Nationalized Health Care - Competition Allowed?

[TokyoBayer]

@Sublight

*Regarding the Tokyo Medical and Surgical Clinic, an acquaintance of mine said “They know English, but that’s all they know.” They were the ones who repeatedly misdiagnosed my cancer for a year. It was the National Cancer Center that successfully treated it.

Damn, you had cancer? You OK?

[Noone_Special]

@Sage Rat

(And the real benefit of a system like this, assuming that the government pays more for people who are high risk like the elderly, is that it becomes profitable to raise the average lifespan of the population to the insurance companies.)

Payment is not per individual but rather per visit/procedure, so this **is **the case, albeit indirectly (that is, you **will **have cases of younger people costing the state a lot in medical costs, and cases of healthy older people who are practically costless… but by the law of averages, an older patient will generate more revenue for the Health Fund.)
This is – IMHO – on of the best aspects of our system: There is absolutely no connection between how much I pay for my Basic medical (and this is income-based) and how much my Health Fund gets from the state for caring for me every year (close to nothing so far, and I’ll be happy for it to stay that way! :))
Not that there aren’t problems with the system, too (any system that lives on tax-payers’ money is open to corruption as well as to abuse by both the care providers and the care receivers…) – but IMHO the benefits far outweigh the negative aspects (and I’m speaking as a healthy, above-average earner, who should theoretically benefit the most from a privatized system!)

[Hari_Seldon]

@bluezooky

Let’s put this way every dollar spent by the private sector is one saved by the taxpayer, why would the government shut down the private system?
I’m a bit confused about Canada; do they allow private schools or only public? Are you allowed a private car or have to catch a taxi? If people are willing to pay for private treatment why would the taxpayer want to pick up the bill.

I don’t know about other provinces, but Quebec certainly allows private doctors and clinics and they can charge what they like. Doctors must, however, choose. They cannot be in the public system and also have private patients. My ophthalmologist went private a year ago. So now it costs me $100 to see him. I asked him why and he said hte wants to solwly wind down his practice and also spend more time with his patients. Since I need a specialist, I have gone along with this. But should I ever need an operation, he would not be allowed to operate in a public hospital. Once I need a house call and only a private physician would do. He came on a Saturday morning, gave me the prescription I needed, collected his fee ($125) and I have not seen him since.

A private cancer hospital just opened a half mile from where I live. I don’t know how well they are doing, but they just started. Amusingly the building they renovated to do this used to be Bell Canada’s pay phone centre. Evidently payphones are disappearing.

[Balthisar]

@Hari Seldon

He came on a Saturday morning, gave me the prescription I needed, collected his fee ($125) and I have not seen him since.

Well, that’s not a very encouraging endorsement for an ophthalmologist.