[lbo-talk] Modern medical "coverage"

[Sheldon Baker]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:27 AM, ken hanly <northsunm at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  One virtue of the Canadian system  is that co-pays are forbidden. Some private clinics manage to get around this somewhat by special charges such as tray fees for minor operations that are done in the clinic rather than a hospital. For example for a recent cystoscopy I paid 20 dollars but if I had insisted it be done in the hospital it would have cost nothing. The clinic is not re-imbursed by the govt. for costs of the equipment which would also be available at a hospital, so they naturally bill the patient. Of course many other doctors would just perform the operation at the hospital. In a small city such as Brandon there is only one specialist so you don't have much choice. It is just easier to get it done in the clinic rather than spending a bundle to travel to Winnipeg or argue with the specialist.
>
> Cheers, k hanly
>
> Blog:  http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
> Blog:  http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html

Well copays are the least of our problems here.  When I was arguing
for single payer with a righty, he argued that if its totally free,
then people will over-use the system, coming in for simple sniffles
and such.  I countered, primarily as a rhetorical strategy, that this
could be controlled by charging moderate copays, perhaps wavable for
the truly destitute.  Shit, if we could get a single payer system like
Canada, and all I would have to pay is a lousy $20 for an office
visit, it would be a great leap forward.  Its the additional charges
that really hurt.