Indemnity Dental Insurance

Are you Americans worried about the lack of universal healthcare?

Would you be in favour of adopting a system like in Canada? Canada's health care system is a group of socialized health insurance plans that provides coverage to all Canadian citizens. It is publicly funded and administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government. Under the health care system, individual citizens are provided preventative care and medical treatments from primary care physicians as well as access to hospitals, dental surgery and additional medical services. With a few exceptions, all citizens qualify for health coverage regardless of medical history, personal income, or standard of living. Yes even though your med research is more advanced in some areas, at least every citizen is covered for a wide range of procedures (even eyes) and paps so I am glad I live here! I pity you ppl down there where you pay through the nose for insurance....and if you lose the insurance you're screwed......

Public Comments

1. nope cuz i am canadian!
2. Most people I know (Yes, I'm from America) would like to have a healthcare system like Canada's. It's really terrible being sick and not having insurance, and definitely having a bad health history and not getting approved for any insurance. That's why most Americans also hate President Bush, he doesn't help the healthcare situation at all. Edit: I do agree with Oldwhiteguy2earth. Americans are very advanced on healthcare, much more than Canada (no offence or anything) and people would probably get angry if they got a new universal health plan that didn't cover something they could previously get. Thanks for pointing that out Oldwhiteguy2earth.
3. The thing that we Americans don't understand is that universal health care is still rationed health care. The Americans that do have insurance have the best insurance in the world, as evidenced by the number of Canadians that come to America for service that is not available in Canada. We will probably end up with universal insurance, then Americans will complain about services that they can no longer get because it is not paid for by the universal plan. I had cancer of the eye four years ago. Because I have first rate American insurance, I still have two eyes with perfect vision. If I was in Canada or England, I would be one-eyed right now.
4. Having a universal plan would be much better than having no plan, though. Otherwise, you can be hung out to dry so easily. I used to have health insurance through my job, not great but decent, $40 copay for preventative stuff, and about $100 a month, which was so much worse than what I had when I went to college through the school, but I was glad to have something. Then I went in for a gynecology appt and found out that my pap smear was abnormal - I might have cervical cancer. A colposcopy was scheduled and right around that time, my company was bought out by this Australian company. That was this December. They cancelled our health insurance, and keep stringing us along as to when we're getting new health insurance. The latest word is June. I've had to keep putting off my follow-up treatment, because I can't afford a few thousand dollars, and the only clinic sort of cheap place I know that can help only makes appointments at the beginning of a month, and if you call and they're booked up that month, you have to call back next month for an appointment. I'm a little scared at this point. However, we do seem to do a good job as a country at covering children. I just don't understand why the human life apparently becomes worthless when you turn 18/graduate college.
5. no i am a natural health consultant and it is just teaching us to be resourceful like to seek alternative ways of dealing with health issues.
6. I see a lot of problems if Universal Health care comes to the United States. I think taxes will increase, in Isreal taxes are taken from your income and go into a health care fund. Another problem is how well the government will operate it, and I wonder about fraud. Seems there is a lot of fraud in the medi-care and medi-cal programs here. (those are government programs for the elderly and poor).
7. Nope, not interested: "Comparing Canada with other industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that provide universal access to health care, a study released by The Fraser Institute in May revealed that Canada spends more on its system than other nations while ranking among the lowest in several key indicators, such as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes. ... In 1999, Richard F. Davies, MD, described how delays affected Ontario heart patients scheduled for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. In a single year, for this one operation, 71 patients died before surgery and another "121 were removed from the list permanently because they had become medically unfit for surgery;" 44 left Ontario and had their CABG elsewhere, such as in the USA. In other words, 192 people either died or were too sick to have surgery before they worked their way to the front of the waiting line. One of the reasons Canadians are slow to acknowledge the problems with their system is that general practitioners have been relatively easy to access and reasonably efficient at providing everyday services for common complaints, such as colds, sprains, aches and pains. As time passes, however, more and more Canadians are confronted by the halting quality of their system when they face complex and expensive medical problems. They often cannot get timely or appropriate care for bone fractures, prompt treatment for cancer, or non-emergency surgery such as hip replacements. Their doctors complain that they are unable to help them and the government pleads shortage of funds. ... Canadian physician frustration with their inability to provide quality and timely care is resulting in a brain drain. According to one poll, one in three Canadian doctors is considering leaving the country. A doctor shortage looms, as the nation falls 500 doctors a year short of the 2,500 new physicians it needs to add each year to meet national health needs, according to Sally Pipes, a policy expert formerly with the Canadian Fraser Institute. Another casualty of the lengthy waiting periods is Canada's much-vaunted equal access to medical treatment. Even though medical emergencies allow some people to jump ahead in the waiting line — making others wait longer — a survey published in the Annals of Internal Medicine medical journal found that more than 90 percent of heart specialists had "been involved in the care of a patient who received preferential access" to cardiac care based on non-medical reasons including the patient's social standing or personal connections with the treating physician." Jewish World Review June 11, 2004 written by Dr. Cihak AND "The biggest Canadian fiscal drain comes from the single-payer medical system. "Current model of health-care delivery leading us down the path to financial ruin," states the lead editorial in the Calgary Sun. Health-care costs would consume 50% of Alberta's budget by 2016 (according to the Fraser Institute) or 2017 (according to Aon Consulting, a firm hired by the Alberta government). Health care would devour 100% of the provincial budget by 2030, if present trends continue. ... An estimated 90,000 Canadians sought medical care outside their country in 2005. The cry "no two-tiered system" could be replaced by "set our patients free," stated a lead editorial (National Post 9/18/06)." Jewish World Review Dec. 1, 2006 by Dr. Glueck So why no total collapse yet? Because “illegal, for-profit health-service centers” have “proliferated” in Canada and are so accepted that the head of one became the president of the Canadian Medical Association (“Individual Freedom vs. Government Control,” 1 August 2007, nationalreview.com). ...Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the health-care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,” he fumed to the New York Times, “and in which humans can wait two to three years.” And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. Day’s clinic, for instance, handles workers’-compensation cases for employees of both public and private corporations. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80 percent of government-funded diagnostic testing. In Ontario, where fealty to socialized medicine has always been strong, the government recently hired a private firm to staff a rural hospital’s emergency room. This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain’s government-run health care dates back to the 1940s. Yet the Labour Party—which originally created the National Health Service and used to bristle at the suggestion of private medicine, dismissing it as “Americanization”—now openly favors privatization. Sir William Wells, a senior British health official, recently said: “The big trouble with a state monopoly is that it builds in massive inefficiencies and inward-looking culture.” Last year, the private sector provided about 5 percent of Britain’s nonemergency procedures; Labour aims to triple that percentage by 2008. The Labour government also works to voucherize certain surgeries, offering patients a choice of four providers, at least one private. And in a recent move, the government will contract out some primary care services, perhaps to American firms such as UnitedHealth Group and Kaiser Permanente. Sweden’s government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80 percent of Stockholm’s primary care and 40 percent of its total health services, including one of the city’s largest hospitals. Since the fall of Communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany: increasing co-pays, enhancing insurance competition, and turning state enterprises over to the private sector (within a decade, only a minority of German hospitals will remain under state control). It’s important to note that change in these countries is slow and gradual—market reforms remain controversial. But if the United States was once the exception for viewing a vibrant private sector in health care as essential, it is so no longer." http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html
8. If USA decided to start Universal Health Care tomorrow morning, you are talking 20-40 years before you can implement it, have a 'universal health care system' up and running.