Health Care in America Far Worse Than Anywhere in Western World: Wish We had Canada's

I want to thank Not My Mother's Blog for this great post. For all the annoying talk of the problems with universal coverage, not a single "negative" is ever born out by facts. As someone who had the pleasure of experiencing the English Health Care system I find all the lies about universal coverage to be shockingly disengenious. I got great care start to finish. On a system that was set up to benefit me the patient not me the paying customer. What I mean is that my doctor called me (or his office) to make sure I was up to date on my shots and that my health was good. He held information sessions to make sure I had the best data on how to stay healthy. I had costly preventative tests, comprehensive asthma treatment and consistent care. And when I had an emergency trip to the hospital (one were similar horrible experience I would have someone drive me to their and my risk to save money) it was an ambulance ride from heaven, professional, put me at ease and cost me nothing. In the long run I cost less, because I would be healthier and not need the costly corrective strategies that our system where we only go when things REALLY go wrong. Yes they had problems with funding, but those are minuscule problems compared to the behemoth of terrible care in the American health care company enrichment system we have. One of the dumbest rationales is the wait time. I never had to wait longer for ANYTHING in England...apparently neither do the Canadians. ...the Canadian Institute for Health Information released their report on wait times for several common health procedures across Canada. ...More than 75% of patients requiring cancer radiation treatment received that treatment within 28 days of being ready to treat. Let me give you a comparison here - my dad was diagnosed with melanoma in November. If he had been diagnosed in Canada, there is a better than 75% chance that treatment of that cancer would have started before Christmas. Here in the U.S., a guy with the kind of health insurance he has (read: excellent) should have been treated well within that time frame, right? His actual date of treatment: April 15. That’s right, here in the US, where we supposedly don’t have the nasty wait times brought on by nationalized health care, he waited four months longer for treatment than he would have waited in Canada. How about cataract surgery? The Canadian benchmark for cataract surgery is 16 weeks - within 112 days of the “booking time”. The data shows that 50% of the patients referred for cataract surgery in Canada have that surgery within 38 to 78 days. Ninety percent have the procedure performed within 199 days. In five of the eight provinces reporting, more than 75% of those waiting for cataract surgery have it performed within the benchmark 112 days. It’s another place where I have some personal experience. My mother had cataract surgery on April 17. She was referred in early January for that surgery. In other words, if she lived in Saskatchewan, there’s a 50% chance that she would have had that surgery done and out of the way by Valentines Day. In fact, in almost every single one of the provinces, there’s a better than 75% chance that she would have had her cataracts removed sooner. at which Deb Powers asks a great question. So I guess the question is - why are we so invested in maintaining the fiction that health care reform results in substandard care and longer wait times, when all the evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion? RSS