Canadian Health Care Information

In my last blog, I described a personal unintended experience in an American hospital. I committed to post the cost of my visit to Emerg for a broken collar bone and a torn shoulder rotator cuff.
The bills arrived and the total was $2,161. While the cost was not cheap, it was not in the realm of the stories we have all heard. What was mindblowing was the storm of paper and phone calls required to manage the bill(s). This was in spite of my immediately and faithfully sending any bill or piece of paper to my Canadian insurance company for handling and payment. And just when I thought that everything was done and paid for (it took 5 months), today I received a call from a collection agency for the phsician bill of $327. This was the second call from such an agency. The first one was a few months earlier regarding a radiology service for $29. For a country that is known for its "good old American know how", it was shocking to witness ongoing across-the-board confusion coupled with multiple redundant circular phone calls. It seems that the hospital costs are separate from the radiology costs and that physician costs are separate from either of these. But nobody communicates or coordinates these facts or these systems. I am beginning to understand why their paper costs and admin costs are so high.