More on healthcare

[pecunium]

The Denver Post has a decent column up, Debunking Myths about Canadian Healthcare

There is also a forum for discussing it.

It's interesting, as one reads the comments (almost 450, at this count) to see the difference between those who think the US system needs to change, and those who don't.

Those who want to see it change cite studies, and polls. Those who don't cite opinion pieces, or make unspported statements (someone blamed Natasha Richardson's death on there being no helicopter; never mind that she refused treatment).

Most of the "rebuttals are things on the order of, "The US is best", and, "We don't want the beauraucrats making decisions". There are also the, "Gov't can't do anything right crowd."

When a Canadian opines (esp. those who have lived both places) that they like/prefer the Canadian system, they are called liars.

But my favorite comment was this one

I'm a Canadian, and I can tell you that we do have American-style care here in certain areas. I went to my medical provider when a member of my family broke a leg. I was astonished by the invoice for the operation: consultation fee, anaesthetic, bandages, various drugs, needles, assistance of three people, specialist- the invoice was three pages long. The total was nearly $1350.00. And I was very interested because I'd never seen a medical invoice before.

When another member of my family broke an arm, there were two operations, three casts, and twenty rehab visits without every seeing a single piece of paper.

Of course, the broken leg was my dog. The broken arm was my son.

You Americans treat your children the way we treat our dogs.

Comments

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

I can't assume that Canadian health care is the same everywhere you go. Is it? She lived on the east coast of Canada before she moved to the States.

My friend had no supplemental private insurance. She was unable to get a hysterectomy in Canada in the 1990s. She came to the US and got her hysterectomy around 2000. Perhaps things were different then, or now?

I'm guessing her Canadian doctor didn't think the hysterectomy was medically indicated. He wanted to manage her symptoms with Lupron, which will set a woman's body into an artificial state of menopause. This is considered a radical treatment, sort of the last-ditch effort, for endometriosis prior to hysterectomy. He was unwilling to contemplate surgery and she was unwilling to keep living with the horrendous side effects of the Lupron. So she moved.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

The other factor in my case is that I was under the age of 10, and the surgeries were to correct birth defects.

The thing about your friend's treatment is that it seems based on factors other than money. Otherwise she would have been told, "I am recommending you get X treatment, but it will cost you." However, many doctors are very reluctant to perform hysterectomies on women of childbearing age, and unfortunately if you can't get a doctor to prescribe that kind of treatment, you can't get it funded.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

Yeah, hysterectomies are touchy that way. It took me years of argument and stress just to find a doctor that would tie my tubes, a procedure that is potentially reversible. I even had one doctor tell me that tube-tying caused 80% of women who underwent such a procedure such terrible pain afterward that most of them required hysterectomy to resolve it. Obviously he was lying.

Her treatment issues had nothing to do with money. I also had a hysterectomy for the same reason and mine cost me $50 from start to finish. It's a lot more about access, I think, than money.

I have no idea how Canadian doctors talk to each other. If her first doctor said he would not perform the hysterectomy, would that go into a file or something that other doctors would see and then refuse to perform the surgery too?

I dislike the idea of some non-doctor deciding if a procedure is necessary or not based on cost-versus-benefit analysis. I don't believe that healthcare, or education (for that matter), should be treated in any sort of profit-making way. I think that treating every human endeavor as if it were a business that folks should receive profit from is a little inhuman. On the other hand, I equally dislike the idea that a person with a medically-verifiable problem could be refused a treatment shown to resolve the problem because her doctor had emotional problems with the procedure.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my mom had to suffer through five years of endometriosis before she finally got into menopause. The problem in this case was that doctors didn't diagnose it. She could have had her whole apparatus out - she was well over fifty and had a daughter already - and saved herself quite a bit of pain.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

It can't possibly be.

in alberta, if you and your doctor "elect" to do a hysterectomy because of endemetriosis, all you're paying for is your cable tv and telephone in the hospital.

It might be a difference between "have" and "have not" provinces - the atlantic provinces are not that wealthy, and newfoundland was even less so in the time period you describe, whereas alberta is extremely wealthy and so has a lot of money to include in a health care budget. my provincial health care includes Chiropractic visits and Physical Therapy, and I know that's not included for every province.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I can't assume that Canadian health care is the same everywhere you go.

Basic rules set by the Federal government, actual programs run by the provinces according to their abilities, political and local degree of being Alberta (Most provinces score very low Alberta levels but there's a big spike out on the prairies).