Re: Petition to expand Medicare to be the Single Payer Healthcare System for the USA
Originally Posted by
monadnocky
Interesting - as an American it's sometimes difficult to discern if the Canadian wait times are problematic or if they are exaggerated by opponents of any form of a nationalized system.
In the Canadian system, care is rationed, based on 'need'. If you have a critical car crash on the highway, and air ambulance picks you up and you fly to a trauma center hospital
where a team of world class trauma doctors save your life. If you have cancer, you get immediate treatment with proven outcomes to extend life to an international standard
of survival rates.
If you tear your ACL, you go sit and wait. If you live outside an urban area where you don't have local access to the best medical centres, you have to travel to get treatment.
Patients do no paperwork. Administration costs are far lower than with insurance based systems.
Canada battles with wait times the way that a baseball stadium does to get a line of people processed. It's not always about adding more entrances, but managing the ones
you have the smartest way you can. I heard one of the Canadian doctors who testified to Congress say it this way - She waited 30 minutes at the metal detector to get into
the meeting room, and across the hall were two other entrances with no lines.
I'd rather be in the situation to fix what could be improved, than at the point where the US is still arguing who and what should be covered. It's a tragedy how much money
you guys spend for the outcomes in the current system.
-g
EPOst hoc ergo propter hoc
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