uh
national health insurance i think is a problem
in as much as the quality of health care that people will receive
right
yeah because uh the articles that i've read regarding national health service in Canada and England has indicated that uh what
stay stay in line for uh four hours to get an aspirin from a doctor
right yeah i'm i'm sort of mixed on this i think that the the answer may lie in uh not in so much a uh
national
kind of medical thing that like like England has but more of a um national insurance uh sort of clearinghouse or whatever i think that uh
too many the problem with with right now is that we've got too many different health insurances that people have to go through and and i think that i think you you mentioned Canada i think that they have a system where uh
they the government
deals with the with i mean you you go to whoever you want but file through one one's particular uh setup and that way
um i see
they they are able to reduce prices because they've you know it's it's all one one centralized thing
yeah
like i think that uh again having gone through a period when i was out of work and had to buy health insurance on my own if you don't have a company supporting you
in the uh picking up the major portion of your health insurance the cost is
um-hum
almost prohibitive
right uh i i was listening uh on the radio the other day and they were talking
something something something like this i think they were talking about the fact that um the money that could be saved
um in administrative costs and so forth nationwide by consolidating into sort of a national insurance provider um could uh could
they could make they could it i i provide health insurance to to people who couldn't afford it just by the money they would save
yeah uh we're currently where i'm working now under Blue Cross
i don't know what the total cost of the program is
but for dependent coverage i'm paying a hundred and
seventy dollars a a month or something like that so i assume that probably the total coverage cost is probably three fifty to four hundred they're probably picking up about half of it and that's a pretty good policy
right
right
but if you had something like one of these uh
health maintenance programs or one of whatever the type name is HMO uh where the
yeah HMO
uh where you go to the doctor and it only costs you ten dollars and the insurance picks up the rest if you tried to buy something like that i'm probable it would probably be five or six hundred dollars a month
yeah is they're they're fairly expensive i i um
for just the cost of something
i had was on an HMO up until last year and uh through through work and it was
yeah
i forget how much i paid a month but it was much you know is at least twice if not more expensive than the regular health care
yeah
and uh the reason i i quite was because of uh not because i didn't like it i i really kind of did
uh the reason i quite was just because the the doctor a a certain doctor that we enjoyed
enjoyed going to was no longer associated with that HMO so we my wife decided she wanted to to stay with that doctor so we went to the to the
yeah
the medical insurance that we have at here at work and uh i uh
yeah
i like the i like the convenience of the HMO in in a certain respect because it uh even though you're once you find the doctor that you like it's not a problem you know a lot of people complain saying well i don't want to uh
be have to be told who i need to go to but you know if you don't have a doctor anyway normally it doesn't really make much difference
yeah that's right
because you can you know if if you find someone you really like and then we did find several good doctors and um
like you say it's uh five dollars an office visit and um my wife was in the hospital had our had our daughter and i think her total bill was around three hundred dollars
oh goodness
for everything uh that included uh
you know the doctors the time the hospital everything
delivery room and everything
delivery room and everything include including a private room because there was a little extra that she had to pay but that was that was still included in that price that cost so it's really nice because they
yeah
you know their their attitude is different than than a regular uh insurance uh health insurance uh the
in in a HMO you know they're trying to prevent a problem by by keeping the cost down at the front end
yeah
you know and have you come in you know they they charge five dollars a
yeah
you know pop you're more willing to go in and try to take care of a problem before it grows big
yeah
as to a company's benefit to have a program like that because it keeps their employees healthy and on the job
yeah
because they don't have to worry about going in and and paying
uh seventy five dollars to have the doctor look at you for ten minutes
right
yeah i i uh i i really liked it we both my wife and i both did you you don't have to worry about filling out forms uh you know for reimbursement and all or you know getting paid eight percent of of whatever you just pay the
the five dollars right then and then you're done with it
yeah
but here again the the doctor's practices in hospitals have gone become fairly sizeable businesses under themselves now uh you take a hospital uh the physical plant itself you have to pay your share of the operating of that
um-hum
eight story building uh when the rooms are empty so they spread the costs out over uh all the patient costs and uh that's how you come up with aspirin that costs four dollars apiece and things like that
right
right
the horror stories that you hear about people going into the hospital for a week and uh it being a four thousand dollar bill
well they and then again they're also they're taking up the cost of people who can't pay you know they they get a lot of uh
right
a lot of uh people who are just just have to be there and can't afford it and so they they know they're not going to get paid you know get money from them so they
yeah yeah
will have to absorb it somewhere else
yeah my daughter and son-in-law had a baby here about uh what he he'll be three in August and uh their insurance plan that they're under
um-hum
encourages you to shorten your stay in the hospital
right
and like she went in she had the baby and she was out in two days time
right
and it was treated almost like it was an outpatient visit to the hospital the deductibles didn't apply
right
rig ht
and so that's one way one way the insurance companies are trying to hold costs down is by uh okay if you'll shorten your stay then we will uh waive the deductible
right our our insurance is uh is doing something similar where they're also going to more
