Quote:
|
Originally Posted by LoBlo
Who here is from a country with a socialized medicine program?
I'm curious about what people that live in socialized medicine programs feel about their program, how their programs work, and whether or not they feel things are managed optimally by their government, whether they are satisfied, or if not, what grievances exist.
Here are some specific questions that I'm curious about
1. How does your system work? Anything special about getting seen in a clinic, or do you just make an appointment, show up and that's it free service?
2. Are wait times for doctors visits short or too long?
3. Are diagnostic test readily available or do they take many months of waiting list? Is access to routine care and clinics as easy as life threatening and care for significantly morbid conditions (liver failure, heart failure)?
4. Do you thrust your doctors?
5. Are they all equal in your eyes are or some doctors/hospitals better than others? If so, do you get to choose the doctor/clinic/hospital that you wish to go to, or are you forced to see a certain doctor/etc by the program?
I'm especially interested in how the Canadian system works since they are a relatively large country with a large system in place. (Things that work for smaller countries might not neccessarily work countries many times largers or which more heterogenous populations).
Opionions?
|
Another Canadian perspective (one from a different province), though my answers are very similar to Perilscope's:
1. Our system is "single tier" in that all Canadians, from birth, have medicare access to essential health services; generally that is anything hospital or clinic related, but you pay (either through additional private insurance or out of pocket) for things like prescriptions (except those administered as a hospital inpatient), eye glasses, dental (though here, and probably elsewhere it is covered by medicare, to a point, for children upto a certain age), private physiotherapy, massage therapy, and cosmetic surgery (except where needed to fix damage from either birth defect or injury, ie skin grafts etc). The actual delivery of service is done through both public and private hospitals and clinics (medicare generally only concerns itself with the service itself, and not with how its delivered)
2. Wait times vary from region to region and even province to province. For clinics it is usually not long, and some will accept walk in appointments. Otherwise, for hospital visits and procedures it will vary depending on the seriousness of the injury/illness. Generally speaking when you go to an ER you are seen right away by a triage nurse who checks your vitals and asks you a series of questions to try and assess the seriousness of the injury/illness and that will then determine how long you wait.... if it something like, for instance, a fractured bone you could be waiting hours, but for something that might presents with symptoms of what could be a more serious illness (say appendicitis) you would be seen immediately. It is the same for specialists and surgeries/hospital procedures... if it can wait, then you're going to wait. If its urgent or life threatening then you are moved to the top of the list and rarely will you wait.
3. Same as above.
4. I've had doctors I didn't trust and doctors that I've trusted absolutely; that is hit or miss, like any other profession, but you are free to choose your own doctor so if you don't like or trust them then you can pick another. I went through a few doctors here, good and bad, before I wound up with a regular family doctor that I now see exclusively and trust completely. Probably my worst experience there was when being treated in the ER for a wisdom tooth infection that was misdiagnosed and initially treated as a migraine; I'm one of those unfortunate few who get regular migraines that are, rarely, so severe that I have to go to the ER (because the nausea is so bad that I can't keep any pain killers or anti-nauseants down and it is combined with very intense pain and frequent vomitting and dry heaves leading to dehydration and worsening symptoms)... that particular visit I knew it wasn't a migraine because I had no light or sound sensitivity, no nausea, and the pain was on the wrong side of my head and not the same kind of pain as a migraine... I'd thought it an ear infection but after looking in my ears the doc said no, insisted it was a migraine (despite my explanation of why it wasn't) and insisted on treating me as though it were one anyway... outcome: several wasted hours in the emergency room waiting for migraine meds to "work" that of course didn't before it was properly diagnosed and treated, and by then I was so doped up by the meds (I could barely walk) and it was so late that it cost me a day of work that it wouldn't have if the doctor had listened and properly diagnosed it instead of wasting hours treating something I didn't have.
5. See above, but no they are not all equal, but at least you get to choose (except when you are admitted to a hospital via ambulance or when you have to have a certain kind of treatment that can only be performed at one hospital).