Here is your "Free and Universal" health care. <br><br>Living in th...

Jefferey Cave - 2012-04-20 06:52:32-0400 - Updated: 2012-04-20 06:52:32-0400

Here is your "Free and Universal" health care.

Living in this province, I am totally unable to receive Health Care. The doctors have simply said that they are not allowed to accept new patients. Now this guy comes forward to show how disgusting the hospitals actually are.

With the decisions regarding health care being made by some bureaucrat in an office far away (not by patients) only quantity matters (wait times) and quality becomes meaningless (didn't have time to clean the room).

Dialysis treatment room 'filthy,' Halifax patient says - Nova Scotia - CBC News

Robert Martin - 2012-07-09 20:46:12-0400

Perhaps we should consider increasing the financing for health care. Call your MLA and request a tax hike to cover the extra staff.

Jefferey Cave - 2012-07-09 21:24:23-0400

In our house we keep asking: "Is it actually 'free' if you can't have any?" For example, if I receive a ticket for a trip to Venus on the next regularly scheduled trip, have I actually received anything at all? If I receive a "free" trip to the doctor, but there are no doctors anywhere, do I really have healthcare?

My solution is much simpler... get government out of healthcare.

Robert Martin - 2012-07-10 05:54:15-0400

You are right, healthcare isn't free. A day in the ICU costs $15000. A medical grade LCD display costs $8000. Medicine seems to double in price every few years. If we could afford it, we wouldn't have created this system 50 years ago.

Jefferey Cave - 2012-07-10 06:23:36-0400

I'll reverse your statement: if we hadn't created this system 50 years ago, we could afford it.

A few years ago, the local private clinic was forced to move into the hospital (small town) as a cost savings measure. The cost of a doctor's visit went from $50 to $200. The doctors don't get paid more, the facility is just that much more expensive.

So long as government is footing the bill, companies seem to think that billing more is a good idea: government has deep pockets. I think the cost of healthcare would be less if government stopped financing it.

Robert Martin - 2012-07-10 17:56:42-0400

Hmmm. The US has private health care. I can see its really working for them.

Jefferey Cave - 2012-07-10 18:14:49-0400

I have seen no evidence that it is not working for them. Nova Scotia is the first place I have ever witnessed doctors refuse to treat a patient they know has a debilitating disease (being government funded, payment was not the issue). I have seen it at least twice.

Robert Martin - 2012-07-10 20:58:28-0400

I know people in various US states and places within Nova Scotia with similar problems. This is terrible. Where do you live? I live in HRM.

Jefferey Cave - 2012-07-11 06:46:56-0400

Annapolis Royal, but the problem exists in HRM as well.

After finding there are no doctors in rural Nova Scotia. We spent a day phoning clinics in Halifax (not all of HRM) looking for a doctor that would take us on. I can find a thousand walk-in clinics, but nobody was taking on new long term patients. We phoned every doctor listed in the phone book for Halifax, we found two taking patients. The first one we tried refused to treat ("here is your cane, I'll mail you the paperwork for a handicap tag for your car"), we use the other one. My wife and I now travel to Halifax (2.5 hours) once every few weeks for our 15 minute consult with the physio-therapist her personal physician referred us too. We haven't seen the physician since the first visit.