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If America adopted a single payer system how would we avoid this?
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Some of the problems:
— Doctors spend 20 hours a week — about 40 per cent of their total work week — on paperwork like filling out forms, chasing down lab results and making phone calls on behalf of patients. That load is hardest on family physicians, Willett said. And it's increased recently as the Ontario government requires physicians to keep track of wait times for procedures such as hip replacements.
— Doctors feel stressed when they can't get proper treatment for their patients because of a lack of medical backup, hospital beds, access to specialists or diagnostic procedures.
If America adopted a single payer system how would we avoid this?
In America we have this mainly due to different insurance companies paying different rates, denying treatments, etc.
I'm not sure how a single payer system would necessarily solve this but if we had fewer insurance companies, it would certainly help.
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The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 45.7 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered. This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.
Patients also feel stressed when they don't have the money to pay for their prescriptions and have to choose food vs. prescriptions.
Patients feel stressed when their insurance companies deny them life-saving treatments.
Patients feel stressed when they lose their job and a new insurance company won't cover them because of a "pre-existing condition."
I think a single payer health care system would help eliminate many of these patients' fears.
If America adopted a single payer system how would we avoid this?
1st you need to understand, that each province has their own system, own rules and own procedures. The doctors in Ontario need to fill out those forms (about wait times) to improve the system. While one procedure may have a long wait time in Ontario, in BC there could be no wait time.
We currently also have a shortage of doctors and nurses too. Hospitals have been cutting staff for years (these large health systems are profit driven, and have shareholders to look after), and many doctor's have been forced out due to high malpratice insurance costs.
Learn about the systems, there can be wait times (for non-critical procedures), but most are happy with them, in just about every country that has a form of Universal Health Care.
There is a tremendous shortage of doctors in Canada. You know where they go to start a practice? To the US.
Does the Canadian gov't control how much their doctors can make to keep costs down? They do this in countries like Japan and Germany. Their doctors do feel under payed in those two countries.
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