Whether the medical system is American or Canadian, there are all sorts of medical procedures whose costs are not currently borne by the state. As is typical these days, there’s never any mention of ways in which free markets could lower these costs. Instead, the implied solution is that the magical entity known as “others” should simply assume all of the burden. In other words, let’s deal with the problems of a mostly Sovietized system by fully Sovietizing the same system. What could possibly go wrong?
A growing number of retirees, like Morton, are grappling with healthcare debt due to medical bills. Medicare, which provides health insurance coverage to more than 66 million people, covers the lion’s share of the cost of medical care, but not all.
On average, a 65-year-old who left the workforce last year may need $165,000 in savings to cover out-of-pocket healthcare expenses throughout retirement.
Trusting your health care to unknown, barely trained, strangers who will spend entire blocks of five minutes assessing you is irrational and suicidal. The average person is a fool, and half the people are worse than that.
That’s very interesting
I have some friends who grew up here in Canada and moved to Texas and their aged and infirm father is a Florida resident who uses up quite a bit of healthcare and he is covered by something in the United States called ‘Medicaid’.
He has had untold thousands upon thousands perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of procedures, operations,tests and examinations and he hasn’t had to pay so much as 10 pennies for everything that he’s received.
Yes. One can have both Medicare(healthcare over 65 in US) and Medicaid(healthcare for low income) at the same time. And when enrolling in Medicare they actively are looking to determine if one qualifies for additional financial help via Medicaid.I know because I went through this process not too long ago.Americans consume a lot of healthcare not that you can tell by health markers.
Florida’s system is the exception. Retirement destination. Endless hospitals and clinics and specialists.
Other states, it’s a two week wait to see a doctor at the county health center who barely speaks english.
Florida
.
I never thought of that.
My friends were telling me that he was getting immediate treatment, testing, procedures medications,hospital stays,etc etc etc.
I live in Idaho. Some doctors will not take Medicare patients because of their aggressive cost containment measures and paperwork. But when I needed a double bypass in mid-August, I was on the table Septrmber 4th. The surgeon had me on the table 6.5 hours. Once they had the hood up, they fixed a few other problems. My out of pocket cost was $1500. The bills sent by surgeon, other doctors, and hospital, were about $250,000.
Oh my word, that’s crazy!!
I have never been to a doctor with poor English. I think I have met ONE who was not a native.
If he’s a taxpayer he did pay some.
Medicaid is, as another commenter observes, a health insurance plan for poor people (in some cases children with serious heslth problems in poor homes). Medicaid is free. Medicare is funded by a combination of a payroll tax collected over decades of our working lives, and a deduction from our Social Security checks, for me about $190 per month. This is not much; my check is about $3700 per month. (The amount is based on your lifetime contributions through the box marked FICA on your paycheck (5.85% when I last received a paycheck).
A bit clever the way they went from her breaking her ankle to having 90K in bills. She should have little to no bills from an ankle break with Medicare. They don’t say over how many years the 90k was accumulated.Parkinson’s is horrendous and I am sure that it may have overwhelmed their resources.
I read the WHOLE article … which to Yahoo’s credit actually provided detailed advice about how to manage your retirement needs, and retirement medical costs at the end of the article. Things that people have been WARNED about as long as I’ve been alive, such as “don’t expect to retire on SS payments alone”.
But yeah … as with ALL the heartstring examples of “good people who are being wiped out by medical costs” that were trotted-out to SELL Obamakkare … there were always crucial facts left out of the stories. Here … we learn the poor husband was out of work, living on SSDI years before retirement … yet they never had to sell their home to pay for medical costs. Implied is that this couple has ZERO retirement savings, hence they’re loading up their credit card. And why would some retiree who OWNS a home (likely for decades) run up credit card debt? They could take a 2nd mortgage, reverse mortgage, or downsize by selling their home to fund their medical costs.
And speaking as someone who has just ended his first year on Medicare, I can tell you my medical expenses are quite minimal. I pay NOTHING for Doctor visits, and Lab work. I pay minimal co-pays for medication and eye care. It’s all easily manageable, despite both the wife and I being on a couple of costly medications. But you can’t be STUPID. You have to enroll on a Medicare Advantage Plan. Our MAP costs – $0.00. There are many options. And you have to sign up for everything in a timely fashion or pay heavy penalties.
The problem with every heartstring anecdote is that these stories are NEVER picked as representative examples of reality … but are EXTREME examples of all that “can” go wrong … but doesn’t “need” to go wrong.
IMHO … far too many people in America are too lazy or ignorant to manage their financial affairs in a complex society of rules and regulations. And those people are usually ignorant of basic financial good practices. Instead of teaching our children how to put a condom on your non-binary Xe-friend … we should be teaching basic practical financial literacy.
And … ya wanna know what would also help solve cases such as this? Trump bringing good-paying, reliable, middle-class, manufacturing jobs to America. Ya wanna PAY for your medical needs? Get a good job, work hard, don’t spend every dime on selfish “fun” … and retire secure.
I just had a $250,000 surgery. After Medicare, I paid $1500. Something is wrong with that story.
Well, we have MAiD, so we don’t have to worry about trivial matters such as bloated health care costs for seniors.
Must be a slow news day.
(of course I was being facetious, but the sad reality is that is how our government intends to solve the growing health care crisis for seniors in our country. What is now optional, will soon become mandatory.)
The health care system in Switzerland seems to be running just fine. It’s not at all like in Canada, nor in the USA, maybe that’s why it works. Yet people in Canada when you mention an overhaul on the Canadian health care system immediately respond with, “you don’t want it like the American system do you” or “well it’s better than in the USA” and speak to me as though I’m personally attacking them.
Healthcare in Canada is controlled by the gov’t and unions, there are no other entities to blame.
Gov’t created it, then ruined it, and every year they say they’ll improve it, make it better, and every year it gets worse.
Immigration into Canada is controlled by the gov’t, there is no other entity to blame.
Justice in Canada is controlled by the gov’t, there is no other entity to blame
… etc
Meanwhile, you work to pay the taxes stolen by gov’t to pay their wages, their pensions, their schooling, healthcare, their mortgages and dinners… while your situation gets worse.
From day one. Universal healthcare was designed to cry broke. Savings and efficiency are for chumps who don’t want a raise and a promotion.. The highest income tax rate in America is 13% in California.. When they pay for healthcare its as a paying customer.. Up here in Canada we pay 3X more income tax and get treated like a inconvenience..
The highest income tax rate in America is 13% in California.
13% ????
Er no. Highest federal income tax rate is 37% according to the IRS.
Coupled with California’s 13.3%, this means highest rate is 50.3%
But, but, but … AOC reminded us that the top marginal tax rate during the Eisenhower Admin. was 90%!!! Just imagine ALL the “free” stuff we could give-away if we still had tax rates like THAT!!??
Just imagine all the people who would decide it’s much easier to live on the dole than slave away for everyone except yourself and your own family. That giant sucking sound would be all the millionaires and billionaires transferring their assets to The Bahamas … like certain Canadians.
Few people pay that marginal tax rate. The marginal tax rate is the percentage of the last few dollars you earn. I frequently have $200,000 income (I am retired) and seldom pay even $15,000 in income tax.
Congrats on a very NICE retirement income. We survive on far less than that, but when I sell the home (my primary retirement funding) … I’m gonna have a tax problem. And yes, I have some pricey prescriptions … but have paid a total of $186 out of pocket so far this year.
Joe , you are correct, but the story is more complicated. That is the top marginal rate, which is attracted by earnings in excess of about US$750,000. In Canada, you much more quickly climb through the brackets, at CDN$100,000, you are most of the way there. that is $72,000 or so in the US which makes you lower middle class there. Socialist shitholes like Canada have their costs.
Ontario hospitals rob you blind for parking even in out of the way places, US hospitals don’t seem to charge for it at all. It’s a huge annoyance when trying to access “the best healthcare system in the world” lol…
City hospitals usually charge for parking.
Never anywhere that I have been. Perhaps in San Francisco?
The demand for medical care is infinite, especially as we age. The supply of money, labour, and materiel for medical treatment is very definitely finite and given our idiot governments, more likely to shrink than expand.
Sooner or later medicare will blow up completely and we’ll go fully private and let evolution proceed normally – those with a bad mix of sickness, weakness, laziness, stupidity, genes and luck will die. Or maybe we’ll let people die on waiting lists or euthanize (“murder”) the really bad ones.
As usual no politicians, civil servants or rich people will suffer.
Since the pandemic, which also coincides with Joe Biden bringing in 20 million migrants, almost zero of whom were actual doctors or qualified medical professionals of any kind, waits in the US are reaching Canadian proportions.
Unless the waits are measured in years, I’ll wager not close.