I thought long waits for routine healthcare in Canada were a myth?

[Egalitariat]

Is this just more propaganda from the RW? This article says the guy had to wait a year for a hip replacement. Sounds like BS to me. Where can I find some insight?


TORONTO (AP) -- Canada's Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Quebec law that banned private insurance for services covered under Medicare, a landmark decision that could affect the country's universal health-care system.

The justices took a year to rule on a case that began in 1997, when George Zeliotis, an elderly Montreal man, tried to pay for hip replacement surgery rather than wait nearly a year for treatment at a public hospital.

Zeliotis told the high court that he suffered pain and became addicted to painkillers during the yearlong wait for surgery, and he should have been allowed to pay for faster service with private insurance.


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Canada-Medicare-Ruling.html

[Bonhomme Richard]

1. Hah, here if the guy couldn't afford it he........................

wouldn't get one at all.

[NewJeffCT]

2. every healthcare system has their problems

None of them are perfect. I think Canada sets the number of med school students each year and, for several years, underestimated the number of doctors that the country would need and it created a doctor shortage that they are trying to reverse now.

However, on balance, Canadians receive better treatment than Americans, have better access to their primary doctors, have a far lower infant mortality rate and live longer.

[Cleita]

3. Sometimes when you dig into the sources, you find

out that the elective surgery they are highlighting happened years ago, or it may be an unusual case among many. Dig a little deeper and you will find our health care lobbyists at work planting these little stories here and there in the MSM to cast doubt about a NHC system Canadian or otherwise.

Also, there is a movement by the insurance companies to get a two tiered system into Canada. They see it as a new market. Privatization of part of the market would undermine a very successful system as a whole.

[Bonhomme Richard]

4. Your Quote

"Privatization of part of the market would undermine a very successful system as a whole"
Exactly what the RW wants to do to Social Security here.

[Cleita]

5. One of the reasons Britains system is not as

good as the Canadian system is because it is two-tiered making it subject to underfunding and the problems that come with it. Of course we have that here with our privatized system with less and less money going to the health care providers and more of it going to wall street, making hospitals and clinics understaffed and under budgeted.

[Warpy]

6. I know somebody who has waited 10 years here in the US

Hip replacements are NOT emergency procedures and surgeons routinely wait until the natural hip has degraded to the point that the patient is no longer mobile outside the home. Also, there has been an age cutoff in the past because engineered replacement joints have a limited useful lifespan. Although this had been found to be counterproductive, some surgeons still cling to it as gospel, and that is why my friend waited so long. The same thing goes for knee replacements.

So when anyone yowls about this story, tell them a few of the facts above. The gougers and profiteers are counting on their ignorance.

[Astrad]

7. Waits of 6 months...

...to a year are common for elective orthopedic surgery. My father-in-law just had a hip replacement (December) and was on the list for eight months. My father had both knees done. He waited about six months for each. It's not that big a deal because it's not like you wake up one morning screaming 'my god my knees killing me!' My father-in-law cancelled his surgery twice and went back on the list (to the bottom) because he didn't want to miss golf season.

[Pockets]

8. Screw him... a year isn't long to wait.

This man felt he should have been able to go ahead of others because he had more money.

He would probably try to buy his way onto a lifeboat ahead of women and children if he'd been on the Titanic.

May be fine if you're waiting in line at a restaurant, but wealth does not make one more deserving of medical attention.

[Cleita]

9. The story is just a plant by the insurance industry.

They know that health care is going to be an issue in the upcoming elections and they are striking pre-emptively. Look for more of the same in the future. It happened before with Hillary's plan. It's time for us to be aware of this.

[Pockets]

11. Certainly...

That's why we need to plant more stories about rich old men who receive medical care ahead of dying children in the U.S.

[yvr girl]

10. Hip replacements

knee surgery etc. isn't an emergency procedure.

There usually is a wait for them (unless you're an NHL player, but that's a different story.)

I needed a non-emergency surgery, and I think my wait was about 4 weeks. It depends on what the procedure is, and the availability of doctors/hospitals.

[markus]

12. Hell, I have to wait 3-6 months to see a doctor

of a restricted list of approved doctors in an approved plan, and pay through the nose for the priviledge. Oh, and my plan doesn't pay for allergy medicine, quit smoking programs, and they fought against paying for my son's routine physical because we discussed his weight and it got in the code. (We *and* the doctor fought that one until we one).

The real myth is that we don't have these same problems at home. We do.

(P.S. I have Blue Cross/Blue Sheild of North Dakota.

[Pockets]

13. My health insurance...

I have a foot problem, walk with a slight limp now at age 36, work constantly, but my insurance is no use because I can't afford to pay the deductibles and copays. The only thing "U.S. Inc." cares about is that I make it to 65, then when I'm no use to society I'll get thrown out. Ya, we have a much better system here.

[Orangepeel]

14. hell, I had to wait 8 month for a mammogram

with my lovely HMO right here in the good ol' USA.

Besides, making health care available to all here wouldn't stop people from paying out of pocket for faster service. There is already a three tiered system here -- some people have no or very limited care, some have HMOs, and some can afford or have insurance plans that allow choice of doctors, procedures, etc.

It's not ideal, but at least let's have a two tiered system instead, where everybody can get some care.

[SidDithers]

15. CBC Story about the same issue...

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/06/09/newscoc-health050609.html

An important graf...

Four of the seven justices ruled Thursday that the provincial policy violates the Quebec charter. But they split 3-3 on whether it violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, meaning there is no immediate impact on the Canadian health-care system as a whole.


Sid

[Pockets]

16. Good

[valis]

17. Look, Canada is no heaven... For instance, Italy has socialized medicine,

my sister is a head nurse at a major hospital there. But she finds the system is a disaster... So, it's not black and white...

[Pockets]

18. Sure it is (black and white).

I also heard Italians don't have air conditioning in most homes and have to wait all day to get a driver's license. I have confidence we would do a better job.

[KansDem]

19. I choose to ignore media accounts about how "bad" health care in Canada is

and rely on the only real source for truth regarding this subject: my wife's former boss.

She's Canadian, but has been working in the US for quite a while. She once told my wife that, when she retires, she's going back to Canada to live. Why? The health care system.

So, when she retires she'll be enjoying Canadian healthcare while drawing a US Social Security check.

I kinda see that as the best of both worlds...

[SidDithers]

21. There's a bunch of us Canadians here too...

who can give first-hand accounts of the pro's and con's of our system.

Come visit us in the Canada forum sometime :hi:

Sid

[WillowTree]

23. Apparently the Canadian Supreme Court...

....disagrees with your wife's former boss.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20050609-1528-medicareruling.html

The Supreme Court said Quebec's prohibition violated the province's charter of rights by threatening the lives of patients, and the justices noted other countries have successfully combined private and public care.

"The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health-care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote.

"The evidence also demonstrates that the prohibition against private health insurance and its consequence of denying people vital health care result in physical and psychological suffering ... ."

I know a Canadian radiologist who moved here to practice along with her surgeon father after her mother died of breast cancer which was thoroughly operable when first found, but no longer was by the time the necessary testing and specialist referrals were approved under the Canadian system, even with two doctors in her family pulling every string they could to accelerate things. Much depends on where in Canada one is due to inadequate funding in some areas, but even still, it's far from the healthcare panacea some like to make it out to be.

[annabanana]

20. You wait JUST AS LONG here!

The only difference is that HERE they torture you with authorization referrals and referred authorizations.... offices and sub offices of providers, consultation visits etc etc etc until you are ready to go INSANE...

THEN when you are a quivering, sobbing, sick wreck... you
MIGHT get the care you need.

[UdoKier]

22. My son got cranial surgery here in the US and it took almost a year

from when we decided to have it done to actually get it done. I doubt this is unique to Canada. Good surgeons often have long backlogs of patients. In our case, it was worth it because we had 2 of the best doctors in the country...