The German system is NOT a single payer system at all. They have literally hundreds of health insurance companies, and each company pays their own bills.
And Canada does NOT have a private medical system. Being a physician in private practice does not make fore a private medical system. So long as you have a single payer system, you can not have private medical care.
Great Britain has a system where you have both a government plan, and private medical care. If you have the money, you can choose to have private physicians, your own hospitals, etc. You don't have that in Canada.
Cheaper per capita, yes, and also much more difficult to obtain many services. Try to obtain weight loss surgery in Canada, as just one example. The average wait time is over 3 years. Or take a simple hernia surgery. My paternal grandmother died of a strangulated hernia (gangrene set in) while waiting for her surgery in Winnipeg.
Most Canadians have absolutely no knowledge (other than what they read in the papers or see on TV) about how the average American gets medical care. I have never been denied any care I needed, or wanted, nor have I ever had any significant delay (only for appropriate pre-surgical tests, etc.)
In Canada, MRI machines are largely unavailable in the evenings, nights and on week-ends. In fact, in many areas, animal doctors utilize the MRI machines during those hours. In some areas of Canada, a person can wait months, if not years, to get an MRI done.
In the US, you can get a needed MRI done 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Contrary to what so many Canadians believe, you can walk into any emergency room in the US, and get treatment free of charge if you have no insurance and no assets. Anyone, including illegal aliens, can do this.
This is NOT the case in Canada however. I know several people that became very ill, or were injured while visiting in Canada, and they were denied treatment when they had no funds to pay for the treatment. They got the minimum possible to stabilize them and were sent on their way.
In the USA, every hospital gives away millions of dollars in free service every year. That's one of the reasons the costs are so high for those that do have insurance or funds, they are recouping the lack of payment for all of those free services they give away.
I am a Canadian citizen, yet if I were to become sick in Canada, I would get minimal, if any services, because I do not live there. In the USA, in actuality, you get the medical care first, and they ask for the payment later in an emergency situation.
Elective treatment is very different though. If you don't have the money, or insurance, you can wait for elective treatment. BUT in Canada, virtually everyone HAS to wait for elective treatments, even though they are insured.
Try to tell my family just how great the Canadian health system is. Had my grandmother been in the USA, she would have been admitted the day her hernia was discovered, and had surgery the next day. In Winnipeg, she was told that she was not a priority, and she died while waiting for her surgery to be approved.
Yes indeed, that's a GREAT system you have up there.[/QUOTE]
You appear to be glossing over a great number of things as well as not entirely understanding what private health services are. Tonnington has done a great job of giving you an idea of just a few of the private companies operating in Canada, and contrary to your statement a doctor that works for himself in his own privately owned clinic is private. It is utter nonsense to claim otherwise.
And although there may be longer wait times in Canada for certain procedures Canada stacks up very well against the US in recovery percentages for life-threatening illness such as heart disease and has a longer life expectancy. Whatever the problems with Canadian health care it beats what the US is doing.
The same might be said of MRIs. It is true that in the US they are much more numerous, however, a good deal of that is overkill and almost as much is a desire to drive up costs by including expensive services and tests that are often not necessary but are included since an insurance company is probably paying the bill. It does little to improve health care outcomes if the US has ten times the MRIs per capita when a much lower number might be all that is needed. Compare costs for various medical procedures in the US to costs in Canada for the same procedure and you will see what I mean.
And I am sorry about your grandmother, just as I am sorry about the millions of Americans who are refused health care each year through the process of dumping or having some insurance company find some loophole in their policy to deny them coverage. You are aware, I assume, of the fact that the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA is health care costs?
And yes, we do have a fine system "up here" as you put it. However, that is only because we compare it to the incredible health care mess you have in the US. You may not realize it, but Canadians are very critical of their health care system and are constantly complaining about it. The only thing we really agree on is the fact that it is better than what the US has.
