Thursday, October 22, 2009

Oy Canada: Insurance Insurance

A while back, we reported on one insurance carrier's unique (if odd) plan that essentially guaranteed that one could jump back onto an individual medical plan if one's group insurance was lost. The hook was that "(f)or a fee, one buys the right to purchase some kind of health coverage if one becomes at once uninsured and uninsurable." The idea was that one was essentially buying one's future insurability.

Of course, such a plan would be a waste of money for our Friends to the North©, right? After all, they already have free health care, and lots of it.

Or maybe not:

"A group in British Columbia has offered medical waiting-list insurance to members whose government treatment is on hold."

Yup. Although we've detailed Canada's major shortage of actual health care over the years, even we hadn't quite grasped just how little is actually readily available to the average Canuck. Much as our AAA offers roadside assistance to stranded motorists, the British Columbia Automobile Association wanted to offer its members bedside assistance to those stranded on the side of the rocky Canadian health care road.

Folks who bought the policy and subsequently endured a 45 day wait for a covered expense were guaranteed access to a private clinic in BC, or even in the good ol' U S of A.

Or would have been:

"The program, which took two years to develop, never got beyond the pilot phase ... The association shut it down when critics howled and government officials checked to see if such a program was actually legal in Canada."

"Actually legal in Canada." If that doesn't send Arctic chills down your spine, then you're not paying attention: it is apparently illegal in Canada to actually try to help oneself gain access to health care. Yet that's exactly the kind of system that many proponents of a nationalized health care system want to impose on us.

Tell me again why that's a "good thing?"
blog comments powered by Disqus