wouldn't touch her until her mom called with a credit card (her limit was not high enough). It ended up being $60k because of all the damage that was caused.

I count myself lucky that I have very good insurance (for now).

I hope your friend had the brains to get a lawyer and sue the hospital. Appendicitis is a life threatening condition, and moreso when it bursts. By law (which I'm pretty sure is Federal), they HAVE to treat you, money or no money. If it went down the way you say, the case is a sure winner, and she will probably walk away with $50k in her pocket after the lawyer and medical bills are paid.

FWIW, I had the same thing (appendicitis) 2 summers ago. The fact that I didn't have insurance didn't matter - they did the tests, the expensive diagnostic imaging, and the surgery to remove it, without ever asking for a dime up front. It wasn't free - I had to pay the bills later - but I wasn't denied treatment because I had no insurance, and they never asked for a credit card.

 

[Ron B]

When all was said and done, she was billed almost $70k because of all the damage from the burst appendix. After healing up, she went in with the bill to discuss what happened with them and they were smart and waived the whole thing. They knew they f'd up. Scary stuff.

How much was your procedure? Glad your neighborhood hospital isn't only concerned about the bottom line like many.

 

[f5moab]

I have plenty of Canadian relatives and they all tell methat for standard everyday procedures, like broken bones, flu, colds, minorprocedures their healthcare system is great. Need a serious procedure, and beprepared to wait. Had a cousin who broke his hip while playing hockey (gofigure, playing hockey in Canada).
It took him six months to get the hip replaced and he couldnot walk on it for those six months. He could have gone across the border;however, US hospitals require payment up front if the Canadian healthcaresystem won’t reimburse them for the procedure. In some cases the Canadianhealthcare system will reimburse, but not the full amount, so the person needsto pay, up front, for the difference.
So, if the healthcare system in Canada is so good, why did aCanadian Provincial Prime Minister (Danny Williams) come to the US for a heartprocedure?
Why did more than 46000 Canadians jump over the border fortheir healthcare?
"ACanadian study released Wednesday found that many provincesin our neighbor to the north have seen patients fleeing the country and optingfor medical treatment in the United States.
Thenonpartisan Fraser Institute reported that 46,159 Canadians sought medicaltreatment outside of Canada in 2011, as wait times increased 104 percent — morethan double — compared with statistics from 1993.
Specialistphysicians surveyed across 12specialties and 10 provinces reported an average total wait time of 19 weeksbetween the time a general practitioner refers a patient and the time aspecialist provides elective treatment — the longest they have ever recorded.
In2011, Canadians enrolled in the nation’s government-dominated health servicewaited long periods of time for an estimated 941,321 procedures. As many as 2.8percent of Canadians were waiting for treatment at any given time, according tothe Institute.
“Insome cases, these patients needed to leave Canada due to a lack of availableresources or a lack of appropriate procedure/technology,” according to theInstitute. “In others, their departure will have been driven by a desire toreturn more quickly to their lives, to seek out superior quality care, orperhaps to save their own lives or avoid the risk of disability.”
Increasesin the number of patients leaving Canada for treatment were seen in seven ofthe ten Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, NewBrunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
“Someof these patients will have been sent out of country by the public health caresystem due to a lack of available resources or the fact that some procedures orequipment are not provided
in their home jurisdiction,” the report concluded."
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/11/report-thousands-fled-canada-for-health-care-in-2011/#ixzz20hegPrCN

Andwhy did the Ontario healthcare system make agreements with US hospitals foremergency and critical procedures?
http://www.freep.com/article/20090820/BUSINESS06/908200420/Canadians-visit-U-S-get-health-care
So, if the Canadian Healthcare system is so great…why dothey come here for care?

And yes, we do have a problem in this country with the healthcare system that forces many US citizens over to India and even Mexico for discounted medical procedures. But the answer sure is not Obamacare.

 

[Kurt]

To answer the question about Danny Williams [I'm from that province] he went to the best specialist he could find, who happened to be in the US.

I can flip that issue back on its head, my father required a specialist to do a special stent on his Aorta, he had two choices, go to Dallas U of T or St. John's HSC in Newfoundland. Dallas would ran ran $75,000 [Dad has a pre existing condition, no health care here in the US and it was before his Medicaid], or go through his Canadian residency [marriage to my mother] and go through the canadian system. Cost? $0.00. Wait time? None.

The kicker? Same surgeon.. from Ireland. :giggle:

I never had an issue with the Canadian system when I was there, granted the worst I had was a broken arm, rib, collar bone and a lung infection. On the last thing, the first doctor just sent me home with a prescription, I didn't feel that well and it didn't feel right so I went and got a second opinion with another doctor where I was sent to a hospital for a few days for observation and to be put on a rebreather. No wait for that either.

I'm not saying there isn't waitlists, but everyone gets health care, and there's a priority system. If you need emergency care or trauma care, there's no wait obviously. If something is caught in early diagnostic care, then it can be scheduled but you'll be a low priority on the wait list.

Which is a big problem here, many people can't afford insurance or to pay cash outright for routine care, so they miss out on the routine diagnostic medical check ups, and leave things until it's too late to get proper treatment, then you got people in emergency rooms going bankrupt to get care.

On the other hand my experiences here has been:

-Seeing medical companies/insurance companies milk and pad the hell out of my generous health care benefits here. [$50 box of tissues, $300 rechargeable battle pack ]

-Waiting in a hallway in emergency with my friend in a stretcher after a motorcycle accident. Kaiser Permanente didn't have enough surgeons on staff, so they kept my friend drugged up sitting in a hallway for 8 hours with a smashed knee waiting for a doctor... I mean this is in a trauma unit!

-Taking a wrong turn out of my doctor office in culver city. I got charged $1200 for a x-ray taken on 1970's equipment run by a 20 year old intern. If I made the left turn I would have wound up at a digital image center and had the same thing done for $100 [hell for $300 I could have had a full body cat scan burned to disc]. Fortunately my insurance covered my mistake but you got a serious problem when there's a 10-100x variation in service costs from provider to provider [in the same building].

AS for the articles? They're not actually peer reviewed reliable sources of information.

dailycaller.com? I don't imagine Tucker Carlsons pundit website is going to ever post anything positive about a universal health care system that the rest of the industrialized world uses.

As for the Detroit FP piece: cross border care, why not? In some parts of Windsor its actually a quicker drive to run to Detroit then it is to get to a hospital within Winsor. If it saves the Canadian Tax payer money to send out health care to other countries I don't see the problem.

I imagine when the US gets major health care reform or a single payer system, all that spare capacity that the US has will dry up pretty quick.

Going to force Canadians to upgrade their igloo hospitals

 

[3Hummers]

We don't have enough doctors for another 10-20 mm patients. This isn't going to be good.

 

[MaxPF]

When all was said and done, she was billed almost $70k because of all the damage from the burst appendix. After healing up, she went in with the bill to discuss what happened with them and they were smart and waived the whole thing. They knew they f'd up. Scary stuff.

How much was your procedure? Glad your neighborhood hospital isn't only concerned about the bottom line like many.

I don't recall what the total bill was, but being self-pay I ended up paying a total of $15k or so. The hospital I went to was Banner Desert, which is owned by Banner Healthcare, which is a non-profit corporation.

I was in the hospital for less than two days. I drove myself to the ER (in excruciating pain, vomiting twice on the way) at about 2AM. They suspected appendicitis, and did an ultrasound, which was inconclusive. They ended up doing a CT, which was difficult because I needed to hold my breath as they imaged - holding your breath on command when you're whacked up on large amounts of narcotics and barely coherent isn't easy . Anyway, the CT combined with the bloodwork results confirmed a DDX of acute appendicitis, which was communicated to me at 6AM. I was in pre-op by 2PM that day. When I really woke up (I woke up in post-op, but I was seriously out of it), I was in a comfy room in the oncology wing :whaa: They explained that the floor I would have normally been on was had more patients than oncology, and they try to keep the workload balanced to ensure the best care, and that I wasn't there because they found cancer. They asked if I needed pain meds, and surprisingly I didn't - there was minor discomfort, but no real pain. I crashed, woke up the next morning and met my very attractive morning shift nurse, and told her that as much as I wouldn't mind hanging around I was ready to be discharged. Apparently, my attending agreed, and by noon I was discharged. I lied and told them I had a ride, then I walked across the rather large hospital to the ER parking lot, hopped in my truck (somewhat uncomfortable hopping into a lifted truck a day after surgery), drove myself to the pharmacy to pick up Levaquin and Vicodin, and then drove home. Got the staples removed several days later, and within two weeks I was doing all my normal activities.

 

[deserth3]

MaxPF that was a little different than 1977 when I had my appendics removed...
Woke up at 2am with abdomin pain. My father was a voluteer fireman and called for an ambulance. Because we lived in a bad neighborhood. They sent a cop before they would send an ambulance.
Cop came in smoking cigar. That really helped make my skin a little greener. I would have shot him if I had a gun. Still to this day can't stand cigars smoke.
Cop calls for ambulane. Because Dad was a volunteer fireman I knew the ambulance crew. Even had a choice of which hospital to go to.
Got to the hospital. Doc came in pushed on my stomach and said something like... Yup Appendicitis. Send hime to surgery... Starts getting fuzzy from there.
Remember nurse had trouble starting IV. Remember watching ceiling lights pass overhead on way to OR. Woke up once during surgery and remember watching mask as doc was putting it on.
Don't remember much after that.
But never did have an x-ray taken, and they didn't have CT scans then either.

Now they do every test in the book just because they are worried about being sued. And people wonder why health care is so expensive.

In the Air Force I worked with many docs. One of the best came from an Apache Reservation. He didn't do alot of tests because on the reservation he didn't have the equipment available. When he had the stuff available he didn't need it. Because he knew his stuff.

 

[MaxPF]

I don't think the tests are just to avoid being sued. Confirming the diagnosis with imaging and lab work prevents an unnecessary surgery if it turns out to not be appendicitis. In my case, I had an atypical presentation - the pain was broad and diffuse across my abdomen rather than localized in the lower right quadrant, and I did not have the typical rebound pain at the McBurneys point when the area was deeply palpated. According to my surgeon, although it is termed "atypical", it is actually not an uncommon presentation. Since such a presentation could be other things, the lab tests and CT were needed for a definitive diagnosis before they went rooting around in my guts.

 

[deserth3]

In you case feel lucky they didn't have to do an exploratory like the old days. I worked 9 years as a Medical Technician in the Air Force. Worked with both Military and Civialian docs. And saw alot of CYA test done. Docs always have to worry about getting sued.

 

[3Hummers]

I know quite a few doctors and I can tell you from their side that a lot of the tests they do are specifically to make sure they don't get sued.

 

[MSC]

I'm a small business owner that is self-insured now because a few years back our health insurance had increased over 42% in 2 years with no claims, so we had no choice but drop coverage. Last year I had 2 skin cancer operations, the doctor gave me quotes for both for about $10,000.00 each. I told him I did not have insurance and would be paying out of pocket, it was $2,200.00 for each operation. After that, no insurance company would touch me. Now we are facing a tax or penalty for not having insurance and people are complaining, most of those people complaining are the same that complain that so many are getting free health care. I think they should be happy, maybe it will help reduce the overall health care cost and enable everyone to afford coverage. Now, for small business I will be able to provide heath care and write-off 135% of cost. So, I agree that we need healthcare reform...while we're at it, let's hope for more reform with other policies we all need. Congress salaries are about $174,000.00 per year, a few weeks ago I saw Ron Paul admit he accepts a Social Security check and he's against the program. OK, I've vented off a little steam, so I'll step down from my soap box. I hope everyone has a great day!

 

[3Hummers]

Even when I started some of my businesses I paid for health insurance so I didn't ever fall into the pre-existing condition trap. It wasn't always easy but it was important. I now provide insurance for approximately 400 people. It still isn't easy or cheap but it is still important. To me it comes right after shelter and food. As with many other aspects of my business I don't need the government involved in it. Contrary to what Obama said I have built numerous businesses from nothing. I had the help of some great employees and vendors but the government was nowhere to be found when I had to find the money to cover payroll or health insurance premiums. The government wasn't there when I was at 9 or 10 o'clock at night trying to stay ahead of the workload because we couldn't afford the extra help. The government wasn't around when I had to go to the bank and personally guarantee business loans that ran into the millions of dollars nor was the government there when I had to pay those loans back. The government was there when they passed some new regulation that I had to comply with that cost me money, the government was there when I had to pay all my license fees and they were always there when I had to pay my taxes. And my taxes went to build the same roads, pay the same teachers, etc that Obama tried to give others credit for. Funny thing is, on average, the bottom 40% of wage earners in this country pay no income tax. So I guess that means that they are driving on the roads that myself and many other small business people and entreprenuers paid for. Imagine that, something else the non-paying or non-productive faction of the economy gets for free and yet gets credit for. I get sick and tired of hearing that I need to pay my fair share and do nothings like Obama who have never contrinuted a positive ion to the economy think I am screwing the rest of the country. I pay my fair share already. In fact I pay the fair share for a number of people because I have to carry the load for people that pay nothing. Reform...yes we need to reform a lot of things. We can't afford the current entitlement programs we have so they need to be adjusted to a form we can sustain. ( Medicare, Social Security ) Turning the health care system over to the government is like giving matches to a pyromanic, you know they are going to burn the place down. We can't afford 1 in 7 Americans on food stamps. I know this isn't the venue for political discussions but my blood boils when I hear crap like what Obama spouted at his 4675th fundraiser of the month. I'll stop typing but my rant will continue offline.

 

[Dennis]

Outstanding post..My hat is off to you for being an honest employer and tax paying citizen..Thanks for your contribution to our society..sorry you have to carry the scumbags that want to walk on wall street and bitch that they owe money, but you and I should pay for them..Fuk-em I say!

 

[abearden]

I'm a small business owner that is self-insured now because a few years back our health insurance had increased over 42% in 2 years with no claims, so we had no choice but drop coverage. Last year I had 2 skin cancer operations, the doctor gave me quotes for both for about $10,000.00 each. I told him I did not have insurance and would be paying out of pocket, it was $2,200.00 for each operation. After that, no insurance company would touch me. Now we are facing a tax or penalty for not having insurance and people are complaining, most of those people complaining are the same that complain that so many are getting free health care. I think they should be happy, maybe it will help reduce the overall health care cost and enable everyone to afford coverage. Now, for small business I will be able to provide heath care and write-off 135% of cost. So, I agree that we need healthcare reform...while we're at it, let's hope for more reform with other policies we all need. Congress salaries are about $174,000.00 per year, a few weeks ago I saw Ron Paul admit he accepts a Social Security check and he's against the program. OK, I've vented off a little steam, so I'll step down from my soap box. I hope everyone has a great day!

So people are forced to purchase a product, and you think the suppliers will REDUCE the cost? And next year (I think, might be 2014) when they can no longer charge different premiums based on pre-existing health conditions, you think cost will go down for most people? Not a chance in either case.

Health insurance reform in the form of laws that prevent insurance companies from dropping you the moment you file a claim are one thing, but the ugly government intrusion that was passed is ridiculous and horrible for this nation.

 

[3Hummers]

Msc my post was not directed toward you. Government involvement in small business is a hot button for me as is government involvement in private market issues and taxes. I can't debate, rant, babble, etc endlessly on these topics.

 

[Kurt]

One problem here theres a lack of true competition, complicated insurance polices and networks are preventing the public from getting a fair shake on prices. Can't shop around for procedures if you are locked into one network...

I think one thing would help costs is lower the doctors costs, namely malpractice insurance. Canada has limits on damages and up there you don't need $5000-6000/mo for insurance to practice, if they cap damages down here and lower the insurance costs in order to do business it *should* drop costs, assuming of course the office doesn't pocket the difference.

I just found out I'm being switched to a new plan in August because UCLA just dropped blue shield as a network. Work is scrambling to get us blue cross cards now. What a mess.. and I'm working for a Fortune 500 thats supposed to be in the top 10 for benefits :huh:

New plan. Don't get sick....