I know of over 30 current cancer cases of people close to us at church and their kids who live in various parts of BC and their experience is very different from what you describe. The system is completely understaffed and underfunded and the training and skill level is way lower from our experience than what we have experienced before as expats in certain other countries. Here my impression is that many become nurse practitioners or doctors not because of a calling and passion to help but to make a quick buck (which is ironic as Canada, at least under the MSP system in BC, is probably underpaying its medical professionals more than any other advanced economy).
The system is ineffective, inefficient, wasteful and mismanaged. Society built completely on economy run by govt bureaucrats eventually collapses.
I agree but the key point here is that IS much better in certain other countries. Cheaper and of way higher quality and efficiency. The US provides great health care for privately insured or cash payers. It provides horrific services for anyone else. Canada's health care system is a poor attempt to put a socialist patch at a poorly organized health care system. Why can't we look at those countries that do things better and learn from them.
Throwing more money at the system won't help. Most doctors I interact with are not Canadian. South Africa, Great Britian, India must pay less as some of these doctors have families back home and come for the money. What I see is a bunch of little power struggles more concerned about job security than patient care. For instance I sprained a wrist, off to emergency, the wrist was badly swollen, even I knew that I would require an xray, but the nurse can't requistion one, thats the doctors job. So I wait until a doctor shows up,then have to wait around so he can read the xray. Time could have been saved and an emergency bed made available by using a bit of common sense.
And you share a very positive story of kind. It usually goes like this (for non-emergency): * Go to family doctor, get refused because they don't accept new patients * Go to walk-in clinic, wait 2-3 hours, then an underqualified doctor who apparently hates his job walks in and gives you max 5 minutes, then requisites an x-ray and sends you home. * Wait for a call, sometimes for days or weeks to make an appointment for x-ray * Wait another days or weeks to actually go to the appointment * Perform the x-ray after waiting for another 2-3 hours at the hospital to get the x-ray done * Go back home and wait for days to get notified that you now have to go to see the doctor that submitted the requisition * Go back to walk-in clinic, wait another 2-3 hours and see the doctor. Another doctor that knows nothing about the previous conversation(s) pulls up the x-ray file from the system, looks at it, then sends you back to the hospital for further treatment. That is for a simple x-ray, non emergency. In most other countries we lived at before moving to BC, we went to hospital, had a doctor see us within 30 minutes to 1 hour, send us to the x-ray department downstairs, 30 minutes later back to the doctor, diagnosis and further treatment plan, settle the bill (we pre-paid due to private insurance), and you are out of there. The system in BC is horrific and really depressing, especially the attitudes of most health care providers we encountered here. They don't seem to care at all...and unless you pay and go to a private clinic you can't just go to the hospital, you first need to get a requisition from the family doctor or walk-in clinic doc.
Just curious as to what other countries, what you were doing there and how much the private insurance cost? Are we comparing apples with apples?
No, we do not compare apples with apples, you make a fair point. But that is my gripe exactly, which is that we do not have a choice here, MSP is enforced on everyone in BC in the same way as ICBC, no choices. We can get supplemental insurance but that is for prescriptions, eyes, and dental. No private health insurer wants to provide coverage for core medical services for BC residents. We were outright told that we won't get annual screenings or health checkups. "Come when you are sick" was what we were told. So, we ended up going to have our checkups done each time we visit family members abroad.
[QUOTE=" “The Billionaire Minimum Income Tax will ensure that the very wealthiest Americans pay a tax rate of at least 20 percent on their full income, including unrealized appreciation,” the White House said.[/QUOTE] Taxing on unrealized gains causes a huge chained impact on the whole economy regardless of it seems to be designed for just only super rich persons. It is equivalent to Mark-to-Market accounting. Think of the big trouble caused by Enron scandal. MTM played a major role in that scandal. 100m is not a big number for many startup founders. Many of them will surely be hit hard to force to either go bankrupt or give up their majority of stocks or options assume their company not yet going public or the price is not going up enough to cover their unrealized gains after IPO. Does unrealized appreciation including home equity? If so, will be fun to see how many more households to be taxed more. Stilll paying the regular property tax? How about their net value is down? Do they also get 3000 dollars limit for the loss adjustment. That will be fun to see it will take probably thousands years to deduct all that loss amount in their tax report. If super rich gets more amount to adjust their taxable income from the unrealized loss per year, all other people also should be treated the same, so this is a good news for all to ask IRS to remove the 3000 dollar loss limit in your tax return. Besides, the wash sale rules should also be removed because technically it is the same to tax the future unrealized gains. The market is not going up every year. The net value increase for billionaires will not rise every year. What if the market is down for a year or years to come. The government probably still won't get a penny from billionaires. ..... Not fair for billionaires and actually not good the whole population. The poor and the middle class will suffer more when billionaires and start-up founders are penalized when investing in growing businesses. Biden's new tax is too bad to US today and to the future.
Taxing on unrealized gains causes a huge chained impact on the whole economy regardless of it seems to be designed for just only super rich persons. It is equivalent to Mark-to-Market accounting. Think of the big trouble caused by Enron scandal. MTM played a major role in that scandal. 100m is not a big number for many startup founders. Many of them will surely be hit hard to force to either go bankrupt or give up their majority of stocks or options assume their company not yet going public or the price is not going up enough to cover their unrealized gains after IPO. Does unrealized appreciation including home equity? If so, will be fun to see how many more households to be taxed more. Stilll paying the regular property tax? How about their net value is down? Do they also get 3000 dollars limit for the loss adjustment. That will be fun to see it will take probably thousands years to deduct all that loss amount in their tax report. If super rich gets more amount to adjust their taxable income from the unrealized loss per year, all other people also should be treated the same, so this is a good news for all to ask IRS to remove the 3000 dollar loss limit in your tax return. Besides, the wash sale rules should also be removed because technically it is the same to tax the future unrealized gains. The market is not going up every year. The net value increase for billionaires will not rise every year. What if the market is down for a year or years to come. The government probably still won't get a penny from billionaires. ..... Not fair for billionaires and actually not good the whole population. The poor and the middle class will suffer more when billionaires and start-up founders are penalized when investing in growing businesses. Biden's new tax is too bad to US today and to the future.[/QUOTE] I believe they specified the tax on unrealized gains is on liquid assets, so probably houses, publicly traded stocks.