Canadian DUers: What's your opinion of this little video on your country's health care system?

[Fridays Child]

I'm thinking it's a BS, put-up job but I'm not getting much information from "the google." What do you make of it?

http://tinyurl.com/2e4vrl

[whistle]

1. This is total bullshit propaganda, my sister and brother-in-law live in Ontario

....My sister is a cancer survivor she has had a double mastectomy and brother-in-law has had a slow progressive prostate cancer. Neither were ever denied treatment and in my sister's case when it was discovered that she had a suspicious lump in her remaining breast just under four she was immediately scheduled for surgery to remove her remaining breast and she had all of the necessary after care and radiation treatment done right in Ontario and it was fully covered by OHIP.

This video sounds like total neo-con crap Canadian style!

[Fridays Child]

2. That's what I'm thinking. I did read, at one link, that McCreith...

...the guy with the brain tumor, is a wealthy man who chose to have his treatment in the U.S. and is now suing the Canadian government for reimbursement. It makes me seriously doubt that he was facing the kind of wait times in Canada that he described in the video.

[JBoy]

3. It's easy to find individual examples of problems

Yes, you generally will wait longer for an MRI in Canada than you might in the US. How long would an uninsured person in the US wait? Forever.

There is an ongoing dialogue and battle in Canada over the concept of two-tiered healthcare. Should someone, with the ability to pay, be able to get care not available to someone without the ability to pay? Canadian policy is generally no - that egalitarianism is a fundamental part of our system that must be protected.

The reality is that multiple tiers already exist for Canadians - the individual in the video was able to get treatment in the US because he had the financial means to do so. The Canadian system didn't make it easy for him; he had to take personal initiative, travel, and incur expenses. Single-tier vs multi-tier is probably the biggest philosophical issue we deal with in health care, and there's no simple "answer".

[Fridays Child]

4. Excellent point. Forever is right.

[Fridays Child]

5. A kick...because we need to be prepared for this crap.

:kick:

[Billy Burnett]

6. For one thing, it is ONTARIO's provincial system that "rationed" care in this case ...

Canada's so called 'national' system is really a provincial run system. Generally, the more conservative provinces, which Ontario is, heavily cut spending in h-c when provincial budget cuts are made.

If you get sick in another province, they can't ship you out fast enough to your province.

My right wing parents lived in Ontario. They always voted for tax cuts (conservative party). When they got sick (in the late 90's) there was little health care available. Hospital staff were being laid off, entire wings of the hospital were being shut down, doctors leaving for more lucrative jobs in other provinces and the US, etc etc.

Only on their death beds did they get where cuts were coming from.

Cuba has a national health care system. Canada doesn't.

[Fridays Child]

7. That's an interesting distinction. I wasn't aware of it.

[Iceburg]

8. I would put this in the class of propoganda films ...

While the specific case addressed in the film may have some truth imbedded in it, it does not reflect AT ALL the state of the health care system in Canada. What it does reflect is that there are good doctors and bad doctors in any system.
Any decent neurolgist would have picked up the likely diagnosis without the aid an MRI, and then confirmed it with an MRI.

What seems fishy about this story is that in Canada you can shop around for another GP or specialist opinion ... in fact it is one of the weaknesses of the system. You can get 4,5,6 or N opinions should you feel something with respect to your care is being overlooked. There is NOTHING in the way of barriers from seeking out another opinion. Nothing!. Contrast that to the existing American system, which if I understand it correctly would resist doctor shopping. So in the case above, it seems the patient went to the directly to the US instead of simply seeing another doc in Ontario.

In Ontario, MRI's are controlled by specialists, and are offered according to need/urgency -- not first come first serve. The failure point in the above case was the competency of the doc (presumably a neurologist) and NOT the health care system.

I can also provide you with a list of grossly mismanaged cases by docs in the US who treated some of our Florida snowbirds (seniors). Like I said, there are good docs and there are bad docs ... and they practice everywhere.

My personal/first hand experience (10 yrs ago) with a somewhat analogous medical problem led me to having an MRI within hours from the onset of suspicious neurogical symptoms.

The overwhelming majority of patients AND doctors in Canada support our health care system, but there is a small vocal (and dare I say -- greedy) group of docs who would like a more capitalist based system. I take it the assumed Canadian doc in the above video may be one of the latter.