|
|
Maple Leaf [Medical] Rag
What happens when soft-headed technocratic idealism gets a bottle of reality smashed into its nose? Let's take a look:
Issued by the Institute for Clinical Evaluation, the 180-page document provides the first-ever overview of wait times and can be downloaded from the Internet.
...
The report says that the median wait time for total hip replacement surgery in our LHIN is 16 weeks, compared to 24 for Ontario
...
For knees, the median wait time locally is 26 weeks compared to 33 for Ontario, with a recommended wait time of 25 weeks.
...
Patients here waited six weeks for cataract surgery, compared to 16 for Ontario, and 65 per cent received it within the recommended waiting time of four months.
...
local patients waited 25 days for a large bowel resection, just under the Ontario median time of 26 days. For mastectomy operations, the local time was 19 days compared to 29, and the wait was 72 days for a radical prostatectomy, compared to 87 for Ontario.
..
Locally however, the median wait time for hysterectomy operations was 56 days, the longest in Ontario where the overall figure is 46 days.
But hey, at least it's free, right?
No, I don't have the right answer. But I'd rather us leave well enough alone than try a "fix" that we already know doesn't work.
Link goes to some story about a church and the end of the world...
Posted by: ronaprhys on April 7, 2005 03:03 PMIt's kind of like that Bill Whittle essay about "equality of opportunity" versus "equality of result." Much like you can't turn Michael Moore into a basketball star like Michael Jordan (so you instead have to cripple Michael Jordan to make him equal to Michael Moore, and end up with a really lame game of basketball in the process), soci alist systems try to enforce a similar "equality of result." Since they can't afford to make things perfect for everybody for free, they instead make service terrible for everybody (but at least it's free).
And the funny thing is, you CAN get socialized medicine in a capitalist economy. There's Medicare and Medicaid, and they work about as well as the Canadian health care system works (in other words, plain awful). The only real difference is that, in the US, there are much better alternatives for people who have the money to pay for them. In Canada, they can't make the free health care any better, so they just strip away people's ability to buy better health care, on the grounds that "it's not fair."
Oh, and by the way, spam filters are turning into the internet equivalent of car alarms... really annoying to legit posters, and largely ineffective at stopping clever spammers. I had to put spaces in the word "socia list" because your spam catcher thinks I'm pimping Cia lis.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on April 7, 2005 10:05 PMCialis removed. Whodathunkit.
Actually, since 99% of spammers are complete morons, the filter we use is surprisingly effective. It stops (on average, and I'm not making this up) about 300-400 spam comments PER DAY. If we didn't have it we would have long since closed comments altogether.
Posted by: scott on April 8, 2005 07:54 AM