On 10/5/2015 7:01 AM, graham wrote:
> On 05/10/2015 6:42 AM, Gary wrote:
>> Julie Bove wrote:
>>>
>>> "Janet B" wrote:
>>>> Whatever works is good. Prescriptions are too costly and anything
>>>> that helps with the cost is good. I have no problem with my regular
>>>> insurance preferred drugs and the amount I pay ($3). But when you are
>>>> working your way through your deductible you want to pay as little as
>>>> possible.
>>>> Janet US
>>>
>>> I can't see why you would say that. I want to meet the deductible as
>>> soon
>>> as possible. Then I pay less! However, the deductible does not
>>> apply to my
>>> prescriptions.
>>
>> People with the so called "good" insurance policies don't have a clue
>> as to how health insurance works. These are private corporations in
>> business to make a PROFIT. They don't pay your medical expenses out of
>> their pockets ever. If you are getting out more than you pay in,
>> someone else is paying for you.
>>
>> Up until the last 10 years, I always had medical insurance but each
>> year we never met the deductible. We filed for insurance but then we
>> always had to pay the full bill.
>>
>> Company paid insurance, which I used to have, paid for the premiums
>> each month...a very good company benefit. But I still had to pay for
>> the deductible. Never got that high. I paid all my medical bills and
>> the company spent a fortune paying the monthly premiums.
>>
>> Then I started my own business and had to get personal insurance vs
>> group insurance. Much more expensive for less benefits. I signed up
>> with BC/BS with a "subscriber and one minor" policy.
>>
>> It was reasonable in the beginning. This was 1986. $80 a month to
>> cover my daughter and I and $100 deductible.
>>
>> I finally HAD to cancel the insurance about 14-15 years later. It had
>> gone way out of control.
>>
>> Each year or so, they would raise my monthly premium or raise my
>> deductible- Even though we never got a penny back from them....we
>> never met the annual deductible. We would file for the insurance, get
>> a letter saying it was applied to the deductible, then I had to pay
>> the doctor.
>>
>> Anyway, at the end of the time period, when I quit, my deductible was
>> $750 and my new premium was going to be $425 per month. Big
>> difference in 15 years...from 80 month 100 ded... to 425 month and 750
>> ded.
>>
>> When I quit them - and I had to...I literally could not afford it
>> anymore, I added up what I had paid them in premiums all those years.
>> About $45,000. I paid them that much and they never paid a penny for
>> any medical expenses. Do you see a problem here? I sure do.
>>
>> Bottom line here. All you folks that can get prescriptions for only a
>> few dollars and get doctor visits for for 10-20 per visit. Medical
>> care is not that inexpensive. Someone is paying for your cheap prices
>> if you aren't paying for it in high monthly premiums.
>>
>> If I have to go to a doctor right now, just a basic GP visit will cost
>> me about $100. When I tell them I have no insurance, I'm treated like
>> a bum until I reassure them that I have money and will pay for the
>> visit that day.
>>
> As you know, in Canada we have a public funded system. My D-I-L had an
> emergency c-section and one twin spent 3 weeks in the NICU and the other
> is still there after 6.5 weeks.
> I dread to think what that lot would have cost them on your side of the
> border.
> Graham


Oh lookie, more Canuckleheaded spite for the USA.

There isn't ANYTHING wrong with your health care system, now is there?

I mean all those canucks who stream south of the border for elective
surgery are just vacationing, right?

You people have such a national insecurity complex it boggles the
rational mind!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...rticle1210961/

According to a 2007 Commonwealth Fund study, 42 per cent of Canadians
had waited two hours or more in the emergency room during a visit in the
previous two years, versus 29 per cent in the United States. And 57 per
cent had waited four weeks or more to see a specialist, versus 23 per
cent in the United States.

For that $70,000 knee replacement, recent Canadian statistics show that
depending on the province, the median presurgery waiting time ranges
from 112 to 291 days. In the United States, it can be a matter of days.
U.S. patients have the second-shortest wait for specialists worldwide.
As for more general consultations, the median wait time to see a
specialist physician in Canada is a little over four weeks. A 2009 study
found that the average wait to see a specialist in the United States is
20.5 days. Long waits are also more likely in Canada, with 27 per cent
of patients waiting more than four months for elective surgery, compared
to just 5 per cent in the United States.

http://dailysignal.com/2010/02/09/th...go-to-america/

One common assertion among the left is that other industrialized
nations, such as Canada, achieved great success in health care within
their collectivist framework. This, then, begs the question: why is the
head of an east coast Canadian province coming to the United States for
medical treatment?

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams is seeking heart surgery in the
United States, drawing criticism from “local bloggers and people calling
in to the province’s immensely popular open-line radio shows.” Yet his
actions are hardly unusual for world leaders. Saudi Arabian King
Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is known to have his checkups at the prestigious
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
had heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in 2006 . Even middle-class
Canadians are utilizing their proximity to the United States to seek
treatment here.

A study by Steven Katz, Diana Verilli, and Morris Barer in Health
Affairs examining the Ontario Health Insurance Plan from 1987 to 1995
found “evidence of cross-border care seeking for cardiovascular and
orthopedic procedures, mental health services, and cancer treatments,”
although not widespread. Examples include the governments of British
Columbia and Quebec sending patients to the United States for coronary
artery surgery and cancer treatment. Shona Holmes, a Kingston, Ontario
resident in need of an endocrinologist and neurologist, crossed the
border when she was told to wait “four months for one specialist and six
months for the other.” Karen Jepp delivered identical quadruplets in
Montana “because of a shortage of neonatal beds in Canada,” with the
Calgary health system picking up the tab.

Perhaps Canadians’ health care migration patterns are a result of their
own centralized system of government health care planning and “free
care” crashing into the government’s budget constraints. The annual
study “Paying Mo Getting Less” produced by the Fraser Institute, a
Canadian think tank, found that government-run monopolies established in
each province of Canada (simultaneously barring private operators from
competing for the delivery of public health services) produce rates of
growth in government health care spending that are “not financially
sustainable through public means alone.” Each province’s policy of
insulating consumers from price signals, such as premiums, co-payments
and deductibles, has naturally led to over-consumption of medical
treatment. Thus provincial governments, encountering fiscal restraints,
must resort to long queues and the rationing of care.

And wait patients must. A hospital survey of five countries (United
States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australia), conducted by
Robert Blendon and colleagues in Health Affairs found that “waits of six
months or more for elective surgeries were reported to occur ‘very
often’ or ‘often’ by 26–57 percent of executives in the four non-U.S.
countries; only 1 percent of U.S. hospitals reported this. Half of all
Canadian hospitals reported an average waiting time of over six months
for a 65-year-old male requiring a routine hip replacement; no American
hospital administrators reported waits this long.

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