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Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by docker_up on Thursday May 09, 2019 @01:53PM (#19870481)
Having employer-sponsored medical insurance is generally better than Canadian health care. I'm Canadian living in the US. Of course, having Canadian public health care is better when you don't have much money.

I needed an MRI. I got one the next day through Kaiser. My friend had a suspected gallstone. It took her 4 months to get an MRI scheduled. She had to live with pain during those 4 months.

Her children are both diagnosed with autism. It took 2.5 years to get therapy paid for by the government. The only other option besides waiting was to pay for therapy herself which was $80,000/year. She couldn't afford it so her children had to wait without therapy during the most crucial times for therapy. Recently, the Ford government decided upon spending cuts that will limit her youngest son with severe autism to 2 more years of care and then they get nothing.

With Kaiser, they have a top standard autism program where children get instantly put into. My friend is a medical doctor specializing in this and he said the Kaiser program was great. When I told him that my friend had to wait 2.5 years in Canada, he was shocked and saddened for the children.

Before the younger son could get diagnosed with autism, he had to undergo an MRI to ensure there wasn't anything specifically wrong with his brain. They waited 3.5 months, and then when they got to the MRI appointment, they were told their appointment was cancelled, and they had to wait another month.

My aunt was scheduled for gall stone surgery in Toronto but it was also months in advance. One weekend she went to emergency because was vomiting from pain. They put her in a bed and scheduled her for surgery at the hospital. If she left, she would have to wait for the scheduled surgery but if she took an emergency room spot, she could get surgery sooner. She had occupy that bed for 1.5 weeks until they finally scheduled her for surgery, taking the place of other patients. We asked if we could move her to another hospital that didn't have the wait and they said no, she had to stay in that hospital otherwise she would lose her place.

These are experiences just with people I know. I've lived much of my life with Canadian health care and I trust it. But what you don't pay with money you pay with time.

I've found that most people in the US want government health care, but they also want a private option, which is untenable for such a large country, and illegal in Canada. They have a 2 party health care system in Australia but the quality difference is vast. With public and private, you can criticism that only rich people get the best health care but with a single public system, everyone waits. So there's no great way.

Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by lotsofpulp on Thursday May 09, 2019 @02:16PM (#19870700)
>Having employer-sponsored medical insurance is generally better than Canadian health care.

Some lucky employees in the US have generous health insurance benefits. But the majority, by far, do not. Kaiser itself is a uniquely high performing organization, that serves a very small portion of the US population.

The employer has nothing to do with the quality of the healthcare the patient receives, other than being in a sufficiently lucrative business to be able to pay for nice health insurance. Health insurance and healthcare would be much better for everyone if employers were left out of the whole equation so that more healthy, lower cost lives get mixed in with higher cost lives in order to create a viable marketplace for multiple health insurance companies to be able to compete for business on healthcare.gov.

Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by refurb on Thursday May 09, 2019 @03:04PM (#19871182)
As a Canada-US transplant that's been my experience as well. If you have good coverage through work, you'll get better care in the US than in the public Canadian system.

Of course, not everyone in the US has good coverage through work...

Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by xenospn on Thursday May 09, 2019 @04:39PM (#19872196)
We have that in Israel and it works fine. There are a lot of things i disagree with Israel about, but the way they do healthcare is one of the best in the world.
Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by docker_up on Thursday May 09, 2019 @05:01PM (#19872377)
Israel is a small country. Small countries can do things like universal health care. Canada is only 1/10 the size of the US. Large countries like the US have a much harder time as can be seen today.
Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by kjdndisneinj on Thursday May 09, 2019 @06:18PM (#19872989)
What does that have to do with anything? If anything it should be cheaper because the risk pool is much larger and the population density is much higher. A big part of Canada's healthcare cost is due to the huge geographic distribution of the population.

The truth is American elites systemically abuse poor people and feed them propaganda to make sure they don't question their terrible conditions. You're repeating that propaganda.

Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by cgh on Thursday May 09, 2019 @05:56PM (#19872825)
In Canada, you can pay for a whole variety of things, from imaging (to reference your MRI examples) to day surgeries. I've done both. In fact, I paid for a shoulder MRI just last year and only had to wait a few days.
Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by vkou on Thursday May 09, 2019 @02:29PM (#19870828)
Kaiser doesn't treat many people over the age of 65, because the overwhelming majority of them aren't working, and those that are, aren't working somewhere they can get Kaiser healthcare.

Any healthcare system can be made 'cheap' and 'good', if it mostly cuts out old people.

If Canada just kicked old people off the healthcare bus to die alone, I'm sure both the waitlists, and the tax bills would be a lot smaller.

Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by docker_up on Thursday May 09, 2019 @03:21PM (#19871339)
I don't think you've been in a Kaiser facility if you believe this.
Re:Diabetes complications soar in US, but not Canada, as tee... by pkaye on Thursday May 09, 2019 @02:47PM (#19870987)
> Kaiser doesn't treat many people over the age of 65

I know a couple people over 65 who are at Kaiser.