From MPSIMS, the issue for debate being do medical costs in Canada push people into bankruptcy despite universal health care.
Unfortunately, when people complete their bankruptcy forms in Canada that list the reason for going bankrupt, the forms do not differentiate between “ I was doing nicely until I became so sick that I could no longer work, which pushed me into bankruptcy,” verses “I was doing nicely until I was hit with doctor bills, lab bills, and hospital bills, which pushed me into bankruptcy,” verses “ I was doing nicely until I was hit with out-of-hospital drug bills, which pushed me into bankruptcy.”
Here in Ontario, if you are under 65, your hospital stay (including drugs there but for most folks not drugs outside of the hospital) are covered, and your doctor visits and lab work are covered. Once you turn 65, your drugs outside of the hospital are also covered. That means that if you are under 65, the medications you take at home are not covered. http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/pub/drugs/odb.html
You will be very hard pressed to find folks here who went bankrupt when they were well over 65 because they couldn’t handle their medical bills. What you will find is people over 65 whose health declined as they aged, to the point that they could no longer work to supplement their retirement pension/savings, landing them in bankruptcy.
Note that the study covered people from age 55 on up, and that the bankruptcy rates for folks between 55 and 64 due to health reasons were higher than later age ranges. I very much expect that much of this difference is due to people being pushed into the hole by out-of-hospital drug expenses prior to their turning 65, resulting in their going bankrupt prior to turning 65, or with a year or so of turning 65.
This is a flaw in our health care system. I would like to see our socialized health care cover not just visits to doctors, labs and hospitals, but also cover prescription drugs for people of all ages, not just people over 65.
When my mother was treated for Lymphoma in NS at 62 everything in hospital was covered 100% without question. But outside of hospital she was taking 4 different medications daily; pain, anti-nausea, etc. Those weren’t covered. She also had low a white blood cell count, so a nurse from the VON stopped by the house a few times a week for injections, and that wasn’t covered. My mother was smart/lucky enough to have private insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield that paid for all of that.
Long story short, there is more to health care costs than doctor visits and xrays. Those costs add up, and when combined with loss of income and additional debt lead to bankruptcy. Even something has simple as how to get the hospital is often neglected, but it’s not uncommon for a person with illness to not be allowed to drive.
The real lesson here is that the stats in the US also fail to make a distinction about how medical costs lead to bankruptcy, and as a result the often repeated “62 percent of our bankruptcies” is a gross exaggeration.
Yes. I am tired of the “denial of the non-deniable” by private dental insurers (in my case, covering fillings but not covering the glue to hold the filling to the tooth, and covering endodontics but not endodontics done by a dentist certified as an endodontist), and I do not like seeing the working poor go without dental care.
The only cases I’ve heard of in Canada regarding financial hardship caused by medical problems were due to prescription drug costs or the costs of full-time care (e.g. nursing homes or home care). Neither of those are covered 100%, as far as I know.
This is interesting to me, because I have a 2-year old who’s getting weekly visits from a nursing agency for dressing changes, all arranged by the CCAC, and the costs of the visits and supplies are all covered. Do you know if it was the visits, or the injections, or both that weren’t covered?
I really think loss of income has to be the biggest factor for many people. So many people live pay-check to pay-check, and it only takes a month or two of no income to put people into a terrible spiral of late payment fees, high-interest loans, etc etc (because, in part, inexperienced people in the midst of medical crises are often not great at the brutal financial triage that really needs to be done) that before you know it what appeared to be a loss of only a few thousand dollars worth of income can blossom into tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt.
What are the policies on short term disabilities/sick leave in Canada? If a wage-worker needs an emergency hyseterectomy and can’t work for six or eight weeks, what happens?
Quite apart from whatever benefits a person might have through private insurance, or worker’s compensation (for on–the-job injuries), federal employment insurance starts covering you once you have been off work for a couple of weeks, and pays up to a max of $468 per week. It usually takes several weeks for the first cheque to arrive.http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/types/sickness.shtml#eligible
In short, half pay is better than none, but it can still be one hell of a hit for people who were already at the financial edge. There are also some restrictions on how much you have to work before you can make your next claim, so heaven help the person who has a series of medical calamities, such that EI runs out.
Up until recently, self-employed people were not covered by EI, be now we have that option if we wish to also pay into the plan the way employees pay into it.
Paid sick leave is determined by the government*, and incorporated into the government’s employment legislation. That amount would be a minimum; an employer can increase the amount of sick leave over the statutory requirement if it likes. Beyond that lies short-term disability insurance (STD) and long-term disability insurance (LTD), from private carriers, and usually offered as a benefit by an employer.
Not all employers offer STD and/or LTD though, so if our hypothetical wage-worker’s employer does not, and she does not buy her own, then as Muffin notes above, some income would be forthcoming. However, in spite of the fact that the employer does not have to pay the wage-worker during that time, it does need to have a job for the wage-worker to return to–this is mandated by human rights legislation. You cannot fire somebody while they are off sick.
“The government” can be either federal or provincial, depending on the industry. See ss. 91-95 of the constitution for which industries are governed by which governmental body.
I’m sure some people must go bankrupt due to the costs of not being able to work, even with better welfare and sickness benefits. For US stats it would actually be useful to see it divided up by people going bankrupt due to the medical treatment itself.
Does Canada have anything like the UK’s prescription pre-payment certificate? Though for unemployed people, some people on very low incomes, some people with specific illnesses (like diabetes), pensioners and children prescriptions are free anyway.
When other stats say the real number is closer to 17 percent, you saying it is a factor in 62% is a gross exaggeration, and done to deliberately mislead people.
From your cite: “…or lost significant income due to an illness.”
So even if everything associated with health care was completely and entirely free, loss of income would **still **account for medical bankruptcies.
As noted above, what is then different in Canada is that there are a variety of employment and disability insurances provided by the government, which would alleviate some of the bankruptcies.
But even still, the rates of bankruptcies end up being higher in Canada than in the US (0.27 vs 0.30).
What you are presenting is nothing more than a hollow stat of questionable merit, that you trot out again and again despite being shown it’s wrong and misleading.
And presenting misleading information should be unacceptable in Great Debates.
Whether or not it happens in America is irrelevant to the discussion when it **also **happens in countries like Canada with UHC, a point you incorrectly made in the other thread.
The other facetious aspect of what you’re presenting is that bankruptcy laws in the US had been different (and in some ways easier) from other countries, and after 2005 were changed to be more like Canada’s. After that point the rates of bankruptcy in the US ended up being lower than those in Canada.
So if filing for bankruptcy is easier, and there are cost associated with medical conditions, then yes, you will get people filing based on medically related issues, which oddly enough I believe include dental issues (something not covered in Canada).
Going back to my mother’s situation: several times I picked up her meds and paid for them on my credit card, to be reembursed later from her private insurance. Had I gone into bankruptcy I could have been in the “medically related” classification. I paid for a cab to take her to a check up, on my credit card, also “medically related.”
Goes to show that when you have an agenda statistics can be your best friend.
Also from that cite, which I assume you haven’t read:
*"Other major causes of medical bankruptcy identified in the study include deficiencies in health insurance plans, **job loss *and subsequent insurance loss due to illness or need to take care of sick family members, lack of disability benefits or paid sick leave. "
Nothing to do with whether or not a country has UHC, and says nothing about how crappy the US health care system is. And goes to show that you can twist bankruptcy stats how ever you like to support your agenda.