Posted on 04/25/2006 9:20:47 AM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
At issue: health care for patients with self-destructive vices -- overeating, smoking, drinking or drugs. More and more doctors are turning them away or knocking them down their waiting lists -- whether patients know that's the reason or not. Frightening stories abound. GPs who won't take smokers as patients. Surgeons who demand obese patients lose weight before they'll operate, or tell them to find another doctor. Transplant teams who turn drinkers down flat. Doctors say their decisions make sense: why spend thousands of dollars on futile procedures? Or the decision is the product of frustration: why not make patients accountable for their vices? {snip} But in a health system with more patients than doctors can treat, where doctors have discretion over whom they'll take on, some say it's inevitable that problem patients will get shunted aside in favour of healthier, less labour-intensive cases.
So here's the question: if people won't stop hurting themselves, can they really expect the same medical treatment as everyone else? Health care in Canada is supposed to be about equal treatment for all comers. [snip]
Doctors across the country told Maclean's of colleagues who would not take "unhealthy patients" -- smokers, drinkers and the obese -- because caring for them would be too complicated, and too much of a burden for their already overcrowded practices. Such patients might, in other words, take longer to treat, reducing the number of patients a doctor can see and bill for. The consequence is an entrenched tendency to choose the gym-goer, the moderate connoisseur of red wine and the non-smoker. Says Dr. Edward Schollenberg, the registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick: "The idea that smoking or drinking or excess weight impacts on your health care is just the way the world is.
(Excerpt) Read more at macleans.ca ...
When the public health care monopoly was introduced in Canada, the deal was equal treatment for everyone. Now, we see that some people are more equal than others. We've gotten used to waiting lists, and other more subtle forms of rationing. Now, we're seeing flat-out social engineering.
This is an excerpt; because I'm not sure about the rules for posting from Macleans. The whole article is available on line at the link & is worth reading as a cautionary tale about socialized public health care monopolies.
Doctors should have the right to refuse patients just as business owners should be able to turn away potential customers.
Ah, socialized medicine. Always so good.
They're not going to have many patients if they turn down Canadians who drink.
Ping.
I guess this means that homosexual AIDS patients will go to the back of the line. /sarc
ping
In a free market certainly, but medical care is socialized in Canada.
They've forced people into an system where they're denied medical care. And there are no other options in the country.
''Doctors should have the right to refuse patients just as business owners should be able to turn away potential customers.''
... and the first people they should refuse to treat are lawyers and politicians.
The problem is, we have a health care monopoly. If doctors within the system won't treat them, there is no where else for these patients to go.
This would be comparable to your HMO refusing to treat you, after you've been making payments your whole life. If an American HMO tried that on a wholesale basis, it would quickly lose its client base to competitors. Canadians don't have any alternative to the public monopoly.
"Transplant teams who turn drinkers down flat."
If the transplant is for a liver that the person ruined by drinking it's no shock. Same thing happens here in the U.S.
and, the elderly should be shuffled far, far back in the line since we all know its all down hill for them anyway...../sarcasm
Soon, rationing will be by government guidelines and edicts.
Then, the sad commentary will be:
First, they came for the drug addicts. But I didn't use drugs, so it didn't matter to me.
Next, they came for the drinkers. But I didn't drink, so it didn't matter to me.
Then, they came for the obese. But I wasn't obese, so it didn't matter to me.
Then, they came for the weak and unproductive. But I was afflifted by neither, so it didn't matter to me.
Then, they came for the elderly. But I'm only 50, so it didn't matter to me.
I guess this means that homosexual AIDS patients will go to the back of the line."
They have priority...
Have you ever got that right! (The sarcasm, I mean)
Still and all, what if the patient is an overweight, cigarette smoking Muslim? Or an overweight sot of a queer? Will/can they be denied treatment?
The more health care becomes an individual responsibility, the better.
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