Health-care in Canada

Health care in Canada is fantastic!! Sadly my boyfriend's daughter was in a bad car accident in the USA. She is an American citizen and her care is up to almost $1 million, I'm sure. In Canada ALL OF THAT could be covered by the government!!! In Ontario we have OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) and they have something similar in other provinces. As for prescribed medicine, I've never had a problem with it. A lot is available up here, and I'm certainly not complaining.

Well, since I've always lived in Canada I guess it's difficult for me to compare what we have to what people in other countries have, however I have been the recipient of my share of medical treatment and have been treated very well. The wait times can sometimes be very long, but considering we don't have a pay per use system and cost is not a concern when we know we have a health issue, I'd say our system ranks pretty close to the top. The last thing you need when you're sick is the added stress of how you're going to pay for it or going through insurance hassles. I know that anytime I'm sick, I can go to my doctor not have to worry about how I'm going to fit it into my budget. All I have to worry about is getting better. And most of the many people I've dealt with regarding my health care, including doctors, nurses and other assorted medical and administrative staff are very caring, personalized and confidential service. I'm very satisfied with the health care in my country.

I have trouble with the health care in Canada. I'v needed to use it a lot for the last 2 years, and many times I wished that we had a two tiered system where I could PAY money to see a specialist faster. I can't really compare it to other countries though because I have only lived in Canada. It's great that it's free but the care isn't the greatest. To give you an example, last October I was 6 months pregnant and started leaking blood and fluid, and went to the ER at least 6 times in a week. One doctor told me I had a yeast infection, another doctor told me it was a threatened miscarriage, another two times I waited more than 8 hours and just gave up, another time my doctor/obstetrician was there and gave me an ultrasound and they misdiagnosed me. Turns out that I was leaking amniotic fluid and I lost my baby. I found out on my miscarriage website that this has happenned to the US to women, and they are given a simple litmus test to see if it's amniotic fluid or not. I was never offered this test. I asked for it, and they said "you need to go up to the obstetrical unit to get that test" so I went up THERE and they refused to do it because I hadn't been REFERRED by a doctor in the ER. These were the worst 2 weeks of my life.

Like anywhere there will always be things to complain about. I don't have anything to compare things to, but I do find that the health care system in Canada is basically ok, and the fact that things are covered by our Ontario Health Plan certainly helps. I do have to say that over the past few years they have discontinued coverage for eye care for people between the ages of 20 & 65 which I found was totally disgusting. My children are covered, my parents are covered, but now at my age when I should be going in to get my eyes checked regularly, I can't afford to go, and at the moment am at risk of coming down with glaucoma. On the other hand if I had to come up with the money for other things it would be even worse...so yes, I'm satisfied. I really can't complain about the service I've received thus far, except to say there is a shortage of good doctors, and in order to get into a specialist and get scheduled for a lot of different surgeries there is quite a wait. Right now it takes me at least two weeks to get a doctor's appointment, and probably going to be 4-6 months on a waiting list to get knee replacement surgery which I desperately need.

It's definitely not all roses here, either. In Alberta, we pay a $44.00 fee per single person per month to Alberta Health Care for basic procedures and hospitalization, but we do have to pay fees for things like prescriptions, ambulance service and any dental procedures. Some people pay an additional fee from their paycheques if their employer offers benefits or pay for Blue Cross coverage, and then another small fee to the service provider if their benefits don't cover the full cost. The concept of Canada's health care being 'free' is largely a misnomer. I went to the doctor once last year and paid full cost for the prescription he wrote out for me, but I paid over $500 for health care. You don't really have the choice NOT to pay for it either, you can't go to a clinic or a general practitioner without an Alberta Health Care number, so you either get it and pay through the nose IN CASE you might need it, or don't have it and regular doctors will refuse to treat you. I claimed I was 'new to Alberta' a year after I moved here from BC just so I could avoid telling them I hadn't got an Alberta Health Care number just to have the doctor fill my prescription for the birth control pill. Of course I sat in the waiting room for 2 hours, and then the exam room for another 45 minutes to get that slip of paper. Each province in Canada has its own health care plan, so while someone in another province might pay less for medical procedures or health care, other provinces are paying more. Another huge problem here is the wait times. You could literally be waiting 8 months for a organ transplant operation just because they are that backlogged. They say the median wait time for radiation therapy for cancer in Ontario is about 12 weeks. By 2010 the Canadian government hopes to establish health care wait times guarantees. We have a while to wait yet, I guess. My boyfriend had his appendix burst in the hospital waiting room in December because we'd been sitting there for 4 and a half hours waiting for someone to examine him for his 'stomach pains'. They got him in 15 minutes after he doubled over on the floor, crying, the doctor examined him an hour later and he got his appendectomy done the next day at 6pm. So he got to deal with almost 20 hours of the infected contents leaking into his abdomen, and was in the hospital for 5 days while they cleaned up the mess that could have been treated if they'd seen him within the first 2 hours after we got to the waiting room. My roommate was in a car accident last July and was in the hospital for 7 hours laying on a stretcher waiting for someone to come back and tell him whether or not the x-rays indicated he'd sustained whiplash. He didn't.