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 ...
bump
"Doctors should have the right to refuse patients just as business owners should be able to turn away potential customers."
Not if they're taking government money. You seem to be under the delusion that this is the free market we're talking about. :)
bttt
You're welcome. BTW, what are the taxes on Cigs and booze in Canada?
If you know.
The US and state Gov. make more on them than the producers!!
"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."
There is a shortage of livers (and other organs) for transplanting. They should go to people who won't abuse them.
However, what should we do when (if) the technology for growing new organs is perfected, and there is no longer a shortage? In the U.S. drinkers would probably be able to get insurance, if they paid a large premium. Rich boozers could just pay all the costs out of pocket. Canadians have no alternative to the public health monopoly (except to travel to the U.S. for the services).
Yep, but by god don't you dare tell an Illegal Alien he can't have free Health Care.
Racist pigdogs.
/sarc
But half of the things you mention directly relate to the part of the article that stated "This is an issue of behaviour and choice," . . . "People can choose to alter their behaviour, can choose to go to the gym more often -- these are choice things."
"Sin taxes" (taxes on booze & tobacco) are much, much higher in Canada. Cigarette smuggling from the U.S. is a big business.
There are other ways the monopolies restrict access. My father in law (who by the way, was active, non-smoker, healthy eater) contracted colon cancer in his early 50's. Because he would not submit to chemo, the doctor refused to give him any other care. The same thing happens stateside, or course, but here it is easier to switch doctors.
You mean to tell me it's not just smokers any more?
Who'da thought?
< /sarc >
Drinkers and smokers get no care, but the chronically non-productive still get everything free, yes?
A guy that I knew got arrested on his third trip with a RV filled with cigs. They confiscated the camper and threated him with 10 years. He rolled on his cananadian accomplices and got nothing but an official "never come to Canada again". The real kicker is...It wasn't his RV, so he got off with nothing.
... and everyone should have the right to choose whom they associate with socially or business wise, but...
That is now bigotry, profiling, discrimination or meanspiritedness and forbidden by by law
Ah, just think of all the money they WON'T be making. These are just the folks they can have a field day with!
A terrifying situation. Next, doctors won't accept patients over 80. Or 70. Or 55. Doctors with waiting lists might decide to work only on pretty women. Canada seems crazy to me.
Unfortunately, the New Deal has made self-sufficiency a punishable offense
You may thinnk it's sarcasm, but that is actually happening in the Netherlands.
And in the good old USA
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49888
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