I think the time has come when people receiving health care treatment should be billed directly for their care. Before they leave a hospital or doctor’s office, they should see what their treatment cost, whether for their heart attack, broken leg or annual medical examination.
Most people don’t have a clue about the cost of their medical care. The consequences of that ignorance could be disastrous.
Well before I was in my teens, and before the dawn of medicare, I needed emergency surgery. I received it and returned home after a week to subsequently make a full recovery.
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Sometime later, the surgeon who had cared for me came to our house, to see my father.
A while after that, I went to the basement recreation room to play with my train set. It was on a large piece of plywood and had sturdy legs. It had a station, multiple tracks, even a switching yard where trains could be assembled. But my train set was gone. I was baffled, but not terribly disturbed. I was moving on from the train set.
Years later, I understood the connection between the doctor’s visit and my missing train set. As an elementary school child, I helped to pay for my surgery with my trains.
Many Canadians have suffered far worse. They have lost their homes, their businesses or their farms to pay for their medical care.
Those kinds of losses spawned the development of medicare in Canada.
In the United States, without comprehensive, universal medicare, the inability to pay medical bills is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, even for those who have some health care insurance.
Medicare in Canada is not a single plan. It is a complicated series of arrangements among the federal, provincial and territorial governments. Ottawa and the provinces both have responsibilities for health care in our constitution.
The agreements are to be renegotiated over the next three years. Already Conservative MP Maxime Bernier has been suggesting transfer payments for Ottawa might be or are illegal. It’s a message from prime minister Harper to expect tough negotiating.
Federal-provincial transfer payments help keep the costs of medicare relatively equal from province to province. Without them, provinces will have to increase taxes and reduce care.
The alternative is a two-tiered system, one for the rich, one for the rest of us. That has been tried elsewhere and there are always problems.
That’s why it is important for people to know the costs of their health care by getting their bills. Those bills would show the portion medicare has covered, leaving the patient with little or nothing to pay.
Without that knowledge, people could miss the significance of the health care negotiations, which could lead to the loss of their homes, businesses and train sets.
Rob Brown is an ethics student in Saskatoon.
