OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM – Does It Need Fixing?

[L Gilbert]

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.

Flying? Yep. That's cool. Don't bother paying doctors a bit more to go to rural areas where they are needed. Spend that money on jetfuel rather than on diagnostics.
Driving people all over? Yep, spend money gadding around the countryside and take an extra hour or two to bring the patient to where they can be diagnosed properly. Genius.
"Oh, sorry, Mr. Smith. If Dr. Jones was here instead of Vancouver General Hospital located in the city he can go shake his booty in at his fave club, we might have been able to fix your ruptured spleen right away but we can't. You;ll have to wait another 5 hours to go get diagnosed and treated."

 

[SirJosephPorter]

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.

It doesn't matter to me if you take me seriously or not, countryboy. That is your call.

 

[countryboy]

Flying? Yep. That's cool. Don't bother paying doctors a bit more to go to rural areas where they are needed. Spend that money on jetfuel rather than on diagnostics.
Driving people all over? Yep, spend money gadding around the countryside and take an extra hour or two to bring the patient to where they can be diagnosed properly. Genius.
"Oh, sorry, Mr. Smith. If Dr. Jones was here instead of Vancouver General Hospital located in the city he can go shake his booty in at his fave club, we might have been able to fix your ruptured spleen right away but we can't. You;ll have to wait another 5 hours to go get diagnosed and treated."

Yep, I'm sure there's nothing like a nice smooth flight when you're deathly ill or all banged up after an accident. The ultimate in patient comfort, care, and overall well-being.

Some of these ideas look just great on paper, as long as you remember to keep the patient out of them. Of course, it's hard to do that when the discussion is on Health Care! :angryfire:

 

[L Gilbert]

Yep, I'm sure there's nothing like a nice smooth flight when you're deathly ill or all banged up after an accident. The ultimate in patient comfort, care, and overall well-being.

Some of these ideas look just great on paper, as long as you remember to keep the patient out of them. Of course, it's hard to do that when the discussion is on Health Care! :angryfire:

Exactly, especially when the phrase "Mr. X's life" doesn't look near as cool on paper as "$X0,000" does, as you say.

 

[countryboy]

It doesn't matter to me if you take me seriously or not, countryboy. That is your call.

That pretty much says it all.

Now let's get back to improving our Health Care system...

 

[taxslave]

Flying? Yep. That's cool. Don't bother paying doctors a bit more to go to rural areas where they are needed. Spend that money on jetfuel rather than on diagnostics.
Driving people all over? Yep, spend money gadding around the countryside and take an extra hour or two to bring the patient to where they can be diagnosed properly. Genius.
"Oh, sorry, Mr. Smith. If Dr. Jones was here instead of Vancouver General Hospital located in the city he can go shake his booty in at his fave club, we might have been able to fix your ruptured spleen right away but we can't. You;ll have to wait another 5 hours to go get diagnosed and treated."

We do this all the time on the island. While it is understandable that small remote communities can have little more than ER facilities and a few beds with major cases to Victoria or Vancouver but moving patients between Campbell River and Comox all the time, depending on which hospital has what expert on that day is stupid. It happens because of a turf war between the two communities.
Five hours is good time to be in OR unless you have your accident in front of VGH. The golden hour is an urban myth however nice it would be. When my wife did a boot top tib-fib skiing on Mt. Cain it was over six hours from the time of the accident until we got her boot off in the hospital.

 

[#juan]

Over the past three and a half years I have had knee surgery and open heart surgery. There were four or five consults in there but I can't complain wait times. Everything was on time and on schedule. Canada is going to have some problems because of the size of the country. Outlying areas will not have the services that are available in the cities. Other than those sorts of things, we have a pretty decent system.

 

[VanIsle]

Healthcare started really going down the toilet when Martin went draconian and cut back healthcare transfers to the provinces. Basically the rug was pulled out from under the provinces. They were not prepared to handle the sudden burden. And that was long before Campbull got his mitts on BC.

True but Campbell took it to the extreme. Not once but twice. He started doing much the same as soon as he was re-elected.
I got this in my email today: (for anyone who can open it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSp10pTw5hI

 

[damngrumpy]

Over all we have a pretty good system, we don't see families going broke and being
homeless because someone got sick. Does it need improvement probably but all in
all its pretty good. My wife has all kinds of breathing problems and we have always
been looked after fairly. I think the one thing that needs fixing is the tax system in
this country. We have governments raising taxes on us to pay for stuff and they
allow the large companies to defer all kinds of taxes due year after year and have
for decades. If they paid up we would likely have no deficit either.
It time we started looking at health care and education as investments rather than the
old its an expense idea. At least we have coverage, and I don't like the privates getting too involved although some is OK, as long as its legislated and not wide
spread. Remember in this country the taxpayers have already paid for the infrastructure and it should remain community property. We have good public
services, are they the best in the world, don't know. but I do know if you are a
chronic case or serious illness or injury case you are seen in reasonable time

 

[AnnaG]

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.

Bumps this. (He's a good boy. Pretty bright, too.)

 

[AnnaG]

We do this all the time on the island. While it is understandable that small remote communities can have little more than ER facilities and a few beds with major cases to Victoria or Vancouver but moving patients between Campbell River and Comox all the time, depending on which hospital has what expert on that day is stupid. It happens because of a turf war between the two communities.
Five hours is good time to be in OR unless you have your accident in front of VGH. The golden hour is an urban myth however nice it would be. When my wife did a boot top tib-fib skiing on Mt. Cain it was over six hours from the time of the accident until we got her boot off in the hospital.

It's a 40 minute flight from the nearest landing strip here to Vancouver.
It's also ridiculous that sometimes they can't even stabilize someone to be okay for flight.
But keep sticking up for this dysfunctional system that's second to some 3rd world countries' systems. Everything is peachy keen. There's nothing to improve on in our system. yup yup yup :roll:

 

[AnnaG]

We don't have a pretty good system for a country as developed as ours is; we have an okay system that's able to treat almost everyone eventually. Who cares if a few slip through the missing floorboards? It's only a few.
All 3 of the nearest towns have a MD shortage. You people don't seem to grasp what the implications of that is. People have acquired diseases in the hospitals around here, but apparently you can't graps the implications of that either. As long as it doesn't affect your fat butts as you sit in comfort a 5 minute drive away from St Paul's or VGH or something like them. So because the Health Authorities would rather give their top execs nice fat bonuses and salaries (like between a quarter and a half million per year) rather than spend money on diagnostic equipment, everything is just peachy keen. Hubby and I just gave a bundle of bucks to a charity in a nearby town just so they could get a used CT scanner. What the hell are we paying these people for if we have to buy our own equipment?

We used to be ranked in the top 5 in the world. Now we are 30th and you people are happy about it. Get a grip.

 

[countryboy]

We don't have a pretty good system for a country as developed as ours is; we have an okay system that's able to treat almost everyone eventually. Who cares if a few slip through the missing floorboards? It's only a few.
All 3 of the nearest towns have a MD shortage. You people don't seem to grasp what the implications of that is. People have acquired diseases in the hospitals around here, but apparently you can't graps the implications of that either. As long as it doesn't affect your fat butts as you sit in comfort a 5 minute drive away from St Paul's or VGH or something like them. So because the Health Authorities would rather give their top execs nice fat bonuses and salaries (like between a quarter and a half million per year) rather than spend money on diagnostic equipment, everything is just peachy keen. Hubby and I just gave a bundle of bucks to a charity in a nearby town just so they could get a used CT scanner. What the hell are we paying these people for if we have to buy our own equipment?

We used to be ranked in the top 5 in the world. Now we are 30th and you people are happy about it. Get a grip.

Yes, the horror stories in the BC Interior are becoming legendary. They have a bus that drags sick people all over the place to get some very simple treatments. I know of a kid and his mother who spend 3 full days a week travelling for kidney dialysis treatment...every Mon., Wed., Friday. The dialysis doesn't take that long - but it's on a bus that has to wait for all the people on it to have various treatments, etc. so everyone ends up waiting for everyone else..an all-day affair. And these people are not well for the most part...

There is a hospital close to where this kid lives (5 minutes by car), but they've cut it back to a very limited facility while patient needs continue to grow in the area. I'm not an expert on all the details, but it would appear that patient care has suffered a great deal around here.

 

[countryboy]

There are some health professionals who say that the easiest way to maintain good health is to eat a good, healthy diet and get exercise. Seems simple enough.

I wonder why our hospitals are notorious for the questionable food they sometimes serve? I've seen things like processed meats (mystery meats) served to patients who are supposedly there to get better. This whole thing about "insitutional food" is one area that could be examined with a view to making it better for the good of the patients.

The priority seems to me (just my impression) on low cost and "efficiency" rather than food "goodness."

 

[YukonJack]

No system is PERFECT!

So, I'd like to see some changes whereby drugs which are not covered by my provincial plan would be covered.

 

[countryboy]

No system is PERFECT!

So, I'd like to see some changes whereby drugs which are not covered by my provincial plan would be covered.

YJ - I agree that no system is perfect. But if we quit trying to make it better, it'll just keep getting worse.

 

[Gilgamesh]

Good post.
I'd be interested to see if ON has that good of a system everywhere inside its borders, too.

Well, obviously neither Ontario nor any other Province or State can afford the same access to Medicare as happens,for instance, in the GTA The Golden Horseshoe.
Population is dense, distances are short etc..
Go to a small town or village in the Bush, and it is just not possible to have the hospitals, clinics, labs etc., etc., that can exist in densely populated areas.
Other than that basic geographical fact we aren't too bad.
The very best systems are the French & German which have almost nonexistent wait times, better patient outcomes etc..
The main differences between them and Canada is that they allow a tightly controlled public/private system.
The other big factor dragging Canadian Medicare down and costs up is that we have ten times As many non-stop medical civil servants / vs. Medical staff than the French & German. Pathetic.
In fact there are only 3 nations on Earth that have a govt only system; Canada, Cuba, & North Korea.

 

[Gilgamesh]

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.

"Liberals were trying to balance the budget ".

ROFL. Not in this universe.

 

[TheShadow]

I recently, (last Friday) had to attend a cancer care clinic in London Ontario.

There was a bit of a wait to be screened and get in, about an hour, but they were also doing triage on people in line and opening a second line when it got to a certain point.

This is of course right in the middle of the pandemic.

I am quite pleased with how they have also used other forms of technology like phone/video consults and more to keep on track with car plans.

Is there room for improvement?

Sure, there always is, but I can say in this case they are fighting to get everything done in a difficult time.

Just my 5 cents,

 

[Avro52]

I recently, (last Friday) had to attend a cancer care clinic in London Ontario.
There was a bit of a wait to be screened and get in, about an hour, but they were also doing triage on people in line and opening a second line when it got to a certain point.
This is of course right in the middle of the pandemic.
I am quite pleased with how they have also used other forms of technology like phone/video consults and more to keep on track with car plans.
Is there room for improvement?
Sure, there always is, but I can say in this case they are fighting to get everything done in a difficult time.
Just my 5 cents,

Hope everything is okay.

My brother is beginning his chemo therapy this week. So far he has had no issues with access or delay of treatment.

Can the system use reform, I think so, but it seems to do what its suppose to for now.