Wendell Potter on the Sarah Burke death [View all]

[eridani]

http://wendellpotter.com/2012/01/park-city-vantage-point-puts-tragedy-of-american-health-care-in-vivid-relief/

Instead, her family will be laying her to rest in her native Canada — and pleading for money to help cover the estimated $550,000 they owe for the medical care she received at University of Utah Hospital over nine days.

The irony is that had the accident occurred in Canada, her family would not be facing having to come up with more than half a million dollars to pay for her care. Her care would have been covered because, unlike the U.S., Canada has a system of universal coverage.

An estimated 700,000 American families file for bankruptcy every year because of medical debt. No one in Canada finds themselves in that predicament, nor do they face losing their homes as many Americans do when they become critically ill or suffer an injury.

One of the things my colleagues in the insurance industry tried to get Americans to believe was that Canadians flock to the U.S. to get medical care they cannot get in their own country. That is a myth. Yes, some Canadians come to the U.S. for treatment, but not in large numbers. In fact, polls in Canada consistently show high levels of satisfaction among citizens with their country’s single-payer system.

I probably would not have known about a fundraising effort that has been started by Burke’s friends had my wife not come across a tweet about it Friday morning. I haven’t been able to find anything about it so far in any media here in Utah. There was a report about her accident on the morning news, but no mention of the fundraiser.

Wendell is a Senior Analyst at the Center for Public Integrity where this first appeared on 11/23/12

Commentary from Canada--note that Alberta is Canada's most conservative province

http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/Remington+Sorry+your+loss+here+your+bill/6029293/story.html

Morgan says Burke's case should be a sobering reminder to Canadians of what could happen in a privately-insured market, rather than a public system where everyone is insured against a catastrophic event.

In 2000, the U.S. health policy journal Health Affairs wrote about the issue under the heading "Gouging the Medically Uninsured: A Tale of Two Bills."

"Overcharging the uninsured is one of the many unintended and largely overlooked results of our decade-long obsession with curbing health-care costs," it said. "Powerful interest groups — government, employers, insurers, hospitals, medical equipment vendors, and health care professionals — have fought vigorously to protect their interests. The uninsured, with no organized voice, emerge as losers."

Since 2001, family health insurance premiums in the U.S. have increased 113 per cent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, with annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage growing to $15,073 in 2011. Due to the economic downturn, the number of Americans going without insurance has grown by one million to 49.9 million people.

We complain of health-care costs and outcomes in Canada, but the U.S. ranks behind Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the U.K. in five areas of health system performance: quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and mortality, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund.

It is, indeed, a sobering reminder to Canadians how lucky we are. As one commentator wrote of the Burke family’s experience with the U.S. system: "We are sorry for your loss. Here’s your bill."