Reply #70: Hi, there! [View All]

[NanceGreggs]

When I first moved up here (in '74), people here didn't really grasp the difference between their healthcare program and how it operated in the States. At that time, we actually paid into OHIP as a separate bill: $100 for family coverage, and $80 for single coverage, if memory serves.

So my Canadian friends just assumed that programs like Blue Cross were the same; you paid a hundred bucks once a year, and got the same coverage Canadians got through their provincial plans.

However, over the years, Canadians have been more than educated about the US healthcare disaster re being insured or not. Many of my friends have had personal experience with being injured or becoming ill while traveling in the States, or they have relatives who live in Florida during the winters who have had disastrous experiences.

As a result, I believe the introduction of a private health insurance system here would not be a hard sell, but rather an impossible sell. With all of the horror stories coming out of the US, and movies like Sicko, I don't think any amount of PR or spin by insurance companies can come close to convincing Canadians that private insurance is the better alternative.

There may have been a time when that was possible, but there's been too much filthy water flowing under that bridge for a while now.

The only people here who are interested in "private health care" are those like Mr. McCreith, who think that if they pay through the nose for something, they will get the bigger bang for their buck -- too dumb to realize that the ONLY bang-for-the-buck is on the insurance company's side, especially via the profits they make by denying coverage they deem expensive enough to make a dent in the bottom line.