Thanks to Scalpel or Sword for pointing out this story from Dr. Wes about rationing of medical care in Canada. Think about it, folks. This is what you’re asking for when you ask President Obama to create health insurance for everyone. Government-run healthcare doesn’t work in Canada or Britain, so why should we be in such a rush to follow our neighbor’s bad example?
January 22, 2009
January 23, 2009 at 8:24 am
Health care “works” in Canada. It’s not fast, and it’s not perfect but at least everyone has access to care, which, in my opinion, is much better than what the US has.
January 23, 2009 at 7:27 pm
We need some defined terms here.
How can you say that Canada’s system “works,” when life-saving devices like pacemakers are rationed to such an extent that five more per year is a big improvement; or when people needing surgery for cancer have to wait weeks or months to get an OR date?
In the US, on the other hand, everyone does have access to care. If you walk into an ER, you will be taken care of, regardless of whether you have an insurance card or not. As far as more routine matters, it’s a Medicare regulation which prevents hospitals and physicians offices from offering lower rates to customers who pay in cash or out of their own pocket. That could be fixed quite easily, and at no expense to the government.
January 24, 2009 at 12:24 am
If more people had better access and didn’t have to use the ER as primary care wouldn’t that reduce the number of patients requiring more invasive surgeries/procedures since cancers and other conditions would be caught in less harmful stages?
If health care changes I don’t think we would see any benefits for many years, well beyond our current administration, so who knows how any success would be measured.
Also, your last point brings up an idea I’ve never thought about before and it’s quite interesting. How do you think prices could be set? Sliding scale?
January 24, 2009 at 4:41 am
Whoa, some clarity here.
1.) The article refers to implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs), not pacemakers.
2.) ONE hospital got funding for 5 MORE ICDs a year. No, that’s not a huge increase, and yes, there’s probably more than 5 more people than the previous year who could use one. But without any knowledge of the population base which this hospital covers, this stat isn’t particularly meaningful.
3.) Back to the real topic at hand. In Canada, in any major city, you will receive top-notch acute care.
For ELECTIVE treatments (and yes, things like ICDs and knee and hip replacements fall in this category), you will have to wait in a waiting list (according to the severity of your condition). This waiting list will be longer than any comparable waiting list in the USA. However, it’s free!
That’s the route our country has chosen to take, and I’m not ashamed of it. Yes, there are flaws, and yes we definitely could use more government funding to reduce wait lists. But the concept of triage in a socialized (and no, that’s not communist) medical system so that the most ill get treated first, regardless of ability to pay, that’s something I’m happy about.
January 24, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I wonder if the reason there is disagreement on this issue is that we are missing the bigger issues. If medical care were one of the more important factors determining health, we would need to decide issues like who pays, and what treatments they receive. But as Leonard Sagan, and Ivan Illich, and most recently, Nortin Hadler have demonstrated, there are far more important factors which affect our health.
Our presuppositions are far more important in this discussion than we realize.
February 1, 2009 at 3:11 pm
As said by Canadian Med Student above, comments such as those stated by Scalpel in the original reposting, are done in a combination of ignorance and in greed. In the US system, the struggle is to pay for services that are given away for free as a large percentage of the population pays nothing for services rendered in an ER or Urgent Care. Those costs are borne by the hospital which in turns passes it on to the paying consumer. This in itself is a form of socialized health care, but in a manner which is inconsistent and ultimately unmanageable.
I debate constantly with the widgets at various health care organisations in the US concerning this. These widgets (the doctors/nurses/PAs, etc.) do not realise just how close they are to not having work anymore at all, especially the ultra specialist. They fight for top dollar (far more than they deserve for their education and productivity) and for equipment that is unfeasible. And please do not tell me differently, a Family Practitioner in the UK can still afford to buy a luxury car, live in a very nice home, vacation yearly at an exotic location and send their children to private schools. In the US, they expect to do that, but on 3 days of work a year and own 3 extra homes and 3 luxury cars. A surgeon in Canada makes a very respectable wage, but does not have the overhead of litigation, insurance and extremely high student loans (this is where the US government can step in).
Is Canada’s solution perfect? Not at all. It is hardly free… in fact 50% of my tax dollar goes to health care. Which for me means I pay close to 90k per year for coverage. However, it does manage to cover every Canadian, with excellent coverage. If that hospital needed a 6th ICD, they would get it.
The US, will have to move closer to the model that is shared by Canada, Australia, UK, etc. Or it will have to learn to turn people away. Take your pick. In any case, the days of netting 450k per year for doing a widget job are coming to an end. The days of expecting immediate care to a problem that can wait may as well. Perhaps the days of expecting great care after a lifetime of obesity, heavy drinking and smoking are as well.
March 7, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Alice, everyone doesn’t have access to care in the united states. Sure, they can walk in to any ER and be seen but many don’t because they won’t be able to pay for it. They wait until the problem becomes too big to ignore because they are afraid of being unable to afford the ridiculously high bills associated with being treated at the hospital. Yes, the canadian and UK systems aren’t perfect. Yes, people must wait in line to have procedures performed and that is not ideal. But those countries at least have a system in place for paying for the patients who come into the hospital. The US does not–so patients without insurance and/or the ability to pay walk into the ER and are treated and then there is no system set up to pay for their care.
And, just something to think about, if people are asking for Obama to implement that type of system and are clamoring for change, that’s an indication that the current system DOES NOT WORK. And I think that many of us (republican and democrat alike) would agree that our current healthcare system (funding-wise) in the US is not ideal and needs to be modified.
Remember, just because you may be one of the lucky people in the US with health insurance and thus do not have to worry, there are many, many people who do not have health insurance and who cannot afford the care the rest of us take for granted.