Still angry, and now I'm focusing it HERE.

[ifritah]

My mom loves to forward me stuff. Heh, I doubt she expected me to reply to her forward with a GRR of how I felt about it. ^^;

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What a stupid spin on the Canadian system. I love how one example of a family that has found some money is able to supercede their system to get care means that the Canadian medical situation is evil for forcing them to

Comments

[rowdyman]

I don't know; I see both sides of the coin. The free market stimulates advances in health care through competition. But I also see that those advances need to be appropriately disseminated to the masses. After all “We hold these truths to be self evident… … “. But then again I don’t feel that I should have to wait to see a care provider. I can make a call on Monday and if my provider (who is Nurse Practitioner) is open I can go see her that day, I’ve never had to wait more than a few days for care. Further more the elimination of private practice causes overall patient care to suffer. Some providers actually have a good bedside manner, and there is an old adage of “treat the patient; not the problem”. You rarely find the attention to detail and level of concern from standardized health care providers.
As far as emergency medicine is concerned; if you pick up the phone and call 911 you get an ambulance. That EMS unit will transport you to a hospital (in my case any one you ask for). I have been required to ask for insurance information, but morally and legally it does not affect my level of care nor my decision to treat or transport. My agency has had to eat the cost of several billable calls because the patient wasn’t insured, but we still provided the service. I’ve also heard of County Paramedics transporting frequent repeat patients (frequent flyers) to a designated health care facility because it was close to where the patient did their shopping for the week. Others call on a cold night looking to be sent to the hospital for three hots and cot (three hot meals and a place to sleep). That type of abuse of the system takes a front line unit out of service and unable to respond to an actual emergency. So with EMS (at least in this area) it is free to those that can’t afford it and there are no lines.