09-18-2004, 07:32 AM
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#27 (permalink)
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Pissing in the cornflakes
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Oh Canada.....
Quote:
A July poll conducted for the Canadian Medical Association (search) found that 40 percent of Canadians now grade their health care system as a C or worse.
“Year over year, Canadians have identified that their confidence in their health-care system is eroding,” said former CMA president Sunil Patel.
The reason is simple and the problem is structural.
In theory, Canadians enjoy an almost ideal system — the government pays for all necessary health care, which is delivered by private practice physicians and independent hospitals. The day-to-day reality is starkly different. When Canadians need care, they face a series of waits: one for access to a primary care doctor, another for access to scarce diagnostic equipment, and another for the necessary procedure.
Between 1993 and 2003, the median waiting time from referral by a general practitioner to treatment increased by 90 percent, from 9.3 weeks to 17.7 weeks, according to an annual survey of physicians by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. For cancer patients, the waiting time for medical oncology more than doubled from 2.5 weeks to 6.1 weeks, and the waiting time for radiation oncology increased from 5.3 weeks to 8.1 weeks.
That’s the experience of 58-year-old Don Cernivz, who noticed blood in his urine in fall of 2003. He waited three weeks for his first diagnostic test and then another month for an MRI (search). Actual treatment for his cancer of the pelvis didn’t commence until May of the following year.
“The waiting time is ridiculous at the hospital,” his daughter complained to the Calgary Herald. “He is in pain.”
The waits for care are not aberrations, but the logical result of the incentives of a government-supported system. To the government, health care costs are merely the checks it must write. To the patients like Cernivz, however, costs are broader, including the value of lost or diminished work while waiting for care and the diminished quality of life, while waiting in pain.
Government planners control monetary costs by shifting non-monetary costs on to patients. The system then prohibits Canadians from avoiding those non-monetary costs by paying out of pocket for their care, unless they leave the country.
That’s exactly what former champion figure skater Audrey Williams did. After waiting two years for a hip replacement in Vancouver, B.C., she traveled to Washington State and paid $25,000 to stop the pain.
“I couldn’t wait any longer,” the 71-year-old Williams told the National Post. She could barely walk, wasn’t getting enough sleep, and pain pills had upset her stomach. “I wanted a life.”
Canadians are finding they now have to wait for primary care, not just advanced procedures.
One Canadian tells of a 5-year wait to see his wife’s general practitioner. Nearly 4 in 10 Canadians reported waiting longer than they thought reasonable for access to a family physician in a poll conducted for the CMA in the spring of 2004.
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132785,00.html
40% Give it a C? They pay HOW much in taxes for this? Oh kids, why do you want to fuck up the US health care system so badly.
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