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Canada spends about 11.5% of its GDP on healthcare. The US spends 17.9% of its GDP for healthcare, due both to the inefficiencies of its system and the aggressive profit-taking of the US medical and pharmaceutical sectors. (See Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)Aren’t you concerned that the US will be bankrupted by its healthcare costs? (Certainly many individual US citizens are bankrupted: two-thirds of US families who file for bankruptcy say that medical bills are the reason. See: This is the real reason most Americans file for bankruptcy). No Canadian families are bankrupted due to medical bills. None.

When I was a home health nurse, I met one or two individuals who were very close to perfect. One was a little 88-year-old lady who owned and took immaculate care of her own house she had lived in for 55 years.Not only that she was the sole caretaker of her invalided YOUNGER sister. Her sister was the home health patient. As her condition deteriorated mainly just due to aging and the severity of her diagnosis, her very healthy older sister knew it would not be long before she was needed to be placed in a nursing center for skilled nursing observation, treatment and care indefinitely.One day she asked me about herself going into a nursing home, as her reason for keeping the house (to take care of her sister) was drawing to a close. I told her that there had to be a medical reason for this in order to qualify for Medicare insurance requirements. (She could go as a private pay with NO NURSING needed, but WHO had that kind of money, it is very expensive).Then a brainstorm hit me right out of the blue. She needed to take only ONE medicine that required a skilled nurse’s assessment, vital signs and administration to qualify. So I asked her what prescription meds she took.Can you believe that this sweet little 90 lb. woman had never taken a prescription medicine in her life?Not to be undone, I mentioned adroitly to her doctor that should she be ordered a maintenance dosage of high blood pressure medicine, she would qualify for a skilled nursing bed in a nursing home.He said but she doesn’t have a high blood pressure that often. I reiterated the concept to him as well, you and I know that 5 mg. or 10 mg. of XX blood pressure medicine is the average dose, right? But as she only weighs 90 pounds, then a maintenance dosage for her would be 2.5 mg. per day, right? It would qualify her for Medicare then, but it was such a small dosage it would NOT cause her difficulties.Immediately the “light-bulb came on upstairs” and he did just that. She took it for a while at home, then later by months was admitted to a nursing home.For me, that was her reward for slavishly taking care of her sister for 40+ years.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board is using Palantir to detect and investigate abuse of Stimulus funds. Palantir is also being deployed to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) to investigate fraud.