some vw people drive me insane... (Page 4 of 4)

If you want to know the state of health care around the world watch the movie "Sicko".

Any tourist can walk into a Cuban hospital and get 1st class treatment. All they ask is your name and age. They don't ask for money and prescriptions that cost hundreds of dollars in the USA are 50 cents in Cuba.

In Canada we do charge foreigners. Our biggest problems are wait times and a shortage of nurses due to the higher pay in the US. In most of Europe there are no wait times and they pay even higher taxes than Canadians.

Bottom line nationalized health care is very expensive. Other types of insurance, like fire or car, is cheaper because many people never put in a claim but we all need some kind of health care eventually.

There are differences as well in socialization. In England doctors are employed by the gov't and receive a salary while in Canada doctors are self employed and they bill the gov't per service. So in England you go to a clinic and see a different doctor every time while in Canad we still have the family doctor.

One advantage of the British system is that every record is in a central system so trends can be spotted quickly, like a lot of cancer in a geographic area. They inadvertently discovered that butchers have more boys.

jim