A brush with Canada's… (political)

[rgraham666]

health care system by an American citizen.

Just to counter the endless "Canada's system is socialist and therefor useless" rant I hear from the usual suspects.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

I have to reiterate the comments in the article that Rob posted the link to.

During my recent vacation to Canada, I suffered a heart attack as well. I was in a fairly small town that didn't have the facilities necessary to treat a cardiac patient. I was then medivaced on a new Beech King Air that was state of the art from the avionics to the medical equipment on board.

I was arrived at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon where I made a quick pit stop in the ER and then sent to the Cath Lab.

The care I received in my six days was second to none. The hospital was spotless, and the staff professional, and friendly.

What was best, was the first questions from the care givers was, "What's wrong?", and and not, "What insurance do you have?"

 

[DesertPirate]

It's a good article and Bri's story says the system works. I just don't know how well it would work here. With the gross inefficiency of anything run by this Govt. (and Party doesn't matter, it's the papershufflers) I'm sure it would cost 3 times what it should and might not work as well for years. Wish that was different but anytime the Govt. gets involved things get worse.

 

[Belegon]

It's a good article and Bri's story says the system works. I just don't know how well it would work here. With the gross inefficiency of anything run by this Govt. (and Party doesn't matter, it's the papershufflers) I'm sure it would cost 3 times what it should and might not work as well for years. Wish that was different but anytime the Govt. gets involved things get worse.

Just more proof that we need to address that issue though...

Seriously. It is not going to be easy. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. So many things are true about the inefficiency of our bureaucracy and our health care system is most definitely affected by it.

Fixing health care in this country is going to be really difficult. As difficult as finding an answer to our energy addictions.

But I think we can do it. It is going to be hard, but America has that "backed into a corner snarl" about such things sometimes...

I think that the Canadian system and the UK system both have lessons for us on this... both positive and negative, I'm sure.

 

[CharleyH]

health care system by an American citizen.

Just to counter the endless "Canada's system is socialist and therefor useless" rant I hear from the usual suspects.

Not much to read on Lit today, but I couldn't pass up responding to this, Rob. Any Canadian who has ever spent time in a US hospital has likely been appalled - if not by the conditions, certainly by the treatment or the bill (unfortunately, bland food you can bounce off of walls is pretty much a given in any country, me thinks *chuckles*).

It's a good article to share and just wanted to say thanks for it. The Canadian system is simmering with politics behind the scenes, but when it comes to patient care it is (most of the time) top notch on every level from front line workers to the housekeeping staff.

I am fortunate that I haven't had to experience the health care systems of other countries first hand, but I have been privvy to second-hand experiences and I think I can say, with a certain amount of pride, that there's no place like Canada for first-rate health-care!

Bel: True, every system has ads and disads and no system is perfect. I doubt any system of any kind is perfect. In Canada, you'll hear the call of the doctor's shortage (one problem) often enough. This is true for many rural communities. The sad fact about the Canadian system is that there are caps on income and GP's have the lowest cap of all, so very few individuals going through med school want to even be GPs. Those that become GPs want to stay in urban centres and many GPs coming out of school are women who want to work part-time. It's such a loop that it's hard to explain, but basically the shortage could be somewhat alleviated by licencing foreign doctors, which Canadian doctors are a bit want to do because they prefer to train "CANADIAN" doctors.

While it has been a few years since I was working in the system, I do believe Canada was trying to better their system by looking at Norway's for one (that I recall).

 

[DeeZire]

With the gross inefficiency of anything run by this Govt. (and Party doesn't matter, it's the papershufflers) I'm sure it would cost 3 times what it should and might not work as well for years. Wish that was different but anytime the Govt. gets involved things get worse.

If you substitute 'Halliburton' or 'private contractors' for 'government', you would have an accurate assessment of what's been going on in Iraq.

Back to healthcare - In case you weren't aware of it, the administration costs for Medicare are roughly one tenth the administration costs of private health insurance. This would indicate to me that, in this case, your generalization about the inefficiency of government would be about 90% wrong. But I'll give you the other 10% because I, too, hate lazy, unmotivated freeloader paper-shufflers who bog down the government with their lousy attitudes and incompetent work habits.

I think it's possible to streamline the government systems and then let the workers sink or swim (with revised civil service statutes.) This, to me, would be preferable to leaving healthcare in the hands of greedy capitalists who are profit-motivated, rather than a government entity that is service-motivated.