UPDATE: The leading cause of bankruptcies in the U.S.? Yeah.My wife and I did for years, and we've been incensed by the lies we've heard back here in the U.S. about Canada's supposedly broken system.
It's not broken - and what's more, Canadians like and fiercely defend it.
Example: Our son was born at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital. My wife got excellent care. The total bill for three days in a semi-private room? $21.
My friend Art Finley is a West Virginia native who lives in Vancouver.
"I'm 82, and in excellent health," he told me this week. "It costs me all of $57 a month for health care, and it's excellent. I'm so tired of all the lies and bullshit I hear about the system up here in the U.S. media."Finley, a well-known TV and radio host for years in San Francisco, adds,
"I now have 20/20 vision thanks to Canadian eye doctors. And I haven't had to wait for my surgeries, either."
Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.
Conclusions:
Illness and medical bills contribute to a large and increasing share of US bankruptcies.
2 comments:
This is a battle that is regularly waged at dailykos...Lots of Canadians there saying, "hold on a minute, this is how it is..."
And then a flunky from the insurance industry will answer with some fake anecdotal story of their Auntie Ethel in Saskatchewan who knew a neighbour who waited 3 years for a hip transplant.
And the anti single payer ads generally turn out to be paid for by the worst of the worst in the Insurance industry...CNN is infamous for presenting those lobbyists as independent.
Lotsa bucks going into this smear campaign.
With the help of some Canadian medical profiteers like Dr Brian Day.
The opponents of Canada's system have to resort to lies in their opposition. Those of us who know better need to share the truth.
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