Healthcare and the Almighty Dollar

[jamesq]

Why I'm glad I live in Canada. Between my Father's stroke and my Mother's cancer (and they were both diabetic) I'm sure my siblings and I would be royally screwed if we lived in the States.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/7/751100/-How-I-lost-my-health-insurance-at-the-hairstylists

Whenever you hear some politician extolling the virtues of the free market improving health care, reread the link above. They do not have your best interests at heart.

Comments

[mallt.livejournal.com]

That's kinda scary... I'm glad that if the worst should happen my parents can come home.

[jamesq]

Does "home" in this context mean Canada or the UK? Just curious.

[mallt.livejournal.com]

Home is Canada... something major would need to go down for us lot to move back to the UK!

Wales

[gareth13.livejournal.com]

Where abouts in Wales are you from?

Re: Wales

[mallt.livejournal.com]

Mum's side of the family is from the south... Llanelli & the Gower.

[minyata.livejournal.com]

Irony of Ironies, the advertisement at the bottom of the article is for a public service group that says "Quit Whining, Our Healthcare is fine" or somesuch... Scary article.

[jamesq]

The problem with keyword-sensing targeted advertising.

[conejita-diabla.livejournal.com]

Ugh....currently watching an appalling and ridiculously false commercial on a US station about how US style health care is the best and how it saves all the people unfortunate enough to be Canadian, cause when our lives are in danger, we can travel down to the US for that awesome care.

*gag* *retch*

[jamesq]

Of course, people who travel to the states fall into two categories:

1) People opting for treatment of non-life-threatening problems. Queue-jumping basically. Not that I blame them in some cases. Needing to have a hip replaced might not be life-threatening, but it is a serious quality of life issue.

Truly life threatening problems are dealt with right away. Chad, for example, was in treatment two days after being diagnosed with brain cancer IIRC.

2) People being treated with experimental procedures that are simply not available here. We have strong medical research here too and I expect that there are Yanks who come up here when the situation is reversed.

[catalytic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Chad was in pretty quick. If I remember correctly his optometrist saw him on Tuesday and told his clerk to get him an MRI as soon as possible. When the clerk returned to say the best she could do was the next day the optometrist got on the phone himself and got Chad an MRI two hours later that day. The surgery didn't happen until Saturday but that was because Chad had to be dosed up on anti-seizure drugs a day or more before he could go under, something I understand is standard procedure when operating on the brain. If he hadn't needed the pre-surgery drugs I'm sure he would have been in surgery even sooner.

[jamesq]

This mirrors life-expectancy for both countries.