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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe single-payer model: a foundation for professionalism
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2014/october/the-single-payer-model-a-foundation-for-professionalismDr. Brian Day, founder of Vancouvers Cambie Surgery Centre, and other commercial specialty clinics are suing B.C. to allow private funding of medical care. This would facilitate expansion of private diagnostic and surgical procedures and undermine the single-payer model. The integrity of Canadas entire health system could be at risk.
Advocates for commercialized healthcare funding, now prohibited by the Canada Health Act, often promote a hybrid model. In 2012, Dr. Day wrote in a newspaper column that European countries successfully combine universal care with a public-private system, but he failed to address the different contexts of North America and Europe.
European insurance and healthcare sectors are highly regulated. For instance, in France, even supplemental health-insurance funds are not-for-profit, unlike in Canada, where supplemental insurance, now limited to pharmaceuticals, dental, vision and complementary care, is offered by for-profit corporations.
Canada has extensive commercial ties to the United States, not to Europe, and were the hybrid advocates to prevail, U.S. insurers could invoke NAFTA to gain access to an expanding Canadian health-insurance market.
U.S. insurance companies are unlikely to submit to a European-style model in Canada, where regulation in most sectors is already more American than European because of harmonization under NAFTA.
Furthermore, these insurance companies have the resources to get what they want. In 2013 the leading U.S. health insurers reported $12.7 billion in profit on $313.7 billion in revenue (U.S. dollars). According to OpenSecrets.org, that same year health insurers spent $154 million on lobbying U.S. lawmakers.
Using their financial clout, they could quickly change the landscape in Canadian healthcare funding for not only procedural medicine but primary care, mental-health care and other specialties.
laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)I know a bunch of people who used to think it was a good thing, until I explained to them how it would work (it would leach resources from the public system and cause longer waiting times, not shorter times...those who have studied it know this). They had no idea and are now vehemently against it. And these are hard core conservatives. Another thing I asked them was if they thought they could afford $20,000 here and there for the odd surgery. No? Then you will be waiting longer because of those who CAN pay. Suddenly - the hybrid system doesn't look so good. And most Canadians have an innate sense of fairness - and this does NOT seem very fair to most of us. I hope BC courts throw Day's case out.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)I would like to remind your friends that U.S. health insurance companies do not contribute anything to health care. They are only a PARASITIC middle man taking a cut of "FREE MONEY".
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)rich people are treated the same as poor people.
It offends their firmly held belief that the rich are simply a better class of human being.
nationalize the fed
(2,169 posts)had them arrested
Now, he's Ambassador to China, no doubt continuing his hard work for the Middle Class.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Way to go, President Obama! Another fine appointment, part of that change we can believe in.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)daleanime
(17,796 posts)KG
(28,766 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)So wish we had it.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)These "conservatives" would adopt a system that awards Free Money to a purely parasitic insurance entity.
Hell, Canadians, this is what we in the USA want to get rid of. Don't be stupid.
Don't be stupid!