[NeedKarma]

Cool. I guess there really isn't a problem in the US.
So how does the hospital get paid for the homeless guy's treatment?

[smoothy]

What's the definition of "emergency level services"? Is there a policy statement link somewhere?

Read wondergirls response.. as that is really quite broad...

If your Canadian system was so wonderful and perfect... why do you have waiting lists for everything... (organ transplants are exempted from this argument for obvious reasons).

After all... remember your Prime Minister came to the US for surgery rather than use the Canadian system remember.

[smoothy]

Cool. I guess there really isn't a problem in the US.
So how does the hospital get paid for the homeless guy's treatment?

Taxpayers and people with insurance bear the burden of their lack of responsibility.

Who pays for everything in Canada? You didn't think it was really free did you?

[NeedKarma]

Who pays for everything in Canada? You didn't think it was really free did you?

That's quite an ignorant statement. We all know how our system works... except for you I guess.

[NeedKarma]

If your Canadian system was so wonderful and perfect... why do you have waiting lists for everything... (organ transplants are exempted from this argument for obvious reasons).

That's everywhere. Did you miss this post:

In my area of the East Coast, it takes 2 months to get an appt. with most specialists, even when I lied and told them I was severely ill

There isn't a 1 to 1 ratio of equipment to patients.

[Wondergirl]

So how does the hospital get paid for the homeless guy's treatment?

Medicaid kicked in. Who pays so that Medicaid exists?

[Wondergirl]

In my area of the East Coast, it takes 2 months to get an appt. with most specialists, even when I lied and told them I was severely ill

There isn't a 1 to 1 ratio of equipment to patients.

Move to Chicago. If I have a legitimate problem, my primary doctor can get me an appointment with a specialist in snappy-foo time.

[smoothy]

That's everywhere. Did you miss this post:



There isn't a 1 to 1 ratio of equipment to patients.

Its not everywhere... I'm not talking making an appointment for a routine checkup, I'm talking about things that need taking care of... if you are sick today... they don't make you wait a week to see a doctor... If you need a hip replacement you don't get put on a 6+ month waiting list to get one... If you need a pacemaker.. you don't get put on a waiting list to get one if you live longer enough... you get them in a matter of days (if not sooner) assuming there isn't a active infection or a medical reason the requires a delay. Not unheard of with hip related issues as one exaple I am using.

[smoothy]

That's everywhere. Did you miss this post:



There isn't a 1 to 1 ratio of equipment to patients.

Its not everywhere... I'm not talking making an appointment for a routine checkup, I'm talking about things that need taking care of... if you are sick today... they don't make you wait a week to see a doctor... If you need a hip replacement you don't get put on a 6+ month waiting list to get one... If you need a pacemaker.. you don't get put on a waiting list to get one if you live long enough... you get them in a matter of days (if not sooner) assuming there isn't a active infection or a medical reason the requires a delay. Not unheard of with hip related issues as one exaple I am using.

I've lived and visited in three states on the east coast and doctors and hospitals in them in my 50 years walking this earth ( not counting the District of Columbia). And I've not had to wait ever in the number of times I've needed to see a doctor at a private practice or when I walked into the emergency room in all that time. And by wait... since some people like to parse words... I mean more than an hour or two wait. Not days... not weeks... and certainly not months for real medical issues. But making appointments for routine annual physicalls etc.(non-urgent medical issues) for a future date are not uncommon anywhere.

And the post you mentioned is obvious they are a member of a crappy HMO plan which is one step better than socialised medicine... you get what you pay for. You don't get a Mercedes if all you are willing to pay for is a KIA.

[NeedKarma]

Move to Chicago. If I have a legitimate problem, my primary doctor can get me an appointment with a specialist in snappy-foo time.

I had the same excellent service when I had a meniscus problem. My doc got me an MRI right away.

[speechlesstx]

Glad you get excellent care, NK.

Medical wait times worsening in some provinces: report

The Canadian Press

Date: Tuesday Jun. 19, 2012 2:06 PM ET

OTTAWA — After several years of progress, it appears some provinces are slipping in their quest to reduce the time it takes to receive a number of benchmark medical treatments.

Part of the slide can be attributed to hospitals being overcrowded by elderly patients with dementia -- a problem that can only get worse as the population ages, said a report from the Wait Times Alliance issued Tuesday.

"Canada needs a national dementia strategy that formally integrates the functions of primary care, specialist care and home-care services with a strong focus on keeping seniors in the community, out of the ED (emergency department) and out of hospital," the alliance recommended in its 2012 report.

The report showed a decline in performance for patients receiving care in the five government-identified priority areas -- diagnostic imaging, hip and knee replacement, radiation for cancer, cataract surgery and heart bypass surgery.

Prince Edward Island received an F for knee replacements and a D for hip replacements.

Manitoba earned a D for hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery.

Ontario scored the best with As across the board and no significant changes in wait times.

"Unlike the past several years, the 2012 results show a worsening of performance with regard to patients receiving care within the pan-Canadian benchmarks set by governments," said the report.

"Although some provinces have shown improvement, the overall results point toward lengthier waits."

What's worse is that most of the figures compiled by the alliance only relate to specialist care and don't account for the time it takes to see a general practitioner or to have medical tests completed after visiting the doctor.

In its contribution to the report, the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology concluded that wait times for so-called GI procedures are up significantly in the last seven years.

"Total wait times for Canadians, considering all gastroenterology indications, have increased from 2005 to 2012 and are now 30 days longer than they were in 2005," the association said in an email.

The total wait time for a person seeking a colonoscopy, for example, is 279 days. The target wait time for the procedure is 60 days.

In another paper released Tuesday, the MacDonald-Laurier Institute called on Ottawa to reform the Canada Health Act to allow for extra-billing by doctors and experimentation by the provinces with for-profit medicare.

The paper entitled, First, Do No Harm: How the Canada Health Act Obstructs Reform and Innovation, urges the federal government to remove what it calls the "shackles" the act imposes on health care.

Serious reform can be achieved while retaining the core principles of universality and portability now found in the act, said authors Jason Clemens and Nadeem Esmail.

"In order for Canada to proceed with serious, positive, health-care reform, the CHA must be revised," they concluded.

The paper compares Canada's medicare system with those in other developed nations that provide universal health care.

Among the differences they found were that "all other universal health-care countries allow private, parallel, health care, where patients can choose to purchase health-care services outside of the public system."

A large majority of those same countries allow for delivery of universal care through privately owned and operated surgical facilities and hospitals.

The Liberals pointed to the alliance's report as confirmation that the country's health-care delivery problems are systemic and underscore a need for federal leadership to reform the system.

"Canadians are concerned about what this Conservative government's lack of leadership means for the future of their universal health-care system," Liberal health critic Hedy Fry said in a statement.

"It is time that Stephen Harper stops shirking his responsibilities and convenes a meeting with first ministers to renegotiate the (2004) health accord, instead of leaving the provinces to fend for themselves."

Report Card on Wait Times in Canada (.pdf)

Apparently it's not so great for others and this is not the first call to expand on private healthcare in your country. 279 days for a colonoscopy, let's hope you don't have colon cancer during that wait.

[NeedKarma]

Once my doc ordered it I had my preventative one 3 weeks later. Now it's every 3 years. No, I don't pay a cent nor is there any paperwork. Yes I know it comes off our paycheck.

There are horror stories in the US as well as you know, should we focus on the bad? That seems to be your forte.

[paraclete]

In my country we know that relying solely on the "system" could be a death sentence in some instances so we have a two tier system where private insurance is available to enable access to the private hospital system at affordable cost. It is structured so that if you have private insurance you don't have to pay the 1.5% tax levy for the coverage the government provides.

This enables the low risk people to run the gauntlet but they can't opt out of paying something which provides access to the public benefits system. The main point here is that no citizen is without medical expense coverage for essential procedures

[speechlesstx]

Once my doc ordered it I had my preventative one 3 weeks later. Now it's every 3 years. No, I don't pay a cent nor is there any paperwork. Yes I know it comes off our paycheck.

There are horror stories in the US as well as you know, should we focus on the bad? That seems to be your forte.

I'm sorry but that's your forte. That and distraction, you always have a lame response to your system's failures. Like I said, I'm glad you got excellent care but your system isn't quite so glorious for everyone else. But feel free to find where it takes someone 279 days to get a colonoscpy here and explain the need for more private care in Canada.

[NeedKarma]

Nah, I dwell on the positive in my life, I don't seek out everything that's wrong. That for you guys to do in the Current Events board.

[TUT317]

Seems to me that the left has the idea that lowering the cost of healthcare will increase the quality of healthcare.

I certainly have never claimed this.

It won't, but it will be "fair" and after all fairness is the endgame, right? I mean when faced with the facts in a 2008 debate that even though lowering the capital gains tax increased revenue Obama said he would raise it anyway "for purposes of fairness."

Not really there are many endgames as you call them when it comes to fairness and equity. I will gives examples a bit later.

For the moment you are providing a false analogy. The analogy falls down because there is no single property of fairness that can be equally applied across different categories (health care and tax) for the following reason.

There are a number of properties that characterize fairness and equity when applied to the health care industry. Equity of good health is something that ought to be encouraged. So it is fair and reasonable that poor people should not suffer from common diseases and complaints associated with belonging to a particular racial and/or socio-economic group. Especially since such diseases may well be less common in more affluent groups. In my country diabetes would be an example.

It is not fair on the individual suffering from the disease to have to continually seek treatment? It is not fair on the medical system (private or universal) that we should have to keep paying for a chronic problem that could have been prevented?

So who cares if we have quality health care or increased revenue or more jobs or whatever as long as everything is "fair," right?

Again, not really As I said,there are many different aspects of fairness when applied to health care. Fairness is not an absolute there are many particular instances of how things can be fair and equitable.

Tut

[TUT317]

The facts support my position .Competition reduces costs . Government monopolies or government supported monopolies do the reverse .

Hi Tom,

Do you mean like the availability of certain types of medicines when there is no market for them?

Tut

[tomder55]

It is amazing how the rare exception is used as an example to refute the rule. Yes there is a need for some incentives to induce R & D ;so there is a role for the government in the development and price support for orphan drugs .

But then again ,neither Speech or I are speaking in absolutes. When we speak of limited government we are not speaking of no government.. Maybe I should add that as a caveat in all my comments so I don't have to address the strawmen .

What I'm saying is the common ailments and medical services can easily be handled in a free market,consumer choice environment .

[TUT317]

It is amazing how the rare exception is used as an example to refute the rule. Yes there is a need for some incentives to induce R & D ;so there is a role for the government in the development and price support for orphan drugs .

But then again ,neither Speech or I are speaking in absolutes. When we speak of limited government we are not speaking of no government .. Maybe I should add that as a caveat in all my comments so I don't have to address the strawmen .

What I'm saying is the common ailments and medical services can easily be handled in a free market,consumer choice environment .

Hi again Tom,

What straw man? What absolutes? I was asking a question. Thanks for the answer.

Tut

[tomder55]

Hi again Tom,

What straw man? What absolutes? I was asking a question. Thanks for the answer.

Tut

The same ones that had Ex comment earlier :

I'm for that.. Who needs meat inspectors, anyway? Competition will keep 'em honest, won't it? Who needs to make sure you have clean water to drink? Nobody, that's who. Corporations wouldn't dump poisons that seep into our water supply, would they?? Competition will stop 'em, won't it?