Some time ago, someone posted a thread asking about the cost of medical treatment in countries other than in the U.S. (I tried to find it before starting a new thread, but do you know how many threads “health care” brings up??)
At any rate, I didn’t post anything to it, because I’ve never had a bill for medical care in Canada, so had no data. However, by a fluke, the PiperCub’s provincial health-card expired and I didn’t notice I needed to renew it, and we took him to our doctor for a check-up during the expired period, and the doctor’s office has now sent us a bill, which we’ll have to pay if I can’t get a retroactive renewal from the Ministry of Health.
As well, we had to take the Cub to a doctor in the U.S. a couple of years ago for a check-up, not covered by our insurance, so we got a bill for that. Both were routine check-ups, by a family GP.
Which leads me to my data point:
US PiperCub check-up: 250 (US)
Canadian PiperCub check-up: 38 (CAN => 36.21 US$)
So, in this limited data point, the Canadian cost was roughly one-tenth that of the US cost.
Yup. And one of the things I’ve always taken for granted is that you flash the health card, see the doctor, and leave. You never see a bill, not even one saying ‘hey, here’s what it would cost, but your balance is $0’.
Speaking of health card renewals, Saskatchewan just sends out stickers you put in the upper right hand corner of the card every few years. When you’re in a group of bored people, it’s fun to compare the height of the sticker stack. Once it becomes thicker than the card itself you’ve reached adulthood. I kinda wonder about people who have cards from the very start of the sticker program - they’ve got to be reaching half a centimetre by now.
Every so often the BC health guys send out an invoice for auditing-‘hey, did you actually have a wart removed on May 12 or is your doctor billing for nonexistent warts?’. It has THIS IS NOT A BILL written in 28 pt font across the top-I’m sure that only reduces the number of people calling about getting a ‘bill’ by 7%.
I was going to write that the US doc sounds like an awful lot, but I only have the charges of the ophthalmology department I work in to go by, and I don’t know how they charge compared to pediatricians. It might also make a difference that we’re part of a non-profit hospital (versus perhaps a private practice for the pediatrician?), and do take Medicare/Medicaid, which also drives down prices.
I just got the notice fir my health card renewal and you have to book an appointment and go in now. Better than the old way of hoping to find a short line day I guess. On the plus side they use Service Ontaio offices Noe so I can renew my drivers license at the same time.
Both notices arrived yesterday and it’s about 10 weeks til my birthday. I bet that reduces the number of people showing up the day after it expires by the same 7%.
I pity you for not being free. If I am ever forced to sell my house to pay for chemotherapy I will be singing Lee Greenwood’s hit ‘proud to be an american’ at the top of my lungs (or what is left of them). And you’ll never know that freedom.
Here is a list of per capita spending on health care by country. In 2007 the US spent $7290 and Canada spent $3895, the OECD average was $2964.
Well, I’d like the constitutional right to own and keep my firearms. But since no government official has yet to show up and take them away, I’d say we’re doing pretty well, freedom-wise.
In the US we spend about 18% of GDP on health care. Of that about 8-10% is public funds, the other 8-10% is private.
Public health care includes medicare, medicaid, SCHIP, VA, CDC, HHS, state and local plans, health plans for government employees, etc.
Medicare and medicaid on the federal level alone cost $750 billion in public funds 2010 (30% of all health care spending). That doesn’t even include all the other federal programs or state medicaid. So getting to 50-60% coming from public funds isn’t hard.
Canada spends about 11% of GDP on health care, of which about 8-9% is public and the rest is private.
I think the UK spends 8% with about 7% being public and 1% private.
We pay as big a % of GDP in taxes for health care as European and other wealthy nations. But we also pay about 8% of GDP in private spending on top of that. All for a system that is far worse than any other OECD system.
Our system is screwed up. But sadly we are a plutocracy with a population that goes into histrionic conniptions over even mild reforms. Too many powerful people make too much money on our current system, and too many low information voters go into anxiety attacks at the thought of even mild reform.
So in the US we are just biding time until the entire system collapses within 10 years. See you then.
That number boggles my mind! It’s per capita, so you’d need to multiply that large number by four for “average” household of four. (But misleading, perhaps, since households with old people presumably cost more.)
For example, health insurance industry employs many people whose job is to deny people needed care! Eliminating those jobs would save money, yet any reform that would disenfranchise stockholders in any American company is never up for discussion.
My lack of health insurance makes me afraid to visit U.S.A. but I’m happy to live in Thailand with no insurance at all. (A few weeks ago I visited one of the very best hospitals in my region to get a CT brain scan, which was $120. The doctor’s fee was an additional $6. Some years ago I had an angiogram in one of Bangkok’s very best hospitals for $1000, with this high price due to my being a foreigner. My coronary stent some years before that cost $8000 total, most of which was for the stent itself, imported from U.S.A.)
Probably. Not to mention that many US doctors who work via a hospital-based clinic get their malpractice insurance covered by the institution; doctors who have private clinics are usually on their own there.
Is that per capita or total amount spent. The US population is nearly 10 times the Canadian.
I have a question. What does a pacemaker cost installed in a US hospital? The reason I ask is that a good friend’s brother-in-law collapsed on a visit from his home in Florida. A hospital here put in a pacemaker and billed him $25,000. At the time that was probably around $20,000 since it was early in the millennium. This included everything–hospital, surgeon, device. I got a pacemaker three years ago and it cost me only the bus fare to the hospital and the taxi home (I could have taken the bus home too, but strap-hanging was counter-indicated until the lead was well-settled and this bus route is always SRO, even late at night.) I was in the hospital for eight hours total, but the guy I talked about had actually collapsed, so he was probably a couple days in the hospital.
Don’t hold your breath on that. In 1999, my daughter-in-law graduated from Tufts Medical School. One of the graduation speakers was Marcia Angell, then editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She detailed all the problems in the US “system” and then said that the good news was that it was now so fucked up (not her words, but a reasonable interpretation of what she said) that it was about to collapse under its own weight and be replaced by a real system. That was 11 years ago.
It is not mentioned much but one of the drivers of US health care costs is the exorbitant cost of medical school. Had she not gotten a public health fellowship for her last two years, she would have ended up a quarter million dollars in debt. Even so, congress was so niggardly about these “fellowships” that, unlike all other scholarships and fellowships they were fully taxed as income. The reasoning seemed to be that they would immediately become wealthy and shouldn’t get a tax break on top of it. One result is that nearly all new MDs feel they have to make a lot of money fast to pay off their loans. MY DIL has always practiced at a hospital on a salary and figures her loans–still well over $100,000–are like a mortgage that she will spend much of her life paying off. She is in family medicine, incidentally. Very few doctors are willing to settle for the lower income
In Canada, medical education, like all education, is heavily subsidized and doctors do not have to spend their early years paying off gigantic loans.
That’s per capita. What makes this disparity even more mind boggling is that even with twice the per capita spending, the U.S. system leaves a significant portion of the population without full coverage.
…and you still have people who are vociferously reactionary whenever the subject of trying to fix the system is broached.
Err - that’s not quite true. It costs about $60,000 to complete medical school (at least at the school I work at). $15,000 per year in tuition, about $10,000 in books and $5,000 in other fees.
So, while it’s not $250,000, it’s still quite a bit of money, considering a first year resident only makes about $50K a year.
The day after I got the bill, I went to the Ministry of Health office. No waiting line, just went up to the counter. Helpful Health lady took the information, and told me that she’d get it re-activated that day, with no gap in coverage, and that the new card would come out in a couple of days.
Early next week, the new card arrived, bright’n’shiny. Took it to the clinic, they took a copy, said they would re-submit the bill to the Ministry for payment, no need for me to pay pending that happening.
I guess that’s the well-known “government inefficiency” that makes universal health care so unworkable.
