Most provincial governments in Canada are too trying to choke off social medicine (i.e. Canadian health care system) so corporates can come in and do a “better job”. Conservatives are pretty blatant about it.
I mean, Alberta is. I don’t really feel that in BC. Not sure about other provinces.
It’s really bad in Ontario. Wait times are regularly hitting ~20 hours in our emergencies and it’s near impossible to get a family doctor.
edit: but at least we’ll have beer in corner stores next year! 🙃
Similar here in the UK. Its like, yeah, even if the model you’re proposing was better (it isnt), you can tell for a fact that its for the benefit of the wealthy and at the expense of the 99%, simply by whos saying it.
I mean, its like taking parental advice from a convicted paedophile. In the same way, why would anyone take advice on socialised medicine from someone you know is trying to fuck your socialised healthcare system.
Well yeah but you have those long wait times to deal with right?
Here in America, I only had to wait 4 weeks for a video conference (in-person would have been 6 weeks) with my primary care physician so she could recommend me to a specialist that doesn’t have any openings until mid-August. Thank goodness I live in the land of the free where I only have to wait 3 months to see a doctor who has about a 20% chance to cancel on me last minute due to a “scheduling issues” and leave me hanging for another 4-8 weeks.
AND I get to pay for some of it out of pocket despite paying monthly for better than average medical insurance!
USA #1
Canada here… yes wait times are a bitch
But it must be clarified this is not a result of socialized medicine… this is mostly a result of Politicians (largely Conservatives) starving the system as hard as they can just to justify Private Medicine as the only solution.
Just to be clear, you should have read my post in the most sarcastic voice you are capable of. I don’t think 3 months is an acceptable amount of time to have to wait for a doctor’s appointment and I think it’s absolutely insane that I have to pay as much as I do for insurance and still have to pay something out of pocket for the visit. The only thing keeping me in this country is my partner’s fear of starting over in an unfamiliar place.
You say this as though wait times aren’t a problem in America, but they are. Funnily enough, it’s one of the main arguments people use against socialized medicine. It is consistently the most disappointing thing ever; that people refuse to lift themselves out of their shit filled pools.
U.S. wait times aren’t bad? When I tore my biceps, I was able to get x-rayed 1 hour after coming to the hospital, then got my surgery 4 days later.
Can you give us a break down? How are politicians slowing down the speed of intakes - wait times?
I’m going to assume (against common sense, this is an honest question)…
Most recent example
Less money = less staff, less maintenance, less services => more people with no choice but to go to Emerg, hospitals that work putting out fires all the time with less staff to go by… long term, it also causes people NOT too go into health care as a profession
They are literally planning to shrink hospital capacity
It seems like our socialized healthcare doesn’t cover our sarcasm detector organ 😅
We have the option to go private too. My brother had his NHS appointment delayed due to doctors’ strikes so he went private and got his operation done very quickly.
Because he had insurance already it only cost him about £150.
Here in the States, the only non-private option is through the Veterans’ Administration, which requires that one be a veteran or their direct family. It’s also intentionally bad, overly bureaucratic, and extremely inconvenient (had to drive 40min outside of the state capital to get my then-housemate to a veterans’ hospital once because he, a disabled veteran, couldn’t afford care anywhere else), embodying the right-wing hatred of actually compensating veterans. In fact, right-wing administrations have been caught instructing officials to attempt to avoid providing veterans with their contractually-entitled care and benefits.
Those of us who are not veterans are stuck with the private US system when terrible wait times.
Always a fun time when you have to beg the ambulance crew to drive you to the VA instead of the closest hospital because it’s the only way the VA will cover your ambulance ride. Despite Congress telling them they need to pay for them three times. They even passed a law and the VA immediately ignored it.
Then God help you if they decide your emergency wasn’t actually an emergency. Because on top of all the other problems, a surprise medical bill was just what you needed.
A big part of the wait times is because of the healthcare coverage IMO.
In the USA, if you have a non-life threatening issue, that is more annoying than an actual problem, it usually gets ignored because nobody wants to go into debt for that… Unless you’re a millionaire or something, I guess.
Meanwhile in countries with socialized healthcare, if you’re even slightly unwell (and even in cases where you’re not unwell) you can get any number of procedures done to rule out any possible illness.
There’s simply no good reason to not get checked out if you feel the need to be checked out.
Just to be clear, the point of my post was that I pay for insurance, pay for the visit, and I still have to wait 3 months to see a specialist. I’ll then need to wait weeks or months for an appointment for any sort of procedure or scan.
I live in a place with socialized healthcare (Canada), and did a sleep study, which didn’t cost me anything, in January… In about two weeks from now, I sit down with a doctor to review their findings.
The sleep study is very much a non-emergency. I did it because my lady has complained about the noise I make when I sleep, I also frequently get bad sleep for one reason or another.
It’s non-critical, and I’ve spent more than six months waiting for results.
Bluntly, I’d rather wait longer than pay more. I know anything important/life threatening would be completed same-day, and I’ve had that experience too. Though, at the time, I wasn’t really in a life threatening situation.
don’t forget that if you live more than an hour away from a major metropolitan area, then you’re not getting care from an actual MD, but a NP or PA who just got their “degree” from bob’s discount medical credentials 10 minutes ago
If you want to argue there are bad NP and PA programs that’s fine. But on the whole NPs and PAs are graduate level jobs with strict certification tests. And honestly? We extremely over train doctors to just look at cuts, bruises, and stomach aches all day. For 11 to 15 years education they should be running the place and tracking down the hard cases.
For me the most annoying thing about it is when you specifically make an appointment with the doctor and they change it to the midlevel without telling you. For certain things it can be a bit distressing (for me) to have a random stranger come in to do.
I’m forty-five minutes outside a medium sized pair of cities known for a decent state university, and glad to run into town for care as needed.
Landed in the hospital three months ago with something that got me a follow-up scheduled with neuro, in the practice associated with the hospital.
Three months to the day later, I’ve only just had the suggested test and the visit is still a month out…. With an NP. Not the MD who saw me in the hospital.
Honestly, at this point, I’m only keeping after that issue because I need their clearance to get surgery for my actual, pressing, immediate, and painful concern.
Happened to my 12 year old a couple of months ago. Our hospital bill was the equivalent of ~15$. My dad went through a year of cancer treatment a little over a decade ago. His hospital bill was a jaw dropping ~15$ equivalent as well.
It keeps the hypochondriacs from wasting resources.
My dad had a cardiac arrest a few years ago. Resuscitation, ambulance, two hospitals, a week in a coma, another week recovering.
I think the biggest expense was putting their cat in the cattery for a week.
Come to think of it, my kids were all born at large hospitals in large cities. The biggest expense for all of them was parking.
He was lucky enough to have it in the middle of Covid, so all the parking was free. Probably not the best idea to have everybody pawing at the same parking meter in the middle of a pandemic at a hospital. Hard enough to get people wearing masks, let alone washing their hands as well.
Meanwhile, here in the states, thanks to financial help from my mother, the over $10,000 in medical debt we’ve racked up over the past year is less than $10,000!
I watched Hank Green’s stand up today and he let out the secret to cancer in the US. It’s the one thing the health insurance industry doesn’t want you to know! Just make sure to get your cancer at the start of the year so you can max that deductible and get free healthcare the rest of the year!
You joke but…
I was in a benefits meeting a few years ago led by the insurance rep for our employee health coverage.
Deductibles came up.
I raised my hand and asked, “So if I go skiing for Christmas and snap my femur on December 26, it behooves me to delay any treatment until January 1, right?”
She didn’t miss a beat and said, “Yes, that’s correct.”
There was a stunned silence in the room from that one.
Cue Americans angry that other countries don’t force their citizens into bankruptcy for getting sick in 3… 2…
Nah, I just get annoyed when people rub their free healthcare that we already know about in our faces. Especially on a site like this where most everyone agrees that the US healthcare system is trash.
We feel do completely overshadowed by American sports and culture that we take what few victories we have and run with them.
What makes me really sad as a non american is that a lot of research and medical progress comes from america, financed by medically bankrupt americans and the rest of the world gets to enjoy it for free. I had an ex that had a brain tumor and there was a experimental american drug that used to cost thousands of dolars a dose. They sue the government for it and got them to pay for the entire treatment. 10 doses 100% paied for by our public health care.
Even more sad? My dog had diabetis and the public vet clinic would give us insulin and needles for the whole month for free.
a lot of research and medical progress comes from america, financed by medically bankrupt americans
The real beneficial research is financed by taxpayers. The medically bankrupt finance the obscene profits of health care corporations and pharmaceutical companies, who do not spend much at all on primary research. The “research” they invest in is how to productize and market drugs.
It’s not free, it’s paid from taxes. Money that’s not spent on bombs and such.
Different priorities, I guess. 🤷
We rub it in until you finally do something about it. Dont act like the majority of americans knows their system is trash when you still have half of the voters voting for a party that wants to make it even worse.