When I was still on COBRA, it cost me $384 a month for just the medical and prescription for myself. I had to drop the eye and dental to save a bit. I had $25 copays for each doctor visit, $75 for an ER visit, unless I was admitted to the hospital, then they covered the whole thing, and 3 months of recurring prescriptions for $14 if I ordered them through mail order. (I can now get exactly the same drugs for $10 per 3 months from Walmart, without having insurance. Great deal our prescription plan had. :p)
This was supposedly exactly what my former employer was paying, minus the amount I paid. I don’t remember exactly what I did pay out of my check, it has been a long time since I looked at one of those. I do know that every summer we would get a raise that was just above the rate of inflation by 1/2% or 1%, then in the fall they would announce our health insurance costs were going up by more than enough to wipe out the raise.
For most people COBRA is not a very good deal, and it probably would not have been for me either, but it probably paid for itself with the one ER visit to a hospital in Manhattan and the follow up to the specialist when I got home. And mine ended just before the bill last February that lowered the costs for it.
The Canadian government sets standards and contributes. Like most government programs, it started with high hopes and great promises, and degenerated into a nest of weasels. The feds said they’d pay 50%; then when they realized what they got into, they put a cap on it. Now it’s nowhere near 50%; it’s just part of the general equalization redistribution to allow the poorer provinces to have almost the same service as the richer one(s).
They then set standards - eiminating, for example, the extra billing. This makes sense. A system where the patient can be asked to pay extra degenerates into an analogue of the US public school system, where everyone contributes but in some places, nobody wants to be part of it if they can afford not to. Alberta, with its oil revenue, is in a position to opt out of federal standards sometime soon.
The system has a distinct dislike of for-profit institutions; since basically all they can do siphon some of the public funds into shareholder profits. Even a doctor that can perform a service as medicare or private is suspect - after all, if he says “I can schedule the procedure for 3 months from now for free, or tomorrow in my for-paid clinic” - why couldn’t he do it tomorrow at the clinic for medicare rates? Greedy bugger!
A doctor can either be in the system or out. If he’s out, then his patients do not get reimbursed either. This means almost no doctors are outside the system. In the system, they are entirely paid at medicare rates. The patient pays nothing. I hear some provinces have extra premiums for coverage, but in most cases - what difference does it make? Higher taxes or a head tax? - the income tax is more progressive.
Drugs are not covered except welfare, seniors, and anything given to you in a hospital as part of your treatment. No co-pays. Dental (except in hospital emergencies) is not covered. Dental and drugs are the biggest and most useful employer benefits.
We had a consultant in the mid-90’s from the USA; he switched employers, and mentioned that his wife’s pre-existing condition meant he needed to pay $350/month to keep her covered on the old employer’s plan. That just sounds so stupid…
I am happy for you and your family, you a among the most fortunate in the US. It is nice to see that some citizens have world class care at a reasonable price - rather than the third-world care many in the US have to endure.
I doubt the rest of us will live to see that sort of coverage for all, I think that I heard some Tea Party voices claiming that the sort of government care you have is socialism…
I had $25 copays for each doctor visit, $75 for an ER visit, unless I was admitted to the hospital, then they covered the whole thing, and 3 months of recurring prescriptions for $14 if I ordered them through mail order. (I can now get exactly the same drugs for $10 per 3 months from Walmart, without having insurance. Great deal our prescription plan had. :p)