> From: Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> The immigration
> pages for Canada say that immigrants must buy private insurance and
> seek private treatment because they have not paid into the government
> system.
As a recent immigrant, I can say this is not quite accurate, at least
for BC.
Health care is administered by the provinces. In BC, you are
encouraged (not required) to purchase private insurance for up to
three months while you get into the system. We landed May 3rd, 2006,
ignored their encouragement to buy private insurance (I'd been
without health insurance for six years, what was three more months?)
and were on BC health care by August.
If we were actually required to buy private insurance, no one came
and arrested us for going without for three months.
> I just shake my head in wonder sometimes when I hear someone on the
> tube say...
Is that similar to "I read it on the Internet, so it must be true?" :-)
> Most insurance policies have an upper liability limit that is easy to
> exceed in a serious limit. I have a good friend with lymphoma that I
> helped and by the time he died he was knocking at the door of the
> half million dollar limit on his policy. If he had decided on the
> bone marrow transplant he would have ended on some lesser care for
> indigents.
I have a friend who is a successful vice-president of IBM-Canada,
with a wife and two children. As an early teen, he was successfully
treated for leukemia, and he estimates that it cost Ontario about $3
million 1970's dollars to keep him alive. He has been cancer-free and
a productive citizen since then. Needless to say, he is a strong
backer of the current system, and goes around the country (on his own
dime) raising money for leukemia research.
But, that's just another anecdote. I'm sure someone can call one up
where some person just had to go to the US to get some treatment
before they died from being on some waiting list. I've never heard
such a story, but I'm sure it exists -- the story, not the actual
person! :-)
::::A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague
the plague it promised to heal. -- Daniel Berrigan
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.EcoReality.org>
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