Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance/Care Overhaul, Pt.4 – How well do we compare to others?

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All in all, it has been determined that our citizens are paying twice as much as the citizens of the other industrialized nations for health insurance/care. To boot, we are also receiving the lesser quality health care then these other nations, in many ways. We have longer wait times and more difficulty getting to see a doctor (especially those unfortunates without health insurance – 51% of our doctors won’t see them at all). We also have more ‘victims because of errors”, far more people who forego needed treatment and even more people who don’t even think about preventive care because of having either inadequate health insurance or none at all.

As compared to our closest relative, Canada, the ‘Commonwealth’ reported findings that US citizens were spending $6,697 per capita on health insurance/care in 2005 while, at the same time, the Canadians were only spending $3,326 per capita on health insurance/care. We’re paying double, but getting less.

From the national economic level, we Americans are being charged and paying 16% of our nation’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product – our nation’s income, if you will) for health insurance/care. By contrast, Canadian citizens are only being charged and paying 9.8 of their GDP.

So who’s being fooled here? With the 30 million Canadians at home, can we make any value health insurance/care judgments based on the few Canadians we meet on the streets of our country (who may be here only to ‘jump the line’)?

To be sure, there are also many US citizens in Canada at the same time who are skirting our own troubled health insurance/care system. That is certainly not a random sample.

Continued…