Mr. Gilly,

I'm pleased to see you reinforced some of those existing Myths for the benefit of the wealthy medical establishment, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, currently preying on the citizens of the U.S.A. --- and even managed to add a couple of new Myths they can now use to justify denying health insurance to the poorest and neediest of Americans.

All told, a job well done.

Obviously, I failed to impart my personal belief and motives. Which ones did I myth?

First, if you reread my later statements, I strongly believe in Universal Medical Insurance for every one, PERIOD!

Second, Universal Medical Insurance should not be a euphemism for enforced non profit state owned poor quality health care delivery. Like all other industries, the economic health of that industry depends on free enterprise, profits, and OPEN COMPETITION, not syndicates and "closed shop" alliances.

Third, the medical/pharmaceutical ethics need to be regulated carefully with input from academia, legal, government, and public advocates all represented on governing boards authorized by legislation.

Will this ever evolve? Not likely in my or your life time, since only nothing is perfect!  = O as is represented by the circle symbol.

The biggest draw back we face is the political meddling with budgets and funding in our current model in Canada.
What we need is for the insurance scheme to be independent of provincial and federal political budgets and run on an actuarially sound model. This would calculate the needs versus the population dynamics, and the changing technology available. The funding would be more properly the responsibility of the federal government. For this to happen we would have to amend the Canadian Constitution to take health care away from the provinces and place it with the feds, but under the current formula, we can't even get any amendments through in this political climate/regime. That is another legacy of the damned English invaders! Conquer, Divide, and Exit! [my ancestry be damned!]

Instead of repeating that entire mass of text, I'll choose one tiny portion of your previous Reply:


More Than Enough Doctors

I live in the far north boonies and not in the populous south. It's true some small towns up here have difficulties retaining doctors but with a few exceptions, those leaving would prefer to stay but can't handle the workload because their fellow doctors would prefer to practice in the big city, where they can be big shots in big, modern hospitals and make more money with all the conveniences and expensive tests immediately available to them.

The uncaring doctors leave the caring doctors to take up the slack and the caring doctors can't handle the workload forever. They end up having to leave to save their health and their sanity.

These problems arise from inflated egos, sometimes insecurity because some doctors seem to depend on the instant support of specialists and sometimes they just suck up all the Provincial government bonuses to pay off their student loans and then they go home. Patients are not a primary concern with some doctors.

How this is the fault of universal health insurance, I dunno.

Waiting Times

The only time I ever visited Emergency (and I had an actual Emergency) in our small town hospital, I was treated instantly and professionally. If they hadn't, I'd be dead.

I used to have to wait one to two weeks for non-critical appointments with a doctor. As of yesterday, I was told the clinic wasn't satisfied with those waiting periods and the new targets are same day appointments - to a maximum of two days for non-critical appointments.

Prescriptions

I have no idea what you're talking about with prescriptions. I'm on a Provincial Pharmaceutical Plan too and my doctors writes scripts for both generic and brand name drugs. Either way, I pay $2. There's no calling back and forth for any sort of permission and I've never even heard of such a thing. Maybe that just happens in your part of the province?

Much of the information you provided was either confusing or seemed to pertain uniquely to you and to you alone - not to universal health insurance. I just didn't think it fairly contributed to the ongoing debate but if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

Cinaed, you have better service and prices in your area by the sounds of it. I suggest that, you check with some of your relatives here in the South to verify what I have written.
When I wrote that we are short 40 doctors here in Oshawa, and in London, too, where there is a teaching university hospital, I was quoting the local papers from two years ago. Our Mayors had then announced plans on trying to recruit more doctors for both of these cities.
Part of the problem is that the Province is restricting funding for the openings in medical schools. This is where the problem lies, it is the political throttle on the funding to medical schools. I am willing to make you and any one a substantial bet on this point!
My pharmaceutical prescription plan is the Senior Citizen plan funded by the Federal Government Medicare Program. I have to pay $100.xx annually, then $6.11 for each prescription regardless of what it costs actually. The C-note is for both my wife and I. She is not yet 65, so her prescriptions are not covered, so that too is a bummer yet until next January.
I get all of my eye exams covered, but only one prescription every 2 years is covered by the Seniors Plan. Currently, I have been checked every 6 months for glaucoma, since I have a borderline condition existing, and was told to come back this time again in one month for a retest to check the trend line. All of that is totally covered.
Wait times at some of our big city hospital emergency dept.s are running better than previously. Depending on the time of day and week of course, it ranges from 1 to 2 hours but can be as high as 6 and 8 hours depending on the triage decisions and the total patient volumes. The one time I needed to see a doctor in Northern Ont. at Hearst, I was told to report to the Hospital Emergency Room, and was served almost immediately.
Also, I parked the semi with a 53' trailer on the side of the front driveway of the Hearst Hospital, with no jeopardy for a parking ticket or being towed away.
Here in the South, you cannot find nearby parking at most hospitals, except inside their overpriced parkades, and some of these don't even allow pickup trucks. It is a common sight to see several people circling the hospital in their cars, and watching for a friend or relative to appear to be picked up and driven home. All of our clinics have charge for parking lots, too! There are very few on street places park and these are all metered, too. It is getting to be more common to see patients take taxis to and from our clinics and hospitals.
Bottom line, some of these taxi drivers are immigrant foreign doctors, that our home grown doctors won't allow to be certified to practice. Now explain to me why they cannot be given a special upgrading course to qualify?
Oh, and enjoy the GWN while it still exists, nothing seems to last very long in this life!

http://wheelsdurhamregion.com/news/oshawa/article/113513

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2006/06/22/to-doctor20060622.html

I have lots of friends and relatives in the south. I used to live there. You may want to stop believing everything you're told --- or at least look at it from a slightly different perspective. The media tends to just report press releases and there are often reasons the statistics in press releases are skewed. For instance, the statistics you quote are convenient when doctors are negotiating fees with provincial governments or when hospitals are begging for more of the taxpayer's money.

Doctors Have Freedom

Contrary to some of the propaganda I've been reading in the United States recently, after fulfilling any contractual obligations, doctors in Canada are free citizens and may practice medicine wherever they choose to do so. There was a time when lots and lots of doctors chose to move to the States because they were more interested in getting rich than in helping patients. A large percentage of those doctors have since returned. Apparently the streets aren't paved with gold in the United States after all.

Here's another example. I had an excellent doctor up here in the northern boonies for two full years. Once she fulfilled the obligations she took upon herself when choosing to attend an Ontario medical school (and paying off her student loans in record time by practising in the the north, I might add) she left here and went back to her home Province. I don't blame her for gong home.

Damned Statistics!

That means we were short one doctor and under-serviced, by your reckoning. Well, how about the place she went? Is it now over-serviced? Sorry, that's not reported.

There aren't too few doctors. There are simply too few doctors who choose to practise where you choose to live. It's a big province and a big country.

A Surplus of Doctors, Just Down The Highway

According to one of the links you posted, you could always move down the highway to Toronto if you're so concerned about the doctor shortage where you live. There's lots of doctors in Toronto - too many, really. Maybe that's why they started throttling the number of openings in medical schools, many years ago? I'm not even sure they're actually doing that anymore. They just opened a brand new medical school in the north, hoping the graduates would choose to stay and work up here instead of moving to Toronto to make the big bucks.

Interesting discussion you two are having. I'm sitting in the sidelines with not much to add, not being Canadian and never having needed medical services there.

That said, "Doctors have freedom?" Not here they don't. My doctor told me years ago that he stopped accepting Aetna. Luckily, my company let me switch from them even though the open enrollment period had just closed when I found out. He stopped accepting Aetna because (quoting as accurately as I can from memory), "they wouldn't let me provide good care to my patients."

So, our doctors are free to take the plan or not. Once on it, they don't have much leeway in providing care. If the plan doesn't cover X, they are virtually prevented from performing X. This may not be true if one knows enough to request X and is willing to pay out of pocket for the treatment or test. However, I'm not sure the doctor is even allowed to suggest or recommend X when it is not covered.

Check out this article from the times today. Note that Aetna gets dishonorable mention there too. But, Aetna is not the problem, they are merely one symptom of our real problem here in the GO USA.

Insured, but Bankrupted by Health Crises

Cinaed, rather than get into a pissing match over details, I will ask you this. Why will Oshawa, and London, Ont. pay a signing bonus to any recent medical school graduate that is willing to come and set up practice in these cities, and note that both London, and Hamilton are producing graduates along with Toronto! I will give you one clue! The clinic which I have patronized for 45 years was opened up 45 years ago when we had the large industrial expansion here [2 new lines at Gen. Mtrs. and the steel mill in adjacent Whitby] Most of these doctors including mine are now age 70 + or - and ready to retire.
 WE HAVE A SERIOUS SHORTAGE OF DOCTORS BECAUSE OF THE BUDGETARY CUTBACKS BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WHEN CRETIEN AND MARTIN NEEDED TO BALANCE THE BUDGET A DECADE AND A HALF AGO! They cut off the funding to not just the medical care plan but the universities, too!

This is compounded by the doctors closed shop union called the College of Physicians and Surgeons who get to say who can and cannot practice. To wit: A graduate 2 years ago from Western in London, Ont. failed to take or pass these exams. He started to practice and took on my son as one of his new patients. In a matter of days he was no longer in the province, and is now in uniform serving in Afganistan the last we heard! What happened to his signing bonus? Did he repay it? Why did Western graduate him yet he is not qualified to practice in his home province? By the way he has the same heritage as you and I do, including the same temperament!

You are more correct than you understand. There are many more facts that should be exposed and I doubt that a Federal Royal Commision could get them all out! Like there is something rotten in Canada, never mind Denmark, Hamlet!

Who's Jean Chrétien? Who's Paul Martin? Never heard of them. Where's Oshawa? Some place in Australia? Where's Whitby? In France? You mean London, as in England?

You should know none of what you wrote is even remotely true but I guess you don't.

If you limited yourself to posting on blogs in southern Ontario, in Canada, at least the people there would recognise the bullshit and simply dismiss it for what it is. Americans? They're likely to believe it's true if they wish to believe it's true and it's profitable for them to believe it's true.

Obviously, we should get rid of universal health insurance in Canada and return to the U.SA. model. Obviously, it's the only way to make sure there's enough doctors.

We've had universal health insurance in Canada for a hell of a long time now. It's remarkable to me, we're not all dead up here. According to you, very soon all of us will be dead --- from lack of doctors.

It's simply too ridiculous for a serious response.