OT Ever see the doccumentary Sicko?

[repenttokyo]

tim s.

we are going to have to agree to disagree then. i don't have much direct experience with the american health system other than trips to the emergency room, and i don't feel that qualifies me to comment on it's details. second hand knowledge from people who may have an axe to grind is not the best thing to form an opinion on. i have never had to wait weeks for surgery, and there are many options when it comes to testing. I will leave it at that.

[Ferret]

I think it's nap time Jeff... even though there are other people that say that same about that wanker.

This forum really needs a '+' button for its threads to show comedy value.

[dacoyote]

This forum really needs a '+' button for its threads to show comedy value.

I assume all threads are funny.... I still visit / post and don't even have an e34 anymore

[Dave M]

you did say you could drive here if needed.
so if we change to the system you have, then what will you do?
tim s.

Good question. I'll just cross my fingers that as I age, enough accessible private health care exists. Canada is still grappling with whether or not to adopt a "two tiered system" allowing for private practices in addition to the free public service. Who knows, a good mix of both might be the best answer. However, trying to find good docs to work in the public system may become difficult.

Stay healthy in the mean time,

Dave

[Zeuk in Oz]

Canada is still grappling with whether or not to adopt a "two tiered system" allowing for private practices in addition to the free public service. Who knows, a good mix of both might be the best answer. However, trying to find good docs to work in the public system may become difficult.

Intrestingly enough, many of the best medicos in Oz work in both systems - they are attached to a large, public teaching hopsital plus they have a private practice often attached to a private hospital.

Their research etc is done in the public system and they make their money in the private system.

[attack eagle]

according to the documentary the US is the ONLY western country to NOT have UHC. We in the US can go to any hospital anywhere besides here, including France and Cuba and get as good of or better care than here...without insurance and not even being a citizen there and not walk out with a single bill...unless you count the 5¢ breather the lady needed that cost 120 here. King George can kiss my ass.

Well I have been treated in socialized universal health care systems, and I have to say I don't much care for it. The care you get in a hospital here far exceeds what passes for health care in MOST of the world's UHC hospitals. Not to mention that if you think the emergency room waits are long here now, wait until you experience the same kind of wait at every healthcare appointment. Nothing like making an 8am appointment on tuesday and being seen around thursday. When you subtract the cost of insurance from a doctor's salary they make a comfortable, but not fantastic living. Let's get that under control and perhaps we will see our cost of medical care decrease, and then our cost of insurace might decrease as well.

Oh, and I don't have healthcare insurance and I'm STILL against this idiocy.
Socialism is NEVER the answer.
TANSTAAFL is especially true here.

[ryan roopnarine]

as someone who has never seen the movie, and has no axe to grind, i'd say that canadians have absolutely no reason to complain about things up there. i complained when i lived up there, and it took a single emergency room visit (with insurance, mind you) to change my opinion. yeah, of course i can afford to give you my ins. card along with 430$ for the initial visit (in the event that they can't "verify" the validity of my policy). yes i have a primary doctor, but they don't have the resources to verify why i might be suddenly losing my vision, hence me being instructed by (their) staff to go to the er. they tell everyone that comes in with a non-critical injury that the service time will be approximately 8 hours. i later found out that this is the typical wait, year round. i used to bitch incessantly about a 3-4 hour round trip times in canada, but i guess you don't really know what you've got until it's gone. and please, please don't think that just because the hospital i went to was in bfe, that (they) have the resources typical of a hospital in bfe. doctors from this hospital are the ones on site at every space shuttle launch. if something were to happen to the shuttle on the pad (or they had to make an emergency landing), the astronauts would end up at this hospital. (it) is a rather major university/research hospital.

$700 out of my pocket (with insurance, mind you) to find out that i was likely having a painless migrane headache. and that was with me telling to doctor i saw that my vision loss was not typical of blindness (light blurring, not dark, impenetrable dot). yeah, i'm sure that my eye would have fallen out in canada.

[632 Regal]

what I found interesting was how the health companies are screwing every claim, this is a major issue! The co-pays and deductables are totally and then they deny you and you end up having to pay the whole bill...sucks.

[attack eagle]

LOL, or you don't pay for it if you are smart and make them pay it like they should.

After socking 20-40k worth of costs (two children born) to the insurance company( CIGNA) in exchange for some 5-6k in premiums over the previous 5 years, I know a bit about the insurance thing. They send you a bill stating what was charged and what your deductable is.

Then you might or might not get a bill for something else depending on how it was coded in the billing system and by whom after all is said and done.
Sometimes they don't want to pay it because the way it was coded makes it appear like seperate procedures or multiple doctors or an out of network doctor. Sometimes they will accept your word for it and pay up, and sometimes you have to call the doc and explain the problem and the doctor's office will recode it so that it is within the specific guidelines your coverage includes.
I had to fight with them over a charge for a mandatory newborn hearing test on our firstborn that was performed in an approved hospital by the doctor on duty. He wasn't "in network" or preapproved, so they didn't want to pay. After 6 months they finally agreed that they would rather pay the hearing test and have us as an early release, instead of them paying an extra day of hospital stay, and that because it was a mandatory test required of all newborns and performed by hospital personnel that it should be covered.

they agreed to this after I called them every week for 6 months informing them that I wasn't going to pay CIGNA for it, and stated my reasons. They had already paid the hospital for it and were billing us retroactively for something that was a state requirement for our newborn's hospital release... and something that was covered under our policy according to section xxx paragraph yy on page zzz.
when we had our second one, there was NO problem, as they had fixed whatever the hell the problem was.


And yes I dropped em like a hot potato when they tried to up our premium to 8k a year with a 6k cumulative deductable before they would start to kick in 80%. That is literally a year's salary for most CSRs before they will pay anything at all. Might as well go bankrupt for the entire bill instead of for just just 12k+ of it

Insurance companies have this funny idea, that they are supposed to collect your premiums to pay their stockholders excellent dividends, and that if anything happens that is not your fault to cause a claim (like you get rear ended), that they should then raise your rates to make up for the claim... Hello! You should pay the same amount after a claim as before, because statistically the chances of the not at fault event happening twice are more remote than it happening the first time.

[Jon K]

WTF are you even on here for? you are completely useless for 99% of the people here, why even bother besides your greedy attention.

How am I completely useless? I now pay for health insurance - $50 bi weekly is fine with me for the service I get. Sounds like someone has some sort of complex...