Saturday, May 03, 2008

free health care

I am getting a little pissed with the Canadians that are forever wandering around announcing to various strangers that we have free health care. We do not.
Everyone in Canada is assessed at tax time for their ability to pay for health care. Some Canadians at the poverty level don't have to pay. the rest of us do. I paid six hundred dollars this year. I also have private insurance that covers long term care, dental and prescriptions. That costs me personally about twelve hundred a year. So I pay eighteen hundred a year for my health care. I am not in any way unique. At least seventy percent of us pay for health care.
Then our employers have to pay too. They are assessed on their taxes and they get their bill for all their employees. At least forty percent of all Canadian employers also offer private benefits. Our employers are required to pay their share of our premiums too.
Most of us get our taxes done professionally so we never see the health care tax. We are ignorant of it until of course we have to pay for it out of pocket.

Then we all have to pay provincial and federal taxes on everything we buy. That is a health care tax. So, once again health care isn't free.
Just because no one gave you a bill at the end of your office visit doesn't mean you didn't pay for it. That bill is hidden under a different name is all.
I think we should be demanding a better system but because we all somehow think we are getting something for nothing we don't want to speak up. Just in case we alert the authorities and they wake up and what? make us pay?

So the next time some idiot politician goes on about Universal Health Care tell him to shut it. We don't have it. We are taxed near to death for a system that is in tatters.
a system where you can be having a heart attack but get denied angioplasty because there is no bed available. A system where you get on a plane and fly to a foreign country for your chemo and have to pay for your plane ticket yourself.
A system that thinks having one nurse for ten patients is a great idea.

Yeah, it's better than the US but so what? A dollar store first aid kit is better than the US.That doesn't mean our system is good you know.

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