For the Americans who want to move to Canada to avoid health care:

[theweaselking]

You will hear a great many people saying that Canada has single-payer health care This is a vile calumny and is not true in the slightest. Canada most emphatically does NOT have single-payer health care.

Canada has thirteen-payer health care.

The more you know!

PS: The best health care in the world is France, but they're far away, and disturbingly French. We're nearby, and refreshingly French.

Plus vous en savez! Comment êtes-vous? La pamplemousse.

Comments

[catlin.livejournal.com]

What is 13 payer?

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

It's 13 different single-payer systems; one for each province and territory in Canada. Each province/territory gets some federal money to support their system, but according to our Constitution administering health care is the responsibility of the provinces.

The different systems are largely the same (the federal tax top-off is in part to ensure that) but there are differences between them. I don't know of anyone who's moved as a result but I don't doubt that there may be a few instances of that.

-- Steve still thinks it's better than the US's system.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

One single-payer system for each province/territory, with the federal government giving money to make sure they all meet the basic standards of civilised care.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

So long as you think "basic standards of civilised care" don't include, say, the drugs that keep you alive, blood tests, ambulances, etc etc.... (Still a lot better than America, but.)

ETA: upside? Hospitals here are CLEAN. O_O

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The details depend on the provincial implementation. In Ontario, blood tests are free, drugs are heavily subsidised but non-free (the primary purpose of private insurance is drugs, along with dental and vision and close seconds), and ambulances are almost free as long as the hospital agrees that you had a good reason to call an ambulance.

Canadian health care isn't perfect, but it's way better.

[nsanity-au.livejournal.com]

and the simplest measure to use is;

How many medical-fee induced bankruptcy's has their been in Canada? (or pretty much anywhere but the US).

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Well, this is a late-night kinda-rushed browse, and should probably not be considered reliable, but:

Working from 2010, it's pretty much not possible for there to be more than 45 thousand a year; 145,233 Canadians filed either bankruptcy or consumer proposals that year, and the top three causes of bankruptcy are (in descending order) job loss, separation or divorce, and medical bills.

In the US, also in 2010, medical illness was responsible for 940,000 bankruptcies (involving over 2.547 million Americans). So, without distinguishing between bankruptcy and consumer proposal, and figuring the US population is ~10 times the Canadian one, still twice as many...?

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

I totally want to move to Canada, but I doubt they'd take me in the Great White North.

[entropymagnet.livejournal.com]

I actually looked into moving to the Great White North and my family doesn't qualify. :(

[ashbet]

Same here -- I'm disabled, and Canada doesn't want me :/

Still, I'm glad that North America has at least *thirteen* regions with civilized healthcare . . .

-- A

[skington.livejournal.com]

The French don't think you guys are French. At most they might think that Quebec is, potentially, as French as New Caledonia.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Je n'aime pas la pamplemousse.

Cependant, j'adore Pomplamoose.

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

I thought you were joking about this until I saw somebody's journal post with a link to the conservapedia article on the ACA and bitched about how he was going to move to Canada, completely sincere about both.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

I keep saying... those people who claim they are moving to canada... well, generally won't qualify for the canadian immigration... I looked it up.

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I find it interesting that the people who complain the loudest about this ruling are the ones who will benefit most from it.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-moving-to-canada-because-of-obamacare

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

While facepalm-inducing, still not as bad as the oreo tweets, I think.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I suspect most of those are joke tweets. If I had a twitter account that I used for anything, I would have made one myself.

[drcuriosity]

Funny how you don't see people saying "Screw this, I'm moving to Mexico!"

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

You are a grapefruit?

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

I don't care how many payers there are as long as I'm not one of them.