New Internet Video
Stuart Browning of On the Fence Films has a short internet video entitled, "A Short Course in Brain Surgery," on the problems with Canadian Healthcare. If you wonder what a single payer system might look like, take a look at the video.
posted by Helen at 5:08 PM
11 Comments:
You can ration care on this side of the border.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Health/story?id=1529546
I'm in the province of quebec, yes I'm Canadian, and I can tell you a few stories,
Two days ago a friend told me that she took her 92 year old father to the emergency at the nearest hospital because he was bleeding profusely from the nose.
It took 8 hours before they took care of him. They got to the hospital at 10 pm, were seen at 6 am...
Also where I live - five minutes from Montreal city so I'm not in some remote area - there are a lot of clinics but when you call to get an apointment with a doctor they tell you " Doctor so and so does not take any new patients, go to emergency room"...
A couple weeks ago I took my ex girlfriend to the emergency room because she had blood in her urine and had intense pain, she is a 45 year old woman but was in tears so painfull it was.
We got there a little before midnight, the place was jam packed with people, it took five hours before she could see someone...oh and there were balls of dust rolling under the chairs in the waiting room, and this was in a large hospital five minutes from Montreal city - not in Somalia! - all that has to do with being under-staffed and budget cuts...
A couple weeks ago there was a report on tv - it is a hot topic now, you know the inneficiency of our "free" health care system - that revealed why the government refuses to regulate natural/alternative health remedies; while people are trying to cure themselves with those inneficient or even dangerous snake oils remedies they stay home and out of the emergency rooms, the "free" health care system is less busy, and the government saves money...
Some people have to wait 18 months to get an operation for "free" in Canada, so is it any wonder so many chose to go to the US and pay for quick and professional service?
It is a good thing our drugs are cheap because some people need a lot of pain killer while they are waiting months and months to get the treatment the state promised them for "free"
And I could go on all night.
Of course it is nice that it is "free" but there are a lot of problems, serious problems with it.
oh enough, good night.
For several years my father consulted, as a psychologist, with the oncology unit at the University of Tennessee hospital. They often had a patient or two from Canada.
Anyone who passed 3rd grade geography knows it's about 500 miles from Knoxville to the closest point in Canada. But these Canadians wanted to get treatment for thier cancer, not sit in ine.
I'm sure Canada has a problem with doctors emmigrating to the U.S. also. My personal physicians and his wife, who is also a physician, moved to Maysville, KY from Nova Scostia about 12 years ago because they can make a better living.
I don't understand how some people resent the money doctors makes. They go to school for about 9 years, or so, total plus internships, etc. Our lives and well-being are literally in their hands. I want a doctor who is happy with his career and reaping rewards for his/her efforts.
A thought on health care coverage:
What about "cooperative" health insurance whereby the people being insured also are shareholders in the insurance company.
The way it works now is that a small number of shareholders extract profit from the company.
The way the co-op would work is that rather than extracting profit, the profit is passed on as lower cost insurance. It still works on competitive market forces.
There are 2 ways to pay for ANYTHING.
Time or money.
If you ration with money, then the liberals cry about the poor.
If you ration with time, then the sickly cry about quick healthcare.
SO: PLEASE pick which you'd prefer.
Waiting? or Paying?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. (or healthcare)
I prefer the poor dying. Their obviously unproductive little parasites, or they wouldn't be poor. So I go with the paying.
The rich don't care about either system. They can afford to go somewhere outside the country.
A combination of both systems would be best.
People who can afford it just pay and get fast and excellent service.
And people who can not afford it go wait in line where it is "free".
Actually here in the province of quebec
we already have both systems, in some province it is illegal, but here we have clinics where you pay to see a doctor and we have more and more of them, people are fed up with the "free" and bad system we have.
Liberals are against that because rich people have access to better service, and they say it is unfair to poor people, but even in the most socialised countries - even in COMMUNIST countries - rich/powerful/connected/famous people ALWAYS have access to better things than poor people, be it food, housing, clothes or heatlh care or whatever money can buy.
Here in Canada everybody knows that rich/powerfull/connected/famous people move to the front of the line in the "free" health care system , even if it is illegal to do it;
No one in Canada has ever seen and will ever see a famous movie star, famous politician, or a successful business man wait in line at the "free" emergency room.
People who believe in 100% fairness and 100% equality are dreamers.
No matter what system you have, connected people will ALWAYS get better treatment.
It is human nature, and nothing will ever change it.
Stop dreaming.
I wonder what the obstetricians do with pregnancies. Do they make them gestate for 14 months?
Of course they don't let women gestate for 14 months, and neither do they let people hurt in car crashes bleed to death.
But brain tumors are not a priority as you saw in the short video, and as a Canadian I can tell you that we hear of similar stories all the time, either from people we know or in the media.
People who wait many months for urgent tests and/or surgery are not exceptions, they are the majority in Canada.
To be fair some European countries that have a similar system are doing better than Canada,
yes Canada is one of the worst performers ...for now, because with the aging population, the cost of health care will go up and less people will be paying taxes...and the health care systems in those European countries will slow down and become as bad as the Canadian one,
England's health care system is already on its way to becoming as bad as Canada's.
Between the extremes of waiting
8 months for "free" and getting immediate service for $28,000
one too slow, the other too expensive, there should be a "middle ground".
$28K for a brain surgery in Buffalo? Wow, that is pretty cheap for something that advanced. I have seen my insurance company pay as much for knee surgery or a one week semi-private stay with tests for my ailing father. I bet there is an "insurance" cost and a "cash" cost - but that would be another debate, about how our health insurance system guarantees that prices will be outrageous when insurance companies pay.
My recent gall bladder surgery was $35k. $28k for brain surgery is cheap.
Under the 90s era Hillarycare plan, it was criminal to go private outside the gummint system. No private pays. The doctor and the patient could face heavy fines and jail time!
What would that mean for Canadians? No American safety valve escape hatch.
I was born in Canada...when I blogged about my gall bladder surgery, I thanked God that I wasn't still in Canada on a monthslong waiting list for endocscopy and ultrasound to figure what was going on...then more waiting for the surgery itself. I would have suffered terrible attacks, lost work time, possible rupture and gangrene and crisis.
We had lots of doctor friends in Canada. They've all left Canada.
I have lots of doctor cousins in the UK. They have a private system layered over the public one. Of course the hot topics of discussion among the policymakers is that the poor and minorities have longer wait times and lower quality care.
Comparing costs, copays, deductibles, and taxes, I still pay less than Canadians and Europeans with socialized medicine and get faster, high quality care.
It's not just dustballs in the ER waiting area in Canada. They have problems with infection control because they're so short staffed, the staff are reducing the frequency of HAND WASHING. Basic 19th century health principle!
I think something needs to be done to expand insurance coverage or Medicaid for the bottom rungs, but don't torture everyone else where the problems aren't there.
It must also be recognized that a lot of the "uninsured" are illegal aliens. Do we want to cover them? No fence would stop that flood.
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