Medicare (Canada)
Medicare () is an unofficial designation used to refer to the publicly funded, single-payer health care system of Canada. Canada does not have a unified national health care system; instead, the system consists of 13 provincial and territorial health insurance plans that provides universal health care coverage to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and certain temporary residents. These systems are individually administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government. The formal terminology for the insurance system is provided by the "Canada Health Act" and the health insurance legislation of the individual provinces and territories.
List of countries with universal health care
The United States as a whole does not have a fully implemented universal health care system, but about 92% of its citizens have health insurance coverage as of 2017. Furthermore, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate universal health insurance in 2006. Furthermore, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, sought to have expanded insurance coverage to legal residents by 2014. The act provides for federally mandated health insurance to be implemented in the United States during the 2010–2019 decade with the Federal government subsidizing legal resident households with income up to 400% of the Federal poverty level. This threshold varies according to State and household size, but for an average family of four, subsidies would be available for families whose income was about $88,000 or lower. In June 2010 adults with pre-existing conditions became eligible to join a temporary high-risk pool. In 2014, applicants of the same age began to be able to obtain health insurance at the same published rate regardless of health status — the first time in U.S. history that insurers no longer had the right to load the premium or deny coverage prior to contract, or cancel a policy after contract due to an adverse health condition, or test result indicating that one may be imminent. The law prohibits insurers from capping their liability for a person's health care needs, a move expected to rectify medically induced bankruptcy. As of October 7, 2016, the U.S. uninsured rate fell to 10.9% from the 14.6% recorded when President Obama came into office. During the debates about proposed Obamacare, more and more Americans dropped their existing insurance and the uninsured rate peaked at 17.1% just before Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, started its "exchanges" and made the new plans available. 85.4% of Americans had insurance when Obama entered office; 89.1% had insurance by the time he left office.
The Congressional Budget Office and related government agencies scored the cost of a universal health care system several times since 1991, and have uniformly predicted cost savings, partly from the elimination of insurance company overhead costs. In 2009, a universal health care proposal was pending in Congress, the United States National Health Care Act (H.R. 676, formerly the "Medicare for All Act").