Although I have worked for years in the United States including in and around health issues, I have never fully understood the ways in which Americans pay for their health care, or why their insurance company-based system is so important to them. This article explains how complicated it is to choose a medical plan and how expensive it is not to have one. And fundamentally this doesn’t change under Obama’s new plan. The premium this family pays, even now under the plan they want to keep, are more than twice what I pay for a family of four in a public health care system in Canada, and because we make more than $30,000 a year we are in the highest bracket in BC. We pay $133.00 a month and here’s what we get. There is no deductible. It’s basic, and extended medical plans obviously offer more benefits like dental and eye care, pharmacy and ambulance services (Great West Life’s mid-range plan is close to $400 a month). But with this basic coverage, my son has been in the emergency room twice in the past year with “12 year old testosterone accidents” – broken and suspected broken limbs – and we have incurred no costs other than paying a small fee for ambulance transport. If I wanted the same extended coverage as this family, I’d probably end up paying the same or more (and the deductibles would be WAAAAAY less), but if I don’t want to deal with an insurance company – and believe me, I don’t – then I don’t have to. My basics are covered and I have peace of mind. If I work for an employer, I just sign on with their extended plan. No problems.
Many Americans object to being “forced” to pay insurance premiums. How would you feel if you had the thought that paying premiums to the state for accessible health care was actually a peace of mind situation rather than the actions of an overzealous government seeking to limit your freedoms? This is all a matter of perspective and while I know millions of Americans share the view that I have about publicly funded health care, millions still do not and neither of course do the insurance companies who make their money by charging premiums and minimizing coverage. And now, in Washington, their political lap dogs are doing their dirty work and frankly it hurts the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of Americans who would rather be doing their own thing in the world than tying themselves to wage slavery for the benefit of a cheaper health plan.
Public health care is not perfect but it is brilliant. In Canada, we have very little stress about these issues compared to our southern cousins. Every American I know – and I know hundreds – worries about their health care insurance. In Canada we only worry about it when we have a wait for a service or a bad experience in the hospital, or we have a cranky complaining day. The rest of the time, we are cared for and cared for well, and I don’t think we know how lucky we are.
Good luck my American friends.
On my way back to Toronto after spending time with my mom and dad in Thornbury Ontario. If I have time I like to stop by the grave of my great great grandparents Mungo Dand and Catherine Ann Munro who are buried in the cemetery of Burns Presbyterian Church in Feversham Ontario.
My great great great grandparents William and Marion Dand are also buried here, but their graves are unmarked.
These two are a tragic story. Catherine died in childbirth delivering her fifth child who himself died two months and 20 days later. Mungo remarried but lost his second wife too and stricken with grief he shot himself in the head with a shotgun in 1902.
Mungo was a hewer of wood and a barnraiser and a farmer and was a well loved neighbour. On my great great grandmotjer’s stone he put this little poem:
Beneath this stone I’ve placed in trust
Not the immortal but the dust
Of one on earth to me most dear
Who learned in youth her God to fear.
I get the sense they were a pious family and his suicide must have been a shock.
Subsequently in 1918 his son William Gordon Dand died tragically as one of the first flu victims in Regina, Sasaktchewan. I have visited his grave too in Regina in the flu section of the city cemetery.
I love connecting with my ancestors.
There are conversations I don’t want to have and there are conversations I show up in and where I don’t like how I show up there. How to change these?
We are always inside the conversations we don’t want to have. We cannot leave them. We always have to host from inside this place.
At some level you can never leave earth. You belong here and to every conversation that is happening here. You are invited to host it all. That is your obligation for being given the gift of life.
Spring in full flight in Howe Sound. Blossoms and sun and birdsong and light and a warm shower or two on a grey afternoon.
Got a bunch of work done today so to celebrate I headed out on my SUP for an hour long paddled from Tunstall Bay to Cape Roger Curtis across pristine shoreline teeming with life. Gulls eating starfish and anemones, oystercatchers with their high pitched calls skimming the top if the way. Eagles soaring over the trees.
Only the slightest hint of a headwind outward bound but glassy still on the return leg. It’s so quiet out here today.
And the beauty of living on the South Coast of BC in winter is that Sunday I will go skiing with the kids over at Cypress Mountain.
Beach in Friday, ski hills on Sunday. Winter ain’t so bad after all.