Canadian Healthcare vs USA or Europe !

[paullind10]

We have long compared our healthcare system to the lowly USA private system. This both lowers the bar and is a poor comparison because we are publicly funded.

A new report was just released comparing canadian and european healthcare sytems, called Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index 2008 you can find it here,http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=2025

In it Canada generally lags well behind most other european countries in quality of care delivered and bang for your buck. Drugs are financed at around 90% in europe while canada's healthcare system pays for about 40% of your prescription costs !

In europe healthcare is geared around the patient, with patient rights guaranteeing timely and effective treatment., in canada we have taken a top down approach, focusing on the healthcare providers and ignoring patient opinion or input and providing no guarantees to wait times.

Finally, we are raising the bar for healthcare in Canada. Please, no more comparisons to the USA system.
P.Fezziwig, contributor for Healthcare Reviews , http://www.healthcarereviews.com , building a better healthcare system through patient feedback.

 

[darkbeaver]

Excellent point paullind10, I have been guilty of focusing on what I don't want to see rather than on what I do want to see. Your suggestion also gives us a better picture of where we are as a nation on the social services scale. It's a better perspective, I'll adopt it it my thinking.

 

[dancing-loon]

Where I live in Ontario, the care and professionalism I recently received during a life-threatening acute illness, was outstanding!! I have nothing to complain about, only reason to praise!
I'm lucky to be alive due to the excellent care I received. And it cost me nothing!
Europe couldn't do better!

 

[#juan]

A number of people here on this forum including Colpy and myself, as well as a half dozen friends and acquaintances of mine went through recent major heart surgery with out a hitch. The service was great and the outcome excellent. I have no complaints with our system whatsoever. In my case it couldn't have been handled in a more professional manner.

 

[karrie]

I enjoy our medical system. I think it's great. But, just because I've seen some good outcomes, doesn't mean that I don't want to see improvement. It's proven that it CAN be better than it currently is, and that Canada has health care issues. I don't think something as important as health care is should be left to a 'good enough' mentality.

 

[dancing-loon]

I enjoy our medical system. I think it's great. But, just because I've seen some good outcomes, doesn't mean that I don't want to see improvement. It's proven that it CAN be better than it currently is, and that Canada has health care issues. I don't think something as important as health care is should be left to a 'good enough' mentality.

Due to personal experience I cannot agree with you, Karrie. To always push for better, for more, for improvements... sounds like being always critical. I praise when praise is due, and that alone will spur our health professionals on to try even harder, be better, if that is possible with what is given to them. We have a good thing, let's appreciate it, instead of nagging to do better yet!
I think it is also the duty of every citizen to look after himself and live healthy as good as he can. One shouldn't just expect the doctor to do all the work, while we keep on ruining our health with detrimental habits! Teamwork, please!!

 

[karrie]

Due to personal experience I cannot agree with you, Karrie. To always push for better, for more, for improvements... sounds like being always critical. I praise when praise is due, and that alone will spur our health professionals on to try even harder, be better, if that is possible with what is given to them. We have a good thing, let's appreciate it, instead of nagging to do better yet!
I think it is also the duty of every citizen to look after himself and live healthy as good as he can. One shouldn't just expect the doctor to do all the work, while we keep on ruining our health with detrimental habits! Teamwork, please!!

Pushing for improvements isn't always done by critiquing. Paying well for work well done springs to mind. It motivates and has the bonus of drawing new workers to the field so that Canada is no longer so short staffed.

 

[tracy]

I'm glad to hear people have had positive experiences with the health care system. It does sometimes seem like only the bad stories get told and that's a shame. My family has had good experiences with the system as well.

I do think there are things that could be done better of course. I think public health deserves a real boost. I also think the use of non-doctors needs to be promoted more (nurse practitioners, midwives, physician assistants, etc).

 

[Scott Free]

The problem I have with socialized health care is that it gives government too much control over our lives. They tell us what to smoke, what to eat, how much to exercise, etc.. and if you don't follow their rules they refuse us service. This happens all the time. Yet the government and doctors gleefully take our tax money and revenue from cigarette taxes, etc. I think it is outrageous!

 

[karrie]

Absolutely. Frankly, I find it frustrating some of the things that we need to see doctors for.

There is a clinic in Stony Plain, where my friend will be having her baby, that is a pilot project midwifery clinic. It's had incredible success. Why not ease the burden on doctors when we can?

 

[karrie]

The problem I have with socialized health care is that it gives government too much control over our lives. They tell us what to smoke, what to eat, how much to exercise, etc.. and if you don't follow their rules they refuse us service. This happens all the time. Yet the government and doctors gleefully take our tax money and revenue from cigarette taxes, etc. I think it is outrageous!

Refuse you service? When has anyone ever been refused service based on lifestyle choices? I've seen people limit their own ability to heal through those choices (for example, tissue transplants don't take well in alcoholics, smokers, or drug users, thus the risk is to high for a doc to allow the procedures), but I've never heard of anyone turned away from health care by the government.

 

[tracy]

The problem I have with socialized health care is that it gives government too much control over our lives. They tell us what to smoke, what to eat, how much to exercise, etc.. and if you don't follow their rules they refuse us service. This happens all the time. Yet the government and doctors gleefully take our tax money and revenue from cigarette taxes, etc. I think it is outrageous!

When are people refused services? Most illnesses have a lifestyle component, but I've not known of any that were being blacklisted from getting healthcare because of it.

 

[tracy]

Absolutely. Frankly, I find it frustrating some of the things that we need to see doctors for.

There is a clinic in Stony Plain, where my friend will be having her baby, that is a pilot project midwifery clinic. It's had incredible success. Why not ease the burden on doctors when we can?

I am a HUGE advocate of midwives. Most european countries only use OB/GYNs to deliver babies in high risk cases. Midwives do the rest and their outcomes are a lot better than ours. I have had the priviledge of meeting some excellent midwives and would definitely choose them if I were pregnant. I'm glad to hear it's available in communities outside the main centers. It used to be in BC you could basically only get a midwife in Vancouver. I lived in Kamloops and there still aren't any there as far as I know.

 

[karrie]

I had a home birth, attended by three midwives, in Grande Prairie. I was lucky in that the college had hired a nurse, who had spent ten years in Scotland working as a midwife, to teach. So, she was working training midwives in her spare time, simply because it was a passionate cause of hers.

It cost me roughly $1500 though, a cost which the women who use this new midwifery center don't incur. They also have the bonus of being attached to the hospital, should something go wrong, so that medical intervention is almost immediate.

 

[darkbeaver]

I just had surgery on my knee yesterday morning and and MRI and x-rays before that and excellent care in every case. The health care system is under great pressure to privatise however. In Nova Scotia we have emergency room closeures and a shortage of doctors all arround, our provincial government has been draging it's feet for years to give thier friends in the private sector a foot in the door. We don't really have government anmore anyway, just public extensions of the private sector corporations.

 

[#juan]

Refuse you service? When has anyone ever been refused service based on lifestyle choices? I've seen people limit their own ability to heal through those choices (for example, tissue transplants don't take well in alcoholics, smokers, or drug users, thus the risk is to high for a doc to allow the procedures), but I've never heard of anyone turned away from health care by the government.

Kerrie I have heard of doctors refusing service to smokers. I quit smoking almost twenty years ago and during my three pack a day time I probably would have yelled at somebody had I been refused service from a doctor. Today I whole-heartedly agree with a doctor refusing service to these people. It should be general policy to refuse treatment to smokers.

I'll probably get yelled at for that...;-)

 

[karrie]

I'm all for making smoking illegal. Stop making money on death. Stop selling the damn things.

But universal health care is universal health care. If docs don't turn away crack addicts or street bike riders, then we have no right to be refusing service to smokers.

 

[Avro]

A number of people here on this forum including Colpy and myself, as well as a half dozen friends and acquaintances of mine went through recent major heart surgery with out a hitch. The service was great and the outcome excellent. I have no complaints with our system whatsoever. In my case it couldn't have been handled in a more professional manner.

Yet the numbers and stats show our sysytem to pale in comparison to care in Europe. Why are we so afraid at looking to them for ideas? Is it because the evil (sarcasm) private sector is involved?

Ideology prevents us from improving a broken system.

 

[dancing-loon]

Kerrie I have heard of doctors refusing service to smokers. I quit smoking almost twenty years ago and during my three pack a day time I probably would have yelled at somebody had I been refused service from a doctor. Today I whole-heartedly agree with a doctor refusing service to these people. It should be general policy to refuse treatment to smokers.

I'll probably get yelled at for that...;-)

Not from me, you won't! I'm just too chicken to post it first so, I'll support you from behind!! Truth is, I have never smoked in my life and don't know how hard it is to quit.
I have witnessed a friend slowly dying of throat cancer. She tried and tried to quit, but couldn't manage. It was sad. The Chemo, the operation, the widening/stretching of her feed tube ... it all didn't help her any, just prolonged the misery for an extra year. Is that year worth all that money and effort? Doktors know, but they keep on trying anyway... it's their oath, to save a life.

There are millions of cases, where the cost and effort of keeping a person alive, outweigh the miserable gain.

 

[#juan]

I'm all for making smoking illegal. Stop making money on death. Stop selling the damn things.

But universal health care is universal health care. If docs don't turn away crack addicts or street bike riders, then we have no right to be refusing service to smokers.

Karrie that is something that has bugged the hell out of me for years. If you want to build a car to sell to the general public: It has to have steel beams in the doors to guard against side-impact, At least two air bags in case you hit something, Roof roll-over protection in case you roll the damn thing, crush zones front and back to lessen the impact.

What does a motor cyclist need? A crash helmet?????? G.F. Strong Hospital in Vancouver is full to the brim with paraplegic and quadroplegic Goddamn bikers that out medical system is paying for. While we are abolishing cigarettes, why don't we abolish motor bikes as well.