When a new graduate or when a doctor wants to move to and ,say, work in Vancouver, he/she has to get a billing number from the province. The province had routinely been denying those numbers in places where they deem there is an oversupply of doctors. You can get a billing number without difficulty if you want to go and work as a doctor in the Northern parts of any province, where it is extremely cold, underpopulated and underserviced, but you will have a hard time if you want to work in your profession in Vancouver,Toronto, Montreal and so on. Physicians in Canada may be the only group that have no choice as to where they want to work and raise a family.
Doctors are seeing fewer patients because of imposed billing limit
Marginal Revolution: French health care
In Critical Condition: Health Care In America Canada's Way What a universal health care system delivers, good and bad
Under the Radar: Stealth Development of Two-Tier Healthcare in Canada
When Doctors Opt Out - WSJ.com
FCPP Publications :: Canada’s Doctor Shortage
Where Have All the Doctors Gone? By Dr. Peter W. Kujtan - A Research Guide
The Doctor is Out: Physician Participation in the Rationed Access Day Work Stoppage in British Columbia, 1998/99 :: Vol. 1 No. 1 2002 :: Longwoods Review :: Longwoods Publishing
I just randomly pull up some articles. The first and the last were addressing the annual billing limits the government imposed ( can you say Pay Czar, the latest scheme the US government is thinking of ?) Reactions from physicians included rotating strikes in British Columbia, and doctors closing the office and taking long vacations. Another article talks about the time a doctor spent in filling out government forms for billing,(they took more time than seeing a patient) and at the end of day he got $C 20 for the patient's visit. From that amount he had to pay office rent, staff, supply, all the support services and Tax.
The average salary of a French Physician in 2003 is $50,000 as noted in one of those articles. It alluded to the tainted outcome comparison between nations taht people touted. If you want to have doctors who operate on your eyes or brain , who have to work long hours, spent years in training, to make the same or less money than a US postal or auto worker, by all means. You might still get the best and brightest to go into the profession, and then again you may not.
When I say the malpractice risk is the same, I mean that just because you saw a patient and the government pays you only 33c instead of a dollar because you are over the billing limits, the malpractice risk did not decrease by a corresponding 2/3. I was not comparing the malpractice insurance rate between Canada and the US.
American has the fantasy that the Canadian system is the panacea. That may be so from afar. You may not see all the worms in the system
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So you think an average combined rate of 45% for federal and top provincial tax is fine. That is half a person's income he tolled for. On top of that you have the 13% GST and PST, used to be 13$ in Quebec. That GST and PST applies to home purchase and other large items. ( I was struck by having to pay the 13% GST and PST when I bought stamps to mail postcards to friends when I was on vacation in Montreal.) Before 2000, the top federal rate of 29% kicked in at $ 60000 and it was only recently that the top rate applies to income over $100000. There is no mortgage deduction in Canada. At the end of the day. you still pay for the "free" Canadian health care if you are a Canadian.
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I do not know where your rosy number of 2 billion dollars in Canadian government deficit came from ( you said last year). For 2008 it is $50 billion and it was a record. Health care cost accounted for 40% of the federal budget.
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Federal deficit headed toward record territory
France 24 | Canada on course for record budget deficit | France 24
I am too lazy to research and link the article now. What it said was: the national debt of the US is 1x the GDP. ( I do not know whether the calculation takes into account the current spending rate), but the national debt of the European nations like France and Germany we so admire is 1.5x the GDP. They do not have a large defense budget, so most of the deficits stemmed from social spending. That ratio of debt to GDP is even higher in smaller economies like Italy and Greece.
P.S. I think I 'll will stop kicking around this discussion now, before the moderator cut us off. This is getting to be something that should be posted in the Political Discussion section