OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM – Does It Need Fixing?

[SirJosephPorter]

That's one. The travel times for some very basic treatments is another very huge problem for people outside the big cities. And the emergency room problem. And many more...

The access problem is common to most countries, countryboy. Access in urban areas is usually very good, in rural areas, sometimes not so good.

 

[countryboy]

Tenpenny, Chrétien decided that the way to bring deficit under control was to gut all the spending, including health care.

A healthy, common sense view, conservatives would do well to try to adopt it (rather than cut taxes and borrow heavily as they have been doing for the past several decades, both here and in USA).

Cutting the spending, balancing the budget is not an easy thing to do. If it was easy, even the conservatives would have done it. Cutting spending causes hardship, it makes people mad. But it had to be done.

Indeed, Liberals got plenty of flak from just about everybody. They were criticized for gutting health care, for gutting military, for robbing the EI program, for gutting the social services and so on. When they get everybody mad at them that tells me that they were doing the right thing. But the fact remains, while Bush was running astronomical deficits in USA ( a typical Conservative way of running the economy), Liberals were running healthy surpluses here in Canada.

So sure liberals cut the health care transfer to the provinces, it was the right thing to do. The deficit monster had to be slain at all costs ( a concept totally alien to the Conservatives).

And there is a prime example of why we can't get down to improving our health care system. You set it up perfectly, SirJP - your blind political leanings appear to be getting in the way of a coherent and meaningful discussion on what is wrong with health care and how it could be improved for all of us.

I think your comments are incorrect, poorly-placed, and demonstrate a complete lack of respect for your fellow citizens. What a shame...I feel sorry for you and anyone else who is so hardened against society that they cannot see the real situation for what it is, because it renders them incapable of making valuable contributions to a discussion that showed some promise.

Sure, politics will always rear its head in these things - and it is helpful to a degree to learn from history - but continuing to focus on what happened vs. what should happen is quite regressive. And here I thought you were progressive.

It's your move.

 

[taxslave]

Nicely summed up, and right on the money as far as I'm concerned.

Y'know, there are actually some people in BC who think our health care system is great. True! I've talked with many of them personally. And I am glad for them that they, or someone close to them, has had good experience within the system.

However, I suspect that some of the supporters of the system talk nicely about it because they are afraid that if they start to criticize it too much, a movement toward privatized health care will begin to take root.

It's too bad the discussions become so politicized, because it gets in the way of identifying what's wrong with the system and what kinds of improvements could/should be done. It always degenerates into an "all or nothing", emotionally-charged, "go nowhere" battle.

And that's very sad for all of us.

Health care in B.C. is very good. There are problems of course and many of them stem from unrealistic expectations from socialists and other freeloaders.
Health care is not free and never will be, nothing in life is. At some point we will have to decide what procedures will be paid for from the public purse and who will be eligible to get them. Our current practice of trying to be all things to all comers is simply not sustainable with an aging population. We also will have to decide who runs health care. Taxpayers or government unions.

 

[L Gilbert]

Tenpenny, Chrétien decided that the way to bring deficit under control was to gut all the spending, including health care.

A healthy, common sense view, conservatives would do well to try to adopt it (rather than cut taxes and borrow heavily as they have been doing for the past several decades, both here and in USA).

How would you know what a healthy view is? Who said anything about conservatives and their brand of idiocy? Apparently the CMAJ doesn't look upon Martin's cuts favorably.
"Oh, I can balance the budget. I'll just cripple healthcare for decades to come and .... HEY! Hush up about patronage to my rich buddies and don't mention my using funds from pension plans and employment insurance to help me balance the budget. That's besides the point."
Passing the deficit from the federal budget onto the provinces does exactly what for Canadians? :roll:

Cutting the spending, balancing the budget is not an easy thing to do. If it was easy, even the conservatives would have done it. Cutting spending causes hardship, it makes people mad. But it had to be done.

Not in vital areas like healthcare and not when all you are doing is transferring deficit from one hand to the other. That's just immensely stupid. It cost more in the long run. We're still paying for that massive blunder decades later and will be decades from now. For what? Martin to get a pat on the back for making himself look good for one measly year?

Indeed, Liberals got plenty of flak from just about everybody. They were criticized for gutting health care, for gutting military, for robbing the EI program, for gutting the social services and so on. When they get everybody mad at them that tells me that they were doing the right thing. But the fact remains, while Bush was running astronomical deficits in USA ( a typical Conservative way of running the economy), Liberals were running healthy surpluses here in Canada.

Oh the other guys were worse so that makes our stupidity ok. I see. "Whatta maroon" - B Bunny

So sure liberals cut the health care transfer to the provinces, it was the right thing to do. The deficit monster had to be slain at all costs ( a concept totally alien to the Conservatives).

Only in your mind.

 

[countryboy]

Health care in B.C. is very good. There are problems of course and many of them stem from unrealistic expectations from socialists and other freeloaders.
Health care is not free and never will be, nothing in life is. At some point we will have to decide what procedures will be paid for from the public purse and who will be eligible to get them. Our current practice of trying to be all things to all comers is simply not sustainable with an aging population. We also will have to decide who runs health care. Taxpayers or government unions.

No question that some folks abuse the system. That will always be an issue, but a system could be designed to address that, I think.

And it certainly is not free...just like the old "free lunch"...it doesn't exist either.

For what it's worth, I think your best point is deciding who runs health care. I have a built-in prejudice that tells me any government is not very efficient at running anything. In a way, a government-run program is pretty much destined to be inefficient because it's always based on compromise - trying to be all things to everyone so that the votes go the right way. Nothing much we can do about that...it's the nature of the beast.

But, it doesn't mean we have to have the government run everything...if we carried that out to the limit, we'd be flat-assed broke in a matter of days!

I wonder what the "happy medium" might be in running health care?

 

[Francis2004]

Having been in the medical system the last few months in BC, I can safely say it's suffering the same issues that any large system does..

Emergency cases get priority. Which should be the case..

Follow up to Emergency cases follow ..

In my case I got priority due to an emergency.. I am frustrated as they messed up in surgery and now due to cut backs in Surgery, so I am not going to get proper solution, until April / May 2010 for something that should be resolved do to a Surgeon's mistake..

Now one could say this is a Medical Services issue and I understand Doctors are human, but this issue should never have been missed at all.. But I will need to go back to work and then take time off again to have surgery to resolve the problem they missed and further created..

The system is not always broken, just not properly used.. Had Ego's not been involved, the surgeon would have had the proper 3D Cat Scan ( 2 days to get ) and asked the other now consulting Surgeon the question that was eventually asked and immediately solved the problem ( 4 months late ).. Instead I have been in pain all these months waiting and using valuable medical time...

I had multiple CT Scan and X-Rays when a proper 3D Cat Scan was what was required..

Proper use of technology has to be taught and re-trained.. These high payed surgeon and doctors need to learn to put Ego's aside so that they can learn the newest technology use and fastest way to see what is wrong with people.. Playing a game of I know best is not in Canada's best medical interest..

 

[weaselwords]

I'll give you personal experience with Ont. healthcare. A couple of years ago my son unfortunately was involved as a passanger on one of the Hwy 400 accidents. He was severly injured including broken tib, fib, cracked pelvis et al.. Within 45 minutes he was taken to Newmarket & evaluated. Anorther 90 minutes put on an air ambulance to St Mikes. Within 6 hours of the accident he was in the operating room going thru a 6 hour operation. I don't know if any better health care in the world could be found in that situation. So yes maybe my bias in favour of what we've got is showing but I am proud of our healtcare system.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

And there is a prime example of why we can't get down to improving our health care system. You set it up perfectly, SirJP - your blind political leanings appear to be getting in the way of a coherent and meaningful discussion on what is wrong with health care and how it could be improved for all of us.

There is nothing blind and political about it, countryboy. Liberals were trying to balance the budget. When you are cutting spending, nothing should be off the table, there should be no sacred cows. In order to balance the budget, Liberals cut everything, including the health care spending. They cut, health care, defense, education, arts just about everything. They also increased taxes. I see nothing wrong with that.

Sure, politics will always rear its head in these things - and it is helpful to a degree to learn from history - but continuing to focus on what happened vs. what should happen is quite regressive. And here I thought you were progressive. It's your move.

Public purse isn’t bottomless country boy, it is limited. I don’t think there can be any question of increasing health care spending now. We have to do the best we can in the money that is available.

 

[L Gilbert]

No question that some folks abuse the system. That will always be an issue, but a system could be designed to address that, I think.

And it certainly is not free...just like the old "free lunch"...it doesn't exist either.

For what it's worth, I think your best point is deciding who runs health care. I have a built-in prejudice that tells me any government is not very efficient at running anything. In a way, a government-run program is pretty much destined to be inefficient because it's always based on compromise - trying to be all things to everyone so that the votes go the right way. Nothing much we can do about that...it's the nature of the beast.

But, it doesn't mean we have to have the government run everything...if we carried that out to the limit, we'd be flat-assed broke in a matter of days!

I wonder what the "happy medium" might be in running health care?

Personally, I think a mix of public and private would be good with gov't heavily regulating the private so they don't sacrifice people just for making profit.

 

[countryboy]

Having been in the medical system the last few months in BC, I can safely say it's suffering the same issues that any large system does..

Emergency cases get priority. Which should be the case..

Follow up to Emergency cases follow ..

In my case I got priority due to an emergency.. I am frustrated as they messed up in surgery and now due to cut backs in Surgery, so I am not going to get proper solution, until April / May 2010 for something that should be resolved do to a Surgeon's mistake..

Now one could say this is a Medical Services issue and I understand Doctors are human, but this issue should never have been missed at all.. But I will need to go back to work and then take time off again to have surgery to resolve the problem they missed and further created..

The system is not always broken, just not properly used.. Had Ego's not been involved, the surgeon would have had the proper 3D Cat Scan ( 2 days to get ) and asked the other now consulting Surgeon the question that was eventually asked and immediately solved the problem ( 4 months late ).. Instead I have been in pain all these months waiting and using valuable medical time...

I had multiple CT Scan and X-Rays when a proper 3D Cat Scan was what was required..

Proper use of technology has to be taught and re-trained.. These high payed surgeon and doctors need to learn to put Ego's aside so that they can learn the newest technology use and fastest way to see what is wrong with people.. Playing a game of I know best is not in Canada's best medical interest..

My better half is in Japan right now, helping her sick father. She had a problem a a few weeks ago and went to see her father's doctor about it. That was on a Friday. She had a CT-scan the following Monday, and an MRI one day later. The doctor was apologizing to her because they couldn't get her in for the tests sooner! (Everything turned out OK, by the way).

Sometimes it helps to look around to see what's going on in the rest of the world. It's like that old saying..."Good? Compared to what?"

So how does Japan do this? (They do it consistently). I don't know. But if we could get down to a "Let's figure out what's wrong and then fix it" mode, it likely wouldn't take long to find out.

 

[L Gilbert]

I'll give you personal experience with Ont. healthcare. A couple of years ago my son unfortunately was involved as a passanger on one of the Hwy 400 accidents. He was severly injured including broken tib, fib, cracked pelvis et al.. Within 45 minutes he was taken to Newmarket & evaluated. Anorther 90 minutes put on an air ambulance to St Mikes. Within 6 hours of the accident he was in the operating room going thru a 6 hour operation. I don't know if any better health care in the world could be found in that situation. So yes maybe my bias in favour of what we've got is showing but I am proud of our healtcare system.

As a first responder I can tell you that in severe cases, treatment within an hour is the best. 135 minutes is not bad. 6 hours is pathetic. An old guy from around here fell and injured his spleen. He was transferred a couple times before he died about 6 to 8 hours later while waiting for treatment.
But that's from a purely health concerned viewpoint and doesn't include costs of treatment, which doc gets to fix what first, etc.

 

[countryboy]

There is nothing blind and political about it, countryboy. Liberals were trying to balance the budget. When you are cutting spending, nothing should be off the table, there should be no sacred cows. In order to balance the budget, Liberals cut everything, including the health care spending. They cut, health care, defense, education, arts just about everything. They also increased taxes. I see nothing wrong with that.



Public purse isn’t bottomless country boy, it is limited. I don’t think there can be any question of increasing health care spending now. We have to do the best we can in the money that is available.

Thank you for your unbiased, caring, humanitarian, unselfish, focused, insightful, and visionary contribution to this discussion.

Now I suggest we get back to discussing how to improve our health care system and leave the ad campaigns on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada for some other thread.

 

[countryboy]

The access problem is common to most countries, countryboy. Access in urban areas is usually very good, in rural areas, sometimes not so good.

Thank you for your insight on that. I believe we already came to that conclusion. The question then becomes..."What the hell do we do about it?" Sheesh!

 

[L Gilbert]

There is nothing blind and political about it, countryboy. Liberals were trying to balance the budget. When you are cutting spending, nothing should be off the table, there should be no sacred cows. In order to balance the budget, Liberals cut everything, including the health care spending. They cut, health care, defense, education, arts just about everything. They also increased taxes. I see nothing wrong with that.

Yep. balancing the budget for a year or two was definitely worth choking healthcare half to death for decades.
Money over people. That's definitely laudable.:roll:

Public purse isn’t bottomless country boy, it is limited. I don’t think there can be any question of increasing health care spending now. We have to do the best we can in the money that is available.

And Martin sure liked to spend on nice rich contracts for his nice rich buddies. Yep, he sure knew how to do things responsibly.:roll:

 

[countryboy]

I'll give you personal experience with Ont. healthcare. A couple of years ago my son unfortunately was involved as a passanger on one of the Hwy 400 accidents. He was severly injured including broken tib, fib, cracked pelvis et al.. Within 45 minutes he was taken to Newmarket & evaluated. Anorther 90 minutes put on an air ambulance to St Mikes. Within 6 hours of the accident he was in the operating room going thru a 6 hour operation. I don't know if any better health care in the world could be found in that situation. So yes maybe my bias in favour of what we've got is showing but I am proud of our healtcare system.

That is a great example with an excellent result.

There are likely many reasons why it turned out so well, and I would think all the things that went right should be examined with a view to making it happen more consistently across the entire country.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

I don’t have a lot of firsthand experience with Ontario health care. Whenever I need health care, I do get it promptly, I have no complaints. But then is that because of the fact that we know so many doctors? I don’t know.

I had a colonoscopy two years ago, we go camping with the surgeon many times. Last year I saw a urologist, again, a good friend of ours. There was a slight possibility of cancer. When he ruled out the cancer during my visit, he said to me ‘let me call your wife, I know she is a nervous wreck’. He called her right in front of me.

I don’t know how much of the attention is personal, whether they give me any preferential treatment etc. (and I don’t ask, it is best not to know).

But I personally have had nothing but good experience with our health care system.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Thank you for your insight on that. I believe we already came to that conclusion. The question then becomes..."What the hell do we do about it?" Sheesh!

Not much, it is not easy to improve access in the rural communities. As I said before, most countries have that problem. It just isn't cost effective to have all the facilities in the rural areas, I think it is more common to fly the patients over to urban areas where they may be properly treated.

 

[L Gilbert]

I don’t have a lot of firsthand experience with Ontario health care. Whenever I need health care, I do get it promptly, I have no complaints. But then is that because of the fact that we know so many doctors? I don’t know.

I had a colonoscopy two years ago, we go camping with the surgeon many times. Last year I saw a urologist, again, a good friend of ours. There was a slight possibility of cancer. When he ruled out the cancer during my visit, he said to me ‘let me call you wife, I know she is a nervous wreck’. He called her right in front of me.

I don’t know how much of the attention is personal, whether they give me any preferential treatment etc. (and I don’t ask, it is best not to know).

But I personally have had nothing but good experience with our health care system.

That's a cute little anecdote. I wonder how reflective it is of all Ontario's healthcare, though.

 

[countryboy]

Public purse isn’t bottomless country boy, it is limited. I don’t think there can be any question of increasing health care spending now. We have to do the best we can in the money that is available.

Y'know SirJP - You might have an outside chance of having people take you a bit more seriously (me, for one) if could come to realize that your condescending attitude could be brought under some semblance of control. It's fine to think you're right all the time, but many like to think they are also capable of intelligent thinking too.

Stating something that is so painfully obvious to all - followed by the use of their post name - leaves a rather insulting taste in the mouths of most normal people.

And then perhaps more people would be encouraged to come forward with helpful suggestions on our health care system, which was the original intent of this thread.

 

[countryboy]

I don’t have a lot of firsthand experience with Ontario health care. Whenever I need health care, I do get it promptly, I have no complaints. But then is that because of the fact that we know so many doctors? I don’t know.

I had a colonoscopy two years ago, we go camping with the surgeon many times. Last year I saw a urologist, again, a good friend of ours. There was a slight possibility of cancer. When he ruled out the cancer during my visit, he said to me ‘let me call your wife, I know she is a nervous wreck’. He called her right in front of me.

I don’t know how much of the attention is personal, whether they give me any preferential treatment etc. (and I don’t ask, it is best not to know).

But I personally have had nothing but good experience with our health care system.

I'm sure we're all very happy for you that you are blessed with friends like that. However, I don't think there are enough doctors to go around so that everyone could become personal friends with them.

I am sincerely glad that your health problems weren't serious or life-threatening.