Posted on 11/24/2004 8:34:45 AM PST by quidnunc
What's the defining characteristic of a government health service? It's one word, a word that, in its medical context, doesn't exist south of the border — "waiting," as in "waiting list," "waiting times," waiting, waiting, waiting.
I was sick over the summer and, down in New Hampshire, I went to see the local doctor, who referred me to a specialist. Let's just run through that manoeuvre again, in case it happened too quickly for those accustomed to Quebec levels of treatment: I saw the GP on Tuesday, got referred, saw the specialist Thursday. As is often the case in the U.S., the doctor was Canadian, and indeed came from a long line of Canadian doctors — both his parents practise in Ottawa. Making idle chitchat as his fingers felt his way around my fleshly delights, he explained that "waiting" is built into the concept of a government health service: "If you need surgery," he said, "it's in my interest to get you in and operated on as soon as possible, because that's money for me. The faster it happens, the better my cash flow. But when the government runs the system, every time you get operated on it costs the government money. So it's in their interest to restrict or delay your access. When you look at the overall budgets — salaries, buildings — it's not hard to understand that the level of service you provide to the patient is one of your few discretionary costs. So the incentive is to reduce that."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at westernstandard.ca ...
Once again, the U.S. has health care for everyone. Get it through work or school, buy it yourself or go down to welfare and sign up.
Firefox will run in 64 MB of memory.
It is a pretty stripped down browser.
Ah, the cost of insurance strikes again (a contributing factor, not the sole factor). Its a vicious cycle. Keep putting poor inner city people on juries that award hundreds of millions of dollars in malpractice cases and they'll continue to bankrupt the system. Then when the hospital finally gives up and closes its doors, the first one to bitch will be the jury foremen.
The system is breaking down. Educate yourself.
I will never, ever forget a story I heard reported on the CBC (of all places!) a few years ago. I guess it was too much even for them to ignore:
It was winter. An elderly couple somewhere in Canada was exiting a local hospital, after having visited a friend who was a patient there. Being a Canadian government operation, the hospital had not bothered to salt the sidewalk outside the door, and it had become icy. The man slipped and fell on the ice, breaking his hip.
Since they had left via the emergency room entrance, his wife ran back inside the door, expecting that she could get a couple of emergency room employees to run right back outside with a stretcher to retreive her husband and take him inside for treatment.
What a silly old woman she was for thinking that! It turns out that according to The Rules, only an ambulance was allowed to bring in patients for emergency room treatment. The doctors and nurses - whether out of sheer lack of concern for human life or out of fear of losing their jobs, I don't know - absolutely refused to step outside the door, not even to offer him a blanket while he waited. The wife literally had to call 911 and wait for an ambulance to show up and take her husband the five feet inside the emrgency room door (and fill out the proper paperwork, of course), before her husband received treatment.
That is socialized medicine in a nutshell.
thank you...
and God bless SPUE!
Remember, the HMOs were created by congress. Prior to that, the insurance was much better in this country. HMOs are half way between regular medicine and socialized medicine. The best thing to do is Tort Reform, allowing the medical profession to reduce their costs for mal-practice insurance. Tort Reform should also be accompanied by a dedication on the part of the doctors to eliminate doctors guilty of mal-practice. Just those two things would considerably improve health care and lower costs.
If you think this kind of stupidity doesn't occur here you're living in a dream world. It occurs everywhere, in all walks of life. It's human nature. Mercifully, it doesn't occur very often.
Ping to #16 (The real article)
Wild overstatement.
Maybe not having millions of illegal aliens showing up at their doors 24 hours a day for every imaginable type of "free" treatment would help ease the overwhelming workloads and overheads within?
I hope so...but I don't think so.
Not really.
I have an elderly friend who experienced what he thought was a heart attack while driving his car. He drove to the hospital in Brantford Ont. and found he didn't have the strength to get out of the car .He parked and laid on the horn. Within 5 minutes he was being wheeled in to the hospital. By nurses who came out in response to the person who was attracted by the horn .
Over the years I've taken several people to the emergency room . And I ain't no ambulance .
As for the Steyn story. I have another acquaintance who I helped yesterday . He's 82 and on Oct. 29th went to the doctor and was diagnosed with cancer of the bowel . Since then he had the tests , the operation and the recovery. Yesterday he was walking under his own steam , a little lighter than the last time I saw him , but hopefully cancer free.
Maybe Steyn just has trouble speaking French?
Yes, they would...but lawyers oppose the first and doctors the second. It's a tough sell.
And it's not enough.
Modern medical care if fundamentally very expensive. There are not enough dollars around to make it available to everyone without limits. That means hard choices have to be made.
I would begin by identifying those services which society has an overwhelming interest in providing to everyone. Innoculations against communicable disease, child care for the first year or two of life, etc. These should be provided free to everyone.
I would then look at those areas which gobble up a disproportionate amount of tax dollars. More or less unlimited care for elderly old vegetables comes to mind. If a person hasn't managed to provide for his old age after 40 years of work it shouldn't be society's problem.
What about people who refuse to take care of themselves? Alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts, promiscuous homosexuals, obese junk food addicts. Let them, too, take care of themselves.
Deal with the above - and a few other such categories - and everyone could afford health insurance.
That's exactly right.
I don't remember Kerry offering to show them the door...and Bush has put out a welcome mat. Do you have any other candidates in mind?
Isn't Canadian healthcare managed on the provincial level?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.