Keep going, you're almost there. And don't forget, that under campaign laws using a dedicated 'slush' fund for "just piss off and leave me alone" payments, doesn't violate campaign finance laws - especially when it's your own funds.
Not sure if you really thought your reply through in the first place. Otherwise you'd know that Obama several times didn't report payments out through lawyers and middle-agents for "go away" money.
But hey, what do I know. I can read about the various fines that Obama and his lawyers were hit with for paying fines and then saying 'whoops' and getting a slap on the wrist.
Wow, aggressive and threatening. Please, conquer your own mind and leave the world as it is. Nobody needs you saving it.
If you think that was aggressive and threatening, you don't know much history. That was stating of reality, I mean in your case these days I'd be more worried about China and them back-channel arming Pakistan.
Give you a tip as to why there's fewer clerks per-bed in Canada. Though this varies a bit by province, in Ontario for example, a hospital must run a balanced budget. A surplus is acceptable but it must be reinvested into the hospital. In other words, regulation and requirements of such is what limits the numbers. If that didn't happen, you'd see the same thing as the US. Also keep in mind, that said hospital may be owned by the city, county, or the province itself.
We don't have two-tier care here, everyone gets the same level. Ontario after the last election started opening up private for-profit clinics for cataract surgery for sample though, because a wait time of 2 years 'in the system' was the norm. But that's rare, and the government tries not to let it happen. Now you might ask why, when it can be so beneficial. Well, here's the kicker. Because there's a "set level" of care mandated by law, allowing people to pay for care creates the two-tier system, something that the courts and federal governments of the past have aggressively gone after provinces for.
And in the US they would just let you die in the street. Try and have some perspective.
And in Canada, they let you die in the ambulance because the ER is closed due to healthcare cuts, if you simply didn't rot in a hallway. Try to think a bit further along then the entire line of bullshit you've just posed.
I'd check your sources. My wife has had cancer twice in a much smaller place than Toronto and surgery was the next week. Possibly there is a lot of preparation required for brain cancer.
My sources are the governments own sources, and estimated wait times and resolution times. I've already posted them, let me put it to you this way. Those numbers are "good enough" that under the federal health care act they're one of the reasons why the feds *didn't* step in to manage Ontario's healthcare system when it was implemented all those years ago.
It's much easier to have treatment in a hospital system smaller than Toronto. In Canada, the healthcare system doesn't get any bigger than Toronto. Not even the federal healthcare system which covers all natives, territories, and military personal.
If those payoffs are not a crime them how come Cohen was convicted and went to jail for them?
He didn't. He went to jail for process crimes, then lying over said process crimes. It isn't your fault you don't understand this, US law especially campaign laws are a giant clusterfuck. To put it simply, Obama did the exact same thing as Trump - and used a lawyer to do the exact same thing. He got off with paying a fine for pulling a mea culpa.
In India, we Hindus cherish peace of mind more than money
Well sure explains why they've been fleeing to Canada for the last ~50 years, for the explicit purpose of getting more money. And why we basically have a low-scale ethnic war in Brampton, Ontario between Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims, more so with the current crop of 2nd generation kids who are muslims who think that bashing some Hindu's on a Friday night is the height of fun. Which I'm sure makes plenty of sense, not so much over here. The funny thing is, money(wealth) can create an amazing amount of peace of mind. It can save your life, improve your standard of living, get more people away from hand-to-mouth starvation. My guess is, if Norman Borlaug hadn't decided to fix India's food crisis ~40 years ago, you wouldn't be here. That, is a great example of western wealth and western humanitarianism changing things for the better.
Have your big box dollar stores and mansions given you peace of mind? Have they now? I think not, seeing the aggression that typically spews from the western world.
Well yes. See, if you really want to look at "aggression of the western world" let me paint you a picture. Where we threw off the olde days of religion, then fought each other over trivial territorial issues, got bored of it, then decided that conquering the world had a nice ring to it. The irony of course is that despite your complaints over it, the fundamental impact of that western culture on India was so fundamentally transformative that you basically decided to shatter your society twice as hard with the existing caste system, and then piss up wind on the peons at the bottom daring to try crawling up from it to the point that the 'poorest' were the most likely to GTFO and become wealthy to escape the mess.
Simply, you should be glad that "western society" isn't say as aggressive as even 80 years ago. If it was, the stunt with the nuclear reactor and breaking treaties and in turn going nuke-hot would have led to a hot fast war.
Let me back you up.. two cancers, both treated in the next week. Canada has top cancer treatment. Some cancers are slow moving or not much can be done about them to make them better, those ones wait longer.
And the person who waits 68 days for melanoma treatment is feelin' pretty good by that time too. You bother checking the wait times in Ontario yet? There's a reason why a website exists for tracking treatment, because ~15 years ago it was so bad here that the current state of healthcare was as bad as it is in Alberta now. I agree, it's gotten far better. That doesn't mean I enjoyed waiting 6 months to have the cancer cut out of my hand either, luckily in my case it had only started eating into the bone and other tests showed clear reading. And as the doc said, if they'd removed it 3 months prior we wouldn't have to be considering either chemo or targeted radiation therapy. I went for targeted and get screened every 6mo, and have been technically in remission for ~14 years. But tell that to someone in their 20's, when things are just starting out? That's pretty fucking devastating.
The official wait list times state that people absolutely do wait. The average time for brain cancer is around 50 days in Toronto, that's class 3 and 4(serious and not serious). The wait time for time-critical can still be as long as 21 days(class 2 and 1).
Remember that the IRCA was based on a "gentlemen's agreement" between the the house, senate, dnc, rnc, and president. That if the president agreed to the above, one-time only, that the democrats would agree to more funding for a wall, apprehension of illegals and everything else. If you don't believe me? Fine. Go look up the congressional and senate records, along with the media of the day.
Simply put: Republicans and the President did what they agreed to, and the Democrats then pulled a "but we didn't say so.."
I had a parent (in Canada) diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and started treatment within the week.
"Where" in Canada is the important thing to start with. Because even aggressive cancers can still mean waiting a month. To give you an example, my sister works in a part of Alberta where they have a doctor every 3 days. They fly in, but her community isn't considered remote, not even close to it.
Like it or not, if you were told to wait 4 months to start cancer treatment, it is because you do not need treatment for at least 4 months (eg. low-grade prostate cancer), and there is someone in a much more dire situation who needs those resources more urgently than you. It's just that no one likes being told they're problem isn't urgent and they need to wait - we all want to be first in line. Reminds me of the sign I saw at a hospital emergency center desk, something along the lines of: "You should be very, very happy if you are asked to wait instead of being rushed in to be seen first."
You should tell that to my criminal law professor who was diagnosed with extremely aggressive prostate cancer. He waited 68 days to start treatment, he lives around 18km outside of London, Ontario. London, if you're unfamiliar with it has one of the largest healthcare centers in Canada for child and adult care outside of the GTA. That was only 6 years ago, it's gotten worse since then. Enough so that doctors, specialists, along with the union that represents them, were openly protesting the state of the healthcare system and calling on the federal government to intervene.
Yeah well, think of it this way. In Ontario, in the emergency room. If it's a medical emergency like say with testicular torsion or surgery requiring immediate heart surgery you could still end up waiting a couple of hours or longer, unless they can get another hospital to pick you up and they either fly you there or get an ambulance to do it faster. Give you an example, a friend of mine's wife had a serious heart problem. Went to our local hospital, they could get no surgeons to work on her. They flew her to K/W Regional and had her chest cracked open in 4 hours. She'd already been waiting 5 hours at the local emergency for a surgeon to become available.
No. Rather that because there isn't a crackdown(yet) in Canada on what's effectively our own H1B system(which is called TFW or Temporary Foreign Workers), US companies are happier to move various operations to Canada and abuse the fuck out of it, hiring people who don't actually live in Canada to do the jobs instead, by importing them and already straining the existing welfare/healthcare/housing/rental markets which are fully screwed up.
Guelph and Waterloo are big cities in Canada, and even at that housing prices are passing the $750k range in both places. Mostly because people are fleeing from the GTA and the "well a starter home in the ghetto will only run you $1.2m" type of bullshit. Think of it this way, there is now commuter service to Toronto from London and Woodstock because housing prices are so out-of-wack that people who live ~200+km away pay that price, and some are just making ends meet. But to be honest, if you could buy in at Woodstock for $350k attached, and still keep the job in Toronto that's clearing $140k(where you were barely making ends meet) you're far a head.
That only holds out as long as money is flowing in, and the government can be openly loaned money. But you're paying for it now in deficits, and BC has a serious government debt problem. Not anywhere near as bad as Ontario, which is around Greece levels of gigantic fuckups.
People in the states already have excessive waits. We have death panels also, they are insurance companies that deny coverage.
I suppose that depends on what you define as "excessive waits" you can see Ontario's wait list here. I don't know many people who if they had the option would wait 4mo for cancer treatment to start - that's after seeing a specialist. Especially 4mo is plenty of time where treatable becomes unrepeatable. Yes, we also have death panels here they're called the government. With the passage of "compassionate death" options, they'll even try to force you to kill yourself. There's a few people currently fighting the federal government over this, because even though they're terminal they have no desire to kill themselves.
Plus, don't complain about medication when it's about double or more for the same meds and expensive insurance still has large deductibles and pays only a portion of the cost. It's sad when people have to go to Canada and Mexico for medications and treatments because in many cases paying directly is cheaper than in the states with coverage.
The US has a bigger problem that instead of leveraging their buying power, they piss it into the wind. Ask yourself why at state levels they don't get together and buy? That's what Canada does. And people don't come to Canada for healthcare unless they're so damned poor in the US that they either enter illegally and commit healthcare fraud, or it's one of the extremely rare not-for-profit centers that does treatment. There was a rather big shitshow a few years ago about the private hernia treatment center and the government trying to shut it down. Seriously, you wait for nearly everything. If you're lucky, you might live in a city where you can get same-day CT scans - if you're lucky. Xrays are same day in most cases, but not always. MRI? You're waiting, most people wait 1-3mo.
Need a pain clinic? Good luck. The opioid 'crisis' means that doctors who operated them have said "fuck this shit if we can't listen to patients and prescribe based on experience and what they're telling us. We're quitting." Oh and that's not even starting on some of the really big shit, like telling doctors that they have to operate a practice and do hospital rounds - oh but they're not going to pay you for the hospital rounds. You can do them for free and like it(Wonder why the previous government in Ontario can now fit into a dodge minivan?). My neurologist who's in the GTA(I drive ~180km one-way every 3mo for a checkup, migraines and treatment from when I broke my back in two places), gives an estimate of 18 months for them in her area. My local GP? Ah shit. Well if you're lucky enough to have one, it's around 29 months to a pain clinic. I know people who've been waiting 10 years for a family doctor.
Aren't drug prices subsidised too? In the UK there is a fixed cost per prescription, about Ã10. That is usually a month's worth of drugs. You get medical equipment for free too, they will even come and modify your house to your needs if necessary.
No. Drug prices vary by province, but not by a huge amount. The differences are usually due to distribution costs or pharmacy dispensing costs. Rather instead of subsidizing it, the entire country(all provinces, territories, and federal government) buy for the entire country at a flat rate. The projected costs are based on year-on-year trends for the demand of the drugs required for the amount of users. We don't get our medical equipment free, crutches are $39 at my local hospital if you're wondering.
Most people pay with their supplemental insurance for it, and nobody comes to modify your house. You pay for that, if it's a fundamentally life changing thing like a stroke? You're better off selling your old property and buying something new. You may be covered to have someone help take care of you, but in general your family is the one who's doing all the hard work.
Give you an example from the full rundown, diagnostics, costs, everything. When my grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, the first doctor diagnosing was a ER doctor because she coughed up blood. From there it was 11 days to see her family doctor. 39 days to see her specialist. 40 days to meet with the oncologist, 15 days to start targeted radiation therapy. The doctors and oncologist remarked at the fast turn around time and asked if she knew someone "high up the chain" who might have bumped her name for faster treatment. Most people wait double. She was a head nurse, nursing teacher, and had a bunch of other certifications so maybe someone did, but if they did - we didn't know about it.
For her treatment, we drove 51km one-way. Luckily her residence was "far enough away" that the VON(Victorian Order of Nurses - The VON is a not-for-profit care program, and is mainly funded by donations) which operated a hospice, and took patients to the treatment center would take her on. After that treatment, she was cut loose by the system until her care became so bad that family could no longer take care of her. That was around 9 months of pure hell with degrading health, memory, and various bouts of cancer and drug induced dementia of me taking care of her because both my dad and uncle worked between 40 and 50hrs/week and had no room in their houses, or because it wasn't very good to have a person who couldn't keep their balance walk up or downstairs for a bathroom. Her planning a head, before that she put herself on the list for a nursing home. The average wait time is 4 years, luckily or unluckily someone died and because she was already in the "last 6mo of estimated life" they got her in. She was in there for 3 weeks before she took an even harder turn. The hospital had no room for long term care for the last 6mo. Rather it was the VON again, who had space in a end-of-life hospice care facility. That was the last 27 days of her life.
The state of care for end-of-life is pretty shit. It's shit enough that the government offers "escape" programs for people where a nurse comes in for a couple of days so you can bug the hell out, and try not to have a complete breakdown.
What we pay is based in earnings and hard to calculate as it's rolled up with other social security items, but it's affordable and free for those on lower incomes.
You pay pretty much for everything unless you're old age or on disability here. What is considered "critical care" is mostly covered, but there's plenty of people who go financially broke from the secondary costs of healthcare. And the 'safety net' is really your family.
Yet people have no problem paying it. Something must be working.
People don't have a problem paying it? Strange. I must have missed the last few years when the government banned wintertime electrical disconnection for fear of people freezing to death. Or the numerous charities, food banks, and organizations like the sally ann are being used or broke at not a level seen since 1979-1980. ~10 years ago during the housing crash, food banks were at roughly 1988 levels of use. It was bad, it's gotten worse especially in the last 3 years that wages have stayed flat while the cost of goods have jumped 10-20%
Canada's corporate tax rate is competitive to US companies because you can pay in USD. Which right now slashes 30% off your costs 1CAD=0.71USD right now. But that didn't really help here in Ontario. Now the question is why? Because electricity is expensive, for businesses you're paying around 4x the rate of Michigan or New York. If you were manufacturing the previous government implemented tax rates that were punitive to anything but the service industry, enough so that companies with massive data centers in the 101 Front St.(Toronto) area were considering moves to Montreal, Quebec City and US states.
Healthcare premiums can be all over the place, go hit greenshield.ca if you want. They do look attractive to most Americans, but remember you're blowing 50% of your income on taxes. It can be almost 60% if you live in Toronto or Ottawa. And while you think that your USD to CAD will get a boost? Maybe, but that really depends on where you live. Even at that I don't see many Americans wanting to line up for 2lbs of beef for $7 which is the norm in most of Ontario. Sometimes you can get it for half that on sale.
If you're wondering what 'normal' food costs are? Check Zehrs which is one of the largest chains, their discount chain is nofrills or Independent.
To give a good breakdown, I recommend using the following cities: Toronto and Ottawa(highest cost). Waterloo and Kitchener(medium-to-high costs). London, Windsor, and Kingston(low-to-high costs) Woodstock, Sarnia, Barrie(low cost to medium costs). That'll put you in where 90% of the province of Ontario lives, and roughly 50% of the population of Canada.
Because nothing was ever bad or getting worse under the right wing party? Because the PM personally sets wage policy for fry cooks?
I didn't know that Harper was Trudeau Sr., who implemented wage and price controls. And then experienced massive nationwide wildcat strikes. FYI, provinces are responsible for hourly wages these days, and it was Wynne(Ontario Liberals), who tried to set the wage policy for fry cooks. That was after her brilliant plan to jump the min.wage from 12/hr to 15/hr in 2 years.
Shit, you can blame Trudeau for winter being cold and summer being hot, space being dark and electrons repelling each other by that standard.
I can blame Trudeau's plan to implement a carbon tax, and bankrupting people over it. But what do I know? Because the same architect who did the same in Ontario - which has killed it's carbon tax was G.M. Butts. The same asshole who was Trudeau Jr's bestest buddy in the whole world, until the SNC-Lavalin scandal broke and he left to "spend more time with his family" was the same architect behind the federal Liberals plan.
Doesn't apply to TFW's just a heads up. And if a company can lie it's way through to get a TFW, you can bet your ass that they will. The best way to think of the TFW program is to think H1B's on steroids. Instead of just applying to a particular sector, or job area. A company can hire a TFW for anything, min wage to highly skilled. Out in Alberta during the big oil rush, at least one company laid off of hundreds of skilled trades(welders, mechanics, pipe fitters, etc) and then hired TFW's as replacements. It's happened at big companies like Caterpillar and TD-Canada Trust and Bank of Montreal too.
Canadians have been getting pissed off over this the last few years under Trudeau because it's expanded. A company is more likely to claim that they can't find anyone to work a PT job in a fast food joint and then hire a TFW(temporary foreign worker) to cover it, but it hasn't stopped companies that hire skilled trades from pulling the same stuff, or banks doing the same. The problem is that while the Trudeau government likes to claim "unemployment historic lows!" and all the rest, wages have entered a stagflation phase with the cost of goods going up.
The Trudeau government also doesn't like to point out that the jobs mostly being created are low wage service jobs either. Or that a lot of people are working 2-4 PT jobs just to make ends meet. Pretty easy to figure out why substance abuse, theft and so on is going through the roof isn't it. Even things 5 years ago that were uncommon like entering a dwelling house with a person inside were rare crimes in Canada, simply because the law punishes "entry on a B&E with a person inside" harshly. Now? There are cities where 70% of entries are with a person inside, because robbery is also a motive.
Most Americans would wet their pants to only pay $40/month for health premiums.
BC is an odd province out. If you lived in Alberta, traveling 6hrs to see a specialist or being flown out to a major city is the norm for any type of critical care. In Ontario, traveling 2-5hrs for a specialist is common. $40 sounds great to even those of us in Ontario, especially since most people spend $200-400/per-person in private health insurance to cover drugs alone. That's on top of the money that's already being paid for it via taxes. Figure in Ontario you're blowing around 50% of your income on taxes right out of the gate. And you sure don't see much for it.
But the real question is, how many Americans are willing to wait 2yrs for cataract surgery? Or 4 months to start cancer treatment? Cause those aren't outside a norm in Ontario either.
You're ahead of a lot of people in Canada who pay for private health insurance to cover what isn't covered by universal healthcare up here. So, drugs, dental, vision, hearing, any type of medical equipment and so on. None of that's covered, and to be covered you have to be either a senior or on disability. I know people who pay $200/mo, and only get $700 in drug coverage(70% covered) and glasses every 2-years. In bad years, that $700 doesn't last more than half a year for them.
Good point. Then again modern CPU and GPU's can't predict 5 seconds into the future, the whole error rate, hit, miss and branch prediction is kinda staggering at just how much overcompensation actually happens. The very best is a 'near guess' and then it going down from there. Similar to the ($1/\sqrt{x}$) aka Quake's inverse square root. A near guess, and fast dirty refinements. Even then, unpredictable things happen.
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Keep going, you're almost there. And don't forget, that under campaign laws using a dedicated 'slush' fund for "just piss off and leave me alone" payments, doesn't violate campaign finance laws - especially when it's your own funds.
Not sure if you really thought your reply through in the first place. Otherwise you'd know that Obama several times didn't report payments out through lawyers and middle-agents for "go away" money.
But hey, what do I know. I can read about the various fines that Obama and his lawyers were hit with for paying fines and then saying 'whoops' and getting a slap on the wrist.
Wow, aggressive and threatening. Please, conquer your own mind and leave the world as it is. Nobody needs you saving it.
If you think that was aggressive and threatening, you don't know much history. That was stating of reality, I mean in your case these days I'd be more worried about China and them back-channel arming Pakistan.
Give you a tip as to why there's fewer clerks per-bed in Canada. Though this varies a bit by province, in Ontario for example, a hospital must run a balanced budget. A surplus is acceptable but it must be reinvested into the hospital. In other words, regulation and requirements of such is what limits the numbers. If that didn't happen, you'd see the same thing as the US. Also keep in mind, that said hospital may be owned by the city, county, or the province itself.
We don't have two-tier care here, everyone gets the same level. Ontario after the last election started opening up private for-profit clinics for cataract surgery for sample though, because a wait time of 2 years 'in the system' was the norm. But that's rare, and the government tries not to let it happen. Now you might ask why, when it can be so beneficial. Well, here's the kicker. Because there's a "set level" of care mandated by law, allowing people to pay for care creates the two-tier system, something that the courts and federal governments of the past have aggressively gone after provinces for.
And in the US they would just let you die in the street. Try and have some perspective.
And in Canada, they let you die in the ambulance because the ER is closed due to healthcare cuts, if you simply didn't rot in a hallway. Try to think a bit further along then the entire line of bullshit you've just posed.
I'd check your sources. My wife has had cancer twice in a much smaller place than Toronto and surgery was the next week. Possibly there is a lot of preparation required for brain cancer.
My sources are the governments own sources, and estimated wait times and resolution times. I've already posted them, let me put it to you this way. Those numbers are "good enough" that under the federal health care act they're one of the reasons why the feds *didn't* step in to manage Ontario's healthcare system when it was implemented all those years ago.
It's much easier to have treatment in a hospital system smaller than Toronto. In Canada, the healthcare system doesn't get any bigger than Toronto. Not even the federal healthcare system which covers all natives, territories, and military personal.
If those payoffs are not a crime them how come Cohen was convicted and went to jail for them?
He didn't. He went to jail for process crimes, then lying over said process crimes. It isn't your fault you don't understand this, US law especially campaign laws are a giant clusterfuck. To put it simply, Obama did the exact same thing as Trump - and used a lawyer to do the exact same thing. He got off with paying a fine for pulling a mea culpa.
In India, we Hindus cherish peace of mind more than money
Well sure explains why they've been fleeing to Canada for the last ~50 years, for the explicit purpose of getting more money. And why we basically have a low-scale ethnic war in Brampton, Ontario between Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims, more so with the current crop of 2nd generation kids who are muslims who think that bashing some Hindu's on a Friday night is the height of fun. Which I'm sure makes plenty of sense, not so much over here. The funny thing is, money(wealth) can create an amazing amount of peace of mind. It can save your life, improve your standard of living, get more people away from hand-to-mouth starvation. My guess is, if Norman Borlaug hadn't decided to fix India's food crisis ~40 years ago, you wouldn't be here. That, is a great example of western wealth and western humanitarianism changing things for the better.
Have your big box dollar stores and mansions given you peace of mind? Have they now? I think not, seeing the aggression that typically spews from the western world.
Well yes. See, if you really want to look at "aggression of the western world" let me paint you a picture. Where we threw off the olde days of religion, then fought each other over trivial territorial issues, got bored of it, then decided that conquering the world had a nice ring to it. The irony of course is that despite your complaints over it, the fundamental impact of that western culture on India was so fundamentally transformative that you basically decided to shatter your society twice as hard with the existing caste system, and then piss up wind on the peons at the bottom daring to try crawling up from it to the point that the 'poorest' were the most likely to GTFO and become wealthy to escape the mess.
Simply, you should be glad that "western society" isn't say as aggressive as even 80 years ago. If it was, the stunt with the nuclear reactor and breaking treaties and in turn going nuke-hot would have led to a hot fast war.
Let me back you up.. two cancers, both treated in the next week. Canada has top cancer treatment. Some cancers are slow moving or not much can be done about them to make them better, those ones wait longer.
And the person who waits 68 days for melanoma treatment is feelin' pretty good by that time too. You bother checking the wait times in Ontario yet? There's a reason why a website exists for tracking treatment, because ~15 years ago it was so bad here that the current state of healthcare was as bad as it is in Alberta now. I agree, it's gotten far better. That doesn't mean I enjoyed waiting 6 months to have the cancer cut out of my hand either, luckily in my case it had only started eating into the bone and other tests showed clear reading. And as the doc said, if they'd removed it 3 months prior we wouldn't have to be considering either chemo or targeted radiation therapy. I went for targeted and get screened every 6mo, and have been technically in remission for ~14 years. But tell that to someone in their 20's, when things are just starting out? That's pretty fucking devastating.
The official wait list times state that people absolutely do wait. The average time for brain cancer is around 50 days in Toronto, that's class 3 and 4(serious and not serious). The wait time for time-critical can still be as long as 21 days(class 2 and 1).
Remember that the IRCA was based on a "gentlemen's agreement" between the the house, senate, dnc, rnc, and president. That if the president agreed to the above, one-time only, that the democrats would agree to more funding for a wall, apprehension of illegals and everything else. If you don't believe me? Fine. Go look up the congressional and senate records, along with the media of the day.
Simply put: Republicans and the President did what they agreed to, and the Democrats then pulled a "but we didn't say so.."
I had a parent (in Canada) diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and started treatment within the week.
"Where" in Canada is the important thing to start with. Because even aggressive cancers can still mean waiting a month. To give you an example, my sister works in a part of Alberta where they have a doctor every 3 days. They fly in, but her community isn't considered remote, not even close to it.
Like it or not, if you were told to wait 4 months to start cancer treatment, it is because you do not need treatment for at least 4 months (eg. low-grade prostate cancer), and there is someone in a much more dire situation who needs those resources more urgently than you. It's just that no one likes being told they're problem isn't urgent and they need to wait - we all want to be first in line. Reminds me of the sign I saw at a hospital emergency center desk, something along the lines of: "You should be very, very happy if you are asked to wait instead of being rushed in to be seen first."
You should tell that to my criminal law professor who was diagnosed with extremely aggressive prostate cancer. He waited 68 days to start treatment, he lives around 18km outside of London, Ontario. London, if you're unfamiliar with it has one of the largest healthcare centers in Canada for child and adult care outside of the GTA. That was only 6 years ago, it's gotten worse since then. Enough so that doctors, specialists, along with the union that represents them, were openly protesting the state of the healthcare system and calling on the federal government to intervene.
Yeah well, think of it this way. In Ontario, in the emergency room. If it's a medical emergency like say with testicular torsion or surgery requiring immediate heart surgery you could still end up waiting a couple of hours or longer, unless they can get another hospital to pick you up and they either fly you there or get an ambulance to do it faster. Give you an example, a friend of mine's wife had a serious heart problem. Went to our local hospital, they could get no surgeons to work on her. They flew her to K/W Regional and had her chest cracked open in 4 hours. She'd already been waiting 5 hours at the local emergency for a surgeon to become available.
No. Rather that because there isn't a crackdown(yet) in Canada on what's effectively our own H1B system(which is called TFW or Temporary Foreign Workers), US companies are happier to move various operations to Canada and abuse the fuck out of it, hiring people who don't actually live in Canada to do the jobs instead, by importing them and already straining the existing welfare/healthcare/housing/rental markets which are fully screwed up.
Guelph and Waterloo are big cities in Canada, and even at that housing prices are passing the $750k range in both places. Mostly because people are fleeing from the GTA and the "well a starter home in the ghetto will only run you $1.2m" type of bullshit. Think of it this way, there is now commuter service to Toronto from London and Woodstock because housing prices are so out-of-wack that people who live ~200+km away pay that price, and some are just making ends meet. But to be honest, if you could buy in at Woodstock for $350k attached, and still keep the job in Toronto that's clearing $140k(where you were barely making ends meet) you're far a head.
That only holds out as long as money is flowing in, and the government can be openly loaned money. But you're paying for it now in deficits, and BC has a serious government debt problem. Not anywhere near as bad as Ontario, which is around Greece levels of gigantic fuckups.
People in the states already have excessive waits. We have death panels also, they are insurance companies that deny coverage.
I suppose that depends on what you define as "excessive waits" you can see Ontario's wait list here. I don't know many people who if they had the option would wait 4mo for cancer treatment to start - that's after seeing a specialist. Especially 4mo is plenty of time where treatable becomes unrepeatable. Yes, we also have death panels here they're called the government. With the passage of "compassionate death" options, they'll even try to force you to kill yourself. There's a few people currently fighting the federal government over this, because even though they're terminal they have no desire to kill themselves.
Plus, don't complain about medication when it's about double or more for the same meds and expensive insurance still has large deductibles and pays only a portion of the cost. It's sad when people have to go to Canada and Mexico for medications and treatments because in many cases paying directly is cheaper than in the states with coverage.
The US has a bigger problem that instead of leveraging their buying power, they piss it into the wind. Ask yourself why at state levels they don't get together and buy? That's what Canada does. And people don't come to Canada for healthcare unless they're so damned poor in the US that they either enter illegally and commit healthcare fraud, or it's one of the extremely rare not-for-profit centers that does treatment. There was a rather big shitshow a few years ago about the private hernia treatment center and the government trying to shut it down. Seriously, you wait for nearly everything. If you're lucky, you might live in a city where you can get same-day CT scans - if you're lucky. Xrays are same day in most cases, but not always. MRI? You're waiting, most people wait 1-3mo.
Need a pain clinic? Good luck. The opioid 'crisis' means that doctors who operated them have said "fuck this shit if we can't listen to patients and prescribe based on experience and what they're telling us. We're quitting." Oh and that's not even starting on some of the really big shit, like telling doctors that they have to operate a practice and do hospital rounds - oh but they're not going to pay you for the hospital rounds. You can do them for free and like it(Wonder why the previous government in Ontario can now fit into a dodge minivan?). My neurologist who's in the GTA(I drive ~180km one-way every 3mo for a checkup, migraines and treatment from when I broke my back in two places), gives an estimate of 18 months for them in her area. My local GP? Ah shit. Well if you're lucky enough to have one, it's around 29 months to a pain clinic. I know people who've been waiting 10 years for a family doctor.
Aren't drug prices subsidised too? In the UK there is a fixed cost per prescription, about Ã10. That is usually a month's worth of drugs. You get medical equipment for free too, they will even come and modify your house to your needs if necessary.
No. Drug prices vary by province, but not by a huge amount. The differences are usually due to distribution costs or pharmacy dispensing costs. Rather instead of subsidizing it, the entire country(all provinces, territories, and federal government) buy for the entire country at a flat rate. The projected costs are based on year-on-year trends for the demand of the drugs required for the amount of users. We don't get our medical equipment free, crutches are $39 at my local hospital if you're wondering.
Most people pay with their supplemental insurance for it, and nobody comes to modify your house. You pay for that, if it's a fundamentally life changing thing like a stroke? You're better off selling your old property and buying something new. You may be covered to have someone help take care of you, but in general your family is the one who's doing all the hard work.
Give you an example from the full rundown, diagnostics, costs, everything. When my grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, the first doctor diagnosing was a ER doctor because she coughed up blood. From there it was 11 days to see her family doctor. 39 days to see her specialist. 40 days to meet with the oncologist, 15 days to start targeted radiation therapy. The doctors and oncologist remarked at the fast turn around time and asked if she knew someone "high up the chain" who might have bumped her name for faster treatment. Most people wait double. She was a head nurse, nursing teacher, and had a bunch of other certifications so maybe someone did, but if they did - we didn't know about it.
For her treatment, we drove 51km one-way. Luckily her residence was "far enough away" that the VON(Victorian Order of Nurses - The VON is a not-for-profit care program, and is mainly funded by donations) which operated a hospice, and took patients to the treatment center would take her on. After that treatment, she was cut loose by the system until her care became so bad that family could no longer take care of her. That was around 9 months of pure hell with degrading health, memory, and various bouts of cancer and drug induced dementia of me taking care of her because both my dad and uncle worked between 40 and 50hrs/week and had no room in their houses, or because it wasn't very good to have a person who couldn't keep their balance walk up or downstairs for a bathroom. Her planning a head, before that she put herself on the list for a nursing home. The average wait time is 4 years, luckily or unluckily someone died and because she was already in the "last 6mo of estimated life" they got her in. She was in there for 3 weeks before she took an even harder turn. The hospital had no room for long term care for the last 6mo. Rather it was the VON again, who had space in a end-of-life hospice care facility. That was the last 27 days of her life.
The state of care for end-of-life is pretty shit. It's shit enough that the government offers "escape" programs for people where a nurse comes in for a couple of days so you can bug the hell out, and try not to have a complete breakdown.
What we pay is based in earnings and hard to calculate as it's rolled up with other social security items, but it's affordable and free for those on lower incomes.
You pay pretty much for everything unless you're old age or on disability here. What is considered "critical care" is mostly covered, but there's plenty of people who go financially broke from the secondary costs of healthcare. And the 'safety net' is really your family.
Yet people have no problem paying it. Something must be working.
People don't have a problem paying it? Strange. I must have missed the last few years when the government banned wintertime electrical disconnection for fear of people freezing to death. Or the numerous charities, food banks, and organizations like the sally ann are being used or broke at not a level seen since 1979-1980. ~10 years ago during the housing crash, food banks were at roughly 1988 levels of use. It was bad, it's gotten worse especially in the last 3 years that wages have stayed flat while the cost of goods have jumped 10-20%
Canada's corporate tax rate is competitive to US companies because you can pay in USD. Which right now slashes 30% off your costs 1CAD=0.71USD right now. But that didn't really help here in Ontario. Now the question is why? Because electricity is expensive, for businesses you're paying around 4x the rate of Michigan or New York. If you were manufacturing the previous government implemented tax rates that were punitive to anything but the service industry, enough so that companies with massive data centers in the 101 Front St.(Toronto) area were considering moves to Montreal, Quebec City and US states.
Healthcare premiums can be all over the place, go hit greenshield.ca if you want. They do look attractive to most Americans, but remember you're blowing 50% of your income on taxes. It can be almost 60% if you live in Toronto or Ottawa. And while you think that your USD to CAD will get a boost? Maybe, but that really depends on where you live. Even at that I don't see many Americans wanting to line up for 2lbs of beef for $7 which is the norm in most of Ontario. Sometimes you can get it for half that on sale.
If you're wondering what 'normal' food costs are? Check Zehrs which is one of the largest chains, their discount chain is nofrills or Independent.
To give a good breakdown, I recommend using the following cities: Toronto and Ottawa(highest cost). Waterloo and Kitchener(medium-to-high costs). London, Windsor, and Kingston(low-to-high costs) Woodstock, Sarnia, Barrie(low cost to medium costs). That'll put you in where 90% of the province of Ontario lives, and roughly 50% of the population of Canada.
Because nothing was ever bad or getting worse under the right wing party? Because the PM personally sets wage policy for fry cooks?
I didn't know that Harper was Trudeau Sr., who implemented wage and price controls. And then experienced massive nationwide wildcat strikes. FYI, provinces are responsible for hourly wages these days, and it was Wynne(Ontario Liberals), who tried to set the wage policy for fry cooks. That was after her brilliant plan to jump the min.wage from 12/hr to 15/hr in 2 years.
Shit, you can blame Trudeau for winter being cold and summer being hot, space being dark and electrons repelling each other by that standard.
I can blame Trudeau's plan to implement a carbon tax, and bankrupting people over it. But what do I know? Because the same architect who did the same in Ontario - which has killed it's carbon tax was G.M. Butts. The same asshole who was Trudeau Jr's bestest buddy in the whole world, until the SNC-Lavalin scandal broke and he left to "spend more time with his family" was the same architect behind the federal Liberals plan.
Doesn't apply to TFW's just a heads up. And if a company can lie it's way through to get a TFW, you can bet your ass that they will. The best way to think of the TFW program is to think H1B's on steroids. Instead of just applying to a particular sector, or job area. A company can hire a TFW for anything, min wage to highly skilled. Out in Alberta during the big oil rush, at least one company laid off of hundreds of skilled trades(welders, mechanics, pipe fitters, etc) and then hired TFW's as replacements. It's happened at big companies like Caterpillar and TD-Canada Trust and Bank of Montreal too.
Canadians have been getting pissed off over this the last few years under Trudeau because it's expanded. A company is more likely to claim that they can't find anyone to work a PT job in a fast food joint and then hire a TFW(temporary foreign worker) to cover it, but it hasn't stopped companies that hire skilled trades from pulling the same stuff, or banks doing the same. The problem is that while the Trudeau government likes to claim "unemployment historic lows!" and all the rest, wages have entered a stagflation phase with the cost of goods going up.
The Trudeau government also doesn't like to point out that the jobs mostly being created are low wage service jobs either. Or that a lot of people are working 2-4 PT jobs just to make ends meet. Pretty easy to figure out why substance abuse, theft and so on is going through the roof isn't it. Even things 5 years ago that were uncommon like entering a dwelling house with a person inside were rare crimes in Canada, simply because the law punishes "entry on a B&E with a person inside" harshly. Now? There are cities where 70% of entries are with a person inside, because robbery is also a motive.
Most Americans would wet their pants to only pay $40/month for health premiums.
BC is an odd province out. If you lived in Alberta, traveling 6hrs to see a specialist or being flown out to a major city is the norm for any type of critical care. In Ontario, traveling 2-5hrs for a specialist is common. $40 sounds great to even those of us in Ontario, especially since most people spend $200-400/per-person in private health insurance to cover drugs alone. That's on top of the money that's already being paid for it via taxes. Figure in Ontario you're blowing around 50% of your income on taxes right out of the gate. And you sure don't see much for it.
But the real question is, how many Americans are willing to wait 2yrs for cataract surgery? Or 4 months to start cancer treatment? Cause those aren't outside a norm in Ontario either.
You're ahead of a lot of people in Canada who pay for private health insurance to cover what isn't covered by universal healthcare up here. So, drugs, dental, vision, hearing, any type of medical equipment and so on. None of that's covered, and to be covered you have to be either a senior or on disability. I know people who pay $200/mo, and only get $700 in drug coverage(70% covered) and glasses every 2-years. In bad years, that $700 doesn't last more than half a year for them.
Good point. Then again modern CPU and GPU's can't predict 5 seconds into the future, the whole error rate, hit, miss and branch prediction is kinda staggering at just how much overcompensation actually happens. The very best is a 'near guess' and then it going down from there. Similar to the ($1/\sqrt{x}$) aka Quake's inverse square root. A near guess, and fast dirty refinements. Even then, unpredictable things happen.