Quebec, Canada: Single-Payer, Low Cost, Low Waiting Time Healthcare - Updated
Role-modeling is often touted in leadership training: find someone who is doing something well, then model what they’re doing to also do it well. I suggest that the US role-model Quebec’s success with public, single-payer, universal healthcare.
Instead of compromising with bad faith actors (*cough* insurance companies *cough*) on healthcare, doesn’t it make more sense to be role-modeling?
One of the key points of anti-public-healthcare folks has been “You have to wait forever to get an appointment in Canada!” Not so, even for elective surgeries, it’s comparable to the US:
in Canada, including Quebec, waiting times for elective procedures have improved. Ironically, Chaoulli v. Quebec strengthened the single payer system. Dr. Randall White points out on the Canadian Doctors for Medicare blog, no one in Quebec has purchased the new private health insurance. Not one.
More than two years after Quebec legalized private medical coverage for select surgeries, the insurance industry says it has not sold a single policy.
Bill 33 was supposed to allow Quebecers to seek private insurance for faster knee and hip replacements, and cataract surgery.
Yves Millette, senior vice-president of the Canadian Life and Health Insurers’ Association, said no one is buying the policies because they are too expensive…
…Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc said the province has sped up wait times so much since the court ruling, it’s no wonder no one wants to pay for private coverage.
“We have such a good access to the surgeries in Quebec, that the industry knows they won’t be able to sell any insurance to anybody,” said Bolduc.Imagine that. The province of Quebec, with its health system underfunded and in spite of a growing global economic crisis, has successfully shortened wait times for elective surgeries.
Meanwhile in the United States elective surgery is increasingly “off the table” for the uninsured and under-insured. In addition the New York Times reported in March 2009 that more than 85,000 people leave the United States each year, to travel to other countries for elective surgeries.
I know for some of my son’s appointments, we have to wait 6 months to a year. And pay through the nose for the privilege. And that’s while our post-layoff COBRA coverage is still in effect. If we have to buy our own healthcare? At over $1200/month, we will be bankrupt in notime flat.
Healthcare is a human right, a progressive goal and an issue of national and economic security.
Update: This line, from DailyKos, sums up my post better than I did:
If another country builds a better car, we buy it. If they make a better wine, we drink it. If they have better healthcare . . . what’s our problem?
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