No. of Recommendations: 2
We've talked about the Canadians coming across the border for clinical treatment, etc. It's there, you've read it here. The opponents of "big gummit health care" love to burble about "all the Canadians coming to the US for treatment". Seems a lot of that is non-critical care, for people who just don't feel like waiting their turn. You may recall when Tim had a real problem, with a duff gall bladder. He was in the hospital without delay, the nasty bladder yanked in the middle of the night, and turned loose, to his delight. A former coworker of mine used the Ontario system. He questioned the sanity of anyone who would prefer the US system. Tim did say the public system in Germany was not too good, and people would opt for the private system, if they had the means.
How many "tiers" does the US system have? Medicare. privatized Medicare, VA Medical. Federal Medicaid. 50 state Medicaid systems, plus all the private insurance companies (the net sifter says over 900) I keep wondering how much of the $5T spent on health care in the US each year is burned up by redundant administrative overhead?
Recall, "Plan Steve" finances the single payer system with a tax, like a VAT, so that people are not dependent on the goodwill of an employer to have insurance they can afford. Too many people would like to work full time, but the employer restricts them to less than 40 hours/week, so they don't qualify for "full time" benefits, like medical. I have told the story before, about a guy at the pump seal company, after I left, who developed cancer. He had to keep working, no matter how sick he was, because, if he quit, he would lose his medical insurance and be bankrupted by the bills. Dave ended up working until a few days before he died. To me, making a guy that sick keep working is beyond sociopathic, bordering on sadistic.
The number of people employed part time for economic reasons was 5.5 million in November, an
increase of 909,000 from September. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but
were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs.
(See table A-8.)https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdfSteve
