Ontario Health Care, Health Insurance

Canada has one of the best health care systems in the world. Ontario offers what was once called OHIP, Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which is now referred to as Health Care Canada. Each resident in Ontario, who is a citizen, has a health card that allows them the health care services provided by the province and country. In Canada this refers to the payment of doctor’s visits, including check ups and other visits to your family doctor in Ontario. This also includes emergency services at the hospital in Ontario, where with your health card you will be asked to fill out a form, and then are sent into emergency services where you will be treated by qualified Ontario doctors.

Ontario health care, health insurance is deemed one of the best in the world. Other countries try to emulate or achieve this same care, as paying for doctors bills, excessively adds to health problems and personal problems for individuals who can not afford to pay. However, many other countries in the world have what is called private health care, which means that each visit to a health care professional is something that must be paid for personally or through private health care insurance which the person must have prior to the health need.

The Ministry of Health and Health Insurance

The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care is the Government of Ontario ministry responsible for administering the health care system and providing services through such programs as, health insurance (OHIP), drug benefits - Trillium Drug Program, assistive devices, care for the mentally ill, long-term care, home care, community and public health, health promotion, disease prevention, hospitals and nursing homes.

Health insurance is a type of insurance whereby the insurer pays the medical costs of the insured if the insured becomes sick due to covered causes, or due to accidents. The insurer may be a private organization or a government agency. Market-based health care systems such as that in the United States rely primarily on private health insurance.

A health insurance policy is a legal, binding contract between the insurance company and the customer. The largest difference between private sector health insurance and life insurance is that for life insurance, a person may purchase guaranteed renewable insurance for the whole of the insured's life at a constant premium rate, while health insurance is generally purchased year by year with generally no assurance of renew ability and if renewable no guarantee that premium rates will not increase.

The Problems with Private Insurance

The fundamental concept of insurance is that it balances costs across a large, random sample of individuals. For instance, an insurance company has a pool of 1000 randomly selected subscribers, each paying $100/month. One of them gets really sick while the others stay healthy, which means that the insurance company can use the money paid by the healthy people to treat the sick person. Adverse selection upsets this balance between healthy and sick subscribers. It will leave an insurance company with primarily sick subscribers and no way to balance out the cost of their medical expenses with a large number of healthy subscribers.

Because of adverse selection, insurance companies use a patient's medical history to screen out persons with pre-existing medical conditions. Before buying health insurance, a person typically fills out a comprehensive medical history form that asks whether the person smokes, how much the person weighs, whether or not the person has been treated for any of a long list of diseases and so on. In general, those who look like they will be large financial burdens are denied coverage or charged high premiums to compensate. On the other side, applicants can actually get discounts if they do not smoke and are healthy.