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Overeaters, smokers and drinkers: the doctor won't see you now
Macleans ^ | April 18, 2006 | NICHOLAS KOHLER AND BARBARA RIGHTON

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 ...


TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: healthcare; publichealthcare; socialengineering; socialism
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This is an excerpt from Macleans -- Canada's dead-tree answer to Newsweek.

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.

1 posted on 04/25/2006 9:20:50 AM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

Doctors should have the right to refuse patients just as business owners should be able to turn away potential customers.


2 posted on 04/25/2006 9:25:40 AM PDT by ConservativeMind
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

Ah, socialized medicine. Always so good.


3 posted on 04/25/2006 9:26:09 AM PDT by wizardoz
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

They're not going to have many patients if they turn down Canadians who drink.


4 posted on 04/25/2006 9:27:06 AM PDT by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
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To: fanfan

Ping.


5 posted on 04/25/2006 9:27:52 AM PDT by Springman
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

I guess this means that homosexual AIDS patients will go to the back of the line. /sarc


6 posted on 04/25/2006 9:27:52 AM PDT by garv
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To: Cathryn Crawford

ping


7 posted on 04/25/2006 9:29:17 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
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To: ConservativeMind
Doctors should have the right to refuse patients just as business owners should be able to turn away potential customers.

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.

8 posted on 04/25/2006 9:29:45 AM PDT by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
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To: ConservativeMind

''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.


9 posted on 04/25/2006 9:30:50 AM PDT by Lexington Green (Politician - Lawyer - Journalist.... when you lie for a living)
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To: ConservativeMind

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.


10 posted on 04/25/2006 9:31:42 AM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

"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.


11 posted on 04/25/2006 9:31:47 AM PDT by Bikers4Bush (Flood waters rising, heading for more conservative ground. Vote for true conservatives!)
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To: garv
"I guess this means that homosexual AIDS patients will go to the back of the line."/sarcasm

and, the elderly should be shuffled far, far back in the line since we all know its all down hill for them anyway...../sarcasm

12 posted on 04/25/2006 9:32:14 AM PDT by cherry
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA
Guess after they (the doctors' offices) get through the gene marker screening (DNA) for hereditary diseases, HIV+ folk, drinkers, smokers, overeaters, workaholics, drug abusers, mentally handicapped, physically handicapped, sex addicts, insomniacs, caffeine addicted, diabetics, hypertension afflicted, and the folks that already are sick to send to the back of the line, being a doctor in Canada will be a breeze, right?
13 posted on 04/25/2006 9:35:15 AM PDT by RSmithOpt (Liberalism: Highway to Hell)
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To: dead
Socialized medical care = rationed medical care.

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.

14 posted on 04/25/2006 9:35:50 AM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham (A Liberal: One who demands half of your pie, because he didn't bake one.)
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA
That makes sense. However, in the light of such potential behavior from the State, we must seek a more healthy life as insurance against asinine policies.

We can greatly limit the problems we would need to bring to a doctor. As conservatives, such a "can-do" attitude should already be a part of each of us.
15 posted on 04/25/2006 9:37:34 AM PDT by ConservativeMind
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To: garv
"I guess this means that homosexual AIDS patients will go to the back of the line. /sarc"

Your /sarc tag indicates you already know the answer to that one.

In addition, a BC Human Rights tribunal has ruled that the health care system must pay for "sexual reassignment surgery" for transsexuals.

http://www.tgcrossroads.org/news/archive.asp?aid=688
16 posted on 04/25/2006 9:37:43 AM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: garv

I guess this means that homosexual AIDS patients will go to the back of the line."

They have priority...


17 posted on 04/25/2006 9:38:57 AM PDT by Paisan
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To: garv
I guess this means that homosexual AIDS patients will go to the back of the line. /sarc

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?

18 posted on 04/25/2006 9:40:09 AM PDT by yankeedame ("Oh, I can take it but I'd much rather dish it out.")
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

The more health care becomes an individual responsibility, the better.


19 posted on 04/25/2006 9:45:27 AM PDT by JmyBryan
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To: Springman; GMMAC; Pikamax; Former Proud Canadian; Great Dane; Alberta's Child; headsonpikes; ...
Thanks for the ping, Springman.

Image hosting by Photobucket

20 posted on 04/25/2006 9:45:42 AM PDT by fanfan (FR is the best/biggest news gathering entity in the whole known history of the world. Thanks Jim.)
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