re z magazine health care reform march sorry harel et al but our doctors and most hospitals are still private in canada as well as in much of western europe harelb math cornell edu harel barzilai grad brown writes h e a l t h c a r e r e f o r m by camille colatosti z magazine see bottom march the single payer model sometimes called national health insurance eliminates private insurance companies and removes health care from employment the government provides free health care to all u s residents and there are no out of pocket costs wrong in better ec countries that use pure but public health insurance like we use in canada rather than self enclosed hmo like socialized medicine of our costs comes from private supplementary insurance and or copayments france magazine s summer edition has a fantastic presentation of their basic insurance coverage including a sample chart of copayment percentages for days you re covered for of the public hospital rate afterward with extra private insurance you can get into a private hospital and be covered for any differences beyond the public hospital rate the public insurance covers beyond days or the same cash amount for a private hospital and the difference is paid out of pocket or according to your supplementary private insurance over rds of french have some form of extra private insurance so of health costs in europe are out of private funds and not gleaned from other taxes the gdp figures are combined public and private expenditures for total outlay using the same methods that yield the figure for the u s that the french had deductibles and copayments in their insurance fund is to their credit i am in the minority for advocating such back in canada to make the canadian insurance look more like real health insurance which actually it is the new reform party a breakoff of traditionalists from the conservatives with a mildly libertarian faction hold our public health insurance as an untouchable but that just a few people have to be reminded that it s not free the average canadian european is more fiscally naive than their american counterparts on issues like these i m one of the few people who favour copayments forget about leftists even our conservatives attack me for it on the canadian newsgroups to make it look more like real insurance cos the insurance payment is hidden unlike in france and if you didn t know it you d believe it actually is socialized medicine american conservatives libertarians and canadian leftists are the only ones who seriously call it that canadians aren t worried about the americans who spend we re worried about the french and germans who spend to our so the insurance is looking at things that shouldn t be paid for out of general funds like physicals for insurance policies sick notes electrolysis etc the reason that the canadian health insurance hasn t spiralled out of control despite being open and universal is that unlike americans there is no urge to spend all of your benefits worth and more if you can we re a different culture like the play or pay model managed competition leaves in place two elements of the current health care system that reformers most often criticize the private for profit insurance industry and the employer based system of coverage managed competition compels employers to enroll their workers in large pools of health insurance customers entire industries may for example sponsor a pool or network insurance companies doctors hospitals and other health care providers then bid for the pool s business competing in theory on the basis of price and quality managed care relies on hmo s which are unknown in most western nations that use only public health insurance like canada france and germany i m canadian and my german father in law to be says of hmo nhs approaches we left that behind with east germany sure hmo nhs controls costs because you have managers strangling doctors with budget strings in canada we use the public health insurance approach as in france and germany with all private doctors and both private and public hospitals it is all pure insurance without hmo s the divisions are different with the germans using a couple hundred interlinked sickness funds over a century old while canada divides by their provinces who run the insurance fund and set local fees with the doctors monopoly federal funds cover the fees disbursed with such an open ended system it s no surprise that canada is to the u s in costs all insurance is the most expensive way to go the french and germans use the same approach but have larger populations in more compact geography to improve scales of economy gld je me souviens gary l dare gld columbia edu go winnipeg jets go gld cunixc bitnet selanne domi stanley
