Posted on 08/29/2009 5:09:00 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
While I was away, there was a big debate about how Barack Obama might sort out America’s healthcare system, which, say the critics, is chronically awful and fantastically unfair.
It’s also bonkers. I was once denied treatment at a Detroit hospital because the receptionist’s computer refused to acknowledge that the United Kingdom existed. Even though I had a wad of cash, and a wallet full of credit cards, she was prepared to let me explode all over her desk because her stupid software only recognised addresses in the United States.
Some say America should follow Canada’s lead, where private care is effectively banned. But having experienced their procedures while on holiday in Quebec, I really don’t think that’s a good idea at all.
A friend’s 13-year-old son tripped while climbing off a speedboat and ripped his leg open. Things started well. The ambulance arrived promptly, the wound was bandaged and off he went in a big, exciting van.
Now, we are all used to a bit of a wait at the hospital. God knows, I’ve spent enough time in accident and emergency at Oxford’s John Radcliffe over the years, sitting with my sobbing children in a room full of people with swords in their eyes and their feet on back to front. But nothing can prepare you for the yawning chasm of time that passes in Canada before the healthcare system actually does any healthcare.
It didn’t seem desperately busy. One woman had lost her face somehow — probably a bear attack — and one kid appeared to have taken rather too much ecstasy, but there were no more than a dozen people in the waiting room. And no one was gouting arterial blood all over the walls.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
What’s the Canadian word for ‘lousy care’?
PUBLIC OPTION
Five years ago I spent 8 hours in a Sacramento emergency room with no pain medication after a bicycle accident. My pelvis was broken in 5 places, as it turned out. The emergency room wasn’t even all that crowded. Plenty of staff seemed to be around. They just didn’t help me.
So bad treatment can occur under a theoretically free market system, too. Anecdotes don’t really prove much of anything one way or another.
OTOH, once I got out of ER and into the hospital, care was excellent.
Lousy Care in Canada has several terms:
1) Marriage
2) Goat F—k
3) Liberal Health Care
But in Newfoundland they call it, “Oh Me Dachter is Paison, by!”
Obama
I think that would be: “We got hosed”.
Le health care sux.
This limey showing up in Detroit hospital would be like me attending London’s Finsbury Mosque for Friday prayers.
Shut up, get in line, and try to be thoroughly dead when (if) your assigned “health care professional” gets around to you next week.
“I was once denied treatment at a Detroit hospital because the receptionist’s computer refused to acknowledge that the United Kingdom existed.”
BS unless he was seen over 20 years ago. COBRA/EMTALA was passed in 1986 and made it illegal for a hospital to turn ANYONE away from it’s emergency room without treatment.
Just plain didn’t happen
Good post, quite a story, very snarkily amusing. Didn’t quite get all the historical references. I urge everyone to read it all.
An experience that is very recent.
We had to take Mrs. Chief Engineer to Canada to get treatment for her breast cancer.
I was up in Canada, the last two weeks, helping her get settled into an apartment. I went with her to her appointment to see her Family Physician. She needed to get some perscriptions refilled and pick up some paperwork she had asked the doctor to fill out several weeks ago so she could be designated as being “disabled” allowing her to get bus passes, etc.
He had not filled out the form and told her that he had no intention of doing so because the form was too long and it would take him too long to fill out because he was not getting paid to do it.
She has been seeing this doctor for two months. Never, in this time has he or any of his staff given her any kind of physical exam. The have not taken her temperature, checked her blood preasure or any of the procedures that are a matter of course here in the U.S. when you see your doctor.
Nevertheless, he has prescribed 160 mg. of Morphine per day for her pain. The Doctor and his staff never mentioned a side effect of Morphine, constipation.
There is more to this story, but needless to say, her Family Physican scares the h*** out of me. I can’t say the rest of the health care system gives me confidance either.
Last Thursday an advocate from a women’s help group went with her to see the doctor. The advocate is a lawyer. The form was quickly filled out.
I never dreamed that somebody would have to take a lawyer along when you visit your doctor, but I guess that is what it takes in Canada.
Please pray for Mrs. Chief Engineer
Ping for advice.
That’s a doctor? Nothing like mine! I have to pay around $10 to have some forms filled out, but have never been told no. And he checks my blood pressure every time I see him.
In my town, if you need a gash stitched up, you have a variety of clinics to choose from besides the emergency rooms. I have personally gone to a clinic to have a tiny wood sliver removed from my foot (there was no one else at home to do it). Took 30 minutes and I was gone. I find it hard to believe that I can get a sliver removed in jig time while someone in a real emergency situation sits there for hours. Then again, it was Quebec, seems like a lot of these horror stories happen in la belle province.
Sorry FPC. I should have been clearer in my ping.
The request for advice is for Chief Engineer’s post at #14.
I’m trying to get more information by PM.
Interesting. When my son broke his wrist a few years ago, we drove to the closest hospital, which gave him an X-Ray after a one hour wait. We were then told to drive to the children's hospital, 40 mins away for treatment. On arrival, we filled out paperwork, and then waited, and waited, and waited. 4 hours later, he was treated.
There is more to this story, (They didn't set it right, and it had to be re-broken and reset later, etc.) but the point is that it took all day to have a broken wrist treated on my then 9 year old.
You should have ponied up for an ambulance, then your son would have received priority.
Funny that you should mention a broken wrist. While I cooled my heels and an acute kidney stone attack in a BC ER a few years ago, a nurse who had broken her wrist playing tennis, was rushed in ahead of everyone else(including a toddler bleeding profusely from a scalp wound) so as not to hold up the ambulance.
To survive socialism you need to play the system, unfortunately.
You’re kidding! I hadn’t thought of that.
LOL, the rich do get better health care, even here in Canada. (If they know how to play the system)
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