Hello, Canadians of Lemmy! Down in the USA there is a lot of conflicting information regarding the efficacy of y’alls healthcare systems. Without revealing my personal bias, I was hoping for some anecdotes or summaries from those whom actually live there.
deleted by creator
TIL US citizens have to pay for their COVID vaccines… wtf.
Southern Michigan here. There may have been places charging for them, but they were readily available from lots of places for free. In our area county health departments, local pharmacies, and most hospitals were all doing free vaccines and boosters.
It was free in the US, that was a policy decision because of the whole issue and some people wouldn’t be able to afford it. But at some point boosters are not free afaik.
The latest ones coming out by the end of the month are no longer free if you have insurance.
Out of curiosity, do annual flu vaccines cost money in the US?
In Canada, the way those work is you just go to any pharmacy or most doctors offices. They’ll take info from your health card, give you the shot (usually no wait, maybe 30 min at most if it’s unusually busy), ask you to stick around for 15 minutes and then you can leave. No cost all and super convenient.
You’re asking the wrong guy, I’m Canadian. There’s an askanamerican sub.
New ones are $100-$200 dollars where I’m at. This winter could be a rough one.
Insurance plans will almost always cover it. If you do not have insurance, you are probably going to pay for it yourself now.
A lot of times and places they’re free. But yeah, WTF.
As a Canadian living in the USA… the efficiency of the US healthcare system in comparison to Canada’s is INCREDIBLY overstated. From my experience it has been no more efficient, but a HELL of a lot more expensive and insanely depressing.
Same. The paperwork alone is enormous, and there’s always a lingering dread of “What if my insurance doesn’t cover this somehow?”
It consumes so much time and is so stressful. This healthcare system is an embarrassment and I cannot believe there are people who advocate for this.
Have we mentioned we have 12 month maternity leave?
What if they use the wrong billing code? What if part of their automation to increase efficiency means being charged for work that was never done? What if they send testing out to a place that is our is network? What is the hospital is in network but the fucking emergency room is not?
Before the ACA you could add: what if I hit my lifetime maximum coverage and what if they consider my condition to be pre-existing?
What if the insurance just aggressively “makes errors” to delay payment?
I’ve literally never heard anyone state that the US healthcare system is more efficient than Canada’s, let alone overstate it.
Generally people in the US fear monger about wait times in Canada as if they are awesome here in the US. They might be better here in the US for a lot of things but we also pay 50% more.
In any case where the wait times aren’t extreme in the U.S., you also have to consider the large number of people who don’t even have the opportunity to wait.
Wait times are reduced when people can’t afford to get on the waiting list.
If they want to fairly compare wait times, they need to include in average the infinite wait times for the people who are left out of the system entirely.
Based on the responses in this thread we pay infinity percent more. There’s a lot of $0.00 stories here.
Almost like the capital owners are the ones paying…
I mean the total cost. Yes you do not pay at the time of service but you still pay for it in the form of taxes. Canada spends about 12% of its GDP on healthcare. The US spends about 19%.
I don’t particularly pay for it in taxes.
I personally, make substantially less than our highest tax bracket of $578.126.00 per year, and I make plenty.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets
I’m not personally worried about the taxes I’m paying for healthcare.
I’m worried about being financially ruined (myself and my children) by a health event.
1 in 4 of U.S. adults carries medical debt. One in four. Those are lousy roulette odds with a loaded barrel to the head. It makes some of us think harder about doing risky activities like driving a car to work. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/who-had-medical-debt-in-united-states.html
Personally, I have no sympathy for those making over $578.126.00 per year. Let them pay a lot more, if that’s really necessary (it’s not, but if it is, let them). Hell, I’ll gladly pay more to eliminate the risk of being ruined, if it’s really necessary (it’s not).
And no, as a relatively well off knowledge worker my private insurance does not eliminate the risks. One head injury could:
- give me permanent ongoing medical expenses
- take away both my ability to work (where I get my health insurance that pays my medical expenses
- drastically lower my chances of winning a lawsuit (or even choosing the right representation) against a ln insurance company that doesn’t feel my health merits their expense column.
This isn’t a terrible system for rich people with steady jobs. But none of us are rich people with steady jobs 100% of the time.
Their point was addressing the “$0.00” you quoted. If you’re in Canada, and you pay taxes, some of your taxes go toward the healthcare that everyone benefits from, even if you didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket when receiving services. So even if you indirectly pay $0.01 in healthcare taxes, then it would not come out to “infinity percent more”.
Lol. Fair enough.
Preaching to the choir, my friend. I think anyone who prefers the American system is either fucking nuts or they are profiting off of it. The US pays 50% more overall to come out worse in most metrics. And you are correct that the additional costs fall on the working class. My healthcare costs were about 19% of my income when my wife and I were in the top 10% of households incomes. Lower income households spend more than that 19% here in the US. The ones in the top 5% he up spend only a small percentage of their incomes on healthcare costs. That is extremely fucked.
This is a huge difference. Plus, even if you do end up paying a similar amount in Canada because you’re very well off (boo-hoo), you also don’t have to deal with the US insurance companies that cannot even accurately tell you which facilities are in network or whatever. It’s just so much simpler and the mental burden of dealing with health care is much less in Canada. You don’t have to worry about massive surprise bills or insurance not covering treatment you receive… It’s just not an issue.
Also a Canadian living in the US, and I would tend to disagree. In major US cities, with good health insurance, there are plenty of PCPs, and availability of specialists.
For instance, I had a ganglion cyst that I went to see my PCP for. We decided to give it a couple weeks to see if it would go away by itself. It didn’t, so I messaged him, and was scheduled to see an orthopedic surgeon (probably overkill) within 3 days to have it looked at and drained. Total cost: $0 for PCP; $40 co-pay for the specialist.
Meanwhile, my father in Nova Scotia waited close to a year for a knee replacement surgeon consult and is now waiting for surgery slot, which is expected to be another 6-9 months, despite being in significant pain. That just would not happen in the US.
There are many problems for sure, and I don’t have a universal measure for efficiency, but anecdotally, in my experience, there is just way less waiting in many parts of the US. I also acknowledge how privileged I am to have good insurance, resources to not worry about large out of pocket maxes in an emergency, and to live in a city with some of the best hospital networks in the country.
In my experience the wait times issue has been similar between Canada and the US to see specialists, though admittedly I haven’t had to schedule a major surgery in either place. I will admit that there’s some really nice facilities in the US and stuff too (and some REALLY not so nice facilities… Canadian facilities were consistently good across the board in my experience), but it’s hard to really appreciate them in my experience because it’s really shitty to be worrying about the cost of treatment / dealing with insurance and it also sucks to think about how weirdly exclusive it can be and how many people cannot afford it here. Frankly the insurance and cost issues are huge in my opinion and it makes it kind of weird to talk about because it means almost everybody has different experiences with the US health care system, especially when many Americans think it’s fine that they spend a fortune on insurance because they’ve never really known anything different.
I agree. I think both system have significant flaws, and that is coming from someone for whom the US healthcare system benefits the most (great health insurance, mid-30s, healthy, well-off, very capable of navigating complicated paperwork, and access to some of the best hospitals). I can’t imagine being a lower income, lower educated, aging person with chronic health problems, in a rural flyover state with limited community hospitals. Night and day difference.
On the other hand, some 20% of the total population of Nova Scotia is currently active on the waiting list to get a PCP. You don’t like your PCP? Too bad. You want to get a second opinion? Too bad. Your PCP retires/moves/closes their practice? Too bad. They have tried to plug the gap with allowing pharmacists to prescribe certain meds, and expanding PA/NPs. This is probably better than the alternative of no doctors, but its probably a net negative on the system as a whole compared to properly staffing with physicians.
Overall, it seems like chronic underfunding, and underpay for doctors has led to situation in Nova Scotia in which preventative care, or really, care for anything non-life threatening, has deteriorated quite meaningfully.
deleted by creator
Honest answer?
If you’ve lived through Canadian HC for a few decades, you’ll notice a few things:
-
It’s no where near as good as it was in the past.
-
It’s broken now after Covid and the apathetic response to the stress upon the system.
-
The conservative governments (mostly provincial) are purposely not putting monies where needed (eg more staff), and underfunding everything in it so the system breaks. This way, their associates can swoop in and take over with “more efficient” and faster HC services - and they can then begin raking in the enormous profit margins seen in the private US system (many of whom are their ‘associates’).
Canadians in most provinces are currently being slow-walked into private, for profit HC.
If you don’t see this. You’re truly blinded by your comforting illusions of what Canada is now, compared to 20-30 years ago. Shit, even 10.
Two-tiered HC coning right up!
The conservative governments (mostly provincial) are purposely not putting monies where needed (eg more staff), and underfunding everything in it so the system breaks.
That’s a major contributing factor to the increased delays and decreased availability.
Those same conservative provincial governments were fighting against the federal government’s offered additional health funding because the feds had the audacity to insist on accountability - that health cate finding be actually used for health and not diverted to other things.
This is happening in Eastern Europe too. Every single point can be applied to any country here
-
Healthcare is provincial here so it varies. I’m in Ontario, the largest province in Canada. Hospital emergency wait rooms have been fairly short in my limited experience. Accessing a doctor is free but getting a family doctor can be difficult. My daughter was delivered at a hospital in a smaller city of 50k. The staff and amenities were great. They had lactation consultants on staff etc. All free to use.
My biggest concern with the healthcare system in Canada is medical staff burnout. I hope they get the staff get the support they need
It should be noted that the burnout this person is talking about is due to conservative governments cutting funding to health care, resulting in less healthcare workers to spread the hours around.
And the hospitals that do have long wait times is also due to conservative government cutting.
It should be noted that burnout is happening in all provinces, not just those with conservative governments.
I’m an American ex-pat living as a permanent resident in Canada, and nothing irks me more than listening to idiots from back home arguining with my about the efficacy of our healthcare because “they know a guy who has told them horror stories”. You don’t know shit, and if you really do know someone telling you horror stories about Canadian healthcare, you’re most likely speaking to an overprivledged conservative cunt who lives a lavish life on his oil money whilst somehow convincing himself he has it bad purely because Trudeau is in power.
ER wait times? Sure. But no worse than in the States. And unlike there I don’t have a fuck ton of medical debt, like 5k ER bills for an ultrasound of all things. Fuck me for having inexplicable pain in my abdomen once that never amounted to anything but debt. My mistake.
Exactly. If I don’t feel like I’m dying that day I can wait a few hours. The people in critical condition get seen right away. And if it turns out it was nothing I’m only out some time and maybe a sick day.
You forgot paid sick day. I’ve been listening to a US family doctor doing a podcast. She had to take unpaid leave and vacation to give birth. Here I took 5 weeks paid leave and I’m not the one giving birth.
Sadly I assumed that was implied.
I’ve lived in both US and Canada.
In Canada, my mother had cancer stayed in a private room for weeks until she died and we only paid for the phone bill for her room and parking. I didn’t get a bill from the hospital at all. No claims on insurance.
I had a baby in 2021 and again my wife had a private room while she recovered from her C section and my infant was in the NICU for a week. No bill from the hospital, no claims on insurance. Just paid for parking.
My wife who is type 1 diabetic had 100% of her needs covered through the ontario healthcare system.
I hear stories that in Ontario you have to wait for non-urgent care due to Premier Doug Ford not paying nurses enough, but I have not seen this personally.
I had work coverage that provided dental, vision, and drug coverage if needed.
In the US, I’m 100% dependent on work provided benefits AND I have to pay $4k a year for those benefits. Wife went for some routine work done and it was covered by work insurance. In ontario it would have been a no cost thing too, no dealing with insurance. We wouldn’t have waited in Ontario, we didn’t wait here either.
There seem to be waits here for specialists. Haven’t had to go to the hospital for anything yet.
There are waits for specialists here in the US as well. My son had to wait several months to get an appointment with one of his specialists.
Put it this way. My wife just got a something equivalent to a heart attack. Ambulance got here in 5 minutes. She spent 3 nights in the hospital, got all the tests, one of Canada’s best docs in the field… it cost $135 for something to do with the ambulance.
They saved her life, she’s seeing a specialist, figured out the meds and prepped if/when it happens again.
Everything was seamless. I don’t know how it could have been better.
Add 3 zeroes to that amount and you’ve got the cost of the same ordeal in the US health “care” system
One time I nicked my leg on a camping trip and opened a piddly ~2 inch cut. 911 sent out 2 paramedics on a fully crewed search and rescue night vision boat which took me to the other side of the lake where I was taken by ambulance to the hospital 1hr away. $86 dollars lol.
My mom was diagnosed with stage 1 cancer this year at her bi-annual check by her doctor. Within 1 month she had a biopsy and surgery to remove the cancerous tumour. She was also put on an experimental treatment to boost her immune system for the couple of weeks she had to wait to get surgery.
She’s now cancer free. Total cost? $0.
I will be very less than nice to anyone who advocates to get rid of our system.
It’s overburdened. We have a huge labour shortages for nurses and doctors as the boomers retire without enough replacements. Finding a regular family doctor takes a long time. When Covid spikes, the hospital staff are run ragged. But they make a nice living helping people, there are worse fields to work in.
When you need medical attention you get it. If you need surgery today, you get surgery today. If you need surgery or a specialist but there’s no rush, you’re on a wait list that can be months or even over a year long.
I’m in Sweden which I think has a very similar situation. Trying to get an appointment is a pain and they always seem to have too much to do. Getting help can drag on for years.
But then you end up in an emergency and suddenly you witness a well-oiled machine where everybody knows their role yet everybody prioritizes the big picture. It follows procedure when possible but it’s always pragmatic.
It is beautiful competence porn, and costs $30 for the patient.
That’s awesome that you can say “well oiled machine” for your healthcare. Canada is like an old manual pick-up truck. It’s not as fast or efficient but it’s reliable.
Can you explain your last sentence. I miss the meaning I think.
“Competence porn” is the satisfaction of seeing skilled people carrying out difficult tasks with great aptitude. I’d say it’s especially satisfying when it’s a group of people collaborating well. When stakes are high, that’s what I typically see the Swedish healthcare doing. And in the end, the patient fee for all of this is $30.
It happened to me once when I came in with a heart problem. Within a couple of hours I had met with specialists, performing EKG at rest and under exertion, multiple other tests, blood samples, and been given a long-term EKG to carry with me for a day. And all I paid was $20 (the standard fee was less then, they’ve raised it to $30 now).
Once they figured out that it wasn’t an emergency, they put me back in the regular low-priority group and it took a six months before they eventually gave me some medication. I’ve since realized on my own that they made the wrong call with the meds - they gave me beta blockers but what I really need is magnesium and vitamin D.
Three weeks ago I had abdominal pain. I went to Emergency and was diagnosed with appendicitis, which had fully ruptured. I was transferred to another hospital in the same city, and had an operation that night. Due to complications I was in hospital for 8 days. The biggest expense during this entire time was the parking fees when my family came to visit. I left with a prescription, and no bill. Yes, some of our wait times are stupid long, but in this case I got what I needed promptly and was not rushed home until I was deemed ready.
Hope you’re doing alright now. Take care :)
Yeah, recovery is a bit slow for my liking, but I’m on the right trajectory. Thanks!
Good to hear! Get well soon :)
I had a totally benign fatty mass attached to the back of my skull right where it meets my neck that was a minor irritation and made me uncomfortable with short haircuts. I mentioned it to a doctor during a checkup and a month later it was removed. I’m sporting a short haircut today. It cost me pennies on my taxes.
My retired mom had cancer a few years back, pretty bad. Surgery, chemo, radiation therapy, hair fell out and wore a wig. The only expense was for parking. Even the wig was provided by a charity adjacent to cancer care. Surgery, one to three weeks in the hospital, treatments spanning over a year, costing a couple hundred dollars in parking fees. No stress about losing her home due to hospital expenses.
I’d take that over what can be had in America any time.
Not perfect, but good. It could be way better if people would stop voting for Con Premiers.
Where I am the system is a bit overwhelmed but it sure beats having to go into massive debt or having to have healthcare insurance tied to employment.
It’s there if I need it, and that’s all I need honestly.
Honestly, not that great. In Ontario, health care has been heavily affected by Doug Ford’s Bill 124, which capped nurse’s wages at 1% a year for 3 years, causing horribly long wait times and understaffing at hospitals
The healthcare is fantastic. The conservative governments in charge of said healthcare is abysmal and destructive.
