Quote:
Originally Posted by Table 5
My point is not that the way administer health care in the US is justified (because its not), it's that the core medical costs would still be relatively expensive here too if you think about what goes into treating a child for that long. We still have to pay our doctors, our nurses, support staff, buy medical equipment, buy medicine etc. Public health care doesn't mean free health care.
Medical systems are intrinsically expensive...which is why it's really stupid that anyone in the US expects a for-profit system to work or why so many of it's citizens think changing it is a bad thing.
|
My understanding from when I ran into a similar situation that did get covered is that the provincial health care will pay the bill up to the amount that the same procedure would have cost in Canada. The travel insurance Canadian's get is to cover the gap between what the provincial health care pays and what the American hospital is paying. If the costs were similar, than Saskatchewan should be paying a big chunk of it.
A crazy side note though is that hospitals charge individuals far more than they charge Insurance companies. So if insurance was covering it, the bill would look like something like $1,000,000 minus $600,0000 insurance discount, and actual amount paid by insurance would only be $400,000. Ridiculously, individuals are responsible for the full un-discounted amount. I can only think they assume the majority of individuals that just don't pay, so any sucker who does pay has to pay for them.
What happens if a Canadian just doesn't pay a big American bill? Lots of harassing calls and possibly (but not for sure?) a bad mark on their credit?