A comparison of US and Canadian healthcare, Using babies! Options

[mipadi]

United States

• Wife with previa placenta, c-section, 9 days hospital - $50k+
• Son 3 weeks immature, 3 weeks in NICU - $140K+

Welcome to American health care. I do have insurance so with that it will be about $20K out of pocket for me. And most importantly my son is now 5 weeks old and thriving.

Canada

I'm a Canadian in Canada, father of two. I created an account specifically after reading the above comment. This isn't a horror story, or even a story of near-disaster, just what happened, but I couldn't help but notice a contrast.

In the last weeks of my wife's first pregnancy, she began experiencing some stomach pain. We went to the hospital, she was checked out with a bevy of tests, discharged, and sent home when she appeared to be doing better. Gas, we all thought. After more pain a few days later, and some discussion with the nurse over the phone, we agreed that this needed to be checked again. My wife was diagnosed with an unusual affliction that can affect pregnant women, and that it was best treated with the baby removed.

They tried to induce labour (to no effect), she was given an epidural, and eventually it was decided that this was best handled with a cesarean. The deed done, all was well. Mom and child #1 stayed in the hospital for a few days, receiving checkups and the assorted 200-point-inspections that newborns seem to need. I brought them home, life was good. A nurse came to our home within a couple of weeks to see if we needed anything. At some point my wife went in to a nursing clinic at the hospital to get help with breastfeeding.

Pregnancy #2 came along a couple of years later. As a consequence of history, there were a couple of extra appointments with the obstetrician, an extra ultrasound (I think)...and about three weeks before the due date, my wife started getting pains again. The ob's general take was "let's not mess around - let's just go with the cesarean...how 'bout this weekend?" Another surgery, another stay of a few days.

I paid for parking. I paid to get some photos of the ultrasound in a cutesy envelope, and I paid something like $10 or $15 so my wife would have a phone in the hospital room. I never saw a bill. I don't know how much all this cost. I'd never think this is all that remarkable except that I keep hearing that it is.

I don't really know what things are like in the U.S. I hear horror stories, of course, but I've learned not to trust what you're told about a foreign health care system. I don't know what it's like in the UK or France since I've never lived there.

As for what goes on in Canada...I don't suppose it comes as a surprise to most of the crowd on this particular board to be told that you are being lied to. Horribly, horribly lied to. As the debate rages on in your country, my wife and I are frequently exposed to the things you're being told about the system in my country. She laughs out loud, and my stomach turns.

This isn't a polemic. I don't know that you can really walk away with more than "I heard from some guy that it's not so bad." You folks should do what's best for you and your country, but you deserve good information and a good debate to make your choice.

[queen]

i don't think one can place value on a job purely on its physical labor. one can arguably say that CEOs work just as hard as any "laborer". the other side of that argument is that anyone can do blue collar work, whereas one would (generally) need to input time and money into education for a white collar job. this is especially true during these times, when anything less than a doctorate/masters can't even land people the jobs they used to get a decade ago.

i agree with kryo that CEOs are more valuable to the economy than a single laborer. you're quick to forget that if one person feels he isn't getting paid what he deserves, there's always someone else who's willing to do the same job for less. the person with capital is more important; the single laborer just doesn't have that much of an impact.

and if we distributed america's wealth so that everyone's a millionaire, i'd be putoff honestly. i, like so many other greedy americans, want a bigger house than my neighbors; i want a better car than they have, and i want to be able to buy more useless shit than they do. if i were a doctor, i wouldn't want the same wage as someone who didn't go through med school. if i were a top firm lawyer, i'd be annoyed if my secretary had the same size apartment i have. if i were a CEO, i would expect to have more cars than my employees. i don't think it's fair to establish what's "more than one needs". if a guy can afford 12 cars, he deserves to have them. if we start judging what people should and shouldn't have, what's stopping us from saying we shouldn't have tv, computers, or anything that's not necessary for human existance?