I have two friends–yes, it’s true, I have friends–who recently experienced disturbing neurological symptoms that suggested possible stroke or brain tumor. One lives in Canada. This friend reported the symptoms immediately, and the physician ordered an MRI–which was scheduled four weeks later! My other friend, an American, also quickly reported the symptoms. This friend’s HMO had a CAT scan scheduled within hours and an MRI the next morning!
Thankfully, both friends are fine. But what a difference in finding out they were fine. And what a different course each might have had were their symptoms caused by serious medical conditions!
The kind of health care system we adopt matters. Obamacare will push us toward a far more bureaucratized Canadian-style approach to medicine, one consequence of which will be diagnostic bottlenecks and increased waits for crucial tests–such as my Canadian friend was forced to endure. The dramatically different experiences of my two friends involved with strikingly similar scenarios vividly demonstrates why the Obamacare approach is wrong for America.
January 9th, 2010 | 8:14 pm
Hey, the median wait time for an MRI in Canada is 10.1 weeks.
“The median wait for an MRI across Canada was 10.1 weeks. Patients in Ontario experienced the shortest wait for an MRI (7.8 weeks), while Newfoundland and Labrador residents waited longest (20.0 weeks).”
Source:
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/10/15/waittimes-fraser.html
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 9th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
It was probably the urgency that got a quicker time.
January 9th, 2010 | 9:06 pm
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by CO2HOG: Obamacare: A Tale of Two MRIs http://rly.cc/Y7TG6…
January 10th, 2010 | 4:10 pm
Wesley: You’re comparing apples and oranges. Here in the US every hospital absolutely has to have an MRI machine in order to keep up with the Joneses, and in order to justify the expense they have to use it as often as possible, even if there’s the remotest chance something will be uncovered. Just give the right diagnostic code and, Hey! Presto!, an insurer showers you with other people’s money.
Yes, one of the reasons medical care is so costly here is that when you go into the hospital ER for a cut finger your insurance is helping pay for that MRI machine, not to mention the CAT machine and (with credit to the Pythons) “the machine that goes ‘ping!’”
In case you think I’m exaggerating, I spent a couple few hours one recent morning having a cardiac catheterization (an out-patient procedure) and received an itemized bill totaling $37,583.19 — all of which was paid by my insurance. Among the items: “Recovery Room: $17,574.96.” For those rates I could have had the Presidential Suite at the Plaza for a week instead of a gurney in a cubicle. Go figure. But please, Wesley, don’t insult my intelligence by implying that all’s well with the US system. Please.
January 10th, 2010 | 4:28 pm
Just a little over two hours ago I happened to meet a book dealer who happens to be from Canada and who lives here in the U.S. with his wife, who has a medical problem that requires ongoing treatment. He said he wouldn’t live in Canada because of the health care system there, that old people just don’t get treated, that some with political connections get better treatment, that a member of parliament there was giving a speech defending their health care system while his wife was in the U.S. receiving medical care she needed, and that Canadians have come to like the system because they don’t have to spend any money out of pocket on their own health care (he said people aren’t allowed to do that there) and that they don’t mind waiting and standing in line and not getting treatment e.g. when they are old, and accept that if it’s going to cost money, it’s not worth it, and that when they’re old they should just die, and that they have become willing to line up and to die. He also said that that’s about 80 per cent of people there, because they don’t know what it is to be really sick and need treatment. Well I hope I’m paraphrasing him right, and I hope he visits SHS, about which I told him, and joins in here.
January 10th, 2010 | 4:55 pm
What do you mean, the kind of health care system we adopt matters? Since when do we have to adopt any health care system, let alone any kind of one? What’s with this “health care system” baloney? I’ll tell you — a valueless society in which nothing is considered to matter more than money — in other words, an uneducated one (which has gone stupid at the same time as more and more have received what passes for higher education) — and the insurance companies and the damned women’s movement and women in the workforce, populating hospitals and doctors’ offices and social service agencies and insurance companies, being social workers, administrators, holders of degrees in nursing which make them no longer nurses, coders, billing specialists, etc., etc. When medicine was medicine, nurses wore white caps and these broads would have been either nuns or housewives. Of course doctors and nurses should be of both genders, but the rest of those populating the “health care system” are unnecessary and destroying everything. But God forbid they should stay home and raise a family or do manual labor that actually produces something. Plus there are the pharmaceutical companies. “Health care system” — BALONEY! We need to close the borders, cut off trade with China, put the kibosh on pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies, and start actually producing things again; if the dead weight populating the “health care system” is too incompetent to do actual work, let them starve. That’s how to get rid of the culture of death, and set an example for the rest of the world that’s gone crazy. We’re geographically located the way we are for a reason. What are we doing dealing with the Chinese who eat dogs and cats and force abortions, the French who eat horses, the European and U.K. countries that are advancing the culture of death, etc.? Plus they’re being taken over by Muslims and sometimes suffering terrorist attack, and the terrorists are calling US evil and pulling 9/11 and the recent airplane stunt on us and planning more. Why are we letting the sickness in? Quarantine is a necessary weapon against disease. Lucky for us the flying
Dutchman was on that plane; interesting that the hero wasn’t an American. Anyway, we’ve become druggies while being customers of the Swiss pharmaceutical companies, and then we wonder why we’ve got the issue of assisted suicide, which has found a home there, here? Further interesting, the home of suicide tourism is the home of the pharmaceutical industry. As an astrologer frankly I don’t see much hope for the U.S., whose sun sign explains the problems I’ve just noted, but that ddoesn’t mean that what it should do (but isn’t naturally inclined to do because it is what it is) isn’t what it should do for the sake of its own self-defense and survival.
January 10th, 2010 | 5:08 pm
It’s like futons. Centuries and millenia it took to develop mattresses with box springs that had coils in them; now beds are no longer bed, box springs don’t have coils, box springs are foregone for platform beds, and people sleep on damned futons, which are fine for the Japanese, but we’re not Japanese, and while futons didn’t make the Japanese immoral because they’re an integral part of their civilization, the departure from standards of civilization in this respect has parallelled departure from standards of morality in the West. Similarly, all the “progress” we’ve made that has enabled people to live longer, and now old people can’t get medical treatment and are supposed to die, and money matters more than anything? I remember when people were trying to live longer and wanting to live to 120 and be frozen and never die or be thawed out, etc., and when more people living longer was touted as a good thing in the media. That wasn’t many years ago. WHAT HAPPENED? Somehow “it’s too expensive” eclipsed what really matters.
January 10th, 2010 | 5:09 pm
and futons cost less, too
January 10th, 2010 | 7:30 pm
HW: I agree. I’ve been saying that the problem is insurance all along; Obama seems to be saying likewise but in fact the beneficiaries, as usual, of the “reform” would be the insurance companies.
As for what I’ve just posted, its various topics may seem disconnected, but they’re not.
January 11th, 2010 | 8:16 am
Ianthe: Come right out and say it: will my sex life be better or worse if I get a futon?
January 11th, 2010 | 10:28 am
Wonder what would happen if we went back 50 years ago? Then we all were billed (or most, as many poor got VERY REDUCED bills) and had to pay for their own health care.
One has to wonder if government has caused most of this problem? It wouldn’t be the first time.
January 11th, 2010 | 12:39 pm
I vote worse sex life on the futon.
As for the rest I agree, HW, I think there is a matter of silly practices that has led to an MRI being available everywhere. But is the solution the Canadian system? Not by a long shot.
January 11th, 2010 | 2:47 pm
Khanski: EVERYTHING cost less fifty years ago.
January 12th, 2010 | 11:58 am
holyterror: I’m not implying that it’s an “either/or” situation — the current US system or the Canadian. What I’ve been saying is that there’s plenty of room for improvement, and it seems the only way it’s going to get done is if government gets involved. It’s always been that way; hands off until the abuse of consumers become so egregious that the business practices require regulation. For example, the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Banks complained that it was going to be the end of the world, but guess what? They’re making more than ever. There HAS to be a better way. If some sectors of private enterprise were capable of self-regulation we wouldn’t need government regulation. It’s that basic. Government exists to serve the citizenry, not special interests.
January 12th, 2010 | 6:25 pm
HW: The question doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
January 12th, 2010 | 6:33 pm
Yes, everything used to cost less. But a friend recently told me that when she had her kids, decades but less than 50 years ago, in a hospital, the bill was about $300 for the whole shot per kid, and the obstetrician had huge big burly hands the fingers of one of which were holding a cigarette while he was delivering the baby, which was considered perfectly ok in a hospital then — and the kid came out fine. I remember when it was possible to smoke in a restaurant or coffee shop, too, and it wasn’t that long ago. You’d think they’d have gotten rid of coffee along with cigarettes, now, wouldn’t you? Yet the greenies and health fanatics have are part of the Starbucks culture and vice-versa. PLEASE, DON’T CONFLATE ANIMAL RIGHTS WITH LIBERAL WRONGS!
January 12th, 2010 | 7:08 pm
HW, I totally agree that the government’s job is to protect the citizens hen they do not have the power to do so. Perhaps we would dsagree about what the government is needed for at this point. Hubby and I also agree about the role of government but he thinks that the government should administer health insurance for the whole country and I do not.
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