There’s more than one way to shorten a waiting list.
Leader Post;
The family of a 57-year-old Meath Park woman says it will take at least three months before their mother gets to see a Saskatchewan oncologist who can tell her if her cancer is treatable or fatal.
And while Health Minister Len Taylor says three months is too long to wait, he offered little Wednesday to indicate wait times to see cancer specialists in this province will soon be getting shorter.
Emily Morley has already waited a month to see an oncologist since receiving her biopsy results that identified her secondary cancer, but were inconclusive in determining the primary source. Until that primary source is identified, her treatment cannot begin.
And even though the cancer is now in Morley’s lungs, liver, pancreas and spine, the Saskatoon Cancer Clinic has advised her it will still take at least three months to see an oncologist.
This after several weeks of diagnostic wait times piling up. However, the Health Minister has assured the family that as soon as they find some oncologists, those lists will shorten!
You’d think that having the “cradle of medicare” for the Best Health Care System In The World[tm] located next door to a country routinely cited as among the worst would result in having to beat doctors back over the border with a stick.
A family member is currently being interviewed on John Gormley Live. Now that publicity has hit the fan, they’ve found her an appointment on the 27th.
Squeaky wheel still works.
Shaming the system most often falls to a family member, who will ask the hard questions, often and straight-up.
And it means that another patient will have just lost their position in that same wait-line.
We have the best healthcare system in the world, just don’t get sick.
A far more typical experience with the health care system than most people realize. As someone deeply embedded within it, in my opinion we are past the point of no return. The opportunity to fix the health care system passed, depending on the province, 5-10 years ago. Currently, it lurches from one crisis management scenario to another and there soon won’t be enough critical mass within the system to do even that.
Waiting lists are frequently cited as indicative of our medical systems ills, and while they are perhaps the best measure, there is no mention of the “rationing” that goes on. A relative was recently diagnosed with a coronary blockage on her second trip to Emergency. The first trip resulted in a mis-diagnosis because the Doctor on shift used an old 12 probe ECG.
She was given a powerful clot disolving drug that gave her a better than even chance of surviving. She did survive and was advised by her specialist to have a follow-up coronary cathiterization. (please excuse the spelling) She was denied the second procedure with a bogus medical reason. She had no chest pain, a symprom commonly missing with heart attacks, mostly in women.
Not on any waiting list.
Boudica, you are absolutely correct. We have indeed passed the point of no return. The rhetoric surronding this issue is covering up a worse situation than anyone can imagine. When one becomes ill it is too late to start fighting. This woman in the article is far past the point of return–how many other Canadians are suffering in silence?
Our x-ray equipment is dangerous and will not be upgraded. Our bed situation is over-filled, and yet politicians and special interest groups keep applauding universal healthcare. The only thing universal about it is that most Canadians will not be treated with the most up-to-date equipment, if at all,–those that can afford it go to other countries for treatment–taking their money with them.
The system has imploded under it’s own weight and no one seems willing to do anything about it–bandaids are the order of the day. We have, in effect, no healthcare ‘system’, it is a farce. Words do not heal–and that is all we get.
The problem with the “Squeaky wheel still works” approach is that you have to wonder who got shuffled to the back of the line.
Polititians are really great at appearing to make things happen, when all they did was shuffle the deck.
We’re back to “ACCOUNTABILITY”, again.
The socialist left is not interested in health care. They are interested in their hatred of those with more than them.
They are interested in “levelling the playing field” and if that means lowering everyone to substandard care instead of raising the poor up, so be it. They’re interested in preventing someone else from getting better care than them, not in improving the care received by the poor.
They don’t care if people die on waiting lists. The whole left is about envy and hate and greed. It’s about bringing down “the Man” and so-called “social justice.”
If they destroy the rich without even helping the poor they’re happy (except of course that the millionaire socialists in Rosedale and the Annex don’t consider themselves “the rich.” It’s the other “rich” that are the problem – the capitalists who earned their money, not them!) It combines hypocrisy with hatred, envy and greed. The left are most hateful people on earth.
At the risk of making an internet diagnosis, it looks like Tommy’s Dream Team is letting nature cull the queue. Lung cancer (bad), pancreas (even worse) and spine (painful) already and they haven’t found the primary site? That doesn’t sound good but the real crime is keeping her waiting for three months. My sympathies go out to these people caught in the bureaucratic interperetation of the utopic healthcare system.
As I’ve said before, the American system isn’t perfect but there is a whole world of medical care systems in different countries that seem to work. Try looking at other models besides North Korea or Cuba, eh.
Canadians have bought into the socialist myth of a state funded , state run medical system, being essential for decent health care.
My wife had her knee x-rayed about a year ago, the image showed nothing wrong, but the joint was still painful, especially for someone who has to walk miles daily in her job.
She went to a private diagnostic imaging clinic, and their nice new x-ray, clearly showed bone spurs. When she mentioned the previous x-ray at the hospital, the technician, who had previously worked at that hospital, informed her that the machine was 1952 vintage.
Wait times are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, the equipment is scarce, and generally old.
How much of our medicare dollars go to administration, does anyone know? The local health region voted the admins an 18% raise a year ago, while cutting the wages of the workers by 15%.
I worked in the civil service years ago, and remember that it was very top heavy with administrative staff. Wonder if the same is true of the “greatest medical system on earth”?
Warwick – I believe you’re right but it goes beyond you’re statements. It’s been a big component in getting the Lieberals re-elected. Prior to last election the Lieberals has quite succesful in scaring many Canadians into believing that if the Conservatives were elected we’d soon be dying in the streets; many people seemed unable to realize that the Conservatives would probably actually want to be re-elected.
Protecting a union hegemony in healthcare is likely also a component of the Liberal & NDP platforms. The media loves to have the head of a nurse’s union comment on any proposed changes to healthcare, no vested interest there!
… and no, Jack Layton didn’t realize that was a private clinic (sure)!
Harper is going to fix wait times. This is one of his top five priorities.
AE???? Adverse Event. Up to & including death as a result of “health care” in Canada in horsepitals.
Sue a hospital/doctor? Why sue when the corpus cannot talk? +
The Canadian Adverse Events Study: the incidence of adverse events among hospital patients in Canada
Excerpt:
…
AEs are unintended injuries or complications resulting in death, disability or prolonged hospital stay that arise from health care management.
…
Interpretation: The overall incidence rate of AEs of 7.5% in our study suggests that, of the almost 2.5 million annual hospital admissions in Canada similar to the type studied, about 185 000 are associated with an AE and close to 70 000 of these are potentially preventable. +
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/170/11/1678
Are you folks trying to say that, when Paul Martin announced that he “had fixed health care for a generation”, he wasn’t telling the truth???
Gosh, who knew??
Apologies for the errors in my post, have to stop posting while taking phone calls.
Rationing is the only possible outcome of the system we have set up.
It’s amazing we’ve put up with it for so long.
Are there problems in the system? You bet. So what is YOUR solution, Kate, beyond the usual free-market nostrum?
This experience is quite a contrast to the one that my step-father in the US (Utah) experienced just three weeks ago. He had a routine checkup and the doctor was concerned about possible prostate cancer and ordered a biopsy. A week later a specialist had the results � 7 of the 12 samples were cancerous. This meeting with the specialist was on a Friday�he asked my stepfather what he was doing Monday morning (three days later) because the doctor wanted to have him in first thing Monday morning (7 AM) to operate. The operation was a success�and my stepfather is now home recovering. And, no, my stepfather isn�t some rich guy with a fabulous health plan�he is just a middle class office worker with access to a good doctor and a RESPSONSIVE (as opposed to egalitarian) medical system.
Two more anecdotal stories�I have only lived in Saskatchewan for 6 years, but in the 6 years I have been here I have personally known:
� one person who was misdiagnosed with appendicitis here in Regina and have his appendix unnecessarily removed, only to return to his home in the US to find out he really had Crone�s disease,
� a friend from Alberta who was diagnosed with leukemia (in Regina), only to return to Alberta to find out that, yes he had leukemia, but the type of leukemia had been misdiagnosed here.
Again, I recognize these as anecdotal and may not speak for the state of the overall state of the healthcare system…but experiences like these really make me question the effectiveness of our healthcare system. Fairness and equality are nice values to have…but when it comes to healthcare there may be more important values, such as effectiveness and responsiveness.
Just my $0.02
What do you mean “beyond”?
Unlike many Canadians, I actually have quite a number of friends of various ages who live in the US. I’ll let you in on a little secret – I’ve yet to hear any of them worry aloud because they were on a waiting list for diagnostics or surgery.
None of them are wealthy people. They simply budget their health premiums in the way that we do our car insurance, and other payments.
Hey, but this is Canada – it’s ok if one dies from a condition prematurely because it took months to see a specialist, so long as one avoids greater tragedy of mortgaging your home.
Man, oh man. How brainwashed are we that you’d discount the “free market” as even part of a solution????
I say open it up. Wide open. If someone wants to build a hospital and sell heart surgery privately, let ’em.
Reminds me of my mother way back in 1998 when she was sick with a degenerative neurological condition known as “striatonigral degeneration”.
In short, the condition is the deterioration of the cells in one’s brain that produce dopamine and hence causes the the gradual loss of all the autonomic functions, such as elimination, muscle control, focussing one’s eyes, body temperature regulation, and eventually heart.
The “system” told us to wait for 9 months to get a Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) scan. This was after about 9 months with still no diagnosis I blew a gasket and faxed the Prime Minister and Premier of the Province along with about 22 other Ministers “Responsible” and basically said they were just engaging in ‘supervised neglect’ and the next letter would be from a lawyer.
With copies of said faxes I packed up my mother and made my way down to the UBC Health Science Centre and told the head nurse in emergency that they were taking my mother today. She read my strongly worded missive to the various Ministers “Responsible” and quickly came back and assured me that whatever other problems they had they would find her a bed and do the tests required. After a 3 week stay with a muliple battery of tests, she was sent home as the state of neuroscience at the time offered no reasonable hope of a cure, but managed to offer a drug regimen which was palliative in nature.
She died some time later in April 2000.
Next came my son in September 2000 who was diagnosed with Type 1 insulin dependent diabetes.
I applied for the Disability Tax Credit (DTC) and was told by CRA that my son’s condition wasn’t life threatening. Of course this is why he was 3 hours from coma territory and a permanent “lights out”. In a subsequent, letter CRA suggested that to qualify for the DTC one must show that “if treatment were withheld an organ or group of organs vital to sustain human life would fail”!!!
In a brilliant tour de farce CRA requires that the onus is on the applicant to disprove any statements they make. In short, I have been asked in writing to kill my son for the purposes of qualifying for the Disability Tax Credit!
If you read the following court case one will discover why this may cause one to expire:
Citation: R. v. Tutton, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1392, 1989 CanLII 103 (S.C.C.)
http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/1989/1989scc54.html
This is why we have the Rupprecht family axiom:
“If government is the help, we have no need for enemies.”
Government, for our family, continues to perform at our lowest expectation and always manages to pass what is known in the family as the “DUMB BASTARDS” test set out below:
No matter how carefully government legislation is crafted or how circumspect government acts there will always, at some time, be some DUMB BASTARD who will violate common sense, morality, law and simple human decency.
This fall 2005 my father in law was in need of an MRI for a degenerative spine condition follow-up. Again, we were told that the wait would take some 6 to 8 months.
I phoned up a friend, who happens to work at the VGH radiology department and got her to “jimmy” the system and father in law got the MRI in two weeks.
For five generations now we have been told by government, in various diverse ways, through war, threat or neglect to “Go away and die.”
Personally, for government this has always been standard operating procedure!! We haven’t experienced anything different, why on earth would we expect such lofty goals as timely care and attention.
If I had lost my temper, I would have sent my next remittance to CRA at high speed in lead!
Then of course I would be sitting in Kent Maximum Security facility deciding whether I wanted lobster or steak dinner for Christmas.
On second thought….oh forget it.
The golden rule as interpreted by government has become the following:
“He who has the gold, makes the rules!”
Government can mark me down as somewhat south of hostile and definitely under the “doubtful” column.
As I said in my submission to Tax Court, it is easier to believe in the miracles of Christmas than the veracity of government. This statement was made of course in reference to our “beloved LIEberals”.
Hey only 10 more sleeps to that fateful moment when we all have ‘sex at midnight with the government’; known in more erudite circles as the “tax filing DEADline”. Of course the sunnier fact is that this is the year the LIEberals were finally turfed from office for 13 years of waste, corruption and dumb bastard behaviour.
On that note CHEERS.
Honey, where is my beer stein?
And a free market solution to health care wouldn’t come with a concomitant disolution of any form of public safety net.
The public purse can be used to subsidize or flat-out pay for health insurance where there is need.
As well, making health insurance payments payable with pre-tax dollars for individuals would also be a great for those who are self-employed or working for a small business.
There are plenty of ways to pay for health that don’t involve the government rationing it for us.
And GPs are private providers so tell me what is wrong with a private hospital? Is it more private because it’s bigger?
I have family in Illinois and Oregon and emailed them this article and a few of your posts. I wanted to make sure they were informed of what exactly Canadian-style universal healthcare will get you. I know that there is a continuing debate in the US about their healthcare system – it may not be perfect but it sure beats what we’ve got here.
As for healthcare premiums. You’re right Kate, premiums are just a part of your household budget much like hydro and car insurance. It is also a big part of your job search i.e. what kind of benefits will your employer provide.
For those on the lower income rung, those who hold part time jobs, Health insurance is an issue. For them, yes, I think the US needs to come up with an affordable solution (note I didn’t say Free).
I lived in the US for 30 years before moving to Canada. I think the difference between the two mindsets is that while in the US I viewed my health care as my responsibility i.e. I needed to make sure that I had adequate coverage. In Canada, I think people have fallen into the view that it’s the Government’s responsibility that I’m looked after.
None of us should entrust the government with that kind of repsonsibility over our well being.
Kate… I don’t discount the”free market as only part of a solution”, I discount it as the only solution, which is what you advocate when you say ” Open it up. Wide open.” Despite the anecdotal evidence, the American system has huge problems as well, in terms of the cost to business, those who cannot get ANY insurance be cause of pre-existing conditions, personal bankrupcy because of medical expences, etc.
As I understand it, a facility or practioner has always had the option of going completely private if they opt out of the public system.
Sooz “None of us should entrust the government with that kind of repsonsibility over our well being.”
If I knew I was going to get a reduction in my premiums if my doctor and I could stabilize my blood sugar, or if I quit smoking, or if I lost that 20 pounds and stayed compliant with my cholesterol and blood pressure meds; you can bet I’d be a bit more responsible.
If I was told by three or four specialists that they wouldn’t take my knee replacement on unless I stopped smoking for at least 3 months do you think I might just get the message?
Shameful. The proponents of universal healthcare would do well to sit with this family and try to look them in the eye while telling them that they have the greatest system of healthcare in the world. It does not occur to them that the system is in dire repair because for them, the aristocrats of pull, their needs are met promptly.
ZUMA… You want better solutions? How about starting with allowing people choice. I have a brother in law who cannot walk without numbness and pain because he has a degenerative disk. Why is his only option on Canadian soil to wait until Feb 2007 (that is his appt.). Now he was planning on going to Michigan to get the MRI, but the problem there is that there is no one here who could even look at it for him until 2007. It is an embarrassment and a shame, but lets not let that get in the way of our freakin’ cheerleading. What if the Canadian system was single payer, but the government didn’t need to own the bricks and mortar, didn’t need to employ the cafeteria staff… So my idea… the government provides insurance that says they will pay for any treatment currently covered under the Canada health plan. People who want to be paid for their services by the insurance would need to satisfy whatever criteria the people as represented by our government saw fit and if a person made 250000 a year, maybe he/she could kick in a couple of bucks for their coverage. I cannot see what is wrong with that. There are some problems with our geographical diversity, but those could be dealt with in terms of having the insurance pay different rates for services performed in places where it might be hard to attract physicians. I just think that people who sit back enjoying their health and saying the debate cannot move forward because any change from the current system will mean that we will have sick people roaming the streets. Have a little more faith in the Canadian public.
I always get a chuckle from those who defend mediscare, and attack private clinics. They are usually those who are cue jumpers or haven’t been left stranded. My daughter has a chronic illness and the nightmare that the “system” has put us through would make good reading in a suspense thriller. From misplaced tests, to misdiagnosis, to pissing matches between specialists that just about got her killed, the system is a mess. Waiting lists are just the tip of the iceburg. Beneath the water is an enormous iceblock of inefficiency, waste, politics, and substandard care at all levels. I’ve seen it, I’ve been there, and I hate it.
I have the advantage of being married to an ex-nurse who knows what it used to be like. She can spot soviet-style care a mile off, and believe me, that is what we have in many departments and on many wards. I saved my daughters life by becoming a total asshole and “demanding” action; with the help of my wife who knew exactly what political buttons and “terms” to use. I had them scrambling like ants in a disturbed hill, but not until I became nasty. What about all the polite Canadians who don’t know any better.
Here’s a teaser. My daughters post-op room had dirty dressings piled up and falling onto the floor in the waste basket over aweekend. Nobody cleaned up the mess. And this, in a post-op ward in Tommy’s utopia. In a post-op ward where infection can kill.
MolarMauler,
Not sure what your point is – maybe I’m just being dense today.
But one thing is for sure…you wouldn’t be seeing 3-4 specialists in Canada regarding your knee would you?
Cheers,
Sooz
20 yrs. ago the father of my friend was diagnosed with cancer and told the next step was to see a specialist, and that there was a 4 month waiting period. The doctor suggested a doctor in the US, since he knew that quick treatment was vital. Since one of his sons had money, they made an appointment, got in right away, and were told the same thing, he needed to see a specialist. 10 minutes later he saw the specialist, and then straight to the lab for tests, and then directly into the hospital (which was attached to the clinic)for surgery. 9 days later he was discharged and lived another 12 years until he died of old age. In Canada he would likely have been terminal, because he wouldn’t have gotten treatment in time. That’s the horrible American health care that the Liberals and NDP have been warning us about.
Kate
90% of Canadians live within a 2 hour drive of the US. If private health care will answer your prayers take a little drive or tell your friends to do it. We already have lots of it real close. Do you need to have it down the street? Take a little initiative and take a short drive. You will be welcomed with open arms and given the best service money can buy.
And though there are serious problems with US health care, their gov’t spends more per capita on health care than we do, in addition to all that private health care. For seniors there is medicare, and for the poor uninsured people, there is medicaid. The very rich have the ultimate health care because they pay for it all themselves, but the poor don’t wait the way we do.
JeffP, a single payer is the problem.
The same single payer who can’t afford to deliver health care now won’t be able to afford health care even if the delivery side was totally privatized. The single payer is rationing things now. They’ll still be rationing it later.
Even something simple like a deductible will go a huge distance to people making smarter choices. If someone insists on an analogy for this, look at windshield insurance. Without a deductible I’d have had my windshield replaced a few times already. With a deductible I’ve explored other solutions like resin-filling the early dings I get so the cracks don’t spread.
Besides deductibles, having choices in the types of plans allows someone as a diabetic to purchase insurance that gives them access to diabetes clinics that’ll manage their whole disease and bring all the outside the health care system resources to bear on their problem. It’ll make them healthier as well as well as driving the cost to the system down.
If I want to choose a plan that focuses on prevention and Eastern medicine, then bully for me, it’s my money and I’ll be healthier. The cost to the system goes down.
It isn’t about uniformity, it’s about choice.
The more get away from a single-payer the better. Unless we want single payer as in “here’s your health care money- go buy yourself some insurance”. That is silly in it’s own way as it’d force healthy people to overpurchase insurance.
I’d rather see a system where you could use before tax dollars to purchase health insurance and you were free to buy whatever plan suits you best. It’d be mandated by law that you had to buy it. If that was a problem for you, then take it up with social services.
Maybe then there would be incentive to treat sick people instead of ignoring them.
Steve D… You know why people don’t just drop out of the debate? let the healthcare system go to pot and take their business to the US? It is because Canadians care about our healthcare. We don’t want people to have to go to US for treatment, we want a system that works, what a radical idea. Man, that was cold. I emplore you to go to someone who has just gotten the news that they have a debilitating condition and bithely tell them that they should travel the “2 hours” to the US to get healthcare… Don’t worry that we spend enough per person in Canada to get top flight insurance in the states, but the people who get timely treatment are those who know someone in the system. See, with the soldiers of the status quo, queue jumping is ok, but it is only they who can do it. Man, that was out of bounds, people are dying, dude.
Earth to Steve D. Canadians already are making that “short drive” to the border – along with all their dollars.
Wouldn’t it make sense to keep it in the Canadian economy and have them drive just down the block??
They’d help the environment too, eh?
steve d:
That is simply not the point, don’t be so obtuse.
Here’s a slogan for you:
“Promise made, promise broken.”
It would appear that the Supreme Court of Canada is not on your side. Try reading this decision and the lovely black eye the LIEberals deserve for having lead us all down the garden path:
http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/2005/2005scc35.html
Citation: Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General), [2005] 1 S.C.R. 791, 2005 SCC 35 (CanLII)
You really need to keep up with your reading.
Molar, I agree with you, but I jsut think you have to start somewhere.. I would certainly welcome a private insurance system so that I can buy coverage based on my level of health, my assessment of risk, he services I desire, etc.. but right now we have the worst of all worlds, so I think that the best way to move forward is to get over the first big roadblock.. It would be a confidence building step in which people would be able to see that the world does not come to an end if someone who is risking their capital in the provision of healthcare makes a profit instead of that money and more going to the buearocrats. You are spot on, but lets start somewhere.
And Sooz, my point was that I agree with you in that we need to be responsible about our health because the government can’t do a good job of being responsible for our health. The 3-4 specialist thing was projected into a world where health care was private. You are correct that in today’s world we wait for months to see a specialist that we have very little choice in selecting for ourselves.
And SteveD? Your solution is that we drive to the States to get our health care? Did I read that right? So it’s not okay for us to spend our own Canadian money for a service we should be able to get in Canada, but it’s okay for us to spend it in a foreign country? Whose side are you on? Or rather, what planet?
But you’re right. I am ‘forced’ to buy critical illness insurance so if I get something bad, I can survive for 30 days, get my cheque and do just that. But maybe, do you think I should have another choice than to drain our money south of the border.
Maybe SteveD likes the waiting lists as it makes legalized medicianl marijuana an attractive alternative to responsive health care.
Why not just have the gov’t buy us all private insurance in the US? Or better yet allow us to buy it. They get coverage for everyone and no hassle for them. Contract the healthcare services out like they have done our military capability for the last 50 years.
With 30 million of us, I’d bet they could give us a great rate.
Shawn you almost got it right. All the government would have to do is ‘allow’ us to buy the insurance ourselves.
I’d have no problem at this point running south if I really needed to. The problem is paying for it. That’s the purpose of insurance, for what it costs to insure your car you could get some kick ass medical coverage.
If I were allowed to buy insurance for myself and my family the problem would be over.
MRSA, H5N1, Bird Flewenza: Out damned bug. (H/T Lady Macbeth). +
HANDWASH KILLS BIRD FLU BUG IN 30 SECONDS
Daily Record ^ | Greig Box
Posted on 04/20/2006 11:33:27 AM PDT by FARS
Hope over spray
AN ORDINARY handwash costing just �2.99 can kill the bird flu virus in 30 seconds, tests have found.
No-Germs, a simple hand spray, has been on sale over the counter for two years. But when the H5N1 avian flu outbreak gathered pace among birds, No-Germs owners decided to test it against the virus.
The results, revealed yesterday, were remarkable – the handwash was more tha 99.8 per cent efficient in killing H5N1. The discovery has been heralded as a “major breakthrough” – particularly if the virus ever mutates into a human form.
Sean Campbell, managing director of the British company behind the product, said: “We are very excited.
“We tested the product against H5N1 on the off-chance. We were confident it would work as it kills most viruses, including hospital superbug MRSA. +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618423/posts
They teach you in Kindergarten to wash your hands for as long as it takes to sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star’.
Of course if you do a Number Two, it’s better to sing ‘Have You Seen The Muffin Man’.
Gee, handwashing is hygienic!!
My wife, THE SUPREME dental hygienist, resolutely reminds our family of this fact on a regular basis.
Now we only have to worry about the ebola virus, that the professional dummies from the Texas sugggested we need to release, to keep the human population under control.
Whew, one catastrophe avoided; just duck and cover!
This is not so difficult to figure out.
Look if we allow the private system to set up next to the public you will have to have shuttle buses for the health care professionals. This is not going to help wait times. Unless you are one of those that thinks these medical specialists grow on trees and are a dime a dozen. If we are arready experiencing wait times that we find unacceptable what would happen if we spread our specialists between two different and competing systems?
If you have something serious and they are not dealing with it within a decent time frame then look south. You will get good prompt service and you won’t be worsening the wait time problem up here.
We already have a great private system close by. We have the best of both worlds.
Meanwhile if we want a better health care system we have to demand it and perhaps be ready to pay a little more.
If Harper doesn’t get it done then throw him out. Don’t keep re-electing guys that don’t do what they say they are going to do.
Here is an idea that I am sure Steve D would support.
Opt out.
Give me the percentage of my tax dollars that go to health care back and let me pay for it myself.
Why should I pay for health care in Canada when Steve D says I can just go to the US to get care?
How long to you think the Canadain health care system would last if that happened?
Okay, I promise I’ll stop re-electing Harper if you promise to start making sense.
Steve d. Why will everyone abandon the public health care system for the private? Are you saying that the best healthcare system in the world cannot sustain any competition? It implies that we are forcing providers of health care into a system that is not to their liking for our “benefit”. So do you think we have the right to force a health care provider to provide service the way we want or to leave the country? That does not seem to be a moral stance. I want the people in the health care system to feel they are valued, to free them from crippling bureaucracy, to allow them to earn a living in concert with the value of service that they render.
$2billion spent on the gun registry might not put a huge dent in healthcare, but it would have been a start. Add the 1000 nights in Cancun, David Dingwall’s severance, sponsorship $, etc etc — there should be enough for healthcare.
Steve D.
I have many family members in the medical field. I chose to do anything but.
Did you know we are losing specialists to the US because they’re only allowed to do their work a few days a week? There are surgeons who can only operate 1 day a week in the public sector because there aren’t enough support staff or beds to allow them to do more than that. We’ve had world-class surgeons leave for US teaching hospitals because of lack of funding for basic care, never mind research. If there was a private clinic for these doctors to operate in the other 4 days, a lot more patients would get seen, there would be less strain on the public system which could be used to hire more support staff to get services going (given that the sunk costs in hospitals have to be paid whether the patients are seen or not, having idle doctors and long waits is just bad management.) The biggest complaints that doctors have with the system is not that they’re underpaid (as they are in comparison to the US) but that they’re not supported, don’t have the tools to do their jobs and get no respect from the government or public.
Thanks to idiot government policy (whose pinnacle was Bob Rae’s Ontario,) the governments thought that they way to control costs was to cut back on the number of doctors trained. They believed that the problem with the health care system was that there were too many greedy doctors billing too much instead of seeing the problem as a direct consequence of a “free” service out of control. The demand for anything “free” is infinity. There will never be enough. This didn’t stop the government. They closed down a good portion of the number of med schools spots as well as reducing the number of residencies for training specialists. Not surprisingly, there is now a doctor shortage. Combine this with the government’s complete inability to figure out how to get foreign trained doctors actually practicing medicine instead of driving cabs (deliberate ploy to keep a shortage to save money?)
The health care mess would be the biggest class-action law suit in US history if it were an American HMO. The negligence award would be surpased only but the punative award in its massive scale. In Canada though, we have the most incompetent HMO’s going and they’re state-run, unaccountable and a monopoly and there’s nothing we can do until the asshat drooling idiot public stops listening to media scaremongers and demands choice and accountability.
In no sane country would the status quo be acceptable.
They’ll never be enough money for health care until people stop trying to manage our money for us; governments, corporations and employers.
“The negligence award would be surpased only but the punative award in its massive scale”
But=by