The other thing to keep in mind about the Canadian system is that it's based on need.  So it's not difficult to find someone who's been waiting a long time for a non-urgent or elective surgery.  For example, because I was having immediate reconstruction, I was able to get an appointment to see the best PS in the city in about a week.  My reconstruction was taking place at the same time as my cancer surgery, so obviously that couldn't wait.  But at the same time that I was getting my appointment so quickly, anyone else who'd had a mastectomy already and then wanted to have reconstruction with this same PS would have had to wait 9 months to get their appointment.  That might not be acceptable to some people, but personally I'm fine with it.  I don't want those with money or influence to jump the queue, causing delays in treatment for those who really need it.

I often chuckle at the examples of the Canadian medical system that I see written up in the U.S. press or even on this site.  For example, I've seen complaints that certain drugs are not covered by the government and patients have to pay out of pocket for these drugs.  What this means is that if treatment is taking place at a hospital (where all required drugs are provided at no cost) or if the patient is on a government sponsored drug program (for the elderly or income-based), some newer drugs, while approved by Health Canada (the Canadian equivalent of the FDA) might not yet be approved for these programs. What this also means is that for these drugs, the Canadian government has not yet come in to negotiate a lower price and create a price cap.  So if patients want these drugs, they have to pay for them themselves (or have supplemental insurance to cover the costs), at the full list price.  Isn't this awful?  But wait... in the U.S., don't patients or their insurance companies have to pay out of pocket for all their drugs? And aren't all the drug prices "list price"?  So it makes the news when selected drugs aren't covered in Canada but this is a problem only in the context of a Canadian system that usually covers and/or negotiates down the costs/prices of drugs.   

I also remember seeing an article posted here about a situation where a patient in Canada was flown to the U.S. for treatment.  Isn't it awful that the Canadian healthcare system couldn't treat this patient?  But wait...this patient lived in a remote area and required very specialized treatment.  Although this treatment was available in larger cities in Canada, the closest location where this treatment was available was in a city across the border in the U.S..  So the Canadian healthcare system paid to fly this individual to this U.S. hospital and paid for all the treatments there.  Yet this was presented in the U.S. media, and here, as an example of a failure on the part of the Canadian system.

My suggestion is simply that whenever you read something bad about the Canadian system, read it with a critical eye.  And keep in mind too that no system is perfect.  Over 22,000 women will be diagnosed with BC in Canada this year.  Will it be difficult to find 1 or even 100 or even 1000 women who are not satisfied with their care?  No, probably not.  But if 1000 women are unhappy with their care, that represents less than 5% of all patients.  Any system in the world would be delighted to have only 5% of their patients dissatisfied.  I'm not suggesting that the approval rating for the Canadian healthcare system is that high - it's not - but my point is that even in the very best healthcare system, it would not be difficult to find people who are dissatisfied.

2tzus,

This is not a political discussion for many of us in this support group. It is a major treatment issue. On this thread we have heard from women who CANNOT get the treatment they need for this awful disease, people who live with the daily fear that they will LOSE their insurance in the middle of treatment,  women who didn't get early diagnoses because they knew they wouldn't be able to afford treatment or that it would jeopardize already inadequate insurance coverage, women who had to become indigent in an attempt to save their lives and women who don't know how they will afford the years of followup required to monitor this mean little disease that has a way of showing up again despite our best efforts. 

It seems you have the luxury of reading these ladies' stories from a distance and dissing the concerns/fears/stresses as "a political discussion"...obviously you aren't living with these fears....at least not yet.  As the  years wear on and  when it happens that your insurance landscape changes your abiltiy to pay for treatment and/or  followup to keep at bay any cancer cells which may still be in your body, let me assure you the way you can access and use insurance will be way more personal than "a political discussion". 

In the meantime, I think we need to listen to one another and recognize and validate one another's struggles.  Personally, worrying about the insurance/payment conundrum is much more stressful for me (and where I need some compassionate support) than worrying about losing my hair....and I am grieving losing my hair. 

I'm not going to let people who feel as you do label and try to censure the issues I bring to this group. I am putting a lot of time and energy into advocating for healthcare for ALL citizens; it is one thing I can do to empower survivors of breast cancer.  I think we need to be educating ourselves about the critical condition of our healthcare system and how it is affecting millions of Americans including many breast cancer victims everyday. We need to rally empathy for others whose situations are not as fortunate but who, nonetheless, have to wage the same ongoing physical and emotional struggle against this disease which has a way of never completely leaving one's life. .We don't need to scare people with wrong or incomplete or hide behind the excuse that there is no perfect answer to minimize the scope of the problem. That is exactly what the insurance industry hopes will happen.

I don't believe our government makes a mess of everything it runs. It has NOT made a mess of providing our senior citizens with Medicare coverage. While not perfect, it is a remarkably comprehensive and efficient system, especially given the limitations imposed on it because of the lobby from private for-profit pharmaceuticals. It is much fairer than the private insurance industry and one has a sense that Medicare exists to act in the best interest of the patient....not so with private insurance.

I find it interesting that no one on this main stream post (or even on the alternative board) said ANYTHING about my post,here. Where I said:

"Yet, why I find it also, welcome. Because Obama's Universal health care will NOT be able to afford, all of these bullshit treatments. i.e. Double Mastectomies, for women with DCIS. Which is not even a "cancer." It's a pre-cancer.

Those treatments will be the first to go, away."

And I think that's great.

Join us, on the Alternative thread. On this board. Where any number of alternative remedies can prevent (and cure) cancer.

 
Without all of these expensive (and mostly pointless) "treatments."

Mine is the Flax Seed Oil/Cottage cheese. The Budwig Protocol. I feel the best in my life, than I've ever felt.

It's quite, remarkable."

In my view, fighting the "Cost of Cancer," is just not getting cancer, to begin with. Which is what I'm doing, with the Budwig Protocol. Eating, healthy Omega 3 oils, prevent ALL cancers.

What, do the women on this board think that breast cancer is the ONLY cancer they will ever get?

That is the fallacy, on this entire board. So many women will do EVERYTHING, to prevent their breast cancer, from coming back. ALL of this CHEMO and DRUGS and BREAST RADIATION and CUT YOUR BREASTS OFF, ad nauseaum.

It's all just .. a fallacy. We all have a substantial amount of body organs, that can fail. Why are you focusing, on this one body part? The breast?

The Budwig protocol focuses on the entire body. Eat the Omega 3's, make the BODY healthy.
It just makes sense, to me.

And the Budwig Protocol will not only let me combat any future breast cancer recurrence, but also any recurrence of my Leiomyosarcoma cancer. Or ANY cancer of any other part of my body.
Hey, if we all just ate a diet rich in the true Omega 3's, the Budwig Protocol, and didn't eat all of this crap food that everyone DOES eat. nobody would get any cancers.

But then, NOBODY wants that to happen. ALL of those radiation techs/docs and chemo techs/docs, OUT of a job. If everyone just ate, right.

But then,  everyone WANTS their french fries.

Well, I'll shut up.

But for me, in the end. It's personal responsibility.

Leia,  I suspect that no one responded to your earlier post because no one wanted to start up yet another back-and-forth battle.  There have been too many of these lately on this board.

I won't comment on your previous post either - which is not suggest that I either agree or disagree.  But I will say that like Katalin, I don't see conventional vs. alternative medicine as a black and white issue.  With my family history and my own personal health history, I'm pretty sure that my bout with BC won't be the only cancer that I will face over my lifetime.  And that's part of the reason why I wasn't compelled to have a bilateral mastectomy - I'm high risk for BC but I have no reason to believe that the next cancer I face will be breast cancer again, so why remove a healthy breast?  Having said that, it didn't mean that I didn't want to do whatever I could - within conventional medicine - to treat the cancer that I already had.  But of course it also means that I want to do whatever I can to prevent not just breast cancer but all cancers.  And here's the dilemna I have.  What do we really know?  Have any of the alternate treatments been studied enough to know what is good for you and what may be harmful?  It's commonplace to hear one year that we should take Vitamin XYZ to prevent cancer and then hear the next year that too much Vitamin XYZ causes cancer (or something else).  And then there's the problem that something that might be good for preventing one type of cancer might lead to another type of cancer.  One member of my family has had cancer and currently has a number of pre-cancerous conditions.  He used to eat flax seed and cottage cheese daily until he found out that a high dairy diet actually increases the risk of one of his cancers.  Oops. 

So yes, I am very aware that breast cancer is not the only cancer that I will ever get.  I do try to maintain a healthy diet and I do take supplements. I hope that I can reduce my risk but realistically I doubt that I can prevent another cancer if I'm genetically predestined to get it (and genetics are much more than just the BRCA mutations).  So I maintain a careful screening process and I hope that if I am diagnosed again, the medical community will have the treatments I need to survive. 

Currently in the U.S., COBRA insurance coverage (that's continuation of benefits for people who have lost their jobs) is being subsidized by 65% by the government. That means the unemployed person pays only 35% of what the usual premium would be for COBRA. That "benefit" is part of Obama's stimulus package. (I know because I am on COBRA and I received an incomprehensible from the government offering this benefit to me -- I had to call my COBRA administrator to figure out what it meant.)

I wonder, even with this generous subsidy, how many unemployed people are taking advantage of the offer. No one enjoys shelling out money for any kind of insurance, but because health insurance is not free in America, people need to be willing to spend some money on it -- just like they need to do for car insurance or fire insurance if they have a mortgage. Many people simply are not willing to spend that money, and many of those people end up suffering because of it.

As Vivre said, there is no free lunch, and there is no free healthcare. Someone has to pay for it, and I would rather be responsible for paying for my own insurance, rather than paying indirectly through increased taxes, and in return having choices and knowing what I'll be getting.

Tricia

It's interesting...I also have Medicaid through the state of Michigan (through the Breast & Cervical Cancer Screening Program) and the only thing I've had to pay for is a $3.00 copay for any ER visits...it seems that a whole lot of people in our nation are turning their noses up at government insurance, but when it covers pretty much everything, I would jump on board in a Tokyo minute. 

As a Canadian living in the US for a couple of years I have thought quite a bit about the different costs and systems.  I think the difference is that Canadian health care is non-profit -- the gov't wants/tried to break even.  In the US it is a for-profit business, thus the higher costs.

Both the Cdn/provincial gov't and US insurers have rules on what treatments/tests one can get.  The big difference is that in Canada it is based on equality for all, in the US it is the insurers trying to make a buck.  I think in the long run the Canadian system would be more cost effective for the US and it's population -- if the US gov't runs a healthcare system on a break-even system, not one that pads the pockets of insurers, hospitals, etc, it would work.

As for Canadian healthcare being free -- we pay taxes that cover it.  These taxes can be compared to what we pay in the US for our health benefits through our employer.  What I mean is, in both countries you pay into a pool for healthcare and dip into it when it's needed.  And, my paycheck isn't that different between the US and Canada.  I'm happy to pay a bit more in taxes in Canada to never have to worry about my healthcare as I do in the US if I lose my job or cannot afford the get the same care that my neighbour does.

Problems w/US Healthcare?  1) Get rid of FOR-PROFIT anythings (Hospitals, insurance companies, laboratories, etc.)  If you're in HEALTHCARE, your #1 goal has GOT to be (our) health and NOT return to your "stakeholders."  (BTW:  stakeholders used to mean owners, customers and employees of a business or industry.  Now it only refers to owners and executives; customers and lower level employees don't figure in any more.)  In the '50's, all hospitals were NFP, but drs. still made good money as did nurses.  Public/social services CANNOT be for profit, as it puts a greed motive ahead of public good.  Look at the judges in PA who sentenced all those juevies to privately contracted 'prisons.'  That prison's goal is to keep as many kids in for as long as possible so they can "maximize their revenue."  The goal of a prison is supposed to be rehabilitiation/release back.  This place kept extending kids' sentences for minor reasons just to keep the money rolling in.  I thought that Teddy Roosevelt put an end to that kind of public kick-back crap in the early 1900's!

2nd problem:  "malpractice" costs.  The 2 highest 'specialties' for malpractice insurance are OB and Neuro.  Why?  Because if there's a "mistake" or 'bad outcome' the cost of care for the patient's future is HUGE.  And with OB, it can be YEARS of special-needs care.  Of course, if we had universal single-payer health care, and people didn't have to worry about where they were going to get the money to pay for needs of the person with the brain damage (or whatever) there wouldn't be as many people SUING and malpractice insurance wouldn't be as high as it is.  Please note that when the "cap the judgements" folks talk about how much such litigation adds to the cost of healthcare, you need to make sure they are parsing out "actual damages" from "punitive damages."  Actuals are to cover cost of future care; punitive are to "punish" bad drs., hospitals, etc.  The VAST majority of judgements are for actual damages -- the costs of future healthcare that would be obviated with a universal/single-payer system.

Also, healthcare is not an "industry" nor is banking.  There is no product produced.  Manufacturing autos or computers is an industry -- take raw materials and produce a finished product.  Throw that one out there the next time someone is trying to sell you on the importance of the "healthcare industry" to Wall Street.

Peace,

Beth

I want to point out again that health care in the US is not all for-profit. There is a mix. My HMO, Kaiser Foundation, and its hospitals are not-for-profit. Blue Cross Blue Shield is actually a franchise. Some of its franchisees are for-profit and some not-for-profit.

Prettyinpink, not everyone in the health care chain makes a profit on excessive testing and treatment. The insurance companies don't and they often protect themselves from it by requiring pre-authorization for non-emergency services. Some go too far and don't approve reasonable services. The bureaucracy and delays in getting approvals was part of what caused us to switch from our previous insurance to Kaiser. That and constant shifting of who was in-network and out-of-network.

A lot of the health plans in the US have drug formularies similar to what the Canadian government does. If they don't feel a drug is worth it, they won't pay for it. Therefore, many of us have both the good and ill of that approach just as some on the Canadian drug coverage. Kaiser has that, but they will allow a doctor to override it if there is a medical need. My PCP offered to do that once when an allergy drug I was on was changed out of the formulary for something else that didn't work as well for me, but we found another alternative that worked well and was in formulary. 

Idaho -- I'm sorry to hear that your health insurance isn't covering what you need. May I ask what specifically related to BC your insurance doesn't cover? Maybe some of us have had similar experiences and can offer you some help and support.

Tricia 

One other little clarification -- drugs that are "on the formulary" are there based on what the insurer has negotiated with the manufacturer, not in any way on efficacy.  (Drug "A" isn't on my formulary not because Drug "B" works better, but because my insurer wrangled a better price out of Drug B's manufacturer.)  Now imagine how much more "rigorous" those negotiations would be if the Feds were negotiating for 90% of the American population!  "That cholesterol drug you've got there is nice.  It would be a shame for your big pharma business if it weren't on our formulary because you still feel the need to spend millions on advertising instead of negotiating a better price...."  hehehe. 

And off topic, here's an idea of what to do about usurious credit card rates:  Give the american people back their tax write-off for interest on personal debt.  Not just their 1st & 2nd mortgages, but car loans and credit card interest too.  (This was the way it was until the 80's.)  If people could deduct their 30% credit card interest from their income taxes, the Feds would be taking in a LOT less money and I don't think it would take long at all for them to "convince" the credit card companies that a more reasonable rate was in order.  Heck, I remember when a 30% interest rate was referred to as the "vig" on your deal with the loan shark.

Peace,

Beth

Peace,

Beth

Yes, it's fishy on the different prices.  Canadian drug prices are less than in the US -- I think it's because the gov't is able to negotiate a better deal than the hospitals/insurance companies.  This is probably the same for the European Union countries.  It's business -- make the most money you can.

I know that pharmas need money for research, it isn't cheap.  But this price gouging for some customers is terrible!

Another thing I don't understand -- my insurance pays for me to get a Neupogin shot done in the cancer clinic by a nurse.  But if I want to save time, not miss work, and do it myself, it costs me a big copay.  I was told that the cost of the shot given by a nurse is bundled into the cost of care.  But it seems illogical -- seems to me it would be cheaper for me to do it than to pay a nurse. 

Apropos, of nothing, and I'm sure everyone will rise up, against me. 

The real problem with the US Medical care is all of these useless tests. Breast cancer tests, or just multiply this, to any bodily disorder.  They all have the same tests. the same, "Standard of Care."

This can not, continue. We can not continue to keep screening, healthy people, for cancer. In the breast cancer world, it's these mammos and then the biopsies, when all of them are 80% negative.

And at what cost? 

And then, with the 20% cancer diagnosis, we get Radiation and Chemo and Pills for 5 years. MASSIVE cost. And for what.

The truth? No greater life expectancy. This is all just ... ludicrious.

This entire "health care" system, is broken.

And Obama wants to extend this "broken system," to everyone.

I'm a Libertarian. I find this all, appalling. 

So, we'll see how far Obama gets. It won't be far. When all of these DCIS women, clamoring, for Double Mastecomies, are just finally, refused. The Government won't pay for it. 

That's the result, of ObamaCare.

These useless procedures, go away. It's just NOT affordable. Those will be the first, to go.

Which I just think is .. GREAT! 

There WILL be rationing, of care. There ARE only so many, machines.  

I'm talking about the "Cost of Cancer." 

And now everyone now wants "Free health care."  

But then, SOMEONE pays.

I guess you think the "Government" should pay.But, then, the government, is YOU. Do YOU want to pay 50% of what you earn, to the govt.?

I don't.

 I want what I earn, for myself.  I don't want anyone giving me, anything. 

The Medical industrial complex has told you (and me) "Without screening / early detection a persons life could be at stake. " 

I'm a libertarian. It's a LIE. 

It's a LIE.

We are NOT all SICK. And NEED all of these treatments. Nobody would have even known, they were "sick" unless they had all of these 'tests."

THAT is what is wrong, with this entire Medical Industrial Complex. 

We could all have just died, as all people die. 

Unless you think people should just live, forever?