53 Replies to “You Guys Weren’t Kidding”

  1. I’d rather look at the good side. Within a month I’ve had a MRI and bone scan, with a waiting time of less than a month.
    An American recently said he had a medical bill of over $13,000. and his insurance paid just over $1,000. He can’t afford to pay the remainder but the hospital is accepting low monthly payments.
    A friend in her late 30’s sent an email to everyone in her address book, signing off. Her husband was diagnosed with MS and she knew the financial cost would cause them to lose their home in a few years.
    Yes, my brother and his wife waited to have knee replacements, but they had them and it didn’t cost them a penny. Free home care included.
    This is one of those issues where the glass is half full, not half empty.

  2. Socialized medicine…
    All the good doctors move south
    The lineups get longer
    You get to pay thru your taxes for all the free stuff
    Hope you enjoy the wait in the long long lineup
    Oh and dont forget to thank Tommy the commie Douglas for destroying a little part of freedom in Kanuckistan…
    So Sad

  3. I’d say that Gellen is either lucky to know someone to be able to jump the que or rather unlucky to be sick enough to get placed at the front of the line. According to the study (and personal experience) the wait times for MRI and just about any other procedure isn’t that short. Either way, I hope you are getting better.

  4. FREE, are you a Canadian?
    I will continue with the case of a cousin in her thirties who just died after a 3-yr battle with cancer. She received the most excellent care in B.C., and after moving to Ont., was immediately accepted into the health care system. No waiting time, excellent care, no cost.
    There are many people in Canada who do not pay taxes, or very little. They receive the exact same care as the wealthy.

  5. Texas, me – lucky enough to know someone? What a laugh. I’m an 80 yr old retired sect’y living in a small village whose doctor practices in a town of 5,000. I must share this with him when I see him again in a few weeks.
    I had the same instant care when after a mammogram I required further tests, which after a couple of years resulted in a mastectomy. Again, instant and excellent attention and care, plus bi-annual visits to the surgeon for 5 years. After this November I will have an annual visit.
    No waiting, no cost.
    Now, would any American like to hear the story of my husband’s quad heart by-pass? Three wk stay – in hospital – after ambulance ride to hospital – and surgery. Cost? $35. for ambulance.
    Would you prefer that I complain about something? I’ve just been prescribed pain killers that I must pay for until they’re accepted by the government. Shoot and gosh darn. They cost the same as a cup of coffee a day – $1.50 each.

  6. wait times…
    Public Physio for me, well basically never. My area isn’t seeing “3-4’s” right now, only 1’s & 2’s. It started out as 1 month wait and turned into “not a chance”. Pretty good eh!
    Private system – 3 day wait.
    And I hear it’s the same BS with MRI’s. Long waits in the public system and wierdly enough a days in the private system.

  7. Lets get serious here. I waited four months for a CAT scan regarding a life threatening situation. Luckily it was not serious when checked. My experience is not unusual. My wife was told to wait in line for a MRI related to a pinched nerve in her spinal column. The wait time was probably 6 months. She had already been hospitalized twice already for this problem. She said fine, I will go to Buffalo and pay for a MRI myself which would have been performed the next day. Her doctor managed to get her into the hospital MRI unit in 5 days after that. Incredible!
    No such thing as FREE medical care. Medical care in Canada is rationed because there is not enough money or infrastructure to deal with all needs in a reasonable time. Yes many people in the States may pay a high price for medical care but I bet they have no insurance. The difference in the States is that you must look after yourself by buying insurance. Relying on the Gov’t is a mugs game.

  8. Just spent six hours waiting in emergency this Sunday night.
    My wife and I do quite well so we can afford an option.
    I would just like the freedom to choose. If I could have gone across the street and paid for immediate care I would have and it would have taken us out of the lineup we were in freeing up more space.
    Just give me a choice that is all I want

  9. This is why our politicians love the global warming fear mongering – completely removes the previous biggest problem they had.
    Saving the planet has taken better health care off the political radar screen.

  10. I agree with Right of Centre wholeheartedly.
    We need to have alternatives available.
    Three years ago I required surgery and was told I had to wait months for it. I priced out a clinic in the US that would do it all for $3,800. I called the surgeon’s office and told them to take me off the waiting list as I was going to the US for it.
    Wonder of wonders, two days later I was called by them as they suddenly had a “cancellation”.
    Obviously I took them up on the offer.

  11. The dirty little secret of the Canadian system is the unpublished time it actually takes to get an appointment with a specialist. Last July I asked our GP to refer my 87-year old mother to an orthopedic surgeon to have her leg looked at. Finally, in October 2007, we were told she had an appointment. Good news. Bad news? It’s at the end of August 2008.

  12. Fred–you are so right. When was the last time we heard about wait times? A good friend died waiting for an MRI. I believe our ‘healthcare’ is rationed. And all we hear is ‘shift’!

  13. I think I heard Rutherford mention once that there are only 3 counties in the world where you have no choice between public or private.
    Canada
    Cuba
    North Korea
    I dont know how accurate that is but if true that is disgusting.

  14. March 20 visit to doctor with excruciating pain. Immediate x-ray. Beause I had had breast cancer, I was put on the semi-urgent list.
    May 6 MRI; May 30 bone scan.
    I’m very sorry for those who are having problems with waiting times, and I agree that we should be allowed to pay. I’ve told my doctor that.
    He should be allowed to practice full-time if he wishes, but the limit put on the amount paid by the Ont. Govt. is ridiculously low.
    I have written my MLA but his party is in opposition. No sense trying to tell McGuinty anything. He’s an idiot.
    Salaries of over $100,000. were posted in the newspaper of a nearby city. Salaries for doctors and surgeons were below people who were expendable and grossly overpaid.
    A lot of changes have to be made. The system isn’t perfect, but my cousin in N.Y. State paid $400. a month for a medical plan. I don’t pay an equivalent amount into our health care. Are we unrealistic in what we demand? I’d gladly pay.

  15. If I remember correctly US med insurance runs about $3600 a year, similar insurance in Canada runs about $6800 per person a year. Hardly free.

  16. People in this country can’t talk sensibly about this issue. I’m in the trade.I’ve worked in the USA and Canada both. I’ve seen some things.
    First, with all due respect to gellen, IT ISN’T FREE. It is eating up HALF YOUR GODDAMN INCOME. Don’t talk to me about “free” healthcare in this country, with tax rates of 46%+.
    Second, wait times vary -wildly- depending on where you live and what’s wrong with you. They also depend on who you know. They also depend on how nice you are to your doctor. Talk to -any- nurse, physical therapist or doctor. If they aren’t in management, they’ll tell you things that’ll curl your hair. If they are in management, they’ll lie about it for a while and then admit it.
    There are places where sometimes you can’t get an ambulance, because ALL the ambulances are sitting in front of hospitals with patients inside, waiting to be seen in the emergency room. Places like Toronto, ferinstance. Places like Hamilton. On a bad day they close all the emergency rooms in this town. You’ve got to be shipped off to Brantford or Burlington. Nice eh?
    gellen, my advice for what its worth: don’t break a hip. Wait times for a hip replacement are lengthy compared to how fast you’ll die from lying in bed with a busted hip. Knee replacements likewise, so take your glucosamine.
    This is not the case in the USA. End of argument.

  17. Need to dig a bit deeper…waitlists are for elective surgeries. If you have an emergency (eg. break your hip falling down), you’ll get your joint replaced in hours/days regardless of income or where you live in Canada.
    If you have a chronic illness (eg. obese, diabetes, arthritis) that is degenerating the hip over time, you’ll go on the waitlist for an appointment for a consult.
    Not the best system, but I prefer that we wait so that everyone has access (delayed or not), rather than a premium service for a few.
    Admittedly it is amazing what is classified as “elective” surgery, but it is variable on the graph that needs to be defined better before we make conclusions.
    A “cleaner” look is the % of GDP spent on medical care. US spends more than Canada and does not get as good of a result.
    A final comment (I work in health care administration and could go on and on)…a better system would be one that balances the relationship between the patient and the care provider. Currently the physician and other care providers have all the power. The client cannot even take their purchasing power elsewhere due to government payer. I want the government to continue paying, but we need more transparency in cost of care and involvement of patients in their own care decisions.
    Great blog! I consider it daily reading.

  18. Having free health care isn’t everything. Quality is important also. The quality of health care in Canada is a disgrace to our country.
    The Canadian newspapers reported statistics this week that 4.1 million Canadians do not have a family doctor or have given up looking for one. And for all those who brag about being fair to rich and poor alike, I am afraid that the burden of not having access to a family doctor falls disproportionately on the poor and recent immigrants.
    We haven’t had a family doctor for 8 years. Since my wife injured her knee in a fall three weeks ago, she has been to the walk-in clinic three times, and was seen by a different doctor each time. (They each gave her a different prognosis) This is poor quality health care. Who cares if something is free if it is low quality?
    This spring, suffering from excruciating pain, I was seen by a walk-in clinic doctor who diagnosed kidney stones, and said that since it hadn’t passed in 12 hours, it was essential that I get immediate care. She called ahead to the hospital to arrange a scan, and directed me to proceed immediately to emergency. I registered at emergency at 3:00 p.m. At 1:30 a.m. the following morning. (That is approximately 11 hours of waiting) I finally saw a doctor, who said it was so late at night, I should go home because they couldn’t do anything for me at that time. That is not quality health care, and it is not acceptable just because it is “free”.
    A couple of years ago a child client of mine was referred by her doctor to get an MRI scan. We contacted the hospital in the other city (one hour drive away because our city of about 80,000 didn’t have the equipment), and we were told we could have an appointment on June 8. That was in February, and so we were quite happy that we could get this girl in for her scan in only 4 or 5 months. So we showed up on June 8 but the nurses couldn’t find our appointment. There was about a half-hour of puzzlement and going back and forth, with us insisting that we were scheduled for June 8 for the scan. Finally the nurse checked another file and came back with the explanation. “Sir. This is June 8 2002. Your appointment is scheduled for June 8, 2003” We had to go home with that little girl and wait one more year for the scan! That is not quality health care, and making it free does not make it any more acceptable.
    Look, we are all caring Canadians who don’t want poor people to go without health care. But please stop tellling us that we should accept a broken system and be grateful for it because its “free”.

  19. RofC, your list missed one country: Sierra Leone. All countries on your lists are beacons of prosperity and freedom. Not.

  20. One January day I went to a GP and had to be referred to a specialist (I’m accident prone due to the number of sports I do combined with the lack of coordination for such things I do anyway.) About a month later I was mailed an appointment card for May.
    I thought, well, that’s better than I expected although still not great. May is a long way from January and that doesn’t solve the problem, it just gets me seen.
    Then I looked at the year. It wasn’t May of the current year but May of the next.
    I was lucky that I was able to pull some strings and was seen a few weeks later (“universal” my arse) thus jumping the queue. I didn’t feel bad about it. But if so many of my immediate family hadn’t been in the medical field, I’d have suffered for over a year just to be seen. That is criminal.
    I don’t approve of a single system of health care because it is doomed to be poor and underfunded. But if the state reserves a monopoly on health care through force of law, they have taken on a duty of care to actually provide the F’ing service they promise in a reasonable time.

  21. Pfffft. On our health “care” system.
    I walked into an emergency room in SW ON after getting hit by a drunk driver.
    The triage nurse was offended that I had shown up.
    A week later after going to my doctor, I was diagnosed with whiplash.
    No recourse against the drunk either.
    Then the nurse that tried to discharge me after I had been given demerol. So stoned I couldn’t stand. The doc put me back in the bed. The nurse later came back and booted me anyway.
    A friend came to the hospital to get me. Passed out against the phone booth. If I had walked out of the hospital at 3AM in downtown Winnipeg??…
    And the student nurses in the cardiac ward that didn’t give my mom her medication and insisted she had…
    The nurse that was supposed to change soiled sheets while my mom was recovering from cancer surgery, and didn’t and put her back into the bed with soiled linen.
    The ICU nurses that would let my sister sit beside my mom for hours but would only allow me 10 minutes sitting quietly with her after I had driven 24 hours from Texas to get there when I got the call? Yeah, we’re compassionate caregivers…
    Socialized medecine sucks…
    and the family doctor has standing orders. If I’m coming to see my mother, unless it’s critical, tell the hospital to stay the hell out of my way regardless of the hour, answer what they can answer and make damn sure they are taking care of her…
    Mom did a lot for me over the years. Nothing’s getting in the road anymore to me being with her.
    As for my wife or our boy? Zero tolerance…automatic call to the lawyer before I go.
    They can do a lot of good for people….they can also do a lot of damage.
    The people responsible for our health “care” disaster?
    FIRE.
    THEM.
    ALL.
    and the one’s that are dead? Dig them up and fire them too.
    RANT OFF

  22. Sorry Seymore. Ortho surgery wait times are entirely dependent on the availability of OR time. Staffing is the bottleneck, all the surgeons I know bitch about the lack of OR time, not how overloaded they are with cases.
    You can easily wait a couple weeks for an “emergency” hip replacement if you break it at the wrong time of year. Then there’s the issue of what constitutes an “emergency” and what is “elective”.
    What’s the 50% mortality wait time for an 80+ year old hip fracture, about a week? Ten days for the tough ones? The proper wait time is same day/next day. You can die waiting. People die waiting every week.
    Usually they die of pnuemonia or C-diff these days. The name Joseph Brant Hospital ring a bell?
    That place would be in bankruptcy court if it was in the USA. Here the Ontario government has a little cabinet shuffle and its on to the Next Big Thing. Move along, nothing to see here.

  23. I always get a laugh out of leftards who complain about the immoral practices of US HMOs.
    But these halfwits never seem to realize that the Canadian system is a giant, government run HMO’s with no accountability and where the patients have no recourse to the courts or even to quit the program and join another.
    If our system was a private corporation and run out of the litigious US system the top 20 executives would be in jail and the ambulance chasers would be fighting over the organization’s bones (with a few scraps left over to pay out the victims.)
    It’s the Canadian, socialists, bureaucrat-run system where they deliberately ration care in the hope that people die before they have to provide them with care. In the US, that sort of behaviour leads to very high court settlements.

  24. seymore. 42 to 46% of the gdp of ontarion is consumed by healthcare. nowhere in the u.s. is the number that high. personally i had a five month wait to see an eye specialist, this is in an area where we have better service than most canadians.

  25. Yeah, I am a Canadian, and I want ever dime the scumball liberanos have stolen from me in the form of taxes to finance the sick socilized medical system in this once great country.
    We need to take this country back.

  26. An obvious question when you look at these graphs is why don’t wait times just keep getting worse with time if there’s a shortage of doctors? Why has the graph flattened out in the last 8 years?
    One answer, and a disturbing one, is that the longer the wait time the less the demand. As the wait increases, people become more likely to not bother seaking treatment, or seak alternatives such as going to the U.S.

  27. The health care system was OK until now because there was a some slack in the system.So the cracks in the system could be patched up here and there.
    We also had a large number of physicians from the old British empire system, who fled from the NHS in Britain, from South Africa, and other places. They were excellently trained, extremely hardworking and ethical, and contributed out of proportion to their numbers to all aspects of the healthcare system. However, this generation of physicians is retiring now.
    Currently there is a huge increase in demand due to multiple factors, mostly demographic, but also significantly technological. Further, the government is constantly being forced to pay for more and more things that it shouldn’t because of public whining and crying by people who think that everything from their ingrown toenails to the latest and most expensive and unproven drug have to be free.
    The current system is functioning at beyond capacity and is not sustainable for much longer. Too many people are getting too much for free – it can’t continue.
    As someone who works in the healthcare system, I can tell you what I have thought the fixes should be as I have seen things over the years
    1) allow people to pay from their pocket to access faster/better healthcare. This one is obvious.
    2) introduce a co-payment every non-private every visit. There would have to be some mechanism in place to avoid harming the poor by this. People have no idea how often patients see multiple doctors for the same problem, and have the same tests repeated at enormous costs.
    3) Stringent health testing for immigrants and refugees before entrance to Canada, with elimination of family unification for parents, grandparents, etc. If you go into any big Toronto hospital ICU, clinic, or ward, you will see vast numbers of “new-Canadians” who have been here for a short period, and spent bazillions of health care dollars on treatment of pre-existing conditions that are often incredibly expensive to treat. They are coming here with HIV, drug resistant TB, all sorts of congenital disease, mental illness, etc. I don’t want to be cruel, but shouldn’t people who have lived and contributed to Canada be ahead of these people in line?
    4) some way of having patients carry their health records with them at all times. There is astonishing duplication of unnecessary testing because one doctor does not have access to the records of another.
    People also will have to accept that there are some things they can’t have. PET scans, the latest chemotherapy that hasn’t been proven yet, surgery for non-serious medical problems. They can pay for them if they have the means and want to, but those that can’t pay are out of luck.
    Let me correct one misconception. The number of doctors we are losing to the US is pretty small, and not a small number come back. Practice in the US is not a cup of tea with all their legal issues and complicated payment system, and most physicians are not that money hungry that they would uproot their families and take on all those hassles for 25 or even 50% more money .
    We do lose the super high end surgeons because they require very expensive support facilities that Canada can’t provide. But I don’t see it as a major loss because the money could be better spent on more basic care. Five good family doctors contribute more health and well being to the community than some super specialized surgeon who sees only one type of condition and does only hypercomplicated surgery.

  28. When my knee was torn up bad, it took 16 weeks to see the surgeon to determine if I needed surgery. Then waited 26 weeks for said surgery after it was deemed required. This was in 2001,
    On Nov. 30, 2008 my family Doctor saw something on an X-ray that concerned him. On Dec, 20 I had my cat scan. On Jan 3 I had a meeting with the thoracic surgeon. On Jan 14 they did a biopsy and on the 17th gave me the results. On Jan. 28 they removed the upper lobe of my left lung as well as a tumour larger than a baseball. I don’t think that timeline is all that bad. Especially with the Christmas holiday season in the middle of it.
    Could it be better? Sure could. Could it be worse? Sure could. But when we are comparing health care delivery models, I would say that despite some peoples blind faith in “The U.S. way must be better” , the U.S. system is NOT the role model to aspire to. There are far, far better models than the U.S, that are also far, far netter systems than we have in Canada. Most of them are public / private hybrids, that oddly enough don’t destroy life as we know it.
    But all in all, I’m of the opinion that our health care system is adequate. It’s just that what we need is excellent. My .02.

  30. The Americans have a medical system where sometimes people can’t get health care if they can’t afford it.
    We have replaced that in Canada with a medical system where sometimes people can’t get health care even if they can afford it.
    Wonderful.

  31. Oh fer … That was Dec 2007. D’oh. Maybe it was a lobotomy and not a lobectomy!

  32. Gellen, I think it is great that you were able to get timely treatment.
    I too live in a community of 5000 people with the only hospital within a 2000 sq.km. area serving approx. 16,000 potential patients. Rural but by no means isolated. Consider this cottage country in SK.
    In 2004 my 12 yr. old son was experiencing severe back pain. At that time it was a 5-6 week wait just to see the GP. This process of waiting and testing took a total of 9 months before he was able to see a Pediatric Orthopedist in S’toon where , within 10 minutes,he was diagnosed with a benign tumor on his spine. 3 weeks later it was removed and he has been pain free ever since. I constantly question what would have happened if after 9 months the tumor would have been malignant and I wouldn’t have been able to do more because I couldn’t afford to go to the States for faster treatment.
    Now, 4 years later, we have fewer doctors serving he same number of people.
    A recent article stated that the OECD expects there to be 3 doctors per 1000 people. In Canada that rate is 2.2 doctors/1000 people. In our area that rate is approx. 1 doctor/3000 people. Unless you are in an extremely serious situation, there is little availability to see a doctor in emergency.
    People have to travel as much as 4 hours one way to receive dialysis service or 2 hours one way to see loved ones in a seniors/nursing home. We currently have 22 beds available for those 16,000 people because of a shortage of as many as 8 doctors and 8 nurses, more than 50% of total formula bases capacity.
    I have heard soooo many stories on soooo many blogs about health care that it has become obvious to me that there is a significant difference in service availability in Ontario and Quebec versus the west, especially rural west. That is one of the main reasons you hear such a difference of opinion regarding health care between urban and rural, east and west. My only hope is that sometime soon our urban eastern dwellers, who drive most policy in this country, will finally take an honest look at the big picture of health care in this country and allow the change/choice necessary to better meet the needs of all citizens, not just the fortunate few.

  33. My wife is an RN.
    They cancel 20% of the surgeries every shift she is on.
    The nurses are so overloaded(sometimes 8 patients per shift – California law says only 4)that people are dying because of it.
    Statistics have shown that the mortality rate increases 7% for every extra patient over 4 that a nurse must care for.
    Do the math folks…your relatives are dying because certain pseudo-commies will not allow us to open up our health care system to some competition.
    If something does not change soon, many unnecessary deaths are going to happen.

  34. We had been drinking for 4 weeks nonstop me and my buds. Fights were breaking out towards the end of it and I was singled out as the instigator and beaten up and driven to the nearest railroad track and tied down. After the train went over me there was the long boring wait for the ambulances and finding out that I wasn’t delivered to 1 ER but 2. I woulda paid for a 2 tier system at that time.

  35. I waited 13 hours to be operated on latter in an emergency. 13 hours of seeing no one except one nurse. Held in a public corridor with no Medication except an aspirin. I was informed after some time that since I was homeless ( A condition they assumed because I came there in from work)there policy of ignoring indigents in favor of “Normal people”. The only thing that saved my life was a Jewish intern who took one look at my chart & I was in surgery in 15 minutes . After he had to yell for help, badger nurses , generally had a fit. Was he mad. By that time I was almost redressed. I had taken the IV out & was going home to die. The absolute unconcern for me as an individual coupled with an icy indifference to my plight as well as the isolation was worse than being tortured at least you know they hate you. The indifference was more soul killing than the chest pains.
    In Alberta you can pay for an MRI. Its pretty cheap at any of those clinics that are private. Drs here now advise we get them privately so that it gives them ammunition to get you the service you need. They know this procedure is used as a bottle neck for social triage.

  36. Alberta
    Kidney cancer surgery: 13 weeks 2001 diagnosis to surgery.
    Prostate cancer surgery: 13 weeks 2005 diagnosis to surgery.
    I was out the door on both occasions three days after.
    How does that compare to other provinces?
    My surgeon (a Urologist – laproscopic) takes patients from SE BC and all of southern Alberta. He is a busy man, but complained that he couldn’t get access to an operating theater except on Wednesdays!

  37. Phantom, if I gave the impression that I thought our system was free, I certainly didn’t intend to. I need every cent of my income and would like less of it to go to the government, but I also wouldn’t be able to pay $300. – $400. a month for privateinsurance. I already pay for a major medical and dental plan. In my case, Florida in the winter is out of the question which puts me in the have-nots in my area.
    Yes, I do know I was one of the fortunate ones, and do know that in our local hospital there are tragic cases of people lying on gurneys in the hallways. I’m not dead yet so if the system isn’t fixed, I’ll have some horror stories of my own most likely.
    Our local doctors hold a weekly clinic without reimbursement because those few hours put them over the maximum the govt. will pay. That shouldn’t be necessary. Nor should we have as many people as we do without a GP. What amazed me was meeting two sixtyish new arrivals from the socialized hell of England who somehow went to the top of the list while we had seniors still waiting.
    It’s obvious that I do indeed live in an area that has more access to services. Forty miles round-trip if I was on dialysis, and I cannot imagine how others deal with their situations. Will privatized medicine better provide services to under populated areas? If so, then they should be made available. Naturally privatized medicine means profits so there has to be some compromise for those smaller areas.
    My initial statements weren’t meant to suggest that there isn’t a problem and that the Canadian system isn’t strained. I’d like to think ours is fixable, and voters will demand changes.

  38. A big thanks to Paul Martin and the Liberal Party.
    A 33 % reduction in provincial transfers. A 7 % reduction in federal spending. Provinces spending 40 to 50 % of their budgets on health care. Did they even consider the consequences?
    Someone send that graph to Paul Wells.

  39. Gellen, I’m glad you seem to be looked after rather well in light of the personal evidence presented here. I take offense at the “Fiends of Medicare” that give everyone a tsk, tsk if they aren’t impressed with the Canadian health care model. The first words that seem to come out of their mouths is that the American system isn’t perfect. This is true BUT I don’t see too many Americans heading up to Canada for surgery. Also, insurance can vary quite a bit depending on the plans etc but when I was working down there it was certainly less that $300-400/mo.
    I agree fully with ROC (!), all I ask is for a chance for a choice. Australia seems to have been able to handle a dual system, public through your taxes and private if you choose to buy insurance.
    Phantom and I have both had the opportunity to work in both systems and I agree fully with his comments. I can’t go into details for obvious reasons but the local regional health board is having a hard time trying to find money to replace several obsolete medical pieces of gear but they have time and money for an “Inclusiveness Committee” with 57 members to tell reach out to all the diverse communities (and tell them there is no money to take care of their health).
    If I won the 6/49 tomorrow and built a MRI clinic or cancer treatment facility, I would probably be arrested, but I can still buy health insurance for my two cats! G*d bless Canada… she certainly needs it.

  40. [quote]If I remember correctly US med insurance runs about $3600 a year, similar insurance in Canada runs about $6800 per person a year. Hardly free.[/quote]
    Jeff,
    The US costs per year is also in the $6,800 range. That is an HMO type equivalent to that provided Employees of a Major Company. I paid $7000 a year for an excellent plan
    The problem in Canada is that the money is not going into Emergency & Treatment. The Liberals lumped everything & anything into Health care calling it “Wellness” The NDP planned to include welfare. If you can imagine it, its covered in the Wellness BS… water wells, and the Environment.. Etc
    The Hospital Nurses & Doctors are lucky to see 40% of the Health Budget. This is one area where Cross Border agreements with ND & Montana may produce results. They also have a low number of the patients needed to justify the Costs. The cost of diagnostic equipment is far less than the technicians & Maintenance costs.

  41. My Wife is also an RN who was an operating room Nurse during better times.
    Wait times are one criteria for judging our medical system and rationing is another. The problem is that most Canadians are not medically savy and wouldn’t know if they were given a snow job which in reality is denying them treatment. A dear relative of ours suffered exactly that. Trouble is my wife was not ignorant of the diagnosis and realized the reason for refusal of surgery was bogus. Problem was this elderly person was willing to accept what she felt was as God willed and was not willing to fight the system. Cancer treatment seems to be rather quick after it is diagnosed and orthopedics seems the worst. But you can’t judge from anecdotal reciting’s of patients. A independent survey is a must and that is exactly what the Fraser Institute has done. Thank God for them.

  42. I decided to do a little checking on-line, so I went to a US health insurance broker’s site. Here are some samples of what I received for a 52 year old single male with Type II diabetes, living in Chicago, IL:
    Celtic Basic: $142.39/month, or $1,708/year. Not bad, eh? Oh, except there’s a $5,000 deductible each year, which means I have to pay the first $5k out of my pocket before the insurance kicks in. And then there’s an additional $30 for every office visit. Finally, after the deductible is paid, I have to co-pay 20% of any billing after that.
    United Health Care: $284/month, or $3,416/year. Same $5k deductible, but no payment for office visits and 0% co-pay.
    The best deal was Blue Cross’s HSA 5000: $202.22/month, or $2,426/year, with a $5k deductible and no copay or office visit pay.
    Note that even this “best” deal requires an out-of-pocket payment of $7,246 each year, for a single man. If it were a family plan, I’m sure it would be even more. (I normally see my primary doctor 6 times a year, my eye specialist once a year, and a foot specialist every couple of years, and my diabetes meds and testing supplies are easily $1,500/year.)
    And, of course, this was just on-line quotes, which the fine print made sure to mention were not necessarily accurate, and that each insurance firm reserved the right not to offer me insurance based on details provided.

  43. Gellen:
    Cost? $35. for ambulance.
    How did you manage that? I had a roommate who was an epileptic (he didn’t tell me this when he moved in) and he had a seizure and passed out. I was worried so I called the ambulance. When he got home the next day, he asked me to never phone the ambulance again because it costs him $225.
    That was 6 years ago! It’s probably closer to $300 now (govt workers are highly paid with great benefits).

  44. Phillip G. Shaw: “The problem in Canada is that the money is not going into Emergency & Treatment. The Liberals lumped everything & anything into Health care calling it “Wellness” The NDP planned to include welfare. If you can imagine it, its covered in the Wellness BS… water wells, and the Environment.. Etc”
    I knew it was fixable.
    Texas Canuck – what is the source of the anger?

  45. I want to thank all of you were being grateful that I received the attention I did. I was scared I don’t mind admitting.
    The $35. for an ambulance, Toontown Kid: I’d have to find my files from 2000. Don’t know what people are paying in this area now. I’m certainly going to inquire after reading your story.
    If the Liberals are to blame, and we all knew they were, have the Conservatives been saying anything about improving medical care recently? I get most of my news from SDA. With an election always looming, should we begin emailing our MPs?
    Can they improve the system without giving the provincial govts larger transfers? I certainly don’t trust McGuinty.
    I’d be willing to pay an additional $10. per office visit. That would be around $120. annually. Is that too simple to be part of a solution?
    Or are we just too short of manpower? The resident who attended to me in emergency recently was a lovely woman from India.

  46. gellen
    try the wait list when you have cancer
    and when you finally git treated there is a “just arrived” ( 2 weeks in kanada)freigner ahead of you!!!!
    I can recite quite a few horror stories, so I take your posts with a grain (very large grain) of salt!!!!!!

  47. KevinB; your US Health costs story sounds like a disaster until you consider the wealth of the average person today. My neighbor has 2 SUVs in the driveway, he has a seadoo, a trail bike, a $2.5K mountain bike, a $3.6K stereo, and a boat. I don’t think a $5K deductible is any burden on him. Most of our younger set spend that much on hockey games, etc..
    There have been great changes since Tommy Douglas came up with universal health care. We are a much wealthier society today. The real fear is the ending of a socialist wet dream.
    And in the US Seniors are taken care of with low monthly insurance premiums. The poor also have better health care in city and charity clinics than we have in our UHC Hospitals.

  50. gellen said: “I also wouldn’t be able to pay $300. – $400. a month for privateinsurance.”
    You would if they didn’t take half your income, ducky.
    What is money for, kids? Its to buy what you need. Canadians are not allowed to buy what we need, and before long you won’t be allowed to complain about it in public either.
    Why is this freedom thing so hard for people to grasp? Freedom comes with a price tag called responsibility. You wanna be free, be prepared to suck it up some times.
    You wanna be a slave, that’s ok. But you better hope Big Brother feels like doling the soup today, eh? He might not, and if so you’re not getting any.

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