I don't have any knowledge of Medicare premiums being deducted from social security checks but I suppose its possible. Does anyone here know?
The answer is yes.
Medicare is financed by a portion of the payroll taxes paid by workers and their employers. It also is financed in part by monthly premiums deducted from Social Security checks.
ssa.gov
Surprise. Remember when unemployment checks were not taxable? That was a while back. It's part of the US gov't spending itself into bankruptcy.
These dudes want a US national health care system? (Although why a Canadian should even care is beyond me; we don't tell them they CAN'T have one!) Let 'em. There is no way in H*** they can possibly pay for the quality of care Americans currently receive through taxes- -at least not without a hefty tax increase on corporations (to pick up the money currently paid by employers and employees to their health insurers), driving yet more corporations and jobs out of the country. The gov't will be forced to reduce doctor's pay and drug costs; pharmaceutical companies will have no incentive to discover and develop new drugs since they will have to sell them to the gov't at a cost IT sets. Why would anyone go through 4 years of college, 4 years of med college, 1 year of internship, and normally 3 years of specialty training and often 1-3 years os subspecialty training before they can earn a dime if all they can expect is $125,000, which they can ,ake as am engineer with only 4 years of college?
Think that's a joke? Why are there 10,000 Canadian trained docs in the the US?
Canadian Medical Association report analyzing the doctor shortfall shows Canada has 2.1 physicians per 1,000 residents, ranking it 25th out of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The Ontario Medical Association report in November 2005 states that the province needs at least 2,100 more physicians. It estimated there are 1.2 million Ontario residents without a family doctor - 10 per cent of the population - and warned that number would grow to 1.4 million in 2006. The report also warned the number of physicians working in specialties with long waiting lists - such as diagnostic services, oncology, orthopedics and ophthalmology - is also declining.
There are frustrated patients, health professionals and administrators across Canada who struggle with a shortage of doctors every day. The Calgary Health Region has a shortfall of about 380 family doctors, according to Dr.Wendy Tink, regional clinical department head of Family Medicine.
Hamilton is short of 40 physicians, and somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 people in the community do not have a doctor. Young families use after-hours clinics and hospital emergency departments because they can’t find a physician. With the number of immigrants to Canada being more than 236,000 (in 2004) and targeted at 340,000 over the next 5 years, the need for licensed doctors is only going to rise.
While the population is aging and putting more demands on the health-care system, doctors are getting older too. It found 19 per cent of practicing MDs - about 4,100 Ontario doctors - are over age 60, and 11 per cent - or 2,300 doctors - are over age 65. "Retirement alone will greatly impact physician supply over the next five years, while many other older MDs will be scaling back their practices, adding to the overall shortage of physician services," it said.
The reason for the huge number of MDs nearing retirement now is that they belong to the baby boom generation: (a) Beginning in the late 1960s, Canada experienced a major expansion in Medical schools. (b) From the late 1960s until mid 1970s, there was a relatively open immigration policy for graduates of foreign medical schools (IMGs). As a result, physician supply expanded much more than the population. By the end of 1980s, supply was approaching one doctor per five hundred population.
Canada is still suffering from a decision in the early 1990's to scale down the number of admissions to medical schools. Not only was there a cut back in the medical school numbers, there was also cut back in resident medical training spots. Turning out new doctors will take time.
To add to the problem is a significant brain drain - emigration of highly skilled and educated Canadians, CMGs included, to the United States for greener pastures, causing loss of Canadian tax payers’ money; Money that was spent in providing Medical training to the CMGs.
Herb Emery, an associate professor of economics at the University of Calgary, says it costs Alberta taxpayers about $300,000 to put a student through three years of medical school. At present, there are more than 10,000 Canadian-trained physicians working in the United States inspite of the doctor shortage in Canada.
Regarding the US itself, experts say the United States shall face a shortage of 200,000 doctors and 800,000 nurses by 2020 because of the aging of the baby boomers there. That means the emigration of CMGs is only going to increase if measures are not taken to attract them to stay back in Canada.
72.14.253.104
Regarding those 10,000 and 200,000 numbers, keep in mind
(a) that 200,000 is a PROJECTION for the year 2-2-- -not an existing situation.
(b) The US population is almost 10X Canada's.
cia.gov
cia.gov |
