So, the worry I have for socialized medicine is ridiculous wait times for necessary care. I was born in Ontario, but moved to the US when I was 7. I have family that is still in Ontario, and several of us recently discussed the potential changes to the US health care system. I will spare you most of the waaaaaay right wing stuff that my dad spewed out, but from personal family experiences, this is why we worry (typed by my father):
My aunt Ria lives in Kingston Ontario and is 75 years old, she suffers from arterial fibrillation and needs to see a heart specialist. Her GP is experimenting with different drugs to see which one she is capable of handling with the minimum of side effects. He's gotten it wrong 3 times already and she called the other day to ask whether she should cut the dosage in half, he said " hey you can try that!" now who's the doctor here? She has absolutely no energy and cannot get her breath even when simply walking! While she waits to get an appointment with a heart specialist, she suffers and maybe the wait is unhealthy or even dangerous for her? Now we're talking here about already having waited 3 months to get an appointment, not when she'll actually see the specialist which would be another 3-6 months after the appointment. Everyone reading this agrees she could see a specialist here in the States tomorrow, right?
4) Last year my brother Bert contracted a deadly staph infection from a bite from a burglar who broke into his store. Months later he started experiencing and terrific pain in his back and finally got an appointment with his GP. Strained back he was told, come back next month. The pain got worse, more drugs, the pain got worse he couldn't sleep,
no returned phone calls from his doctor but the nurse called to say he was scheduled for an MRI but not for another 3-6 months, take more pills, double the dosage. (availability)
I advised him to call an ambulance and get to a hospital, unfortunately the hospital they took him to was an underfunded, regional hospital which had limited doctors and no specialists and no MRI equipment, so more pills and advice to get an MRI, Hello! A week later I said Bert, have your wife drive you to the teaching hospital in London Ontario and drive straight into the emergency room. When he got there,
luckily he fell into the care of a young and very dedicated doctor who immediately recognized a very serious situation. An MRI was done immediately that night and a 7 hour emergency surgery performed the next morning. Not a tumour as first thought, but a huge infection (staph) that had eaten away one of his vertebrae T7 was completely gone and T6 had collapsed onto T8 and Bert was told had he waited a few more weeks he would have been paralyzed from the chest down and for life, since his spinal column was severely pinched as a result and the infection which was very aggressive. Had Bert not taken it upon himself to get help, he might today
be paralyzed. The great
free Canadian Health care system at it's finest.
5) My Father languished in a very crummy hospital (believe me crummy is a nice description) in Toronto for over 3 months while they
tried to diagnose what was ailing him. In the end they came up with a diagnosis that today I still think was completely wrong but was bought on by hospital pressure to
move it along. As a result I believe they made a desperate guess as to the cause of the loss of feeling in his hands and feet. Simply underfunded, out of time, over stressed, not enough doctors or specialists and too little or antiquated testing and research equipment to do the job of medicine they jumped at something, anything I believe.(availability)They put him on and then off, very strong steroids and released him. 4 weeks later he died, his heart just stopped beating, very low blood pressure was a side effect of the steroids but at the same time he was still taking high blood pressure medicine because he had had high blood pressure all of his life. Who's on first?
Very long, I'm sorry, but these are events that my family dealt with first hand. I know that there are faults with both systems, but I hope we find a better balance rather than just switching over to nationalized healthcare.
