Guaranteed Healthcare

I don't know if you will accept this or not, but I thought I'd tell you a story that you could share with your fellow Americans. It is about the Canadian Healthcare system. No healthcare system is perfect, and ours certainly does have "SOME" things to iron out. But I love our system.

Here....yes we do pay on an "income sliding scale" for our OHIP program in Ontario. (I am not sure about other provinces). BUT for that fee, which depends on our incomes...we get to take a photo-card to a doctor, or a hospital and we can be seen. At hospitals we are triaged...I'm sure any good hospital already does that no matter where you are from....and then we may have to wait for an hour or so, depending on how busy it is, but we WILL get seen. We don't get turned away at the door because we don't have healthcare, or because our Insurance Provider doesn't work with a certain hospital. Instead we walk out of that hospital knowing that someone has checked us out and ensured that we were healthy and cared for.

We do have doctor shortages in some cities. But we are working on that problem even as we speak. The only large wait my husband ever had to have, was for a stent and angioplasty. That was because there was an outbreak of SARS back in the year when his procedure came up. After the SARS was sorted out, within a week or two he was back in and had the procedure, no problem. No one sent him a bill later for however many thousands of dollars i'm sure it cost to have it done. We didn't have to go bankrupt to pay the medical bills.

About the only area we have a problem with, and I say this because I would love for you to make sure your politicians are aware of it...is dental care, vision care and prescriptions. When we lose a job here in Canada. ONtario's Health Plan (again i'm not sure about the other provinces). Will NOT pay for dental care for the family, or vision care for anyone without a diabetic or vision condition (not just needing glasses but eye diseases). Nor will they help much with prescriptions.

We are in the process of trying to get special insurance to cover our medication expenses, and believe me, they can get nasty here in Canada. Crestor goes for about 94 dollars cdn a month. Some medicines aren't covered at all. This is our Medicare I guess, and we have to pay a certain amount in every 3 months as a deductable, before we can get 2 dollar prescriptions. (but it is based again on financial need) and I believe that even our prescription plan would be well loved by those in your country who have NO care....or big companies that try to weasel out of providing care to their insured parties.

I wish your Country ALL the luck in the world and hope that someday soon you too will enjoy the stress free life of simple and affordable health care.