On Thursday 06 September 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
--- Jon Pruente [email protected] wrote:
THe Canadians have no idea why Americans are so enamoured of their health care system. If a Canadian needs anything more than basic care or some sort of specialty care, and they have the money, they travel across the border to the U.S. and pay an American doctor to fix them.
And if an uninsured American needs basic care, they don't go *anywhere*, or they go help shut down their local hospital by getting extremely expensive E.R. care for which they can't afford to pay.
Please explain how the E.R. care costs the hospital anything. Just because they bill a large amount doesn't mean it's justified.
The millions of uninsured people think that the Canadian system of health care is at least better than the U.S. system, since in Canada you might have to wait for a specialist (but not for basic care). Here in the U.S. you might never get basic care no matter how long you wait.
Speaking as the head of an uninsured family, I have come to the conclusion that insurance, as well as hospitals and doctors, are mostly a scam anyway. On the occasion that we have gone to the hospital/doctor, it turned out to be a total waste of time. The E.R. takes hours to admit (so much for an emergency!), and once we're in they take hours more to tell us they have no clue what might be wrong. For our daughter's birth, they totally disregard our birth plan (actually, we were informed we would have to wait for another doctor, who was currently giving birth herself, if we did not throw away the plan) and then they were going to do all sorts of terrible things with our daughter if I didn't happen to follow her around and stop them.
Quite a few doctors come back to Canada because they are appalled at a health care system which refuses care to people if they cannot pay, and won't even let people, who cannot pay, wait for a specialist.
And where is this? Last I checked, it was illegal for hospitals in the US to deny you care because you couldn't pay.