Canadian Cancer Victim Banished To Waiting List, Flees to US For Treatment

Yes, American-style health care is much better.




.....if you can afford it.

Apparently, 260 million out of 300 million of us can. And many of those who aren't covered are so by choice. And anyone will get emergency care regardless of ability to pay.

Just wondering, how much is health insurance in the US? In Alberta, it is anything but free. We still pay into a health fund for it. I think everyone pays the same amount. For myself, I think it was about $50 a month.

No surprise at all.

I personally know 3 people that have gone to the US for treatment.

For the personal plan I had a couple of years ago--which I bought myself, not through an employer--I paid about $100/month. That was a whole lotta coverage, fairly small prescription co-pays, and fairly small hospitalization deductible ($2000). It would likely be $125-150 now.

Through my employers, I've always gotten still better plans which cost me something like $15/week.

40 million is still a pretty big number.

That's what people tell themselves about the homeless, too. Eases the guilt when you pass one on the street.

But if it's not an "emergency," you're fucked.

And if it is an emergency, and you survive, you've still got to pay a shitload of money for the privilege of not dying.




This argument is pointless. No system is perfect, yet each side will still point at instances in which the other system failed someone, and excuse away the failures that occur on their own side. It's going to end up a ten-page thread full of anecdotes that fail to convince anyone on either side.

I paid $44 for a single person, but if you make below a certain amount, you don't have to pay at all, or at least pay a reduced rate.

Regardless, premiums are gone at the end of the year.

But it's a small percentage. And the 260 million of us who do have health insurance don't want to get fucked in the process of covering those other 40 million.

Many people, particularly young people, do go without health insurance.

And if it's not an emergency, why should anyone else pay for it?

No, you won't. If you had any money to begin with, you would've had health insurance.

Probably. But I like freedom of choice, high quality care, and not waiting. If I have to pay a little more for it, I'm happy to do so. And I'm happy with the health care system as it is. Hey, 'twould be nice if it were cheaper, but I can say the same thing about oceanside mansions and Ferraris.

I don't want government involvement in health care for one simple reason: I don't trust them to fix anything. Even when they're well-intentioned, they fuck things up.

I have...had...a friend who died about 2 years ago because US private insurance wouldn't pay for his lung transplant because his chances of survival where only like 15 - 20%, so they let him die...waste away.

Slowly.

In my book, 20% > 0%.

In there's, it was only a matter of $$$.

Tell his grieving fiance how much greater private health care is - I fucking dare you.

And you think Medicare or Medicaid would be better?

All insurance, all insurance, regardless of who administers it or pays for it is going to have a cut off point when it comes to price versus odds. Bank on it. Determining that price point is one of the main reasons Actuaries and Actuarial Tables exist and every insurer (including Medicare and Medicaid) employs them.

Exactly. If the odds are that low, you're on your own whether it's here, or in one of the places with socialized medicine.

Do you really believe that public health care systems don't perform the same cost/benefit analysis? If anything, I imagine they'd be even more likely to do it as resources tend to be more scarce under public systems. Large costs for unlikely gains are something that no system can tolerate.

Look at it this way: an insurance company (even if it's state run) only has so much money available to accommodate all clients. Is a million dollars spent on one patient a better choice than, say, one hundred thousand dollars spent on each of ten patients with better prognoses? If you had to make the choice, would you approve the use of a lung in a transplant to a patient with a 15-20% survival likelihood over other patients with higher probabilities?

Sorry, hard choices in life are inevitable. If our preferences alone determined things, most of us would spend every cent in the treasury trying to forestall the possibility of death. If a doctor said you would die in a week unless you underwent a $10 million procedure that had only a 1% chance of success, you'd probably take it. 1% > 0, after all. But that $10 million isn't free just because it doesn't come directly from your bank account: it's the cost of someone else not getting treatment.

So errr....what exactly is the monetary value of a human life?

Anyway, I agree BOTH systems have deep flaws.


I wish I knew a solution.

You also specified that it was a lung transplant. With a less than 20% success prognosis, they'd be lucky to be on the list for an organ.

He was on the list, just didn't have $55,000 handy.

(I told him to look under the couch!)

You may be uncomfortable with the thought, but, yes, all people receiving medical care do have a monetary value associated with them. It isn't the worth of the person, though; it's the worth of the resources necessary to treat them.

To pose it this way: how much would you (if you had control over the economy) spend to save ONE person's life:

a) $1,000
b) $1,000,000
c) $1,000,000,000
d) $1,000,000,000,000
e) any number, because human beings' lives cannot be measured in dollars

The heart may tell you to answer 'e', but the brain knows that it cannot be so. At some point, your expenditure to save a single life becomes so great, that you destroy many other lives in the process.

^Well thank you Kodos!

First, what kind of emergency care will you get? Diagnostic tests are out of it, if it is for a long-term condition. You'll get "emergency" assistance, and nothing more. Need a transplant, you're dead.

As for the "if you can afford it" many people CAN'T GET HEALTH INSURANCE because of pre-existing conditions. Do you realize we are the only industrialized nation that permits people to be discriminated against by insurance companies due to pre-existing conditions?

Well hell yeah we should discriminate against pre-existing conditions. Why should I have to pay for your disease you already got? Insurance is there for when things go wrong. It is not there to get you the lowest cost possible for your already diseased body.

Just like other forms of insurance you are supposed to get insurance first before the problem occurs.

Why should all the other insured people have their money flow into your medical expenses for a condition you had before you bought insurance?

That is a point that I think many tend to forget or ignore.

So insurance should only be available to those who never use it!

The entire idea behind it is POOLED RISK.

If you refuse to let people into the system, you will then create the condition where we'll have national health care. Because in time, with an aging population, more and more will be rejected from the system, and they'll eventually vote people in who will force this nation into an NHS.

But don't take my word for it, most doctors already think we should do it.

http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2008/04/21/gvsb0421.htm

"Fifty-nine percent of 2,193 physicians surveyed last year backed the creation of "national health insurance" with a main goal of "financing health care for all U.S. citizens." That's an increase of 10 percentage points since 2002, according to the survey, published in the April 1 Annals of Internal Medicine. Fifty-five percent of physicians supported "achieving coverage through more incremental reform," a question that was not asked in 2002."

People are not entitled to health insurance. No matter what the political establishment would like us to believe. Do we have a right to health care? Sure we do. Just like we have a right to pursue happiness. But, neither happiness nor healthcare are a guarantee.

And unless there is absolutely no backlog on the system, the same thing would have happened here in Canada.

Except they wouldn't outright refuse to treat him, they'd just push him to the furthest end of the waiting list.

Let's parse this absolute piece of shit.

How the fuck can someone get medical care, the care you claim we have a "right to", without somebody paying for it! Who is going to pay?

With insurance, the people paying for it are the people enrolled in the insurance plan. They pay for the treatment, the profits, and the inordinate waste that is carried on. They receive some benefit, but at the very best roughly 70% of what is paid in total. There is intermediation between the buyer of the service, and the provider, which is inefficient. But if you can't purchase insurance, they obviously can pay the claims.

If your answer is "the government", which it must be because you claim this is a right, that the actual providence of a "right to health care" requires payment for said services.

Let's put those pertinent sentences on health care together:

"Do we have a right to health care? Sure we do. But, neither happiness nor healthcare are a guarantee."

You have a right to it, not a guarantee. Are you taking guarantee of outcome, or guarantee of the service, the "healthcare" itself? Because if you have a RIGHT to it, that right has to come from the government. If cost is the denial of that right, it isn't a right, it is a privilege. So there is an immediate disparity between what you said in the first sentence, and in the last.

Leaving aside the entire debate about why health insurance is so incredibly expensive, with health care costs outpacing inflation to an insane degree, we're left with the question of the best way to provide the most coverage to the most people.

Nationalized or "public" health care is obviously not the answer, as you wind up with the sorts of things described in the article. Governments don't do anything efficiently, because everything winds up being politicized. Personally, I don't want my medical needs managed by the same imbeciles who run the IRS or the BATFE.

Pool coverage, as Dendroica alludes to, is probably the best approach. The larger the pool, the better the coverage should be (in theory) because as the number of people in the pool increases, the odds of any one individual needing catastrophic assistance goes down. However, putting everyone in the same pool would amount to the same thing as national health care. There'd be no competition and it would likely be a red-tape nightmare. Imagine everyone in the country forced to use the same HMO. No thanks.

So we're looking like the best compromise would be three or four large providers. There would have to be some government oversight - they'd have to be required to cover anyone who applied, for example - who would each be covering some tens of millions of people. That should spread the risk around enough to keep things manageable without empowering the incompetence that a single monolithic agency would inevitably entail. The plans offered by each provider would likely be similar in broad outlines, but they would have enough wiggle room to give people some real choice. Competition would operate sufficiently to keep costs from being totally nuts. And, most importantly, people would have to retain the option to not buy into the system at all. Most likely, young adults in good health might choose to forego health insurance for a while so that that money could be applied to other things. Probably frivolous things, but there you are.

There would obviously still have to be emergency coverage of some kind . . . free clinics with ER's supported by the government, maybe . . . but these kinds of places would function as triage centers more than anything else. Say there's a horrible car accident. First priority is to get the victims to an emergency facility. Insurance, or lack thereof, can be sorted out later. Those with coverage get full benefit of the health care system, and if that means transferring from the ER to a private hospital when they can, then that's what they do. Those without coverage would get "free" treatment until they were out of danger, then cut loose. Unless they signed up for one of the plans, which would always be an option as the providers would not be allowed to refuse coverage to any applicant for any reason.

Someone who was uninsured but tried to go to the "free" centers every time they got the sniffles or something would be turned away. Until, of course, they opted to join one of the plans.

And the plans would have to be simple. Basically, pay X amount per month and everything is covered.

Those are the broad outlines as I see 'em, anyway.

I'd like to remind everyone once again that the German system is the best one, and that every other country should adopt it immediately.

I certainly don't want an NHS style healthcare system here. As I pointed out in the healthcare thread I started last week, I'm all for mixing the systems the Germans, Japanese and Taiwan uses. All three provide great models for how it could work here, cost less, and have no extra wait times.

could you go into more detail about what is good about each system and what parts we should adopt/meld and use?

That's a good point, and at the risk of someone inevitably telling me I'd feel differently if I were actually in the situation, along those same lines I think it's irresponsible for parents who have several children to descend their family into utter financial ruin for one of them.