Canadian Vs US Health Care….The American Fight For Reform
Our American friends have to get the health care thing right this time. Canadians are not used to being demonized. However in the current debate over healthcare in the United States you would think being Canadian has lost its luster. Many American commentators are making out Canadian healthcare to be something that Americans don’t ever want. Meanwhile about 50 million Americans don’t have any health insurance.
I feel for the many American families who want health care and cannot get it. It was my hope that this time around with Pres. Obama that maybe our American friends would finally get universal healthcare. It always seemed to me that the richest country in the world should be able to provide healthcare for its own citizens. Needless to say it is turned into a polarized debate between those who have and those who have not. It looks to me at this stage that the health-care reform in the United States is being watered down as I write. I’m not so sure Pres. Obama will win this debate.
Meanwhile Canadian healthcare has been demonized in parts of the American media. The one famous example is a woman from Waterdown Ontario who goes on American television and trashes Canadian healthcare because of her wait time. I’m sure she will not be very popular in that town. Regardless, her example is one, which shows the Canadian system is not perfect. We all know that, many of us have waited hours and weeks and months to see a doctor or specialist that we need. However at the end of the day every Canadian has healthcare regardless of their ability to pay.
If you listened to Pres. Obama during the election campaign he had some very good reasons for wanting healthcare for all Americans. He would always bring up the specter of his late mother who was fighting with health insurance companies from her hospital bed where she was dying of ovarian cancer. She was fighting over a pre-existing condition with her health care provider. Obama said if he got to be president he was going to change things. Needless to say he is surely running into opposition.
None of this is very easy. We know as Canadians how expensive it is to provide good health care for everybody. Even in Wallaceburg Ontario where the local community built a hospital and had it running in the black, it is being threatened with closure. Only a heroic community effort led by former Wallaceburg Mayor Jeff Wesley has kept it from shutting down. So it is never easy. However, the Canadian system is well liked domestically despite the many issues Canadians have with it.
On Twitter I keep track of many of my editors who work for Telvent DTN in Omaha Nebraska. A few weeks ago one of my editors wrote on twitter about American health care. She commented on American Sen. Christopher Dodd feelings about healthcare and how those feelings might be different if he didn’t have American government health care. I didn’t really know the context of the tweet but I knew the cost for Christopher Dodd’s health care in Canada. That would be zero. So I tweeted back to my editor and told her just that. She wrote me a note and told me she realized that she wanted that in the United States as well.
Nonetheless we all know that the debate in the United States is getting quite heated. For instance the government option for universal health care system is being portrayed as anti-American, anti-free enterprise and just bad for everybody who has healthcare now. It seems to be divided along partisan lines with many Republicans holding a health insurance company line while Democrats are looking for the universal health coverage. Of course there is lots of in between. That certainly were the trade-offs will come.
I have had quite a few experiences with American health care. My first question is when I call American healthcare providers while on vacation in the United States is do you take Visa and MasterCard? Of course I say that because I know that’s the first question that they will ask or how are you going to pay? I once had my oldest daughter overnight in the American Hospital. The bill for the hospital stay was US$5000 and at the end of the day there was nothing wrong with her. Can you imagine what the bill would have been for my Canadian healthcare providers if there had actually been a serious health concern? It would have been off the chart and I surely would be scheming on how to get back to Canada.
In the United States the recession has surely complicated the passage of health care reform. I’m sure Pres. Obama is scratching his head out how to get it passed. Clearly though, he needs to get it passed. It is high time our American friends had universal health care. What they have now works for the rich but if you get sick and you are not rich you risk everything. A country as rich and great as United States can do better. I hope Pres. Obama gets it through. It’s been a long time coming.