No. No rant this time, Angela. I really would like to know how it works in Canada. We were on vacation in Ontario in the early 80's, when hubby broke a bone in his foot. It cost us $75 (double or even triple that for COL raises over the decades and it's still cheap!) $15 of that cost was for not returning the crutches. (We were only there for a week, so he still needed them. lol)
But, I do think the wait time is a problem. "If it's not urgent" trips me up. My gall bladder surgery wasn't urgent. But, man! When you're facing the reality of gallstone colic once every five weeks, (they came right around the time of my period, so became somewhat predictable), it was all kinds of urgent for me. I hear it's a three to six month wait. That's two to five more excruciating pain episodes. And, unlike Canada, leaving the country to be treated quicker isn't an option quite as easily. (You're already the only country we can drive to that we'd trust with our healthcare needs. lol)
And right now I am waiting for a procedure. (Three-four week wait.) If I had to wait 3-6 months for this minor procedure, I might well wake up one day to a terrible headache followed by blindness, but it's not urgent either. My concern is the government regulations determine the word "urgent," instead of doctors. Given my country's history of legislators dictating healthcare terms, that's a problem. They're lawyers, and lawyers who gave up the work to play god with our lives.
As for the price gouging? I already showed the gouge isn't all from the pharmacological companies. I have no idea who adds to the price gouging. But, yeah, quite a bit of it has to do with how much they are allowed to charge other countries. I'm pretty sure auto manufacturers charge more for a car going out of the country, instead of less. Aren't cellphones evenly priced around the world? I know the only reason it cost more to sell lights and large electrical outlet boxes more if sold to Mexico and Canada is because of the NAFTA charges. Why is medication the only thing that goes down when it crosses any border? Do they know they're losing money elsewhere, so make it up on the American wallet? Or, is that too, a legislative gouge, like much of our legislators do?
I don't know if your country does this, but our legislators charge taxes on whatever they think most people need. We have no idea how much gas really cost us, because it is taxed at a local, state, and national level. I have a $10 cell phone. I pay $15 a month for it, because our legislators tax it at all levels too. I never use it because it cost $.25 a minute, so you can't blame that on overage. Government just decided phones and gas are luxuries.
And they have all sorts of excuses for that too. They tell why they need the money, until after the bill is passed. Once passed, we still don't know where the money goes, except it's certainly not on our infrastructure like was promised with the gas tax. And it wasn't for better phone coverage, since that's why the phone companies have been increasing their profits year after year. THEY made the better communications infrastructure (FiOS and towers), no the government.
In NJ in 1974, we were asked to approve casinos to "help senior citizens and education." 40+ years later, NJ is still one of the worst states in the country for education, and seniors get less help there than most states. They haven't even increased the payout for workman's comp since they first created Workman's Comp laws. If you break your back at work in NJ, no matter how bad it is, you get $5000 to live on. And NJ is one of the highest taxed states in the union.
The beginning of this year, in Philly, they proposed a tax on sugar. One-two cents per ounce of sugared drinks "for pre-school programs to help our children get a better education." They weren't even done passing it before they reneged on that promise. And I knew they weren't going to honor it because we are charged $6000 per student for a system that has about a 50% dropout rate, and, of those students who do graduate, another 50% of them are illiterate.
These are the hands you want us to trust to give us a useful healthcare system? This has nothing to do with how much we pay for our military. Our Constitution promises to take care of our military and our transportation. (Infrastructure.) That's it. That covers less than half of our budget, and they haven't done that well either. You want us to trust our government for a healthcare plan? Why? Even you don't trust our government with that.