Funny thing, how terrible Canadian medicine is!
I'd heard that said so often on this forum, but at the same time the same people were saying how awful the British NHS is, and what they were saying about that, I knew to be lies. So I kind of wondered about the Canadian system.
At Easter I had a Canadian student sharing my office. She'd decided she wanted to do her veterinary degree abroad (even though Guelph has one of the world's top veterinary colleges). Anyway, she'd chosen Edinburgh. 25-year-old woman, been around a bit, very bright student. So I asked her what the healthcare was like in Canada.
She told me she was extremely satisfied with it, and mentioned a few anecdotes of excellent care received by members of her family. She said in particular, treatment was prioritised by urgency of need, so it was quite easy to find people with not-terribly-urgent conditions bitching about waiting times. However, the reason for that was that people with urgent needs were being prioritised above them.
She then, quite spontaneously, said that healthcare was her main reason for having rejected the USA as the place to do her veterinary studies. She said she'd been there, had some idea of what it was like, and frankly if she ever got sick in the US, she'd be on the next train or plane back to Canada she could possibly get on. She had specifically chosen Scotland as the place where she was going to live for five years because of our universal healthcare system.
Ambulance for a dislocated shoulder? I know it's bloody sore, but that's still "walking wounded". If you have transport available and someone else to drive you, I can't understand anyone who would expect an ambulance to come for them for that one.
Physiotherapy not covered? Well, it's covered on the NHS, but people still sometimes choose to go privately - for example, a private physiotherapist will come to your house. But do I detect an inflated sense of entitlement here? The more a scheme covers, the more it costs. If certain peripherals aren't covered, then it keeps down costs, or allows more money to be allocated to central services. So the system expects citizens to take some responsibility for certain aspects of healthcare? How terrible! I wonder how much an insurance policy to cover these small peripheral requirements might cost per month?
My colleague in the next office here is Portuguese, and she just started talking about the Portuguese health service - specifically about how easy it is to see a specialist there compared to the NHS, we were talking about another colleague who has been off sick. She said, "We Portuguese are a nation of complainers. We love to moan about the health service all the time. But it's really very good indeed. For goodness sake, it's a basic human right!"
I suggested she say that to certain Americans of my acquaintance, then just wait for the explosion.
Point being, every country has a different system. Some countries have a variety of systems in different states or provinces, even. And it's human nature to complain about the service. You'll get plenty people complaining about the service in the USA too, even people with insurance.
Just finding one country, or perhaps province, where there is a problem with universal healthcare, doesn't mean this problem is universal. In fact, just finding one anecdote doesn't even mean there's a problem there at all. And just because a few people in countries with universal healthcare have exercised their right to complain (even about something as minor as having to get a lift to hospital with a "walking wounded" injury) doesn't mean that anything Obama proposes is going to be a disaster.
Is he proposing a system identical to Canada's? Don't think so. Is Canada's healthcare system a disaster? Don't think so. Would Canadians in general prefer to have the US system for healthcare? Don't think so. Should someone with a dislocated shoulder have the right to demand an ambulance to come and take him to hospital when he has a car available and someone able to drive him?
Don't think so.
Rolfe.
