On Canadian Health Care -- From "Bear in the Woods"

http://tinyurl.com/lb5f63
****Not only is there pain and suffering through waiting but the efficiency of the system is questionable since palliative care must often be given for MONTHS. The author recounts the story of a kidney stone and the discovery that there was only one (traveling)lithotripter in British Columbia, a province much bigger than Texas with Vancouver being the third largest city in Canada.Unlike Obama's story of rapacious pediatricians forcing unnecessary tonsillectomies on patients ( N.B. pediatricians don't perform tonsillectomies! ), there is a Canadian tonsillectomy story: an adult with serious tonsil-caused infections**** "...He required IV for fluids, and for drug delivery, while in the hospital -- and was listed as critical on both occasions. The doctor informed him he required a tonsillectomy as soon as possible. Until he got his tonsillectomy, there would be, he was assured, more hospital visits. The first available date for him -- a guy in his 20s -- was two years away. For 9 months, in order to stave off infection, he did an outpatient plan where he went to the hospital 3 times a day, every day, to receive treatment via IV. (Once every 8 hours.) A week on the plan, a week off. Doesn't seem like a cheap, or pleasant, experience to me, but what do I know? Luckily, his tonsillectomy got fast-tracked, and he was able to get it after only 9 months of this regimen. Nine freakin' months..."****More stories about bureaucratic impediments to commonsense and finally***"...I know this post is long. But the stories are worth repeating. Because the issue is big, and it's complex, and it has unintended, and intended consequences. Our elected representatives don't want to read the bill, because they don't want to know, or hear about those consequences. Or because they do know, and they believe those consequences are perfectly acceptable, in the name of increased control of our choices, and our lives. I won't pretend that the US health care system is perfect. It's not. But it's a hell of a lot better than what exists in Canada. And anyone who tells you different is either lying, or just plain wrong."