I can agree with you in principle here. However, there are other possibilities. For example, I could see some kind of what we might call Universal Medicare. It would be a kind of blend between private and public health care in that while the individual would have to pay for his own insurance (with the government possibly picking up the tab for the more destitute), this insurance would provide medical vouchers for essential medical services which could be cashed in at any voucher hospital, anywhere in the world, that opts into the voucher programme. this would mean of course those hospitals would be required to accept the vouchers for the services the vouchers are earmarked for, and would be prohibited from accepting any money. In this way for example, a hospital in Florida in a particular community with many Canadians living there could choose to opt into the voucher programme. First it would need to seek approval from the Canadian embassy in its country. Once th embansy is satisfied that the hospital meets the necessary requirements, then any Canadian given a voucher for a particular operation and who would like to go to that hospital for the operation would be free to do so. this would have the advantage of making our insurance more mobile.
Of course many kinks would need to be worked out before this could work, but in Europe I believe their national coverage covers them across the EU if I'm not mistaken. So clearly something of the wort could be established.
You are basically describing, in part, the way medical in BC works. In this province, we pay a monthly medical premium. Yours (I believe) is done via your tax system. Not all provinces charge their citizens a medical premium but to my way of thinking, that's just wrong and if the premium was universal as you suggest, we would have a better system. Anyone can see what people pay per province just by googling it. I mentioned in another thread that the BC governement is looking at allowing people from the USA to join our BC medical plan at 4 times the cost we currently pay. Right now we pay as couples or as families, or a single person and if you are under a certain tax bracket, you don't pay. Gov't covers it. We have private clinics and they were at one point closed down by Gov't. I believe they are open again now.
Some of the major problems we have here is that we have a Premier that can easily pay for himself and his family so he doesn't seem to care how many hospitals he closes, how many hosp. beds he closes or how many operating rooms. The facilities are here, the doctors are here, but he continues to close things down. On the other hand, things like MRI's should be working on a 24 hour basis but there are not enough operators to keep them running. I used to believe it was a shortage of MRI machines but apparently it is not. It's a shortage of staff. However, maybe they don't get paid enough here or maybe there really isn't enough of them.
Elective surgery lists just got longer here because once again, the premier cut back on those services. The first time he cut back on many of these services it wreaked havoc but in the end it seemed to pay off. This time he's gone too far. Had he re-instated some of the services he originally removed, maybe he could have gotten away with cutbacks but all he's doing now is further cutbacks.
I've always believed he should have to spend a couple of months or so without any money, without any credit/debit cards and without his own ID. While I don't wish him any harm, I wonder how he would feel if a member of his family (or himself) lived under such conditions and found they needed a hip replacement or cataract removal or had any kind of life taking illness such as a young woman here just went through (anorexia) where she could not get into treatment because of his lousy cutbacks. Only through the media did she finally get accepted into the required care for her to try to survive.
Why is it that people who live in a place with such great medical care, have to go to the media and beg for help that should be offered up as required. Not 6 or 8 months down the road with the threat of "death" hanging over their head due to cutbacks.
I see every reason to allow Americans to join the BC Medical Plan at 4 times the premiums and at 4 times the cost of surgery. They certainly would not just charge us the amount charged here if we went there for surgery. We would have to pay the "4 times" the cost amount unless visiting and covered by insurance.
