“Gotcha. The essence of contemporary British national identity is defined by waiting two years for a hip replacement.”
More – slow-mo euthanasia. Why not? It works for us.
“Gotcha. The essence of contemporary British national identity is defined by waiting two years for a hip replacement.”
More – slow-mo euthanasia. Why not? It works for us.
Nanny is watching to ensure that every day is Dependence Day.
Two years? When did the waiting time get this short?
Two years? When did the waiting time get this short?
The article I posted above leads me to believe that they’re lowering the wait time by sending the fatties home:
Research last October for the ITV1 programme Tonight With Trevor McDonald found that thousands of patients needing hip replacements or non-emergency operations have been either barred from treatment or told to come back when they have “shown a commitment” to become healthier.
That’s right DB.If you ain’t healthy, i.e. sick, then you have no need for health care.Too bad we couldn’t send some “other” people home,or make them wait…wink wink nudge nudge
Canada; Free health care for all — didn’t say when 🙁
Medicare in Saskatchewan was modeled after Britain’s National Health Service, including the bureaucracy, inefficiency, and delays.
Only two years for a hip replacement! Truly paradise!
Perhaps this is the only tradition we still have in common with our mother country. How sad indeed.
One thing the Brits have over us, its a two tier system. You can -buy- a hip replacement surgery, you don’t have to wait for the gubmint issue one. We don’t have that luxury.
Regarding the story on Dr. Chaoulli, the author mentions that the Supremes have been sitting on this for a year already.
Frankly, a blind pig could see that our healthcare laws are a denial of basic rights. Making a patient wait regardless of ability to pay is a clear, obvious and basic denial of freedom.
Supremes seem to lack the vision of a blind pig, its taking them a year to figure out what an 8 year old could decide in 30 seconds.
This tells me all I need to know about my rights in this country and the value of our Charter as protection.
Has anyone seen a Supreme Court justice waiting around at the local walk-in clinic? I didn’t think so. I really don’t care what you call it… two or more tier health care has been around for a long time (ask any serving member of the CF, RCMP and parliament. The biggest objection I have is that I can buy medical insurance for fluffy or spot but I am a criminal if I try to buy some for myself & family.
When I broke my fibula and tibia last year, the ambulance picked me up in 15 minutes from a mountain road, the X-ray technician was called in within a half hour, I was diagnosed within two hours and operated on, at a hospital sixty miles away, within seven hours. Canadian health care isn’t as bad as people think.
Frank, there is a difference between emergency care and chronic care. You experienced the emergency side of things and you are right, it’s not bad. However, wait until that leg of yours has something wrong that doesn’t involve an emergency. It’s then that the true beauty of socialized medicine shines through.
When I broke my fibula and tibia last year, the ambulance picked me up in 15 minutes from a mountain road, the X-ray technician was called in within a half hour, I was diagnosed within two hours and operated on, at a hospital sixty miles away, within seven hours. Canadian health care isn’t as bad as people think.
A problem with generalizing from one’s personal experience is that it can be countered by the experiences of others who weren’t as fortunate.
No, it’s not black-and-white; medical emergencies generally result in one’s being sent to the front of the queue and there are many excellent medical professionals in Canada who can work wonders when set free to do so.
For some it’s a variant of Stockholm Syndrome (a Canadian patient mantra is “and the nurses were sooo wonderful even though they were so busy filling out their reports at the counter”) or, even worse, an “I’m all right” Jack (or Olivia) outlook, since it’s a well known dirty little secret that not only politicians, prisoners, and WCB cases, but those with political clout are more equal than others when it comes time to access treatment.
I’m glad it worked out for you so well. That’s the way it should work for everybody all the time.
Frank, let me know how you do trying to get a knee replacement if (God forbid!)that leg gets arthritic.
The hellacious wait times are for non-emergency surgery. Non-emergency means you aren’t going to die -today- if you have to wait, you may be able to hang on a month or two before you bite the biscuit.
Example, an in-law of mine with diverticulitis had to wait over a month, in hospital mind you, before he was able to get surgery. This is a man under forty, not some 85 year old alcoholic train wreck.
Diverticulitis is a wonderful ailment, wherein the bowel forms a communicating passageway with the bladder. Meaning farts and other fun things come out your wiener, and if they don’t fix it you die horribly. That guy waited a MONTH, burning up $1000+ bucks a day of your money for the hospital bed because he would lose his place in line if he went home. Nice, eh?
That’s not the worst or longest wait story I know either seeing as how he lived. Lots of people DIE waiting for joint replacements, abdominal surgeries, cancer treatments, elective heart bypasses, oh you betcha.
Charter of Rights? Don’t make me laugh.
“slow-mo euthanasia.”
You betcha and don’t think it wasn’t designed that way.
Question for the reasoning: If this politically vandalized public health system can’t cope with the common demands for sugical prceedures…how do you think it’s doing with cancer cure rates? We never will know because they avoid the answer….taken obe step further how could this health care system cope with a global pandemic which we are constantly told is coming?
I think the truthful answers to both those questions will reveal this public system to be the best population control tool in the technocrat’s tool box.
Self-service medical care is now coming to the UK. Really, you can’t make thus stuff up!
I can’t wait until the Brits start posting their own surgeries on YouTube.
Waiting times target will be missed. It might look familiar but it’s not a Canadian headline.
Come to think of it, didn’t some British medical experts visit Canada recently to warn against creeping privatization?
Don’t Doctors control the number of applicants that are allowed in Med schools? Just in case Doctors become a dime a dozen and fees cannot sustain themselves in the fashion that doctors have become accustomed to? It would seem fear of over competition among the industry is what is truly behind wait times. Is every one advocating dumping Medicare? In favour of what? Paying a for-profit insurance company $1500.00 a month for non pre existing conditions care ? Or is there something else?
@Drained Brain (12:13 PM):
Street legend has it that the initial impetus to socializing healthcare came at the time when the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was first discovered. Under a private system, an independent doctor had the right to say “quit smoking or quit coming to see me.” This bluntness, so the legend goes, made the smokers (of which there were many more than nowadays) mad enough to get behind Tommy Douglas.
To the extent that this street legend is true, the irony is breathtaking.
*
“Might as well blame the tobacco companies – it’s easier and more convenient than thinking.”
@Frank Hilliard:
You’re more fortunate than you think. I myself broke my left arm in two places due to a single fall: wrist bones and a spiral fracture right below the elbow. After taking myself to the hospital, I stood up for a total of a couple of hours. (To be fair, the hospital attendants didn’t know how bad I had it, and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to show them by jostling the dangling meat below my left elbow through sitting down. Had I done so, I would have emitted a loud howl in the waiting room, which I did belt out once my arm was examined…despite being administered a double shot of morphine beforehand.)
Once I was put in the bed, I waited for an operation – for about six days. I actually asked the attending physician what would happen to me had I up and walked out with the cast given me, although my father did dissuade me from actually doing so. (I still wonder.)
I’m not really trying to put a complaint forth, as I did get admitted to the same Toronto hospital that’s a magnet centre for serious injuries in the entire region. They had a mandate, and they had to fill it: hence my wait.
As far as your own story is concerned, it reinforced a suspicion that the out-of-the-way hospital is the place where the line-ups are almost nonexistent for serious fracture injuries. Had I gone to one myself, I might have faced less of a backlog.
Quoth the Bl@ckbird: “Don’t Doctors control the number of applicants that are allowed in Med schools?”
No. They don’t.
These are government funded schools, governments decide on the number of seats. Doctors and their professional orgs have been screaming about this since the number of seats were cut, to no avail. Just another brilliant success of Central Planning.
“It would seem fear of over competition among the industry is what is truly behind wait times.”
No, that could only be true if there were competition. There isn’t any. That being the point. In actual fact it would seem that lack of STAFF is behind wait times.
Surgeon’s number one complaint is lack of operating room time, not lack of customers. ORs sit empty because there is not the funding to pay the required ancillary nurses and techs. Oddly there always seems to be funding for “social services” and the 10,000 clerical/management drones one finds milling about our public hospitals. More Central Planning.
“Is every one advocating dumping Medicare? In favour of what?”
To my knowledge absolutely no one is advocating dumping Medicare. That would be incredibly stupid.
Speaking for no one but myself, what I personally advocate is FREEDOM OF CHOICE.
As in, you should be FREE to -purchase- any type of medical care you so desire that any doctor feels like providing. For money. Capitalism, y’know?
Should insurance companies wish to sell medical insurance they should be FREE to do so, and I should be FREE to buy it and use it.
Finally, doctors should be FREE to work in the public system -and- their own private practice as the spirit moves them. I myself should be FREE to buy a truck, stick an MRI scanner in it, and SELL my services to anybody who wants them. Including shopping malls in Toronto AND five bed hospitals in East Butthole Ontario.
My problem with Canadian medicare is that I personally am not free to spend my very own money to buy a treatment that I need, not even to save my very own life. My choices are:
A) wait and suffer, possibly unto death, for the government funded treatment, or
B) I can go to America.
That is not freedom sir. That is oppression. It is obscene, and I am determined to see its supporters defeated and the freedom of Canadians restored.
Note that a private medical industry does not preclude a robust and effective public system. It just means that public system won’t be the sole provider, which means I can go to a hospital where they actually clean the f*cking bathrooms.
If you think private care is so great you should come live in the US for a bit. For “only” $350/mo my daughter has HMO coverage, which allows me to see her pediatrician for “only” a co-pay of $15. Branded perscription drugs have a co-pay of “only” $40. Need a blood test? co-pay. Admitted to the hospital? co-pay.
And at least my daughter has a hippy pediatrician with a deliberatly small practice. The last time I wanted to see my HMO for an infection I had to wait ten days! Ten days just to see a doctor. And if I don’t see THAT doctor then BAMN, no coverage!
When my wife had ultrasounds done it was a $100 co-pay. Know how much it would have cost if she didn’t have insurance? $850. $850! $850 for a 25 minute procedure in a private for-profit facility.
Let’s say you live in Philadelphia and find out you’re pregnant. Guess how long the wait time is to see an ob? Did you guess five to six weeks? See, so many people sue after they have a problem with the birth that it’s just not very profitable for hospitals in the Delaware valley to be in the baby-delivering game. So their (obvious and rational) response is to shut down the department.
For-profit health care means that the doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies are interested in making money off you – not providing you with quality health care. Moving to the States dramatically demonstrated to me that for-profit care is a disaster.
wondercare, if you dislike for-profit healthcare, then go to a non-profit hospital. I used the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania when I lived in Philadelphia. More recently, I’ve had surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. In the US, both the best universities and the best hospitals are private not-for-profit institutions.
And if you think American healthcare is expensive, it is a lot cheaper than the taxes I paid when in Canada.
I thought Harper anounced a grand scheme to reduce or eliminate waiting times.
Oops…I forgot…he made that claim when he was going through his ‘I can BS just like a liberal’ phase.
Wondercare, I lived in the USA for ten years and I’m a physical therapist. I’ve got personal AND professional experience in three US states, NY, AZ and MN. I’ll tell you right now, stack up the crappy public hospital in Mt. Vernon NY against Henderson Hospital right here in lovely Hamilton Ontario, and there’s damn all difference between them. Except I’m stuck with the Henderson, and in NY I can pay money to go to the nice private joints.
If you don’t like the flavor they serve in one state you can move to another one, you don’t have to leave the country. In Canada, not so much.
As for HMO’s, yes they suck. The VA also sucks. County hospitals suck majorly. They are dirty. They are staffed by morons. They have crowded waiting rooms populated by the scum and off-scourings of society. They have lengthy waiting lists. Their equipment is old and crappy. You can catch nasssty germs and end up worse off than you were when you went in.
Good thing they aren’t mandatory, eh? You can PAY MONEY and go to the -nice- hospital.
Funny how Canadian healthcare has all the worst features of HMOs, the VA and state funded county hospitals. With the added bonus of no choice whatsoever. Because if there was a choice nobody except street bums and drug addicts would be caught dead in the public system. Kind of like the county hospitals.
My advice, jettison the HMO and spend some money on decent insurance. You get what you pay for. Can’t afford the nice insurance? Give up beer and popcorn, maybe take a job on the weekend.
Notice how we keep coming back to the “pay money” thing? Your health is YOUR problem. Either take care of it or don’t, but don’t be reaching into MY pocket. Its immoral, and as Canada and England and even the USA amply demonstrate, potentially fatal. Socialism can get you killed, whereas Capitalism is merely inconvenient.
Good advice Phantom. Living in Texas(and working in the system) I see first hand how the “American” system operates.
First of all $350/mo for a HMO seems a bit steep. I have a PPO for two of us and it is a little over $110/mo (I think). You tend to get what you pay for.
Second, down here if you don’t like the service you just go elsewhere. I want to see a specialist I can go directly and not have to wait for the GP to make the appointment for you.
Third, I’ll pay a $25 co-pay to visit a doctor because I know that there isn’t a waiting room full of people with runny noses or some other minor complaint that doesn’t need a doctor to figure out. A lot of Canadians are waiting in ERs and offices because it is their “right” to get the “free” care.
Lastly, it is a well known fact that in Canada the best way to get prompt attention in the ER is to arrive by ambulance (or complain of chest pains). Otherwise you wait, and wait, and wait…
I suppose a vested interest will form ones opinion.
@wondercare:
The HMO system is partially to blame, but so is the prevalence of lawsuits. Had tort reform been in place, a doctor could open up a completely private practice and charge whatever (s)he pleases without either expensive liability insurance, or the fear of bankruptcy, running interference.
In fact, a lot of those ‘callous’ insurance-company decisions result directly from prior lawsuits, some of them frighteningly large.
Through a combination of the two, the freewheeling sole practitioner has been all-but squeezed out – and that kind of doctor was the linchpin that kept a low-cost alternative open.
(Disclosure: My grandfather on my mother’s side was a physician and surgeon right up until his death in 1977. Back in the private days, there were years when he forgave about 40% of his billings because of patient need. Not all doctors are like this, ’tis true, but his relatively modest costs did afford him that option. The liability-burdened physician of today simply can’t.)
Oh, vested interest is it? Nice Bl@ckbird. Really nice. You have no argument, so slag your opponent with inuendo.
You really are a socialist.