Asklemmy

My retired mom had cancer a few years back, pretty bad. Surgery, chemo, radiation therapy, hair fell out and wore a wig. The only expense was for parking. Even the wig was provided by a charity adjacent to cancer care. Surgery, one to three weeks in the hospital, treatments spanning over a year, costing a couple hundred dollars in parking fees. No stress about losing her home due to hospital expenses.

I'd take that over what can be had in America any time.

In my experience it's okay, but not amazing and slowly getting worse year after year for various reasons. Generally speaking if you have a life-threatening issue (heart failure, cancer, etc), you are taken care of as well as anyone could reasonably expect. But for anything else it can take forever to see a specialist and it's easy to get lost in the system that always seems to be running in capacity crisis mode. There are other countries that do a better job with the single-payer model, mostly those without provincial fiefdoms that insist on doing everything themselves and reinventing all the wheels for political reasons.

Used to be excellent.

Then to many right wing pc corporate rim job loving capitalists got in power and very intentionally ruined the system so they could get their scum sucking pill pushing evil corporate friends to swoop in and save us with their private health care work.

Create a problem and then offer a paid solution to it.

I hope Ford and his crack smoking criminal croonies get the guillotine when the revolution comes.

I don't want to give too much personal information but some time ago I went to the ER with symptoms not typical of a person of my age and was fast tracked through triage straight to tests, bloodwork, and scans. I was in the waiting room for maybe 5mins. Only thing I paid for was parking.

Im in Newfoundland.

Wait times in the emergency room aren't too bad. Its very heavily triaged so if you go in with a major emergency you will basically be seen immediately, but if you go in with something minor you might have to wait a few hours, especially if there are any respiratory illnesses going around. Children and elderly patients struggling to breathe take priority over an otherwise healthy adult with a wound that just needs a few stitches.

Getting a family doctor can be difficult. There just aren't enough to go around.

Seeing a specialist will usually involve a long wait list (a few weeks to a few months depending on what they specialize in), so its best to book an appointment as soon as you can. You may have to travel to St.Johns so there might be some travel expenses. Growing up I had to see an ENT in St.Johns every summer for a checkup, so we just turned the visit into a camping trip.

Excellent. Really, I go into the doctor when I need and get the treatment I need. Same story when I need emergency care.

If you need a specialist or something there can be a long wait, though. That has more to do with just hiring, I think, since all the GPs come from some other country and specialists are more likely to be local.

I've had an elective sinus surgery, a second (emergency) sinus surgery, an overnight hospital stay, a blood transfusion, an ambulance ride, different scans, a cast, crutches, a bunch of specialist follow-ups, physiotherapy, family doctor appoitments, and some drug prescriptions. Wow that sounds like a lot but it was just two separate incidents (I'll let you guess).

I did have to buy the crutches at $24, and while I'm still waiting for the ambulance bill I'll only be charged $40. Drug prescriptions aren't free for everyone, but my province has a program where they cover a portion depending on your income (free if you're low income or hit a drug-expense maximum for that year) which I benefited from when I was unemployed. Physiotherapy also isn't free, but I'm getting that covered through my workplace benefits. Other than those minor costs there's been nothing, which is crazy for me. I'm so thankful I'm not being buried under a mountain of debt, especially as one of the incidents happened when I was unemployed.

It can take a long time to get anything done. It's free, but it ain't fast.

I waited 6 months for an MRI, finally paid for it myself after the 3rd postponement. That gave enough evidence for a spinal fusion that took another year.

I've started to grow disillusioned. I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of resources used for every sniffle and booboo. Gods help you if you try to go to an Emergency Room. Even dripping blood, I've waited hours without so much as a paper towel offered.

I tell people Canada is a great place to get cancer or have a heart attack. For chronic illnesses or trying to find family doctors is becoming very difficult. Medical staff is burning out and retiring or moving elsewhere. Things like hip surgeries can see 4 year plus waiting lists and medical costs are increasing significantly for all governments. To a lesser extent, leading edge procedures are not available. The system is seems close to a breaking point from most of the people I know in the medical industry.

I would say it is better than the US model but not by a great deal. If your illness is not immediately life threatening it can be years to get treatment. In that time you can lose hundreds of thousands in wages and many people often are in the same situation as being financial broke regardless.

If you have a family doctor it's great. It's also great for emergencies. The non-emergency pipelines often get clogged since not everywhere has adequate staff. Triaging happens. But I've rarely had a serious wait. And the hospitals have fixed my loved once numerous times, and I'm grateful to them, and glad we accrued no debt.