A bit of enlightenment on health care
Had an epiphany the other day listening to Rutherford.He had one of those health care advocates on his show pontificating on the dangers of evil american style two tier "wipe-out-your-life-savings" health care . She kept referring to doctors leaving one system for another and a thought occurred to me.
The health care debate is not and never has been about systems, its about money.
To be specific, its about billing, and whether we are going to maintain a system through a limitation on billing or if we will allow the practioners to bill to multiple venues.
Right now doctors cannot bill for services covered under OHIP to anyone but OHIP.
What became evident during the radio interview was that the guest went out of her way to avoid talking about how doctors pay their expenses.
This to me would seem like an important part of the issue. Her big scare was that we didn't want to lose doctors to another system, but she didn't want to expand on why. Its quite fundamental that if I want to get paid more and the guy that signs my paycheque says he can't I have two choices, suck it up or move on.
Another piece of the debate the anti-americans tend to gloss over is that this debate is also about a government run insurance program.
We have private insurance in this country, heck if you have a look at most if not all of the collective agreements the CAW had a hand in, they all have a benefit covered by one of them i.e.: Green Shield.
So what is the diff between private insurance and government run insurance?
Private:
Collects fees from members, pays out for benefits, invests the rest as a buffer
Government run:
Collects taxes, directs that to bureacrats who then distribute to the providers, if the "system" needs more money hits the taxpayer up for more.
The next time you find yourself in the middle of the healthcare debate, kindly remind the provacators, its not about providers, its about who pays, how often, and for what.
Pull that out when they start ranting about proceedures that "should be" covered like sex-changes, and abortion clinics.
posted by gimbol @ 2:36 AM
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