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EVERYONE should have health insurance in the US
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That's nonsense. The US should be like every other industrialize nation in the world.
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That's nonsense.
I don't want to wait 6 months for a /MRI/CT-scan or 12+ months for 'emergency' brain surgery.
If you're too cheap to buy insurance, it's your neck.
If you have no $, there's Medicaid/care. Medicaid in NYC, for example, offers far MORE comprehensive coverage than any private policy you could ever buy, even for $40-50k a year for 1 person.
'A typical Canadian seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment had to wait 18.3 weeks in 2007, an all-time high, according to new research published Monday by independent research organization the Fraser Institute....
Saskatchewan (27.2 weeks), New Brunswick (25.2 weeks) and Nova Scotia (24.8 weeks) recorded the longest waits in Canada...Patients waited longest between a GP referral and orthopedic surgery (38.1 weeks), plastic surgery (34.8 weeks) and neurosurgery (27.2 weeks)....The median wait for an MRI... Newfoundland and Labrador residents waited longest (20.0 weeks). '
You fall in the US and injure your skull/brain, go to emergency room, you get your MRI or CT-scan that day, not 5 months later, insured or not, as it is a Federal crime to deny emergency care.
UK and Canada have well-documented literature, studies, and commissions that show the disgraceful nature of their health systems. Millions of people die off while waiting so that the gov't never has to pay for their care. In France, they just leave the old people in no-HVAC homes all summer and tens of thousands die during heat waves.
Some provinces in Canada report 18-MONTH waiting time for brain surgery for some patients:
http://www.sasksurgery.ca/specialty/...gery.htm#table
'Holmes began losing her vision in March 2005, she told a press conference at Queen's Park yesterday. An MRI in May 2005 revealed a tumour in her brain. Her family doctor couldn't expedite appointments booked with specialists for July 19 and Sept. 19, 2005. As the tumour pressed on her optic nerves, her vision deteriorated. Afraid to wait any longer, she went to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Within a week she met three specialists and was told she had a fluid-filled sac growing near her pituitary gland at the base of her brain. They urged her to have it taken out immediately. She went home with the hopes of quickly removing what is known as a Rathke's cleft cyst.
Unable to get surgery fast, she returned to Arizona and had the mass removed on Aug. 1, 2005. Her vision was restored in 10 days. The Holmes family is now in debt $95,000 because of medical costs.
...A computed tomography or CT scan showed a large wedge-shaped brain tumour. He was discharged from hospital four days later with a diagnosis of stroke and a prescription for anti-seizure medication.
Worried the tumour might be cancerous, McCreith and his family wanted an
MRI. He was given an appointment date four months later. McCreith went to the U.S. and paid $494.67 (U.S.) for an MRI. Armed with the scan, he saw his Ontario family doctor, who referred McCreith to a neurologist. He was examined on Feb. 8, 2006. He was referred to a
neurosurgeon but would have to wait three months.
Unhappy with this, he returned to Buffalo. In early March, during a biopsy, the tumour was found to be malignant and surgically removed.'