I'm in Canada and we have public health care. Every province funds it a bit differently - where I am it's paid along with your taxes and how much you pay is linked to how much you earn, premiums range from 200-900 a year. Employers also pay a health care tax that helps fund the system.

Any service provided by an MD is covered. So psychiatrists and MD's who do counselling are covered. Psychologists and any other type of councellor are not covered so the bills for therapy can ring up really quickly. Some hospital psych departments ofer group counselling but it's usually time limited and the waiting lists can be really long. Drugs aren't covered unless you're really poor and are on social assistance, or over 65 then the gov't pays. Most big companies offer supplemental health coverage insurance to employees to cover at least part of their drug costs. At my company the insurance premium is split 80/20 company / employee and it costs me about $70 a month, but that includes disability insurance, and covers 100% of my drug costs. If you work for a small company that doesn't offer supplemental insurance or your self employed you can really get screwed because drugs are expensive.

Hospitalization is covered 100%. I was IP for 7 weeks in 07 and it didn't cost me a cent.

Addiction treatment is a mix of private and public. The really big treatment centers are private and expensive but you can get in quickly. The public funded centers are generally smaller but good - it's just the waiting lists to get in can be really long. I've been to both public and private treatment centers, and I have to say in my experience the public centre was better.

--splitimage