The UK and Canada have single payer systems where almost everything is run by the government.
There are significant differences between the Brit and Canadian systems. British doctors receive a salary from the government while Canadian doctors offices are run as a business that bills the Provincial Healthcare system at a fixed rate (renegotiated bi-annually by procedure) for services provided.
My current family doctor is a Brit (originally from Nigeria) who was “enticed” to move to Canada with a bounty added by Nova Scotia. Since COVID began she gets paid the same rate for a phone callback as she did for an office visit. We did do a real office visit recently (masked and fully vaccinated) because we both needed flu shots and wife needed her second shingles shot.
If you want to be ‘like France’, then you’ll need to impose a 21% Value Added Tax on everything. Car prices will go up at least 21%. Clothing? Up 21%. Gasoline? up 21%. Heating oil? Up 21%. Everything but food up 21%. That tax on top of state sales tax.
That was always the complaint, before the “socialism!!Communisim!!!” nonsense started up a couple years ago.
What people can’t get their head around is, yes, Federal tax will increase to pay for it, but their payments for private insurance, and their employer’s payments for private insurance, would go away. Given the cost differences between the systems, the people and employers would both come out ahead with a national health plan for everyone…everyone, except the parasite class that runs the insurance companies.
There are significant differences between the Brit and Canadian systems. British doctors receive a salary from the government while Canadian doctors offices are run as a business that bills the Provincial Healthcare system at a fixed rate (renegotiated bi-annually by procedure) for services provided.
Thought occurred to me that I have no idea how hospital staff doctors get paid. Many of them have both a practice and do shifts at the hospital … including the nice lady doc (seriously Dr. Watson) who did my double hernia repair. I was able to get it scheduled many weeks earlier by getting a 40 min drive to the hospital in Windsor NS where she had operating privileges (and far fewer patients on the list) and home after I woke up.
Tim <has more parts sewed together than most I suspect … includes a piece of leg muscle holding my shoulder together>
You are making an assumption based on almost nothing save nonsense sources.
If click through you’ll find the figure is from an academic paper, published in the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy. Abstract below:
The rate of lumbar spine magnetic resonance imaging in the United States is growing at an alarming rate, despite evidence that it is not accompanied by improved patient outcomes. Overutilization of lumbar imaging in individuals with low back pain correlates with, and likely contributes to, a 2- to 3-fold increase in surgical rates over the last 10 years. Furthermore, a patient's knowledge of imaging abnormalities can actually decrease self-perception of health and may lead to fear-avoidance and catastrophizing behaviors that may predispose people to chronicity. The purpose of this clinical commentary is as follows: (1) to describe an outline of the appropriate use, as defined in recent guidelines, of diagnostic imaging in patients with low back pain; (2) to describe how inappropriate use of lumbar spine imaging can increase the risk of patient harm and contributes to the recent large increases in healthcare costs; (3) to provide physical therapists with clear guidelines to educate patients on both appropriate imaging and information to dampen the potential negative effects of imaging on patients' perceptions and health; and (4) to present an example of a successful clinical pathway that has reduced imaging and improved outcomes. Level of evidence: Diagnosis/prognosis/therapy, level 5.
What people can’t get their head around is, yes, Federal tax will increase to pay for it, but their payments for private insurance, and their employer’s payments for private insurance, would go away. Given the cost differences between the systems, the people and employers would both come out ahead with a national health plan for everyone…everyone, except the parasite class that runs the insurance companies.
One thing many people don’t realize is that the employer’s portion of the insurance premium is deductible on the federal tax. So the the private system is already subsidized by the government.
One of the proposals from the original ACA was a Medicare buy-in at age 60. The argument against that was that it would be cheaper and the private insurance market for that cohort would collapse. Maybe we can try again in a few years.
One of the proposals from the original ACA was a Medicare buy-in at age 60. The argument against that was that it would be cheaper and the private insurance market for that cohort would collapse. Maybe we can try again in a few years.
I’ve been on the boards since I think it was 30 August 2000. During that time millions if not billions of words have been typed and posted on the US healthcare system and how to fix it?
We began working on our single payer in 1957 and I think it was up and running in 1966 (I was stationed in Germany as an infantry soldier at the time.)
People also ask Does Canada have a single payer healthcare system?
Canada is a single-payer system, though, here, each of the 13 provinces and territories control their own system. Doctor and hospital care is covered, but major gaps exist. ... During the pandemic, Canada has had much better outcomes than the U.S. Its overall death rate is about three times lower than America's. Apr 15, 2021
Generally the system is popular with the unwashed masses (voters) and any politician hoping for a future in politics knows he may only make changes that improve it.
Currently there is a promise on the books by the Federal government to add Pharma Care though that promise precedes COVID. Not a biggie for me as I pay 20% of our prescription pharma costs.
OK sorry I interrupted, back to regularly schedule Healthcare discussions. }};-D
Single-payer healthcare could cost $400 billion to implement in California
While $400B might seem like a lot, without context it is meaningless. The current cost of healthcare in the US is about $12,530/person. That means California currently spends around $500B for healthcare, making $400B seem like a bargain. It is just a matter of redirecting current healthcare spending into a single payer system and cutting out the waste.
Alan
One of the proposals from the original ACA was a Medicare buy-in at age 60. The argument against that was that it would be cheaper and the private insurance market for that cohort would collapse. Maybe we can try again in a few years.
Yes, I remember that episode. Let that sink in for a moment: Medicare is more cost efficient, so it was banned from the sector to protect the profits of the private insurance industry. Same thing happened with Part D: Medicare banned from directly offering the coverage and negotiating drug prices, to protect the profits of the private insurance companies.
"What people can’t get their head around is, yes, Federal tax will increase to pay for it, but their payments for private insurance, and their employer’s payments for private insurance, would go away. "
Err…no.
In most EU countries, there is about a 10% ‘social tax’ on your salary - in addition to any other local and regional and federal taxes.
Your employer also pays about 12-15% of your salary into this ‘social tax’ system.
It covers health care and your ‘pension’ like SS and ‘education’.
Tim <has more parts sewed together than most I suspect … includes a piece of leg muscle holding my shoulder together>
ROFL…
Sometime - when I am not at risk of an upset stomach, I’d like to hear the story of how a Canuck doctor decided to disassemble your leg in order to repair a dislocated shoulder.
On the other hand, don’t tell me. I’m guessing the shoulder mishap included shrapnel or some flying piece of a helicopter or worse.
In most EU countries, there is about a 10% ‘social tax’ on your salary - in addition to any other local and regional and federal taxes.
Your employer also pays about 12-15% of your salary into this ‘social tax’ system.
It covers health care and your ‘pension’ like SS and ‘education’.
As I said, taxes would go up, but payments to insurance companies would go away. The only reason that makes a difference to anyone, other than the insurance companies, is forty years of propaganda that paying anything to the government is “bad” but more money flowing to the “JCs” is “good”.
Paying $1 to an insurance company, for the same thing you can get by paying 75 cents to the government, is like the conversation I had with a coworker years ago. I was saying I had paid off my mortgage. She said “and give up the tax deduction?” I said “paying a dollar if interest to a bank, to save 25 cents off your tax, is stupid”. She sort of blinked, said “never thought of it like that”, then went back to work.
Sometime - when I am not at risk of an upset stomach, I’d like to hear the story of how a Canuck doctor decided to disassemble your leg in order to repair a dislocated shoulder.
On the other hand, don’t tell me. I’m guessing the shoulder mishap included shrapnel or some flying piece of a helicopter or worse.
Well actually the surgeon was a full colonel in the Medical Corp and ran the military hospital in Calgary until all of them were converted to DVA or turned over to the local community not long after.
The procedure was to operate on both the leg just above the knee right side and remove a piece of facia (leg muscle) then while I was still under install it in my right shoulder to prevent recurring shoulder separation. It was successful in that my recurring separations stopped. Years later my family doctor asked me about the scars and looked it up. She was somewhat horrified.
The amusing part of the story was they put me on light duties for 30 days to recover. On the 30th day I had a movie date with a red head but NCOs showed up in the barracks, told us to grab our gear and 90 of us were loaded onto a Herc and flown to Regina SK then bussed to Lumsden to pack sandbags on a dike to try to keep the town from flooding. The EMO guys were incompetent, they had actually built a dyke around a horse pasture! The dyke was one sandbag wide and seven high … }};-@
In typical military fashion after 11 days of packing and patrolling dikes when it was time to go home two 40 passenger military buses with no AC showed up to take 90 of us back to Calgary. I called the redhead when I got back to barracks and she told me the whole family were sitting around in the living room waiting for me to arrive and the TV news cameras showed us loading onto the Herc and spotted me in the crowd. }};-D
Oh, the dislocations started with a hockey injury and a really bad attempt by a young British army doctor to pop it back in followed some months later by a night recon mission that went badly wrong … down a small cliff.
Bet you don’t want to hear about the time a Brit FV432 APC rammed my M113 APC in a sugar beet field in Germany? The young Lt in the Brit carrier kept hitting me on the helmet with his flashlight so my crew commander reached over and broke his forearm with a sub-machinegun. Because my track shrouds were badly damaged I got to take the river assault ferry across rather than try to swim it across like everyone else the next day.
What assumption did I make and why is that source nonsense? Be specific.
I was specifics. You are ignoring that and bring up a nonsense source again. It is not a diagnostic manual and it is not an insurance company reimbursement policy. Your ah ha moment was dated 2011.
I do not have time to chase my tail for you. I suggest you stop chasing your own tail.
In most EU countries, there is about a 10% ‘social tax’ on your salary
t,
That is why we are almost all saying the Europeans, Canadians and others have it right.
Our “social taxes”…
The current tax rate for social security is 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the employee, or 12.4% total. The current rate for Medicare is 1.45% for the employer and 1.45% for the employee, or 2.9% total. - Google result
I was specifics. You are ignoring that and bring up a nonsense source again. It is not a diagnostic manual and it is not an insurance company reimbursement policy. Your ah ha moment was dated 2011.
Gotcha. You reject peer reviewed medical journals as nonsense.
Just out of curiosity, where you do you get your information? Cereal boxes? Chicken entrails?
You are not even looking at what matters in your source. It is dated 2011 and according to its flowchart the practice of testing stopped prior to June 2011.
I get my information by reading and listening to doctors who are family members, family friends, extended family members and the few I have had to see.
You are not even looking at what matters in your source. It is dated 2011 and according to its flowchart the practice of testing stopped prior to June 2011.
Let me get this straight. If I give an example of something that happened in the past, according to you it is nonsense because it happened in the past.
Good to know. Maybe you can give us some examples of things that happened in the future.
