If medical coverage is not a necessity, what is it?

[SlayerRondo]

The Fury said:

SlayerRondo said:

sales2099 said:
This is why I like living in Canada. Taxed up the ass, but hey, free medical care.

At the cost of time and money the Canadian, along with most other medical systems suffers from poor competition as a result of people not caring about the cost. 

Consider me a stupid British citizen happy to pay into a system that provides care when I (or any member of my family) need it regardless of problem but how is countries having an NHS bad for competition? especially when the idea of competition in healthcare is rediculous to me.

NHS spend what money they can to provide the best service they can and don't worry about if insurance companies 'pay up' or a sick person has the correct type of insurance. If you want to pay more, we have BUPA.

This said, I may be misunderstanding your point.

The fact that the idea of competition in healthcare is so rediculous for you and most other people is why the medical industry has no incentive to bring cost down to compete when people don't pay attention to the cost as either the government pays or the insurance company pays.

Both government and insurance companies make it so that people have no control over their medical cost as they can't stop other people from frivilously going to the doctors costing them taxes and higher premiums. Without cost to the individual their will be no incentive to shop arround for a lower price and thus medcial cost and as a result for Canadians tax rates are higher than they should be.

There is also no incentive for restraint so wait times for doctors in Canada are much longer than in the US with the expetion on pets who can receive private medical care in Canada and thus have less waiting time.

I only have medical coverage for serious injury and conditions and pay for the small everyday expenses myself when they arise resulting in lower cost overall to myself.

If you're happy to have the government pay for your medical care that's fine but people should have the option to opt out in return for tax offsets to use for private health insurance of their choosing or to pay for medical expenses as they come.