Canadian Friends: National Health Care System?

I would appreciate you comments on the following editorial:

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/wwilliams.htm.

Thanks,

rooster

While I am not Canadian, I do know there are many Canadians who routinely cross the border to the US to get some forms of healthcare (to avoid these waits referred to in the article)

Hi Rooster,

I think you would be hard pressed to find a Canadian that would not say that our health care system is in crisis. Wait times for many procedures here are indeed very long. Our current Conservative government made wait times one of the planks in their platform during the last election. However, health care is administered individually by the provinces, so really all the feds can do is either wave money around or threaten to withhold it if a province doesn't toe the line. The province of Alberta was looking at letting in private clinics a few years ago and the feds threatened to cut off health care dollars if they did.

Here in Ontario, although the situation is still dismal, I believe we are are more fortunate than most. My GP ordered two CTs for me last year and wait times were less than a week in each case. My neurologist put in an urgent order for an MRI and I was told the wait would be 3 months. I told them that was unacceptable and called my provincial member of parliament. I had my MRI 2 days later. The squeaky wheel really does get the grease. I should point out that my MRI really was urgent in nature. Yes there are long wait times to get an MRI for a sore elbow that is ruining your golf game. From the time I first mentioned the possibility of OSA to my GP until the time I got my cpap was less than 2 months.

I would have to say that by and large that newspaper column speaks true. There was a huge loss of Canadian doctors to the U.S. What the article does not say is that many of them became fed up with the insurance systems there and have since returned to Canada. And our federal government has actually promised to pay for people to be treated in the U.S. if they can not be treated in a timely manner here.

Our biggest problem here is shortages of doctors, nurses and technicians and equipment. You can throw all the money in the world at equipment, but you need people competent to run it and interpet the results properly. The area I live in has just 2 doctors that specialize in sleep medicine. They service an area that takes in nearly 3/4 million people. Needless to say; they are run off their feet.

I don't know as I would want to trade our system for the U.S. one. If a workable combination of private and public health care could be realized, that would be the ideal situation.

Brian

Bones wrote:I think you would be hard pressed to find a Canadian that would not say that our health care system is in crisis

Amen to that. The hardest part of the past 4 months has been the constant waiting.

I am however glad that I have not had to pay for the dozens of doctors visits I have had in the past year. I would be broke if I had to pay out of my own pocket.

I agree that the wait times are annoying (my upcoming septoplasty is scheduled in 3 months) but I don't have to fork out money to pay for my surgery nor any of my doctors appointments. In addition to sleep apnea, I have diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure so I see doctors often. I didn't pay for any of my sleep studies because they were covered. (My heart goes out to people I read about in cpaptalk.com who won't/can't go for a sleep study because they can't afford it.) I believe that despite the long wait times, if the need is urgent, people get pushed to the front of the line for important things so I seriously doubt that people's cancer becomes uncurable because of wait times. That's just alarmism.

We definitely have a shortage of skilled people. Here in Ontario, if you have a doctor, you keep him/her because you probably won't be able to find another who's taking patients. I'm lucky that my doctor belongs to a health clinic because if she decides to leave, the clinic commits to my being assigned to another doctor so I won't be left to manage with walk-in clinics.

All in all, I believe in our Canadian health system but I definitely believe there's room for improvement with the wait times & number of skilled people.

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now
France

Bones wrote:

The area I live in has just 2 doctors that specialize in sleep medicine. They service an area that takes in nearly 3/4 million people.

I'm really curious to know where you are in Ontario that has this big of a population and only 2 sleep doc's.