Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS (Archive)

curves2000 · 03-21-2017, 05:07 PM

I haven't really chimed in on this thread at all other than just reading and following it. Everybody has their own opinion's on this very highly sensitive matter but when it comes to health care, I find Canadians and American's have a very highly different fundamental understanding of how health care works in each country and on both sides of the boarder an ample amount of "smugness"

1) Canada doesn't have socialist healthcare and medicine like a lot of people think, generally speaking Canadian citizens and residents have publicly funded health insurance paid for by their home provinces. Many aspects of our healthcare system are private enterprise and private business's who just happen to bill a government entity for insured services.

2) The Affordable Care Act, AKA "Obamacare" was an expansion of a variety of existing programs such as Medicaid with other aspects such as an individual mandate (fancy term for government requirement to purchase insurance), programs to help the healthcare system improve and modernize in the hope of reducing costs and preventing expensive problems down the road.

3) Many of the promises that the Democrats promised were going to occur, such as the ability to keep your existing doctor, premiums were going to be really affordable without large inflationary premium hikes and others, have NOT been met. Democrats and people who were/are hard core supporters of this bill NEED to recognize this. This isn't all rose coloured (colored for our US friends) glasses like some people think. One of the reasons for the issues mentioned above is that fact that this bill was watered down as much as possible to try and get the needed votes to pass from both sides of the political spectrum. Other predictions such as many employers moving staff to part-time to get out of specific pieces of this bill have happened a lot more than people would care to admit.

4) The changes that the Republican lead branches of the US government are proposing are trying to deal with some of the challenges with Obamacare and others while keeping some of the popular aspects of the plan such as the pre-existing condition clause. While the Paul Ryan style plan may eliminate the "tax" for people who don't meet the individual mandate, it does allow insurance companies to pretty much screw you in every which way premium wise up to 30% annually in increases if you happen to ever lose continuous coverage. Ask yourself which option would be better for your average low income or hard-working middle-class American living in the rustbelt? A hardcore Donald Trump fan may not be too interested in the sky high premiums associated with a lapse in coverage if they lose their high paying automaker job to Mexico if Donald Trump doesn't follow through with his election promise of taxing auto imports for 30%.

5) Canadians do have universal access to insured healthcare services and the level of care we get can vary greatly. Our professionals are very well trained from some of the best medical schools in the world, including many in the US. My biggest issue with our system is the level of money being spent without getting the results we should be or are striving for. Alberta is spending over $2.5 million dollars an hour on healthcare in this province yet a lot of the metrics they we are looking to improve, are not. I do recall reading the papers not THAT long ago where Alberta's budget was approx $1 million an hour in expenses and we were talking about the same issues. Think about that for a moment.

When the system in Canada does fail Canadians, and it does so regulary, we have very LIMITED options to try and deal with that using 3rd party services or putting our own resources to work.

Ask yourself, how many of us CPers would forfeit some of the cost associated with our beloved Calgary Flames in return to potentially get access and service as soon as possible for a child recently diagnosed with cancer??

There is no right answer when it comes to this topic and there are horror stories on both sides of the Canada and US border. I am not an expert on these matters but I pride myself on being well informed as much as possible and I am not naive to think everything on either side is the cat's ass.

Sorry about the long post.

03-21-2017, 05:07 PM	#6432
curves2000 First Line Centre Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Calgary, Canada Exp:	I haven't really chimed in on this thread at all other than just reading and following it. Everybody has their own opinion's on this very highly sensitive matter but when it comes to health care, I find Canadians and American's have a very highly different fundamental understanding of how health care works in each country and on both sides of the boarder an ample amount of "smugness" 1) Canada doesn't have socialist healthcare and medicine like a lot of people think, generally speaking Canadian citizens and residents have publicly funded health insurance paid for by their home provinces. Many aspects of our healthcare system are private enterprise and private business's who just happen to bill a government entity for insured services. 2) The Affordable Care Act, AKA "Obamacare" was an expansion of a variety of existing programs such as Medicaid with other aspects such as an individual mandate (fancy term for government requirement to purchase insurance), programs to help the healthcare system improve and modernize in the hope of reducing costs and preventing expensive problems down the road. 3) Many of the promises that the Democrats promised were going to occur, such as the ability to keep your existing doctor, premiums were going to be really affordable without large inflationary premium hikes and others, have NOT been met. Democrats and people who were/are hard core supporters of this bill NEED to recognize this. This isn't all rose coloured (colored for our US friends) glasses like some people think. One of the reasons for the issues mentioned above is that fact that this bill was watered down as much as possible to try and get the needed votes to pass from both sides of the political spectrum. Other predictions such as many employers moving staff to part-time to get out of specific pieces of this bill have happened a lot more than people would care to admit. 4) The changes that the Republican lead branches of the US government are proposing are trying to deal with some of the challenges with Obamacare and others while keeping some of the popular aspects of the plan such as the pre-existing condition clause. While the Paul Ryan style plan may eliminate the "tax" for people who don't meet the individual mandate, it does allow insurance companies to pretty much screw you in every which way premium wise up to 30% annually in increases if you happen to ever lose continuous coverage. Ask yourself which option would be better for your average low income or hard-working middle-class American living in the rustbelt? A hardcore Donald Trump fan may not be too interested in the sky high premiums associated with a lapse in coverage if they lose their high paying automaker job to Mexico if Donald Trump doesn't follow through with his election promise of taxing auto imports for 30%. 5) Canadians do have universal access to insured healthcare services and the level of care we get can vary greatly. Our professionals are very well trained from some of the best medical schools in the world, including many in the US. My biggest issue with our system is the level of money being spent without getting the results we should be or are striving for. Alberta is spending over $2.5 million dollars an hour on healthcare in this province yet a lot of the metrics they we are looking to improve, are not. I do recall reading the papers not THAT long ago where Alberta's budget was approx $1 million an hour in expenses and we were talking about the same issues. Think about that for a moment. When the system in Canada does fail Canadians, and it does so regulary, we have very LIMITED options to try and deal with that using 3rd party services or putting our own resources to work. Ask yourself, how many of us CPers would forfeit some of the cost associated with our beloved Calgary Flames in return to potentially get access and service as soon as possible for a child recently diagnosed with cancer?? There is no right answer when it comes to this topic and there are horror stories on both sides of the Canada and US border. I am not an expert on these matters but I pride myself on being well informed as much as possible and I am not naive to think everything on either side is the cat's ass. Sorry about the long post.