Finally - Sanity re: Healthcare funding!
Dear Torstar Editors,
Enroute to making his main point on types of maladies that our healthcare system does not cover in his Sat July 29/06 piece "Any national drug plan must cover chronic illnesses", author Brian Ferguson uncovers the "key" to understanding our MIS-understanding of healthcare funding (and Crown government in Canada, but that's another story).
Mr Ferguson writes "Our national health insurance system encourages us to act as if someone else — the government — is paying for our care, rather than acknowledging that we are paying for it and that the government is simply managing the funds."
Precisely!
To appreciate his observation, all anyone needs do is total all the Personal Income Taxes (provincial/territorial & federal) paid each year and compare that number to the amount paid in funding 'public' healthcare - darn near the same amount!
All our Personal Income Taxes go to pay for our healthcare funding.
Assuming that point is observed and accepted, the open-your-eyes suggestions of Mr Ferguson for our consideration of his ideas on drug plans "We need a form of lifetime drug insurance, a mandatory program that we all pay into each year ... that effectively securitizes insurance. Think of it as making annual payments for a security that will pay off in the form of an annuity , ... where the annuity's annual payments will cover the annual cost of drugs. Or think of it as buying into a guaranteed, renewable insurance policy, where you are insuring against a lifetime risk, at an actuarially appropriate premium, but spreading your payments out over your entire life, overpaying in your healthy years to fund payouts should you develop a chronic illness in later years. But above all, think of it as a mutual insurance pool of which we're all members." can be applied to overall healthcare.
He continues "Whatever the final details of a national pharmacare plan, it must be at arm's length from government and must be actuarially sound, on a lifetime basis. We have to see it as a mutual insurance pool into which we all pay and from which we might or might not have to draw."
We must realize that PIT = Healthcare.
We must Get healthcare funding OFF the budget (a la CPP) and create a 'fund' that is overtly dedicated to it's purpose, rather than the split-jurisdictional, hide-the-truth and blame-the-other-guy current system.
Enroute to making his main point on types of maladies that our healthcare system does not cover in his Sat July 29/06 piece "Any national drug plan must cover chronic illnesses", author Brian Ferguson uncovers the "key" to understanding our MIS-understanding of healthcare funding (and Crown government in Canada, but that's another story).
Mr Ferguson writes "Our national health insurance system encourages us to act as if someone else — the government — is paying for our care, rather than acknowledging that we are paying for it and that the government is simply managing the funds."
Precisely!
To appreciate his observation, all anyone needs do is total all the Personal Income Taxes (provincial/territorial & federal) paid each year and compare that number to the amount paid in funding 'public' healthcare - darn near the same amount!
All our Personal Income Taxes go to pay for our healthcare funding.
Assuming that point is observed and accepted, the open-your-eyes suggestions of Mr Ferguson for our consideration of his ideas on drug plans "We need a form of lifetime drug insurance, a mandatory program that we all pay into each year ... that effectively securitizes insurance. Think of it as making annual payments for a security that will pay off in the form of an annuity , ... where the annuity's annual payments will cover the annual cost of drugs. Or think of it as buying into a guaranteed, renewable insurance policy, where you are insuring against a lifetime risk, at an actuarially appropriate premium, but spreading your payments out over your entire life, overpaying in your healthy years to fund payouts should you develop a chronic illness in later years. But above all, think of it as a mutual insurance pool of which we're all members." can be applied to overall healthcare.
He continues "Whatever the final details of a national pharmacare plan, it must be at arm's length from government and must be actuarially sound, on a lifetime basis. We have to see it as a mutual insurance pool into which we all pay and from which we might or might not have to draw."
We must realize that PIT = Healthcare.
We must Get healthcare funding OFF the budget (a la CPP) and create a 'fund' that is overtly dedicated to it's purpose, rather than the split-jurisdictional, hide-the-truth and blame-the-other-guy current system.
posted by Walk a Kb or Two in my cassins | 8:09 am
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