Municipalities across Canada can't afford to build new hospitals - repair roads or aging water works. Conservatives will pay down $50 billion in debt at the expense of jobs, continuing to defund post-secondary education and leaving no money for new infrastructure.

The much vaunted 'market' has decided that no significant niche can co-exist with a comprehensive public health care system.

And as a perfect example of the failure of private enterprise in a competitive market, our public healthcare system is a threat and must be dismantled, lest we start to consider where else the public model might be applied....

[ 20 March 2008: Message edited by: Lard Tunderin' Jeezus ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lard Tunderin' Jeezus:
George Reisman is a liar, and he knows it. There has never been prohibition of private medicine in Canada. There has only been a boundary between the public and private, with private providers being prohibited from taking payments from the public system and also charging privately.

---

I might be wrong about hits, but didn't Quebec have more restrictive rules?

I went for an x-ray recently and it was a private company who invoiced ohip for the service but they are a national lab company with shareholders and everything.

The Shouldice clinic is private

Shit my doctor who does not take any new patients is a private company with one source of payment OHIP but he is a private company. How do i know this? He told me that the lease to his office is through a numbered company.

If your child is in school and requires SLP or PT then it is most likely that the local CCAC has issued a contract to a company for the services and the company is paid by the CCAC.

While their have been major problems with Homecare and Nursing providers winning and losing the contracts no one has ever blinked an eye that all of these are private entities who are paid by the CCAC who gets their money from the LHIN who gets it from the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care.

So before we start to complain about more privatization lets remember that the majority of our current health care system already is private and has been that way for at least 25 years.

All adults must buy insurance, and all insurers must offer a policy to anyone who applies, no matter how old or how sick. Those who can't afford to pay the premiums get help from the state, financed by taxes on the well-off.

So:

All individuals must be insured.

All individuals purchase health insurance on the private market.

Individuals can choose to get their health insurance through their employer–if the option is available–but the employer does not have to offer health insurance. If the employer does not offer health insurance or if an individual is unemployed, then they must purchase health insurance on the private market.

Health insurers are free to charge each individual any price they please for health insurance. Of course, market forces limit the price that the insurers can charge the consumers before they switch to another plan. After the reform was implemented, however, there was significant consolidation in the health insurance market and now there are only four or five large plans. This may reduce the amount of price competition in the market.

The cost of health care is more transparent to consumers since they see the price they are charged for health care. In most national social health insurance programs, individuals do not know the value of health care they receive since the amount of money they pay into the system is proportional to their income and thus unrelated to actuarially fair value of health insurance.

Health insurance is subsidized by the state. “Insurers get risk-equalization payments for patients with about 30 major diseases.” Thus, people who are sicker receive a larger state subsidy than healthy individuals.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Proaxiom:

I might be wrong about hits, but didn't Quebec have more restrictive rules?

There was a court ruling a couple years back about a guy having to wait an unconscionable amount of time for a joint replacement, and challenged a law preventing him from getting it done privately. And he won. Maybe I misunderstood the details, though.

---

http://tinyurl.com/2chfmb

quote:

---

Canadians over the age of 65 cost the health care system more money, and they are the fastest growing segment of the population. But mounting evidence suggests a sharp rise in the number of aging baby boomers will not cripple the country's public health care system. Nonetheless, Atlantic Canada and Quebec, where populations are aging the fastest, could be hit hard, prompting some to call for changes in the way federal transfers are paid to provinces.

The C.D. Howe Institute, an economic think-tank, has repeatedly warned of a looming health care crisis that could divide the country as the ranks of seniors soar.

But a study published last year by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is the latest in a series of reports that seek to debunk the "myth" of runaway costs to health care as boomers enter their retirement years ...

---