The high cost of rationed health care in Canada
There is much more including a discussion of the deficiencies of the Obama rationed health care scheme. If you click on the Health Care label below, you can see post on the horrors of the rationed health care system including having to send mothers to the US for births becuase they did not have enough room for them in all of Canada.The Canadian health care system is in crisis. Even Claude Castonguay, the mastermind behind the government-run program, admits that something has to change. Notorious for lengthy waiting lines and rationed health care, the system has crumbled under the management of its federal government.
Stories abound of Canadians flocking to the United States seeking treatment that the Canadian government denied or delayed to the point where the patient would have died before being treated. So frequent are these instances that Canadian provinces have started paying for medical services received here.
But what lies behind the Canadian crisis and how can we avoid the same fate?
Canada’s perfect storm has been created by policies that allow the government to set reimbursement rates for health care providers, and require health services to be rendered regardless of an individual’s ability to provide additional co-payment. As a result, physicians are in short supply and patients wait months for services. At any given time, up to 800,000 Canadians are on a physician’s waiting list.
Additionally, public programs that determine the price of generic drugs have resulted in drug prices that are 118 percent more than what Americans pay. While brand name drugs are 62 percent cheaper in Canada, its public programs reimburse the pharmacy directly. The consumer never knows which drug is less expensive.
Similar public financing tactics with hospitals have lead to health care rationing and limited access to services. The Canadian government gives hospitals a pre-determined amount to cover the costs of providing health care, forcing them to limit their services in order to operate within budget.
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I live in Montreal. Our health care system is different from hospital to hospital. Some are great, most are not. Even after spending billions, we still have long waits, good doctors are leaving, and certain care (i.e. cancer therapies, hip operations, etc). are delayed.
ReplyDeleteBut what is the real horror story (that is not in your post), is how dirty our hospitals are. This article from the CMAJ summarizes how 1,400 patients died from C. difficile in Quebec alone. http://www.cmaj.ca/news/26_01_06.shtml
But everyone who lives here knows that the figures are much higher. My father's best friend past away from C. difficile infection, but it was blamed on his cancer surgery.