Quote:
Originally Posted by mykalberta
The difference is "you" dont get better care but that on average everyone gets slightly better care.
In Canada you go in to a centralized clinic location, wait a few hours to see the doctor that is working today say you have a tweaked back they tell you nothing they can do and just to get some rest. At most he prescribes some Tylenol 4 which you have to go to a different location to find a pharmacy and pay for it. And that is after waiting X hours to see the doctor.
In the US, you go to a clinic which is much closer to where you are, pay $135US and a doctor gives to a cortizone and morphine shot and you are out of the doctors office within 45 minutes total. 35 of those minutes are you grilling the doctor of the safety of the cortizone and morphine shot because your doctor in Canada never once suggested that after 10+ times of going to one yet in the US where you are on vacation that is the first thing he suggests.
And what do you know, for free you get the type of service you would expect with the price tag of free. And with $135 you get something completly different that actually solves your immediate problem and you wonder what everyone on American TV bitches about.
|
On Friday, I went to emergency in Okotoks in some very serious, gut busting, mind-boggling agony. The missus had to drive me. Within about 10 or 15 minutes I'd had a doctor in front of me, was being injected with anti-inflammatories and was set up with an IV drip loaded with morphine. X-rays followed, although they did not reveal the suspected kidney stone. A few hours later I was fine and out of there. If they hadn't been able to stabilize me, it would have been the whirling light ride to Rockyview in Calgary and a CT Scan.
Ran 10 miles the next morning (with the doctors permission) and had an ultra-sound this morning.
Total cost. Zero.
Still don't know what the problem was, perhaps an infection but the service was fast and professional.
Regarding the USA health care bill, the partisan divide there is really little different than you see here. On both sides of the border you see shrill, bug-eyed fanatics either arguing against "socialized" medicine or, in our case, against any attempt to use some of the benefits free enterprise might bring to our health care delivery log jams.
America is probably better off for this change even if, as one poster already noted, it's hardly the grand change it's being advertised as.
As one of my American friends, who works in a VA hospital, recently noted, if socialized medicine is so terrible why does it work for the American military and members of government, two of the most important institutions in the country?
Obama, it seems, has finally abandoned his ill-considered, milquetoast efforts at conciliation and has decided to be a leader and the person he really is. There are just some people in the world who disagree with you and will never agree with you, no matter how much you talk. This seems to have been a surprise to Obama. Rightly or wrongly, health care is the hill he's decided to live or die on and we will probably see more like it as his presidency evolves further.
On the other hand, this is not a popular thing to be doing by the look of the polls. The timing looks like an effort to beat the shellacking it looks like the Democrats are going to take in November.
As I've noted before, President's sometimes benefit from some rather miraculous economic timing. Obama entered the scene as President at the bottom of an economic cycle and a spot where he could blame pretty much anything he wanted on his predecessor. Since he took office, the stock market is up about 50%, the economy has stabilized, the housing market has stabilized, employment has stabilized, etc, etc . . . . . . all of which, quite frankly, probably has little to do with Barack Obama and more to do with natural economic cycles and the decisive actions of global leaders and central bankers in the months prior to him taking office.
Nevertheless, timing is everything. If he does turn out to be a one-term President, it would be an astonishing development considering the above . . . . . and it likely would have been because of things like this Health Care bill and how it hangs around his neck.
We watch with interest.
Cowperson