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Comment by fidotron | Hacker News Reader

It's something many Canadians don't want to accept, but too much of their tourist facing industry is setup to exploit and frankly con Americans.

I recall on my first trip here ending up in hospital, being mistaken for an American and shown one price list, only for my insurance company to get on the phone and promptly a new price list appeared and a lot of "We're sorry we thought you were American" from the staff.

And prior to the mobile web dealing with Ontario hotels was like haggling in a Turkish bazaar with an obnoxious layer of passive aggression on top.

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> I recall on my first trip here ending up in hospital, being mistaken for an American and shown one price list, only for my insurance company to get on the phone and promptly a new price list appeared and a lot of "We're sorry we thought you were American" from the staff.

Where were you actually from? Some countries do have reciprocal deals on this sort of thing, and if you're from a country which does have a reciprocal deal, you might very much legitimately get a different price than if you're from a country which doesn't.

When did you last visit Ontario. How was it compared to your first visit (pre-web so I am assuming a few decades ago).

Months ago. I live in Quebec (which is where the hospital incident occurred).

Now thanks to the Internet it's way harder for hotel clerks to claim prices are different, which used to be exactly what they'd do, consequently it's improved dramatically on that front. I still remember the face of an Ottawa guy decades ago confronted with a european smartphone shoved in his face to show he was lying through his teeth. He clearly wasn't ready for the whole concept.

The hospital thing is standard practice in the US. The Canadian hospitals likely have to lie to get reasonable payouts from US insurance companies.

For instance, I once needed $600 of tests at the ER. The hospital billed $80K. The insurance company paid $7K. I paid $100.

Sure, the $600 does not include the ER overhead, but the $7K was still insanely inflated. The important thing is that the money ultimately came from insurance premiums, so every middleman was able to reliably extort all patients.

> For instance, I once needed $600 of tests at the ER. The hospital billed $80K. The insurance company paid $7K. I paid $100.

The other bit of the story was "we realised you might not be American from your face when we showed you the price list". (They told me Americans would have seen the same list and thought the prices were reasonable). I'm guessing you are American?

You need to understand how utterly insane this sounds if you are used to European systems.

And don't get me started on the fact Canadian healthcare doesn't actually transfer between provinces.

What? You can use your provincial health care card in any other province. My mom made an urgent care visit while in BC, showed her Alberta health care card, and got the usual service with no extra paperwork or costs. (Behind the scenes, BC would have billed Alberta for this visit)

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