A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Weiser says:
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the examples of people waitlisted to death in Canada
and Britain are commonplace.
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I think the misunderstandings are due to differences in how medical
priorities are established. In Canada, "your turn" is decided by a
physician. If more emergent cases arise, your less-critical procedure
is "delayed". That is, you have no "absolute" time for your procedure,
because the system cannot anticipate more important cases coming up.

As I'm given to understand from conversations with Americans, your
"place in line" is a function of both emergent need and ability to pay.


Philosophically, the Canadin people do not accept that money should be
a factor in these decisions. For us, the only criteria in making these
decisions ought to be medical -- that is, whatever medical
professionals think the priorities ought to be.

Overly simplistic, but a reasonable picture, I think.

It works fine until the system becomes overloaded with non-critical cases.
When that happens, people get prioritized and waitlisted, and not
infrequently die while waiting for the list to move along because the system
is bogged down with "emergencies," both legitimate and non-emergent cases
that are given a false high priority through political influence or other
forms of corruption.

One of the problems with socialized medicine is that because it is centrally
organized, you can't bypass the wait list for your assigned doctor/hospital
by going somewhere else where there are fewer people on the list, because
this is seen as "jumping the queue."

In the US, if your doctor is too busy to see you, you can go find one that
isn't so busy, anywhere in the US...or indeed in the world.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
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© 2005 Scott Weiser