Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
This can certainly go both ways. My dad had an bulge/aneurysm on his aorta. He was told, "Lifting a 10 pound box, could kill you before you hit the ground." Oh, BTW there's a 10% chance you die on the table at your age. He was then placed on a waitlist and told to wait for a surgeon. 6 months had passed and he was couch ridden, depressed, gaining weight from lack of activity and losing hope. He's 82, and I believe they were hoping he'd die before his appointment.
Meanwhile his 75 year old brother in Seattle went for a routine checkup and was on the table for a triple bypass within 72 hours of them finding an issue.
Money was no issue to my parents, and when my mother started making some calls, and looked into getting the Surgery in the States they miraculously managed to hustle him in within days when they caught wind of this. If they lived in US he would have already had his Aorta replaced and been swinging his golf clubs again. The wait would have been days not months.
I'm sorry, I am as capitalist as they come. I have worked very, VERY hard to have what I have, and made enormous personal sacrifices to get to where I am. As have thousands of well off people in this province. I believe if I have the means, and I am willing to pay out of pocket to save my own life or the life of a family member, I shouldn't have to get on an Airplane and fly thousands of kilometers. That should be available to me in my own backyard, and the fact it isn't and I could die as a result tells me the system IS broken.
There's gotta be something in the middle.
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I understand the frustration of not being able to help someone in a difficult medical situation. I made a much less critical or costly decision to pay for an MRI for my daughter's chronic port-concussion issues. I understand the argument of a paid-tier taking pressure off the public tier, but would be concerned about it draining already scarce medical staff from the public system.
The root of the problem is that what you experienced is unacceptable but governments and the medical community seem unable to deal with it. I've yet to hear any comprehensive analysis of the system, it's bottlenecks, and opportunities for efficiencies. Efficiencies that promoters of private care assure us are there.
Alberta prides itself on having top notch engineering and technical capabilities, as evidenced by the success of the oil sands, etc. It's time to turn the medical system problem over to the engineers. No, not to come up with better treatments, but to de-bottleneck and rationalize the system top to bottom. We're good at that kind of stuff, and there's no shortage of subject matter experts to work with in the medical community. We need a moonshot program for the health system and get the best minds in the province working on it.
Ok, maybe a crazy idea, but I'll wait for someone to tell me a better one.