Just curious as to how you can have "free" healthcare but have the cost go up at the same time? Who's paying for these growing costs? Do you have any inforamtion on how much the costs are increasing? Isn't the country running higher deficits now then expected due to the reccesion and doesn't that result in cuts to things like healthcare, how bad is it?
To the ordinary average everyday citizen, for all intents and purposes it is free. If we go to visit the doctor, or hospital, no money changes hands at all. We simply present our health insurance cards and that's it... literally. No forms to fill out. No one greets us with a clipboard asking us how we intend to pay for the visit. The first questions asked are what is the problem? How can we help you? So as far as we are concerned it is free.
As for the costs, well there are costs for treatment in that the overhead has to be paid. Doctors, nurses etc have to be paid etc., The electricity for the lighting, ...the heating, laundering the linens, scrubbing the floors etc... all these regular routine things that take place in a hospital must be paid for, and these are the costs that are rising.
Diagnostic tests and equipment etc., are all costs in healthcare and those are rising. As for who actually pays for the costs of insuring all the citizens... it's done through an employer health tax of between 1% - 2% paid on payrolls above $400k a year. It doesn't affect small businesses until and unless their payroll exceeds $400k a yr.
Yes, in response to economic factors, often our provincial government has to adjust budgets in anticipation of deficits etc., however healthcare is a top priority for Canadians. Health care & Education are areas Canadians expect to be financed and cuts in those areas can get a politician turfed out on his/her derriere so fast it would make your head spin.
We have seen cuts to our healthcare, but these cuts really don't hurt us. They are just cause for complaint. ie: in response to a budget shortfall, one gov reduced the amount of optometrist visits for routine eye exams to every two years. That doesn't mean ontario residents are limited to getting eye exams only once every 2 yrs. It simply means OHIP {Ontario Health Insurance plan) will only cover the cost of a routine eye exam once every 2 yrs. You're perfectly free to get an eye exam every six months if you want.
ie:
- Eye exam on Jan 1 2009, <-- this visit is free
- Eye exam on July 1 2009,
- Eye exam on Jan 1 2010,
- Eye exam on July 1 2010,
- Eye exam on Jan 1 2011, <-- this visit is free
- Eye exam on July 1 2011,
- Eye exam on Jan 1 2012,
- Eye exam on July 1 2012,
- Eye exam on Jan 1 2013, <-- this visit is free
- Eye exam on July 1 2013,
- Eye exam on Jan 1 2014,
- Eye exam on July 1 2014,
Bear in mind, this is simply for routine visits. If you're experiencing something... then by all means the visit is covered.
You don't have to worry about having a routine eye exam on December 20th, only to have a champagne cork hit you in the eye on New Years Eve 11 days later, and not be covered. You'd be covered. I'm talking about routine preventative care. When these adjustments in the levels and frequencies of coverage are made, they are not made by bean counters, but by physicians based on the statistical data. They realized based on the years of statistical data, that very few if any changes to the eyes and eyesight occur within 2 yrs, and that more frequent eye exams are really nothing more than a waste of money. It would be like having a full physical every 30 days. it's unecessary, and therefore would not be covered. If someone were a hypochondriac and felt the need to have a full physical every 30 days they can, ...they can go to a private health care provider and pay cash. No one says they can't. Most people don't want to pay cash for something they can get for free.
In the USA, doctors will run all sorts of tests which imo are simply to pad the bill. I have a friend experiencing some health challenges, and I tell you it would make me sick every time he told me he was going in for more testing. Everytime he went in for some testing he came out worse than before. And so many allergic reactions to the various medications he was provided for the testing. I'd have to keep it all inside, then when I got off the phone with him i'd be balling my eyes out at the way they were milking him with more useless testing. It wouldn't have surprised me if the doctor decided to give him a pregnancy test next. i better move on otherwise I'm gonna get myself worked up.
With our universal health coverage, there are procedures involved with testing and the various protocols that are used. for certain things, rather than jumping to the most expensive form of diagnostics, there are steps that are required to be taken first. Call it medical profiling if you will. ie: an otherwise healthy 23 yr old woman without a history of breast cancer in her family finds a lump in her breast.
Of course she's gonna panic and think it's the big C and will want to have a mammogram. Now while it is possible that it could be cancer, chances are more than likely it isn't. She would NOT be given an automatic mammogram no matter how much she begged and pleaded. There would be other tests done first. Chances are 99.999% it's just a simple cyst. The procedure would first be to do a simple needle biopsy right there in the doctors office. If it's discovered to be a cyst, it would be aspirated right there in the doctors office, and the fluid would be collected and examined for cancer cells. If it's discovered NOT to be a cyst, then more extensive testing would be done. The idea of having a needle pierce her breast is probably terrifying to women, and many would probably prefer to be hospitalized with full anaethesia for the procedure, but that would never occur. It's the equivalent of requesting to be fully hospitalized and put under in order to receive a vaccination, or to draw a vial of blood. Another example would be an AIDs test. That's really a misnomer, because they aren't really testing you for AIDs. What they test for are the AIDs antibodies. That's a more economical test. If that test comes back positive for the antibodies, they will then take it a step further, and utilize the more expensive test, that actually detects the HIV virus itself. If you wanted to jump the procedural queu and go straight for the test that detects the actual virus, ...it wouldn't be covered. You'd have to pay for that yourself. If you first do the less expensive test that detects the presence of the viral anitbodies, ...and that came back positive for the antibodies, ...then the more expensive test that detects the actual virus itself would be performed and would be covered.
As for the complaints that patients aren't able to see specialists, that's not true. How it works is, if you walk in off the street and get examined by the specialist, the specialist is paid $2y. If however, you are refered to the specialist by your doctor, the specialist is paid $3y. As a result, many specialists will refuse to see or accept new patients unless they are referred by a GP. It's really not a big deal. All you have to do is to tell your doctor you'd like to see a particular dermatologist, or whatever the specialist is, and s/he'll refer you to them.
Oh poop we've got more tornados & funnel clouds touching down. I gotta go... gonna go hide under the bed.
