“Emergency room waits for people with serious conditions sometimes reached 12 hours or more, the report said.”
December 10, 2010
“That is far greater than the province’s 8-hour wait time target, the report found.”
That’s what passes for health care improvements in Canada.
The story doesn’t indicate whether that “8-hour wait time target” is also for “people with serious conditions,” but still. Eight hours? I’ve had some long waits in emergency room waiting rooms in my day, but never eight hours. Not even for relatively minor problems.
Much less twelve hours, much less for something serious.
But, yes, please, let’s go ahead and model our health care after Canada’s.
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100% true. Those who say we should mimic Canada’s system have never lived under it. I did for the first 35 years of my life and I watched it slowly deteriorate. Its starts off great but over time like all socialist causes, it runs out of our money.
The party in power in Alberta is the Canadian analog of the USA Republican Party.
They think that if you can’t afford to pay for whatever health care you need their god must not like the way you run your life.
Have you seen those videos of USA Hospital Ambulances dropping indigent seniors off in the street near homeless shelters, pointing them at the shelter and then taking off?
The USA was the only developed country without a national health care plan. Several countries with such plans, including Canada have Healthy Life years longer than what USA residents face.
It is not just about money. No country spends more per person, on average, than the USA, yet Americans do not have the longest lives, or the healthiest.
If Canadian health Care is so bad how do we manage to live 2 years (men) to 3 years (women) longer than Americans? We aren’t even at the top of the rankings for Healthy Life Expectancy. Our (used to be) cold northern winters are supposed to reduce our life span compared to warmer climes, not extend them.
I had no trouble getting admitted promptly with a kidney stone within the past decade. Same story when one of my children had a strangulated hernia.
Canadian doctors who reach their annual payout limit for Provincial Health Care sometimes get certified to work in the USA for part of each year. They say the major difference in Canada is not having to face gravely ill patients who don’t have insurance and can’t get a loan to pay for the optimal care choice.
I get a number of NW Washington TV stations on local cable. I remember one news story about a single mother who dragged her son around to bars begging, to try to scrape together enough cash to treat his leukemia.
He died when she was K$5 short of what the hospital wanted for the procedure.
Canada also has pharmacare plans. In the USA many people simply can’t afford over prices prescriptions or end up not taking the pills as often as prescribed, taking fewer pills each time, or not renewing them for the full number of times the doctor says on the prescription.
YES..I moved to Nova Scotia from the US, and for the first time had to seek out a doctor’s care for acutely infected ear drums.
First: There are NO doctors available, or taking on new patients. NONE. Some people have been waiting 6-10 years.
This means you are forced to use the emergency room.
Last week I waited 2.5 hrs at the nicest walk in clinic in the richest local college town, and that’s only because I got there 1 hr before the doors opened (already 5 people ahead of me). The doctor saw me a total of 5 mins, didn’t check my chest or anything else. Gave me a prescription for Azithromycin which here costs $40 (in the US, a friend with hardly the best health care plan, just bought the same meds for $6 from Walmart. Azithromycin without copay would have been $12. Where is the extra $28 in profit going to in Canada).
Oh, and by the way, as I’ve just discovered, in Canada, the prescription plan costs extra, based on your income. Most people I know don’t have it because of the costs. Don’t be sold that line of BS
After that long wait last week, I still didn’t get well, but that doctor was not available for a phone call or follow up. She only does one day a week at that particular clinic, so there is no calling the doctor for a refill or alternative treatment. You start from scratch again after each visit. That’s what depending on the ER for treatment means, and that’s what any new resident of Canada faces…even pregnant women
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0013191
Last night I spent at total of 5 hrs at 2 different emergency rooms. The first, after 2.5 hrs, told me it might be an additional 3-6 hrs before I got seen. The 2nd saw me fairly quickly, but in the process I got no sleep for the night, and my frustration level is beyond belief, as well my shock that everyone around here thinks this is perfectly normal, and feel 2-4 hr waits are OK, as they are better than 10 hr waits.
Do a search for family doctor shortage for any province:
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&&sa=X&ei=nSYJTYztF4-t8Ab0y4WfAQ&ved=0CBgQvwUoAQ&q=azithromycin+250+mg&spell=1#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=family+doctor+shortage+canada&aq=f&aqi=g1g-v1&aql=t&oq=&gs_rfai=&psj=1&fp=490addb16bce6f8f
I’m headed back to the US. To me, this is a deal breaker. Tired of hearing about people almost dying in the ER here, waiting for treatment, and it’s just getting worse because many doctors are retiring, none are taking their place.
Those people in the US who think Canada is a role model, have some mistaken idea in their minds formed by a very subtle but persistant propaganda in the press…I know because I fell for it as well. Americans think they’ll get what they have now: choice and immediate availability, only cheaper.
Hah!
However, after living here, and just now, using this myself for the first time, I’m frankly shocked. I never imagined it would be this bad. If you had told me that in deepest rural Africa there was only one doctor forced to watch an entire hospital plus attend to the ER, I would have commiserated, but would have thought “well, that’s a developing nation”. I never would have thought a first world country like Canada had this level of appalling “care”.