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Hospital Price Gaps Show Just How Broken the US Health-Care Market Is
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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I've used the system pretty regularly. To be fair, I live in a small city (150,000) within the golden horseshoe, so definitely better care compared to many throughout rural areas.
In the past few years I've had the birth of a child including all the various follow ups and shots, a stress test, blood work to rule out several heart issues, a halter monitor test, an ultrasound of my heart, three sets of baseline blood work, and four family doctor appointments.
The biggest fee at each was parking.
I don't disagree we have tons of room for improvement. Our contributions each year (ie personal amount of taxes we pay for healthcare in Ontario) have not been sufficient to keep up with the growing and aging population. We desperately need greater cancer screening and diagnostic services, as prevention and early detection can save billions in future chemo/rad or operations. Rural areas and family doctors need a rework, as many people are without one due to fewer and fewer docs entering that field.
That said, I would never take the US system over Canadas. The enormous stress illness would place on a family doesn't seem worth it for the meager tax savings, and the low wait times seem to only be avoided in the US system by paying out of pocket, which is not feasible for many.
I was in Alberta, and for the most part the care was great. There were a lot of shortages, though, which IMO could be solved by paying doctors and hospitals more. Premiums were waived so it was literally free -- with a small tax I think the problems could be solved. The Canadian system would definitely be easier to fix than the USA's
That's overly simplified. Provinces don't all recieve the same amount of Federal funding for healthcare. Alberta recieved about 6 billion in Federal funding for healthcare, while PEI recieved about 223 million in 2023. Alberta can afford to pay Healthcare professionals more and have been poaching those professionals from Atlantic Canada creating crises in places like Nova Scotia where the population has greatly increased through the pandemic. So, yes of course if you pay those professionals more you'll solve problems in some places and cause more problems elsewhere.
Now, provinces can up their own taxes to make up for short falls, but guess how popular that will make the ruling parties that chose that.
The solution needs to be a lot more nuanced than just pay them more.
Edit: clarification
A lot of doctors get their degree in Canadian schools and then go work in the USA, so I do think if Canada compensated better they could retain more people