re: What single-payer healthcare looks like

quote:

---

You misspelled "Veterans Administration system".

---

hey hey hey. it only took Durham VA 2 weeks to get me a consult and x rays when I broke my foot. lucky for me it didn't have to be re set. My fav part is if my doctor gives me ortho referrals, that consists of waiting 2 weeks for a letter that gives me a list of people i have to call myself and make an appointment, instead of them just making it that day with a provider.

quote:

---

I know a guy that lives in Canada that tore up his knee and had to wait almost 5 months to get an MRI done.

---

One of my classmates from medical school was from Canada. He had cancer and he had to sit in the hospital for 28hrs to get his MRI.



















Yes he had an appointment and he still had to wait 28hrs.

British Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh discuses the NHS

....extremely enlightening

BBC

quote:

---

What single-payer healthcare looks like

---

You forgot one stat. How happy are the Canadian people with their healthcare system: LINK

So if you want to know if people there prefer public or private healthcare we should start there.

quote:

---

Just for the record, sister just waited 15 wrels for ankle surgery. In Atlanta.

---

Not an apples-to-apples comparison.
E.g., It is a virtual certainty she had more expedient options with different providers had she chosen to pursue them.

Put another way, if she chose James Andrews as her surgeon, she'd have waited even longer. He's in high demand. That is not comparable to Canada, the UK, etc., where the wait is not elective, but rather it is exclusive of any choice of surgeon, degree of pain, or accompanying disability.

Here, if the 15wks was not acceptable to her, she could have picked up the phone, called other providers, and had her procedure within 7-10 days.

======

Ortho is but one of a litany of problematic areas though.

In the case of coronary disease, CVA, or closed-head injury where minutes make a huge difference in outcome, the delay in Canadian response time can be lethal (see 'Natasha Richardson'). This, despite long term knowledge of the problem on the part of Canadian authorities.

Yet oddly enough, if one were to look up Neurosurgical CHI Outcome Statistics Canada-vs-US, it's likely Canada would claim similar outcome results to the US.

The same is true of a CAD patient who dies while awaiting hospital availability for CABG surgery. Is he included in Canadian CABG mortality stats? Of course not! Yet had the poor soul had the identical problem in the US, he'd likely be alive following coronary bypass surgery.

So though no outcome difference shows up in reported stats, one guy is dead. The other is alive.
There is no equivalence.

I've been in Toronto for a project for a while now.

A lot of Canadians here complain about their effective tax rate and the wait times for health care.

Tl;dr

We can do much better.

Its about priorities.

Ps. The data is more complex than the op lets on.
Each province does it differently.

quote:

---

Tl;dr

---

quote:

---

The data is more complex than the op lets on.

---

As you said, you dr.

quote:

---

We can do much better.

Its about priorities.

---

Famous last words of a failed socialist regime.