Perhaps this best belongs on the Kimberly: The Road to Recovery blog, as definitely this is an outcome of that entire experience. But I noticed a certain political creep starting to happen there in Chapter Eight and I don't necessarily want that very human story to get diverted by argument. Not yet anyway. I'll see how its shape takes place. But this blog is definitely my 'rant' blog and what I have to say definitely fits here.
To quote from the Kimberly blog:
Much later, when we had returned to Thunder Bay, a Doctor at Thunder Bay Regional told me that they had the human resources, the doctors with the skills, to perform the surgery that eventually saved Kimberly's life. They just didn't have the money to purchase the additional equipment they would need. It's a pricing problem. This is why, although I am not a red flag waving socialist, the one industry I would support a government takeover of is the medical industry - pharmaceuticals and equipment manufacturers alike. I absolutely am skeptical of the Adam Smith or Milton Friedman argument that only a private company in a competitive market will press the research and innovation to stay ahead in the market. The competition in a government-run system would be in the form of the research grants doled out to successfully competing bidders. Furthermore, the actual manufacture of pills or machines would also be contracted out. the difference would be that the government, as principal buyer through the hospital system and subsidized drug plans , would also set the most advantageous price for itself while still achieving a result expectation of excellence.
 |
| He'd be less than impressed with current events... |
I'm quite serious about this. I make no bones about it: when Kimberly's son Bradley is finished high school and I hope goes on to study at a good university, I want us to move to Toronto. Why? We have now had two huge medical crises - my bypass and Kimberly's aneurysm. Both times we had to be flown out of Thunder Bay for surgical care in Hamilton and Toronto respectively. Odds are grim but good that this will happen again at some point or points in our lives. I don't love rocks and trees that much. Choosy mothers choose Jiff. I choose to go where the pros hang out.
We mock the American health care system and the full-blooded and gruesome debate that may, may, have doomed the Democrats for a decade. We look at the millions who will remain uninsured even after Obamacare is fully in place and smile smugly and think 'That can't happen here.' We pat our tummies filled of the High Canadian Church of the Highly Satisfied flesh and blood - poutine and Tim Horton's - and go back to trying to decide if its really worth watching the Stanley Cup final because there are no Canadian teams playing in it.
Oh really? When I live in a city that has 30,000 supposedly 'insured' citizens who do not have a family doctor, I call bullshit. And let's say that the family doctor of one of the other 80,000 'insured' decides to retire. I live in a small panic every time I think of my general practitioner who has treated me since I was 30. I'm within a few laps of retirement, so imagine where he must be? And there is no guarantee - none - that my patient file will be passed on to another GP. So which is worse - having an open access to an American system which could prove gruesomely expensive, or having a so-called free system (it's not - we very much pay for it) that has a bottleneck at the front entrance? Granted, if one's physician retires, you are guaranteed access to your files. Hurrah. This is the equivalent of hearing a strange knocking noise in your car engine but instead of getting a mechanic, you're handed a Chilton Guide and a wrench and told to go fix the effing thing yourself.
But let's say you do finally get into the system. Like Kimberly, in an emergency room, after years of being told by her walk-in clinic doctors that her tested blood pressure of 190/120 was the result of white coat syndrome. There you are. The Canadian and Ontario Health Care system is ready to go, because now you're pronate and unconscious. Welcome to our big, shiny party.
The saddest and best part of it all is that we really do have a fabulous health care system...where it exists. Saving someone like myself with open heart surgery was unheard of when I was a boy; saving someone like Kimberly who had suffered a burst brain aneurysm was unheard of when I was thirty. It absolutely shocks me when I hear some people sneer at medical research because 'they haven't cured cancer yet.' What? Like science is laying around in the basement playing cards with its buddies or something? We can do incredible things with incredible machines and techniques that were science fiction a few decades ago.
But it's a goddam lottery. Canadians, particularly Quebeckers, are the biggest buyers of lottery tickets in the world. No wonder. We live, or attempt to live, with a lottery-based health care system. It is wasteful and pitiable to have personnel - doctors - trained in a life-saving art that they are unable to practice because we can't afford the bells and the whistles, the gizmos and gadgets, the shiny and the new.
I used to work for a guy named Frank who was in charge of the clean-up shop at the old Port Arthur Motors. At the time, I was a student at Queen's and was polishing newly sold cars for their buyers. In the shop was a Cadillac, priced say $60,000 then and some little Chevy worth maybe $10,000. Frank said, "What's the difference? They both metal and rubber. They both take you places. Why should one cost so much?" And there is a serious point there.
The true majority expense of equipment should be in its invention, not in its manufacture. A 2008 CT Scanner goes for $3.5 million. This is a function of an extremely limited market - no one's buying one for Auntie's Christmas present and the law of supply and demand. Supply and demand in the oil industry was once defined by Robert Klein as, 'We have all the supply. We can demand whatever the f*** we want!' The medical industry has done a fine job of absorbing oil's case studies.
Will a gigantic overhaul of the health care system happen? Will there be a Medical Bill of Rights whereby every Canadian citizen is guaranteed the right to reasonable access to a family doctor? Will the medical industry be nationalized and in return free up money to pay for that Medical Bill of Rights? Not in your lifetime. No pun intended. Certainly not with Harper who would happily treat the sick with leeches and transport the dead on ice floes.
But we must never give up trying, because sometimes strange things happen. Be seeing you.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar