So AP reports that the health care bill will cost $1.2\u00a0TRILLION to implement.\u00a0 Can you imagine a trillion dollars?\u00a0 Even I can hear the cachink cachink of the coins hitting the empty piggy bank.\u00a0 But where are those coins coming from?\u00a0 The president’s original prediction was $900 billion (like we even have that) and Nancy Pelosi repeatedly referred to it as\u00a0a cost\u00a0of $894 billion.\u00a0 But $1.2 trillion? That’s way higher than they told us.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I would love to see affordable health care but someone has to pay the $1.2 trillion.\u00a0 Guess who?\u00a0 Still us.\u00a0 Only instead of paying a doctor\u00a0we’ll be paying the government.\u00a0 Can you say Canada?\u00a0 (Keep in mind I’m a New Yorker who also lives in Toronto, Canada most of the year so I know what it’s really like up here.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Don’t let anyone fool you when they quote all those happy Canadians who love their health care system. Sure, lots do and those in favor of socialized medicine will dig them up to quote them.\u00a0\u00a0But lots don’t and we have good reason.\u00a0 Too many people have to wait far too long to get life saving treatment or tests.\u00a0 Too many people don’t get the medical service they need at all.\u00a0 Many people in Ontario don’t have a family doctor because there aren’t enough.\u00a0 The emergency rooms and walk in clinics have obscene waiting times.\u00a0 Doctors are limited in what they can do because there is a cap on what they can bill the government. The government decides who gets what and the papers here are full of the system failures.\u00a0 It’s not all bad, but it’s sure not ideal.\u00a0 There has to be a compromise and I think both countries can do better.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And how do you think\u00a0socialized medicine is\u00a0paid for? Super high taxes, of course.\u00a0 Canadians do pay for health care.\u00a0 They just don’t pay the doctor –\u00a0some pay very, very high taxes.\u00a0 And yes, many do it happily because they’re so grateful to have “free” health care.\u00a0 Until they find out how how much the government decides for them and how many things have been de-listed as in you still have to pay that out of your pocket.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Take my audiologist in Toronto.\u00a0 I have to pay to go see her.\u00a0 That visit used to be covered but it’s been de-listed.\u00a0\u00a0(Many services have been de-listed, like eye doctors, optometrists, etc.)\u00a0 The government kicks in a whopping $500 towards my hearing aids every five years and not one day sooner.\u00a0 Have you seen the price of hearing aids lately?\u00a0 Will the new $1.2 TRILLION dollars for health care pay for that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So AP reports that the health care bill will cost $1.2\u00a0TRILLION to implement.\u00a0 Can you imagine a trillion dollars?\u00a0 Even I can hear the cachink cachink of the coins hitting the empty piggy bank.\u00a0 But where are those coins coming from?\u00a0 The president’s original prediction was $900 billion (like we even have that) and Nancy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}