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Having experienced both forms of healthcare I can assure all readers that the U.S. system is far superior until something like cancer arises. I am now back in Canada and I re-injured an arm I had surgery on in the U.S. The hospital I went to COULD NOT get proper X-rays of the arm to see what was wrong because of a glare from the titanium so they asked me to have the x-rays taken at a walk-in clinic in Pocatello ID sent up along with the surgeon’s notes from the original operation in Blackfoot ID. I need a new shoulder because I was walking along a sidewalk which was in extremely poor condition and literally flew over the handlebars of my walker (I have seven compressed discs in my back) I landed first on the bad arm/shoulder, then on my nose which I broke, put my teeth through my lip, and had sidewalk rash from my eyes right down to under my chin before I became unconscious. I was on a backboard for over 5 hours and also was in a cervial collar for 2 hours. Because I was groggy from being unconscious the ER doctor figured I was a drug addict and that is what she focused on, nothing more except removing the stones etc from my face. She actually put down on the report that I was taking 600 mg of morphine! I was shocked when I read that considering I am 4ft 9 in short and don’t weigh 90 lbs. I would be unable to function with that amount of morphine in me. She didn’t look at my shoulder at all and yet I knew by the next morning that I had damaged it when I was trying to do my exercises. I wasn’t taken seriously by my family doctor who got me addicted to morphine instead. It wasn’t until January that I was finally informed that I had so badly damaged the shoulder that I needed a new shoulder BUT I could wait as long as three years for it! Also the hospitals up here in B.C. complain about shortfalls in their budgets but all the patient rooms are wired for video and sound and all patient phone calls are recorded! Want to try sociaized medicine Canadian style now?
And oh yes, when I originally arrived back in Canada I had over $2208 U.S. worth of insulin in flexpens (flexpens aren’t available in Canada) with me. I was admitted to the hospital and all medications I had with me were recorded but when I was discharged four days later the doctors from the ER had sudden cases of amnesia and no insulin was ever returned to me. In Feb a nurse phoned to tell me one of the two types of my insulin was in the fridge in the ER but the other was no where to be found. What a nice way to balance a budget! An investigation has been launched over the insulin but I doubt I will ever get an apology over the treatment I received during that original trip to the hospital considering I ended up at the ER the night after I was released in severe hypoglycemic shock after giving myself half of the ordered doseage of insulin which the doctor had ordered me to give myself. If I had given myself the doseage he had ordered I would have been a corpse going by ambulance to the morgue. That’s the horror of socialized medicine for a short time period, I won’t bore you with my other trips to the hospital, your hair would turn white.