What Money Buys In U.S. - Civility

The Toronto Star ^ | 7-25-03 | Jason Brooks

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Health care in Ontario is free, but so is eating lunch from a trashcan. So last week I flew to Baltimore to see an eye specialist. I did this to avoid a two-month wait in Toronto, the indignity of being treated like a head of cattle at Toronto Western, and health-care workers that are Canada's best answer to an authoritarian regime.

My U.S. medical bill was $1,000 U.S., a price I'm happy to pay just to avoid being sworn at by Toronto nurses.

Whether the care I received in the United States was medically better, I cannot judge. But I did buy something you can't buy here: Civility.

In Wednesday's Star, Joe Fiorito recounted his experience renewing his Ontario health card: a senseless bureaucracy making him shuffle about the city; rude bureaucrats; stupid rules.

His story rings uncomfortably true. Health-care workers I've met in Toronto don't care.

Three months ago, while I lay in bed reading Kenneth Pollack's The Threatening Storm, I noticed a blind spot in my left eye, a little down and right from the centre of my vision. The letters on the page weren't there. Just white space.

For most people, this would be concerning; I was terrified. An accident had severely impaired the vision in my other eye when I was 6.

Although my problem wasn't an emergency, I needed to see a retinal specialist.

This is a doctor who specializes in the photo-receptor-packed "screen" at the back of your eye that images are projected onto.

Part of my retina was apparently not working.

The wait in Toronto was two weeks for me — so short because I went to the hospital, bypassed security and begged for an appointment.

On appointment day, I waited two hours in a room crowded with dozens of patients. My stomach churned.

I overheard an agitated nurse trying to convince someone that I shouldn't be seen. She remembered I hadn't gone through proper channels when I made my appointment the week before.

Then they called my name.

I moved to a jam-packed room where I sat shoulder to shoulder with three other patients. The on-deck circle. I started to sweat. Nurses snapped at patients at a reception desk three feet away. A man with a health card was ordered to the other side of the hospital because he didn't also have a "hospital card."

Then, I was in.

"Ignore it," the doctor said. "Easy case." He saw me for five minutes, looked in my eye with a light and couldn't see a problem.

In the weeks after, the blind spot seemed to get worse.

Every doorframe, computer cord, chart, had a blank spot. I couldn't concentrate at work.

"We're going on vacation, you'll have to call back in August," I was told when I tried to get a second opinion. "There's nothing I can do, there's a lot of other people waiting," another receptionist told me.

It takes one day to get an appointment at the best eye hospital in the United States. I went.

My first indication that Johns Hopkins was different came on the phone. Receptionists were friendly, cheerful and helpful. The answering system has an option where you can speak to an ophthalmologist by phone. In Toronto this would be like phoning a major bank and discovering that by pressing 1 you could chat with the bank president about your service charges. I laughed out loud.

When I arrived at the hospital — and, as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up — they offered me a cup of tea. My "co-ordinator" escorted me through quiet atriums that could pass for a Howard Johnson lobby. People smiled and said "thank you." The waiting room was so empty (five people in a room that could seat 50) I wondered if my plane had crashed and this was health-care heaven. Where were the huddled masses? In the four hours I was there, three doctors saw me for more than an hour-and-a-half, all told.

The specialist thought about my problem, suggested causes and in the end guessed it wasn't serious and that it would heal itself. As to the cause, he could find no answer. But he had thought about it. He had cared.

In Toronto, hospitals don't need us. They're too busy already. Canadian laws make it illegal to buy our way out of an overburdened public system. We can't buy friendly service in Canada.

Our laws will change, someday. For now, the lesson is this: U.S. medical care isn't just for rich people. Who knew you could get such exceptional medical attention for the price of a new suit?

(Jason Brooks is articling at a law firm in Toronto.)

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Having married and recently moved to Toronto, Ontario, I read this opinion pieces in the local newspaper and was SO GLAD that I found someone else in this Socialized Liberal Country that agreed with me! Needless to say, Mr. Brooks' piece nailed it!!! -- ConservativeStLouisGuy (I started posting on Free Republic when I lived in St. Louis -- am now in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship [eh!])

[Humidston]

Why why why in the world would you be applying for Canadian citizenship if you're a proud American??? Say it isn't so!

[BenR2]

am now in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship [eh!])

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Let me guess: You married into MAJOR bucks?

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

I got married and my wife is more "established" in her job than I was back in the States....besides, being here in Canada gives me a chance to spread the good news of free enterprise and debunk this "free health care" tripe these Canadians are so "proud of" up here -- ConservativeStLouisGuy

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Nah, just the cutest, nicest, God-fearing woman I know of! :-)

[Irene Adler]

If you don't mind my asking, what are a few of your major impressions of the differences between life in Canada and life in the U.S.? Is the "general feel" of things similar to the U.S. or quite different?

[BenR2]

Nah, just the cutest, nicest, God-fearing woman I know of! :-)


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No problems there, but . . .

(Why can't SHE apply for US citizenship, instead?)

[tsmith130]

I was born and raised in St. Louis. (Living on the East Coast now.) Great city and people. Where'd ya go to high school? ;o) (This is a required question when one St. Louisian meets another!)

[BenR2]

Nah, just the cutest, nicest, God-fearing woman I know of! :-)


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Well. No doubt you will be a good influence on Canada.

Our loss is Canada's gain in this case.

[Rose in RoseBear]

Pingpingping!

[Little Bill]

Good God, man, 90% of my mothers family fled Canukistan at the first oppertunity, they had been there for a 150 years, there must have been a reason, starve in the Maritimes or prosper in the US of A.

[Satadru]

Don't worry, President Bush will change all of this. He has taken a major step towards socialized medicine.

[RippleFire]

bump

[condolinda]

This sure has been my personal experience. The things that most struck me when I moved to the U.S. from Canada were the friendliness of the medical practitioners, and the speed with which one could get an appointment. I lived many years in Ontario, and rudeness, contempt and long (long!) waits for appointments and surgery were by FAR the rule.

[~Peter]

One can't do better than Johns Hopkins in the US health care system ... it's simply the best there is ... bar none.

[stayout]

Check out this incredible story about healthcare in Canada: Source

Stories abound of Canadians going to extreme measures in order to gain access to medical technology. For example, several years ago an enterprising hospital in Guelph, Ontario, decided to allow animals needing CT scans to enter the hospital in the middle of the night - charging pet owners C$300 apiece. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that except that thousands of people in Ontario were waiting up to three months for an appointment on the same machine.

"I'd go any time," said Greg Moulton, who was in the middle of a two-month wait to learn why he was having "excruciating" headaches. Because people are not allowed to pay out of pocket for medical procedures covered under the government-run plan, they have to wait. If you are a dog, you can get medical technology immediately.

When dogs get better treatment than people, then people will become dogs. In December 1999, The Washington Post reported that waiting lines for MRIs in Ontario had grown so long that one Ontario resident "booked himself into a private veterinary clinic that happened to have one of the machines, listing himself as 'Fido.'"

God help us all if the socialists finally succeed in their attempt to excise the free enterprise element within our medical industry.

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

"Major impressions"? Hmmmm....in the 2+ months I've been here I've noticed a few things:

1) The people in Toronto are TERRIBLE drivers.
2) The mass transit people are MAJOR overpaid (although I must admit the buses/subways/trolleys do move people [LOT OF THEM] very efficiently.)
3) Being a Catholic, there are lots of churches closeby.
4) Most shopping centers are within walking distance.
5) Everyone says "out" kinda "about" funny.
6) Milk is in plastic bags - not plastic gallons.
7) LOTS of Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Italian, Jamaican, etc ("foreign") people -- so much so that I feel in the "minority" up here. In the States that wasn't the case.
8) Most of the Canadian papers/intelligencia have a visceral dislike of anything American.
9) The politicians are all Liberal (and therefore corrupt).
10) Some fries served with vinegar (YUK!!!!!!!!).
11) NO Baby Ruth bars up here.
12) LONG lines in the doctor's offices (lots of beaucratic tape too).

Those are some of the things....incidentally, I left my "Bush/Cheney", "Peace Through Strength" and "Vote NO On Taxes: Vote Republican" on my car when I moved here from Missouri. I now have the same bumper stickers on my car -- except now with Ontario license plates....feels GOOOOOOD!!!.

Overall, the general feel is the same: same sort of stoplights, etc except everything is in metric. As a result, I am having ONE DIFFICULT TIME figuring out the REAL cost of food items.....

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

To be honest, because I got laid off from my job 3 months before we married --- and I didn't want to saddle her with having to give up her (19-year) job, move to St. Louis and look for a job there. That wouldn't have been right...

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Went to high school at John F. Kennedy High in Manchester, MO...thanks for asking --- you are right, that IS a required question St. Louisans ask each other! :-)

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Although I voted for President Bush -- and will vote for him again -- I must concur that he is outspending the Dims by a wide margin....and where has it got him? Just more of Gephardt and Daschle screaming at him for more (those Dims are never satisfied).