Is Health Care in Canada really that bad?
- Thread starter Javacup11
- Start date
First if you can t cross the border to get us help you be dead in the USA. unlike the uSA you can see your doctor weekly if you wated to free... they make you do free tests you dont want and most things are stopped early that kill most americans. on the hand since we din t ignore half are pop. the line ups for specials were long and since covid much longer as doc took a year break... nothing stops you from using the american system but if medical bills exceed 100 bucks canadians would rather wait a year... we are not used to paying medical bills of any kind.
the smart thing is to get usa medicL insurance to supplement the canadian... but we are too cheap for that
No, that is not accurate. Yes, there are lines for things like knee replacement or MRIs for non-life threatening things. But, if you have a heart attack or are in a serious accident, you get immediate help. There are major issues right now due to COVID, the flu, and RSV, which has seen ERs and ICUs swell to the breaking point. Surgeries have been cancelled or postponed due to this, which is a problem. But our provincial government has underspent to the tune of nearly a billion bucks this year on healthcare, and are now crying poor to Ottawa. At the same time, they are ignoring public health authorities who say maybe masking up right now would help the system....So, instead of minority inconveniencing people, Ford would rather see kids and adults get seriously sick and die...
Speaking from personal experience I don't have a family doctor so anytime I need treatment for anything I go to a walk in clinic and get seen pretty quick. The hospital is a different story. Usual wait is 5-6 hours.
Someone in my family was diagnosed with cancer last year at this time. Her treatments(chemo) started within a week. The people that say they have cancer and have to wait weeks for treatment, I question them on that.
Someone in my family was diagnosed with cancer last year at this time. Her treatments(chemo) started within a week. The people that say they have cancer and have to wait weeks for treatment, I question them on that.
No it's not. I've just had 2 emergency situations in the last 4 months, and in both cases, although the lineups and waiting in emergency were long, once they realized I was an "emergency" I was seen and treated by specialists PRONTO! Even transferred to another hospital to get treated by specialists. In one week I got two MRIs and life saving surgery. And in both cases, completely unrelated to one another health-wise, the could have been fatal! I owe my life to triage nurses! I owe my life to our healthcare system. The problem lies in not enough funding for the system to work properly. Pay the fucking nurses what they deserve! Not ONE of them is in it "for the money". They wade through piss, shit, vomit and blood every hour of every day dealing with crazy people, violent people and just plain annyoing as fuck people. Stop watching the news and reading the headlines.
It’s only going to get worse, as long as Trudeau wants to let in half a million newcomers every year our healthcare budget will continue to skyrocket.
No, non emergency surgeries have a waiting list for example I wanted my Gastric Band removed because it's causing me issues eating and digesting since my motorcycle accident, it took me 15 minutes to see a Doc and request the referral, took about a week to see the radiologist for X-ray and ultrasound, got the referral and met the surgeon within a couple of weeks. Now I'm on a waiting list for the actual surgery which may take 6 months to a Year. In the mean time he removed the fluid in the band which alleviated some of my discomfort while eating right there in his office.
None of this is an emergency and all of it cost me nothing other than what I already pay in taxes.
Meanwhile one of my aunts recently fell down and twisted her leg so bad it 's pretty much bent the wrong way. She was in the hospital within 10 minutes and in surgery another 10-15 minutes later. She's been at the hospital for a month now and most of it is still going to be free.
All these stories outlets like Faux News keep peddling are from rich fucks who were on non emergency surgery lists but didn't want to wait because they feel more important than others.
ER nurses will tell you that 90% of people presenting in the ER are not actually medical emergencies. As a result, people do wait a long time for a medical health professional to look at their non-emergency boo-boo. This is usually because they don't have a family physician and this is their only option beyond walk-in clinics. If you arrive at an ER and you have an actual medical emergency on your hands, you'll be treated and at a minimum be stabilized from any immediate danger perspective exceptionally quickly. The biggest problem hospitals actually have is educating the general public what is and is not an emergency.
Great recap.
Covid did a lot of damage to our healthcare system but we will improve. Our numbers regarding cure of important disease are still equal or superior to the US.
The US is the only developed country in the world without socialized healthcare. 30% of gofundme campaign in the US are to pay for healthcare...
The thing is if you do have money in Canada you can bypass the public system and go private. You will still end up paying far less then in the states for any surgery you need.
More and more, hospitals are expected to behave as an extension of the social safety net rather than being true to their intended purpose - provision of health medical services. The more you try to make a hospital behave like a social services provider, the more impossible it becomes for the trained medical health professionals to be successful in their true mandate.
As with anything there are good and bad things about Canadian healthcare:
The Good:
- You get free doctor visits, tests and procedures
- Medication is cheaper
- If hospitals are busy, there are a number of outpatient clinics that are also covered by provincial insurance and you could use one of those
- Number of walk in clinics, and community health clinics where you can go without appointments and it is free to see the doctor or get tests
- If your situation is urgent, you get immediate care for free
- No added anxiety of going broke if you need a big procedure like heart or cancer surgery etc.,
- If drug costs are beyond your ability, Trillium can cover up to 90%.
The Bad:
- Specialist wait times especially in hospitals (Like Toronto Western) is long. Depends on what specialist as well. Mitigate it by visiting outpatient clinics.
- Many procedures are not available in Canada. The US has all kinds of experimental and other procedures available that you can avail off of depending on your condition.
- Scarcity of doctors which further contributes to wait times.
- Poor customer service - in the US you are paying, so quality is better. So sometimes they will try to send you home sooner, and end up missing misdiagnosing you. You have to therefore always advocate for yourself, do research and tell your doctor that you need certain tests because of your suspicions. If you leave it up to your doctor, you are in trouble.
The Good:
- You get free doctor visits, tests and procedures
- Medication is cheaper
- If hospitals are busy, there are a number of outpatient clinics that are also covered by provincial insurance and you could use one of those
- Number of walk in clinics, and community health clinics where you can go without appointments and it is free to see the doctor or get tests
- If your situation is urgent, you get immediate care for free
- No added anxiety of going broke if you need a big procedure like heart or cancer surgery etc.,
- If drug costs are beyond your ability, Trillium can cover up to 90%.
The Bad:
- Specialist wait times especially in hospitals (Like Toronto Western) is long. Depends on what specialist as well. Mitigate it by visiting outpatient clinics.
- Many procedures are not available in Canada. The US has all kinds of experimental and other procedures available that you can avail off of depending on your condition.
- Scarcity of doctors which further contributes to wait times.
- Poor customer service - in the US you are paying, so quality is better. So sometimes they will try to send you home sooner, and end up missing misdiagnosing you. You have to therefore always advocate for yourself, do research and tell your doctor that you need certain tests because of your suspicions. If you leave it up to your doctor, you are in trouble.
Don’t forget seniors who are taking up hospital beds because they can’t get into the nursing home of their choice.
It is not very good and it is not very bad.
There are forces in Ontario that want to privatize parts of the health system. Ford and Al. Are using the familiar conservative playbook: starve the system such that people get disillusioned, and then present a solution: privatization.
In particular, nurses are being grossly underpaid and overworked. Shortages of nurses are the cause of most of the wait times.
There are forces in Ontario that want to privatize parts of the health system. Ford and Al. Are using the familiar conservative playbook: starve the system such that people get disillusioned, and then present a solution: privatization.
In particular, nurses are being grossly underpaid and overworked. Shortages of nurses are the cause of most of the wait times.
It is about to be this bad as you describe. There will be many deaths in hospitals as our Premier (Governor equivalent) Doug Ford wants our healthcare system to collapse. He wants to privatize healthcare for profit. Ontario is going to be completely for sale soon. Already started with the greenbelt.
You posted almilost at same time as me with the same sentiments. Thank God people are realizing how this dangerous unprecedented con artist Doug Ford has a real agenda
Agreed. The problem is Trudeau. Federal funding of healthcare dropped to 21% but he has lots of money to send to foreign countries. Time he set his priorities straight to spend taxpayers money on Canada, not foreign countries.
I do not understand why you would want politicians and bureaucrats to control healthcare? After what you seen for the past few years you still have not learned? It is a recipe for disaster. Let the specialists manage healthcare, they are trained and know the field better then all of us including politicians. Privatization would not be a bad thing if our taxes would be cut to by 50% a more.
