This article is rather timely considering I am here in Canada this week visiting my youngest sister. I live on Long Island along with the rest of my family but my Sister married a Canadian back in 1992 and has lived here ever since. She brings up the topic of health care all the time. For her, she would never move back to the United States because of the high cost and inaccessibility of health care. Granted she has had problems find a primary care physician but she likes the fact that in an emergency the last thing you have to worry about is being covered.
I myself will be losing my current job by the end of the year and the biggest fear is the loss of medical insurance. My own physician now charges $200 for a simple office visit (no tests or anything other than just saying “hi”). My current Health Savings Account plan cuts that to about $65 which I have to pay but without any insurance that would be the full $200. Now the insurance companies have only one primary responsibility; to increase profits and return value to the shareholders. As such, I see private medical insurance going nowhere but higher in cost. Some kind of quasi-public/private system is going to have to be developed for the United States or everyone is going to wind up being covered by default by the taxpayer.
