Saskatchewan Health has a website “committed to providing Saskatchewan residents with the most complete and up-to-date wait time information available”. I took a look at it today, prompted by a conversation I had with an elderly acquaintance. “Jean” is still fairly active, though she’s slowed noticably in the past few months. She lives alone, independantly.
She’s scheduled for heart valve surgery. When, is still open to question, because she first must have a diagnostic angiogram. She’s been on the wait list for the angiogram since July. She mentioned this, because she had finally become frustrated and started to call and bother her doctor about it. She was finally told she’ll recieve it in the next three weeks, but to “be thankful”, because the “normal” wait time for angiogram is a year.
Of course, she could have also looked for basic information on how many patients are on surgical (which I assume are different than diagnostic) wait lists, on the Sask Surgery “Current Information” page.
It hasn’t been updated for 5 months.
(correction: original stated angioplasty, in error)
Jeez. And here I was feeling sorry for myself because I had to wait a month for emergency surgery to replace a dead pacemaker (my battery died faster than expected). I couldn’t walk more than half a block before turning blue.
This will probably sound goulish, but has anyone compared elderly mortality rates between Canada and the U.S.? The difference may spur voters to demanding some private care options.
I wouldn’t hold my breath about any factual U.S./Canada mortality rate comparisons. Even *if* you could get the data through un-skewed and unscathed to voters, they’d still deny it up and down, and prefer to live like cattle to slaughter.
That’s the *majority* will of Canadians speaking – they have no interest in doing what needs to be done to address the situation (i.e. start letting the private sector in).
I read a blog item last year (lost it – sorry) by a U.S. oncologist who related a sad story about a Cdn. man who in frustration brought his wife to his clinic for treatment after she was on a waiting list for over half a year for tests and treatment.
Final prognosis: Did the best they could, but she died.
And that pretty much sums up the *majority* Canadian opinion on healthcare: We’re dying to be egalitarians.
I have friends in Sask Health who will be offended by this – but I don’t care. I firmly believe there is an unspoken mechanism built into the system that expects a certain number of patients to die while on lists, thus relieving the state of the costs of trying to extend their lives.
I thought letting a large number of them die while waiting for treatment was the government’s method of controling costs.
One of the very best data sites for analyzing countries and comparing – is the CIA World Factbook.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html
The above is the link to the US page.
At any rate, the death rate (not divided into elderly) for Canadians is 7.67 per 1,000 population. For the US, it’s 8.34.
Infant mortality rate for Canada is 4.82 per 1,000 live births; it’s 6.63 for the US.
Life expectancy for Canada is 79.96 years, for the US it’s 77.43.
Now, these rates tell us that the two countries are generally, pretty close to birth and death rates. Birth rate usually gives a reasonable statistic for general health of the population.
BUT, what these stats don’t provide, is the nature of the health of that population. Is the Canadian population generally in poorer health than the US?
And – what other factors are involved. You can check out birth,death etc rates for other countries.. I think Sweden has one of the ‘best’ rates; but just check out Afghanistan.
Other interesting stats are literacy level (Iraq was only about 60%); amount of arable land…
What people don’t seem to realize, in Canada, is that our health system is not ‘cheap and equal’ but extremely costly. The money comes from our taxes. It’s a costly and extremely inefficient way to provide this service. Oh- the CIA gives an overview of the country, and for Canada, it says that the ‘paramount political problem’ is health care and education.
Providing health care by a public system means that we must pay a large proportion of that to the bureaucracy rather than the medical services.
So- it’s a costly way to provide health care.
A better way would be, of course, to privatize health care, to remove the bureaucrats. Ottawa exists, as a City-State, by means of bureaucracy. All those jobs..hmmm. That’s what we are paying for…not medical treatment..we are paying for the bureaucracy.
When you mention ‘private health care’…the conversation immediately switches to ”Why should rich people get fast treatment while the rest of us poor people don’t get it?”. So, our inadequate health care system DOES have another reason for its existence, besides Jobs-For-Bureaucrats. It’s a Levelling Device. It levels all to the lowest common denominator. Nobody gets treated. So there.
But, a two-tiered health care system would, as has been repeated often, free up waiting times, so that the net result would be that BOTH the rich and the poor would get treated in a reasonable time period. The rich person would indeed end up paying twice for his service: once through taxation which would assist the poor person and once directly to the doctor/clinic.
Would it even, lower our taxes??? With Ottawa’s ever present agenda of dining and feting itself – I doubt it.
By the way – one thing I’d like to know – who is paying for Pierre Pettigrew’s frequent sojourns in Paris? The Canadian public? Does he have an apartment there? Who is paying for it?
The CIA Factbook is a great place to get a general idea of things but as in all things, it’s best to take it with a grain of salt.
I think it was Ben Franklin who came up with a great quote about government statistics, how (from memory) “the numbers are added, multipled, and squared to the nth degree, producing wondrous charts and graphs, with the government never mindful that the numbers came in the first instance from the village watchman, who puts down what he damn well pleases”.
That being said, in reference to infant mortality: I read an article maybe a month or two ago about how the figures can’t be compared directly. Sorry, don’t remember what European country was used but it was something to the effect of a baby born there under a certain size and not breathing wasn’t even considered a baby, and no effort was made to bring it back. So, no infant mortality affect. The same baby in the US would result in doctors trying to save it. I assume most of the time that doesn’t work – but it does add one more notch on our infant mortality count.
I have no idea if that applies to Canada or not, I’m just pointing out how one counts the numbers is often different from country to country.
(now I’ll go hide before I get shushed)
Well I kind of got carried away again…:-(
I read your artical and kind of sent an email to this address, pm@pm.gc.ca , on this and other issues. The medical thing kind of strikes a nerve lately…here’s what I wrote…hope they take it personal… 😉
I cannot believe the total idiocy and total disrespect that your Government display’s towards it’s citizens and to our neighbors to the south.
Your total lack of knowledge on missile defense and world events clearly shows that your Government does not understand the reality of the state of security in the world today.
Your total lack of knowledge about the health care system, and how it has become a haven for bureaucrats with the intent to make waiting lists so long, that the problem dies so you don’t have to deal with it.
Your taxation policies raping Canadians and showing record surpluses, when you and your government work for us, not us for you. Governments should NEVER abuse there position of authority in relation to the PEOPLES money.Your total attempt to erode the morality for which this country was founded and built on WITHOUT putting it to a public vote.
Your obvious corruption and cover up in a vast number of areas has definitely earned your party an all expense paid trip for 25 years in the Kingston penitentiary.
We don’t have to go to Afghanistan to see the Taleban, we have them running our country.
I just want to say… not for long sir…. the country is massing for you and your parties defeat, and the sooner the better.
I know I missed lots, but I’ll cover that later in some more kind letters..
Of course, ET, it’s a misconception that Canada has single-tier health care. We have multiple tiers, where people may be charged shockingly different rates for the same service, often based on completely extraneous factors.
For example, the hospitals here in Calgary spent years eliminating public maternity wards in favour of private or semi-private rooms. Women who express no preference or request one of the non-existent public wards are automatically “upgraded” to semi-private rooms at no additional charge. Women who request semi-private rooms will have their supplemental health insurance billed — unless an honest bureaucrat hints strongly that it’s not wise to make requests.
How about at the same time you look at Average life span/birth rate/so on, you include bankruptcy and cost of care?
I’ve been to nursing homes and intensive care to visit grandparents on both sides of the border. When my time comes, I don’t care how long I need to wait for a shot, I won’t bankrupt my children by being in the “private” sector or HMO system that’s in the states.