OT My emergency room "doctor bill"

I live in Michigan and the Canadian Border is just a short ferry ride or short trip accross the Blue Water Bridge. I worked in a dental office for years and we had maybe 2 Canadian patients out of thousands. My husband and I both have medical doctors and specialists within a few miles of the border and although i have no official numbers, just in talking with people in the waiting room, there doesn't seem to be any influx of Canadians, in fact, hardly any at all. A co-worker has a sister that lives in Canada and loves the system. Had a baby, stayed in the hospital for 4 days, bill $0. People that have their health insurance paid for in greater part, wouldn't like the system, but the majority of us who pay the full bore, would love it. Interesting topic.

It is amazing how much the Canadians and Europeans love their healthcare system and yet it spreads such fear in the USA by people that have no first hand knowledge of it.

"No I am saying their overhead is 30%. Overhead would include salaries, executive bonuses, lobbying, political contributions, commissions paid to agents, advertising, office space and on and on. Most of these expenses are drastically lower or non-existent when the government does it."

This is another fake stat from medicare used when pelosi was selling this program.

The reason the overhead is lower (using medical costs divided by admin costs) is that medicare patients require the most care and as a result have the most expenses. As a result the admin costs to handle 1 medicare patient with $100,000 in medical costs is the same as the admin costs to handle 1 private care patient with a few thousand in medical costs.

obamacare will require the feds hiring thousands of new employees & hundreds of new agencies to oversee this program. None of these costs are in the proposal. In addition the already bankrupt states will incur billions in costs to administer the medicaid portion of the bill. Again this is not in the proposal.

Also overlooked is that medicare and medicaid have a higher % of fraud than private insurance. There is no reason to think that these fraud rates will go down

Sorry but you are mistaken. Who is the CEO for govt? Does his costs get counted when govt costs are computed? Nope, it's all a simple manipuation of numbers and some folks are easily fooled.

Well put, Snidely. As a Canadian, I know the facts about my medical system. I don't care what nonsense some fearmongers come up with to try & discredit it - I know I can get the care I actually need, any time, and not have to spend the rest of my life wondering how to pay for it (and I don't pay 52% of my income to the government, nor does anyone else here!). I have NEVER had an excessive wait for any medical service. However, if one chooses to show up in Emergency with a hangnail, one can expect to sit for many hours while others with real issues are treated ahead of you. That would be good old Canadian common sense, the way I see it. I choose my own doctor based on my personal preference - I don't have to settle for one on a small, predefined "list" of health care provider-selected options. I don't know which of these things seems to scare the crap out of some Americans, or why, but to each their own! Personally, I'm quite happy with the Medical system we have, and wouldn't trade it for anything!

Well, mist---you have to understand that American political discussion has gotten off the rails in the last few years. We have a bunch of "true believers" who are willing to do or say anything to defend their dogma. They have completely given up on rationality in demonizing those who disagree with them. They have totally gone over the edge of "The Ends Justifies the Means" cliff. You can say that the new law has "death panels" and dominate the discussion; you can say Planned Parenthood spends 95% of its money on abortions, when it's actually 3% and then just say it wasn't meant as a "factual statement"; you can call your opponents "Nazi" and make millions; you can be a college flunkout, drop-out or high school graduate and be considered an "intellectual." You can lie about Canadian health care---hell you can lie about anything you want because their dogma tells them that their ends are justified. It's a time when pretentious, pompous, loud-mouths dominate our politics. It's a good time to turn off the cable channels and watch sports or get on a plane and go to LV--it's not a good time to expect a rational discussion on politics.

To quickly answer your question before I head out the door that would be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, she was paid $199,700 last year. Now here is what the CEOs for the leading health insurance companies made back in 2008: (they make more now)



Aetna, Ronald A. Williams: $24,300,112
Cigna, H. Edward Hanway: $12,236,740
Coventry, Dale Wolf: $9,047,469
Health Net, Jay Gellert: $4,425,355
Humana, Michael McCallister: $4,764,309
U. Health Group, Stephen J. Hemsley: $3,241,042
Wellpoint, Angela Braly: $9,844,212

Looks like the taxpayers are getting one hell of a deal.

Very well said.

Polls in the US consistently showed satisfaction with our system to be in the high 70% range but the democrats chose to change it anyway

You can make any poll say anything you want it to say. I could probably find just as many polls that said the opposite.