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American health care system costs four times more than Canada's single-payer system

American health care system costs four times more than Canada's single-payer system

  • Need more info

    Votes: 5 27.8%
  • Yes, American health care is 4X Candian

    Votes: 7 38.9%
  • No, I don't believe Canadian health care is cheaper

    Votes: 6 33.3%

  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .

swing_voter

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The average American pays a whopping $2,497 per year in administrative costs — which fund insurer overhead and salaries of administrative workers as well as executive pay packages and growing profits — compared to $551 per person per year in Canada, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last month. The study estimated that cutting administrative costs to Canadian levels could save more than $600 billion per year.

The data contradicts claims by opponents of single-payer health care systems, who have argued that private programs are more efficient than government-run health care. The debate over the feasibility of a single-payer health care has dominated the Democratic presidential race, where candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., advocate for a system similar to Canada's while moderates like former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg have warned against scrapping private health care plans entirely.

Canada had administrative costs similar to those in the United States before it switched to a single-payer system in 1962, according to the study's authors, who are researchers at Harvard Medical School, the City University of New York at Hunter College, and the University of Ottawa. But by 1999, administrative costs accounted for 31% of American health care expenses, compared to less than 17% in Canada.

American health care system costs four times more than Canada's single-payer system | Salon.com


Do you believe this? Salon is very left wing.

I pay $36 a month for a family of 6. Yes, my employer pays part of it.

Canadians who make over $60k a year pay a lot more than $36 a month.
 
Do you believe this? Salon is very left wing.

I pay $36 a month for a family of 6. Yes, my employer pays part of it.

Canadians who make over $60k a year pay a lot more than $36 a month.

Annals of Internal Medicine produced the data and findings, not Salon.

Also I think you're coming away with the wrong conclusion: Canadian healthcare is far more cost effective than American healthcare, but their total spend per capita is only about half of America's, not 25%. These options are all bogus.
 
IDK Liz and Bernie are going to make Donald Trump pay for mine.
 
Do you believe this? Salon is very left wing.

I pay $36 a month for a family of 6. Yes, my employer pays part of it.

Canadians who make over $60k a year pay a lot more than $36 a month.

Well you happen to be one of the very lucky ones. Me on the other hand have two pre-existing conditions and am 63 yrs old. I own a small business and last time I called for quotes (2-3 years ago) they wanted roughly $800 a month with a deductible of nearly $10,000.00. I simply cannot afford those numbers. I have about 1.5 years to go for Medicare. I am not alone.
There are many people in the same boat I am in.

Maybe this will help you understand our anxiety when Trump talks about cutting Medicare and SS. I really never expect medicare for all to pass, but for gods sake, leave our current Medicare system and SS alone.
 
Annals of Internal Medicine produced the data and findings, not Salon.

Also I think you're coming away with the wrong conclusion: Canadian healthcare is far more cost effective than American healthcare, but their total spend per capita is only about half of America's, not 25%. These options are all bogus.

They soak people over there for health care. some people pay premiums of $30,000 a year
 
Well you happen to be one of the very lucky ones. Me on the other hand have two pre-existing conditions and am 63 yrs old. I own a small business and last time I called for quotes (2-3 years ago) they wanted roughly $800 a month with a deductible of nearly $10,000.00. I simply cannot afford those numbers. I have about 1.5 years to go for Medicare. I am not alone.
There are many people in the same boat I am in.

Maybe this will help you understand our anxiety when Trump talks about cutting Medicare and SS. I really never expect medicare for all to pass, but for gods sake, leave our current Medicare system and SS alone.



You might check again. You can get Obamacare and they can't consider your pre-existing conditions. Most self-employed people I know, many of them republicans, are on Obamacare which is ironic.
 
They soak people over there for health care. some people pay premiums of $30,000 a year

As a dual citizen who lives and works in both countries, I have literally never heard of someone paying premiums of $30k / YR in Canada; not even with respect to supplemental private insurance.
 
You might check again. You can get Obamacare and they can't consider your pre-existing conditions. Most self-employed people I know, many of them republicans, are on Obamacare which is ironic.

I understand that. However, they have no restrictions on what they can charge you. I've done all the math and it's way cheaper to go see my doc 4 times a year and buy my own prescriptions. Trust me, I realize it's a gamble, but its my home or my health. If I loose my home, what good is health insurance? I can't run my business from a homeless shelter.
 
Sometimes it's like comparing apples to oranges. I would need to see a detailed breakdown of how each country spends their health care dollars. Especially what is charged against "health care". I would also like to know the relative obesity rates of each country. Americans are among the fattest people in the world. My doctor told me 3/4ths of all hospital admissions are related to obesity. You don't see very many fat people in Europe. That would be one major reason their health care costs would be less.
 
Well you happen to be one of the very lucky ones. Me on the other hand have two pre-existing conditions and am 63 yrs old. I own a small business and last time I called for quotes (2-3 years ago) they wanted roughly $800 a month with a deductible of nearly $10,000.00. I simply cannot afford those numbers. I have about 1.5 years to go for Medicare. I am not alone.
There are many people in the same boat I am in.

Maybe this will help you understand our anxiety when Trump talks about cutting Medicare and SS. I really never expect medicare for all to pass, but for gods sake, leave our current Medicare system and SS alone.

Swing Voter doesn't understand yet about the exploding cigar characteristics of a 36 dollar a month policy and for his sake I pray he never has to find out. If his premium is ACA subsidized then he should understand why he's only paying 36 bucks a month.
 
You might check again. You can get Obamacare and they can't consider your pre-existing conditions. Most self-employed people I know, many of them republicans, are on Obamacare which is ironic.

Next time our son has to renew, they will be going off HIS income but up till now we've been paying almost a thousand a month for his policy.
He had three open heart surgeries before his fifth birthday and spent two months in the cardiac ICU last year.
 
Do you believe this? Salon is very left wing.

I pay $36 a month for a family of 6. Yes, my employer pays part of it.

Canadians who make over $60k a year pay a lot more than $36 a month.

The USA spends $10,224 vs. Canada's $4,826 per person, so no, it's not four times as much. It's just a little over twice as much.

What you pay out of pocket is irrelevant, as it is only a small fraction of the total cost, which would be over $60,000 per year for the average family of 6. That's an average, of course. Costs from family to family vary widely. If one member has cancer, for example, then their costs will be much higher than average. If no one has a health issue, then their costs will be below average.
 
Well you happen to be one of the very lucky ones. Me on the other hand have two pre-existing conditions and am 63 yrs old. I own a small business and last time I called for quotes (2-3 years ago) they wanted roughly $800 a month with a deductible of nearly $10,000.00. I simply cannot afford those numbers. I have about 1.5 years to go for Medicare. I am not alone.
There are many people in the same boat I am in.

Maybe this will help you understand our anxiety when Trump talks about cutting Medicare and SS. I really never expect medicare for all to pass, but for gods sake, leave our current Medicare system and SS alone.

48 million receive Social Security benefits. 15 percent of the U.S. population, 44 million—are enrolled in the Medicare program. Enrollment is expected to rise to 79 million by 2030. Only one in 10 beneficiaries relies solely on the Medicare program for health care coverage.
 
You get what you pay for. If you have a chronic condition you want to be in the US. Cancer and other expensive to treat disease survival rates here are much higher in the US. In places like Canada you will get watered down treatments and because they limit their tests it will probably be caught at a later stage. Many conditions also have a very long waiting period in Canada. In fact, tens of thousands of Canadians are going elsewhere for healthcare because they have such extensive wait times.

The US has two government ran healthcare systems. The Veterans Administration and the Native American Health Service for Indian reservations. Both are more expensive than private healthcare and not nearly as good. If you think this is superior to what most Americans have you are dead wrong.

In addition, nearly all healthcare breakthroughs come from the US. There is a reason for this. Research is expensive. As we are seeing now with the Caronavirus, the world is waiting for the US to come up with a cure. Thousands of people are dying in a country with a single payer system because their cut rate system has little ability to develop a cure.

Why Canadians Are Increasingly Seeking Medical Treatment Abroad | HuffPost Life
 
The USA spends $10,224 vs. Canada's $4,826 per person, so no, it's not four times as much. It's just a little over twice as much.

What you pay out of pocket is irrelevant, as it is only a small fraction of the total cost, which would be over $60,000 per year for the average family of 6. That's an average, of course. Costs from family to family vary widely. If one member has cancer, for example, then their costs will be much higher than average. If no one has a health issue, then their costs will be below average.

If often comes down to how you handles R&D. The US as a whole spends more on healthcare R&D than some of these countries spend on total healthcare so having twice the per capita healthcare spending really can mean that the medical services spending are comparable but the R&D is the multiplier.
 
You get what you pay for. If you have a chronic condition you want to be in the US. Cancer and other expensive to treat disease survival rates here are much higher in the US. In places like Canada you will get watered down treatments and because they limit their tests it will probably be caught at a later stage. Many conditions also have a very long waiting period in Canada. In fact, tens of thousands of Canadians are going elsewhere for healthcare because they have such extensive wait times.

The US has two government ran healthcare systems. The Veterans Administration and the Native American Health Service for Indian reservations. Both are more expensive than private healthcare and not nearly as good. If you think this is superior to what most Americans have you are dead wrong.

In addition, nearly all healthcare breakthroughs come from the US. There is a reason for this. Research is expensive. As we are seeing now with the Caronavirus, the world is waiting for the US to come up with a cure. Thousands of people are dying in a country with a single payer system because their cut rate system has little ability to develop a cure.

Why Canadians Are Increasingly Seeking Medical Treatment Abroad | HuffPost Life

American health tourism vastly exceeds Canadian health tourism both concretely and as a percentage. As of 2016, an estimated 64000 Canadians per the right wing, anti-singlepayer think tank the Fraser Institute engaged in medical tourism, or 0.18% of the population (in otherwords, the numbers are likely to be inflated). As of 2017, 1.4 million Americans did so, or 0.43%; 2.36 times as many Americans per capita: https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(18)30620-X/pdf

Also US health outcomes are roughly comparable to Canada's despite spending more than twice as much per person, whereas American health outcomes aren't as good as many other developed countries that still spend far less per capita; objectively in terms of the quality and outcomes of the US healthcare system, it doesn't, as a point of fact, get remotely what it pays for.
 
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I understand that. However, they have no restrictions on what they can charge you. I've done all the math and it's way cheaper to go see my doc 4 times a year and buy my own prescriptions. Trust me, I realize it's a gamble, but its my home or my health. If I loose my home, what good is health insurance? I can't run my business from a homeless shelter.

It is ridiculous that you have to choose between your home or your health. And a bit sad too.
 
Do you believe this? Salon is very left wing.

I pay $36 a month for a family of 6. Yes, my employer pays part of it.

Canadians who make over $60k a year pay a lot more than $36 a month.

Canadians also have very looooong wait lists. The Quebec Supreme Court ruled waiting lists do not constitute care... which tells you how ****ed the system is if that went to and had to be answered by their Supreme Court.

People suffer and die waiting for “care”.

Because the government runs it... they aren’t interested in the latest technologies.

It’s a Communist system... with all the vile results.
 
It is ridiculous that you have to choose between your home or your health. And a bit sad too.

Get the government out of it and everything will improve. You see that handheld supercomputer next to your computer? Cheap wasn’t it. Got much better every year since it was introduced in 2007... and you can get variations of the most expensive devices that are almost as good for 20% the cost.

Healthcare treated as a business... a service ... would have the same result on the free market. Lower costs, better service.

Obama made a lot of false promises... as Communists always do.
 
Why is this a poll question?

Can't the OP just Google for the damn numbers?
 
Really isn't a debate. We spend way more for mediocre outcomes. In America it is all about your.ability to pay. Those who can afford the best don't want change. Right wing media has convinced the deplorables.that the entire rest of the world is wrong about health care.


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Get the government out of it and everything will improve. You see that handheld supercomputer next to your computer? Cheap wasn’t it. Got much better every year since it was introduced in 2007... and you can get variations of the most expensive devices that are almost as good for 20% the cost.

Healthcare treated as a business... a service ... would have the same result on the free market. Lower costs, better service.

Obama made a lot of false promises... as Communists always do.

That plan does not work anywhere on earth
 
That plan does not work anywhere on earth

You interpretation of how health care should work forgets to include one big factor. Corporate Greed. We've tried leaving these company's to their own volition. It doesn't work.
 
You interpretation of how health care should work forgets to include one big factor. Corporate Greed. We've tried leaving these company's to their own volition. It doesn't work.

Thete is no country on earth that has a successful fully free market healthcare system
 
You interpretation of how health care should work forgets to include one big factor. Corporate Greed. We've tried leaving these company's to their own volition. It doesn't work.

Corporations exist for one reason. Profits. Maximize profits! Health care is not.one of those things that.you can decide if.you need like a new washing machine. The health insurance companies have a captive audience and the rest.of.the health care system is much the same. Capitalism at work all the market will bare.

The graph above shows capitalism at work even though regulations control it to a certain extent. Of course the health care business spends 100's of millions of dollars every year to ensure any regulations meant to control their profits are written in their favor.
 
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