The doctor will see you — if you can pay
By Russell Baskett
“If you are here for a consultation and don’t have insurance, a fee of $60 is required before you are seen by the doctor. If you are here for a procedure and don’t have insurance, a fee of $125 is required before you are seen by the doctor. Arrangements to pay the balance must be made before you leave.”
This is the message engraved on a large plastic sign mounted on the wall beside the sliding-glass window of the reception area at the plastic surgeon’s office where I waited for my consultation. I had been diagnosed with a melanoma (confirmed by the Mayo Clinic pathology lab) on my ear, referred to this surgeon and was about to put my fate in his hands — I was frightened. But I wasn’t worried about the cost.
Baskett, of Moneta, is a retired professor of life sciences. He works as a volunteer providing community service in the Smith Mountain Lake area.
September 9, 2012 - 8:01 AM
The author is so right. Health care does not belong in the market place. It should be a human right.
And who should decide if that 80 year old male has the “right” to that heart bypass surgery as much as the 50 year old male does? A 15 member medical review board of bureaucrats appointed by Obama and whose decisions cannot be appealed? I think not!
A “one size fits all” health care system cannot deliver the same level of care as a private system where the individual and his physician make the decisions. Those Canadians that can afford it, come to the US for their bypass surgery!
If the individual dislikes his health care coverage, then he can shop for a better plan or negociate with his employer for a better plan.
Medicaid could be adjusted for the truly indigent. Medicaid now is just a welfare program and not a health insurance system. The majority of Medicaid expenditure goes for nursing home patients and the disabled such as Downs Syndrome and autism.
What the liberals want is to lower the overall quality of care down to the least common denominator for the “collective”, a word liberals love.
If health care is a “right”, what’s next? That no health care provider can be allowed to make a profit on the delivery of health care? I fully expect the liberals to eventually try to enforce such a socialist agenda.
Maybe make all doctors federal employees subject to the whims of bureacrats and elected officials? Then we would have to endure doctor’s unions and strikes much like with the teacher’s unions now!
Health care is a business, take the profit motive out and not only does the quality of delivery suffer, but the best and brightest will not become doctors. You do get what you pay for. There is no free lunch!
With all its flaws, I’ll take the private sector over the public sector for health care any day!
#2: “Those Canadians that can afford it, come to the US for their bypass surgery!”
That doesn’t happen nearly as often as you think, John R:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/21/3/19.full
snip: “Surprisingly few Canadians travel to the United States for health care, despite the persistence of the myth….this persuasive image of Canadian refugees survives in a virtual vacuum of evidence….
“…earlier analysis of Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) data found that most spending for medical and hospital services received by Canadians in the United States during the early 1990s was related to the “coincidental” basic and emergency health care services typically used by Canadians traveling or temporarily residing in the United States.20 Although the possibility of underestimating cross-border care seeking can never be entirely eliminated, we do not believe that its magnitude would be sufficient to challenge our conclusions.”
And Canadians do indeed vastly prefer their own health care system over the system we Yanks have been dealing with. Read ‘em and weep:
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/08/never-mind-the-anecdotes-do-canadians-like-their-health-care-system.html
snip: “By an overwhelming margin, Canadians prefer the Canadian health care system to the American one. Overall, 82% said they preferred the Canadian system, fully ten times the number who said the American system is superior (8%)….from a Harris-Decima poll (.pdf), July 2009. .
The vast majority of Canadians, 91 per cent, felt that Canada’s health care system was better than the United States…CTV, a Canadian television network, Jun. 29 2008, reporting on a survey, conducted by the Strategic Counsel for CTV and The Globe and Mail.”
But hey, why let some inconvenient facts get in the way of your usual rambling tirades, John R?
“Canadians today are waiting, on average, 141 per cent longer than in 1993 for consultation with a specialist after referral by a general practitioner, and 66 per cent longer to receive treatment after specialist consultation. This paints a grim forecast for the future… there are about 90,000 patients waiting on average 35.6 weeks for orthopedic surgery from a doctor’s recommendation to treatment…” said Mark Rovere, the Fraser Institute’s associate director of health policy in Canada.
“Dr. Jeff Turnbull, Ottawa Hospital’s chief of staff, said the facility has been above full capacity for the last year with 1,000 beds occupied and another two dozen emergency room patients waiting for beds Monday.”
http://www.canada.com/health/Surgical+wait+times+increase+Canada/3933033/story.html
I prefer the current US health care system to that in Canada, at least until Obamacare screws it up!
The wait time in Roanoke for heart by pass surgery is 24 hours, in Canada you would be lucky if the wait time was only 126 days. That’s a long time for the patient to suffer and worry.
Link fight!
http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-03-2012/myths-canada-health-care.html
How does the U.S. health care system stack up against Canada’s? You’ve probably heard allegedly true horror stories about the Canadian system — like 340-day waits for knee replacement surgery, for example.
To separate fact from fiction, Aaron E. Carroll, M.D., the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research in Indianapolis, identified the top myths about the two health care systems.
More….
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427
As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one. ….
Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes. ….
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead…..
Oh, John, I looked at your article. It was based on a report issued by the Fraser Institute. Hardly an unbiased source of information don’t you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Institute
The Fraser Institute is a Canadian think tank. It has been described as politically conservative[1][2][3] and right-libertarian[4][5]. Its stated mission is “to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on the welfare of individuals.”[6]….
Like the aristocracy always has, they are perfectly satisfied with the status quo. If you have money, you have all you need, in this or most any other country. Oddly, no country can survive without the lower wage workers keeping the cogs turning. Some countries have figured out how to deal with the retired, disabled, poor or unemployed. There has to be a way that medical care is not rationed by who can pay. Why the hell is that superior to “who has a right”, whose life is “worth it” kinds of decisions and determinations? Good luck getting an appointment with a specialist quickly. Made a dermatologist appt lately?
When my 72 year old mother recently had an immovable kidney stone, after waiting well over 5 hours in the RMH ER in excruciating pain, she needed a urologist. The soonest I could get her an appointment was over 2 weeks out!
If you have an tooth ache, if you do not have cash or insurance, you are simply SOL until the free clinic system can see you, and that is a get here and wait your turn for ever how long it takes.
If you need new glasses, if you do not have cash or insurance…good luck or hope you qualify for Medicaid.
I do not know what is wrong inside people that they can know, and I am here to make you know, that there are people suffering, in pain, every day that the sun dawns in this nation! People who could be helped by simple dental, vision or medical care, who are not getting it. Do you really believe they are all just lazy, sorry, low life folks who don’t try to do any better? Or is that just what you tell yourself so the blinders don’t slip?
No one can pretend there are not real and substantial problems in the US health care system. And we should all be ashamed that the greatest nation on earth is not only hesitant, but refusing to deal with them.