health care system

Hi,

The subject is extensively covered in the newspapers, you may try the Globe and Mail or Montreal Gazette.

It's governmental run system, and it varies from a province to an other.
You need to choose which province you want to know more about.

You may start reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems

ponkatart43 wrote: I am interested in understanding the canadian health system experience.   In the USA, we are told that it always takes too long to get whatever one needs, be it check-ups, diagnostic tests, operations, etc.  but I noticed that the canadian system is ranked as the 17th best in the world and USA's is ranked 37th?! that must account for something.   I am perplexed. what's your take on this?  Do people have to wait too long for needed services?     On talk radio, I've heard examples of people being given IV's and sent home to die and people having heart attacks in the emergency room and being told they have to wait as they die on the floor.  sounds rather odd, but that's the kind of things we typically hear in the USA. what's a canadians perspective on this?   Thank you

agree with you , optimus, whats yr timeline, btw ?

if you want my advise... study medicine.... become an MD.  not for anyone but only you and your family.

My impression of the health care in Ontario is extremely positive. Little or no discrimination based on economic status.

My impression of U.S. health care: extremely expensive and you get about half (or less) what you pay for . . . so if you are willing AND ABLE to pay a great deal, you can indeed get excellent health care in the States. Otherwise, don't get sick.

I have been a member of OHIP for less than two years. I have had a battery of tests done to assess my overall health. I recently had symptoms of an ailment that demands immediate treatment to minimize its impact, including long term effects, and I simply went to a walk in clinic immediately and obtained the appropriate prescription (it does take a little longer to see my personal physician . . . so I followed up with her a few days later), and that saved me much agony (I was still ill for awhile but far less severely than if I did not obtain the medication within 48 hours of onset).

My wife's and my ongoing preventive health care is excellent. My observation has been that chronic illness care (given to others) is very good. I was treated in emergency rooms in Canada, and once had surgery here, prior to becoming a PR and thus prior to having any covered health care in Canada. The service was very, very good. The cost was very, very reasonable (but had to be paid up front . . . including a deposit to cover contingent costs prior to being accepted into a hospital for surgery . . . but again, those costs were quite reasonable).

While I had excellent health care coverage when I was living in, and employed in the United States, that was through employer provided insurance (though of course I paid thousands of dollars a year toward the premiums), but as soon as I became self-employed I could no longer justify spending the even more thousands of dollars a year for "insurance" premiums (which were way higher for self-employed or individual coverage) than I was paying for actual health care . . . so I went on the Bush plan, don't get sick . . . though of course I did occasionally get sick, even needed surgery one year . . . total cost, out-of-pocket, was less for the entire nine years I did this than I would have paid for one year's worth of insurance premiums.

Overall I have observed that Canadian health care is, for most people, a dramatic improvement over U.S. care. My daughter, in the U.S., recently went through an entirely normal pregnancy and childbirth, and while she obtained excellent care through a very good insurance, her co-pay amounts added up to thousands of dollars still. Thousands of dollars over and above what the insurance company paid, for an ordinary pregnancy and child birth.

While it is my impression that the recently adopted (but mostly yet to be implemented) health care reforms in the U.S. are a step in a better direction, I also perceive that the U.S. system is still a long, long way from becoming a just system let alone a good system . . . the discrepancy in care between the affluent and the not affluent is grossly unjust and there is lots of statistical evidence, such as infant mortality rates among many other areas in which the actual quality of health care is evidenced, illustrating what should otherwise be obvious: the U.S. has among the worst health care systems among the more modern, industrialized countries.