Canadian Health Care

Found this interesting post on a blog I visit every now and then (for obvious reasons). http://www.bodyrock.tv/

This isn't a political website so I find it pretty revealing in terms of a real world experience with the Canadian Helath Care system.

Yesterday Freddy started to have sharp pains in his foot. This is a bit strange since he can’t recall hurting his foot in anyway. When we took a look at the foot, it was very swollen and tender. Soon he wasen’t able to put any pressure on it at all. We called for a doctor’s office and the secretary said that there was no appointment available for 1 month. There was a chance to see the nurse practitioner the next day so we took it. Being from Europe, and the Czech Republic I found this situation incredibly strange. Why in a country like Canada would someone have to wait the better part of a month to see a Doctor? In Czech you can usually see a specialist the same day – that includes x-rays, scans and imaging etc. Freddy explained that he was lucky just to have a family Doctor, and that many people in his community don’t have a doctor at all. He also said that it can take 6-8 weeks or longer to see a specialist. This boggled my mind!
We wrapped his foot in an ice pack to numb down the pain and Freddy took a few advil’s. Today we went to the appointment to see the nurse practitioner. The nurse was a very nice woman and she took a lot of care to examine Freddy’s foot, which by now was swollen, red and incredibly painful to the slightest touch. The nurse actually went and grabbed the doctor so that she could get an additional opinion. They were not sure what the problem was, so they ordered some blood work and prescribed some anti-biotics. Freddy got some crutches on the way out (that he had to pay for – again this is strange for me) and off we went to the pharmacy. It turned out that none of the pharmacies in the city had any of the anti-biotics. The pharmacists explained each time that they had been out of stock for a month. This whole experience of Canadian health care just kept getting more scary for me. When we finally did manage to get an alternate medication in the 3rd drug store that we went to they gave Freddy a bill for $150. At home all of our drugs are covered by our health insurance which costs about $60 per month – this also includes coverage for eyes, dental care and hospitalization as well as most everything else. If you happen to pay extra costs it’s never more than a few dollars. Amazingly, having my wisdom tooth pulled out at home cost me the grand total of $1. When I went to the dentist here in Canada with an infection in my other wisdom tooth, just the check up was $100. I refused to have it pulled because it was going to cost more than I was willing to pay. I think that my tooth was even in shock because when they told me it was going to be hundreds of dollars to have it pulled, it immediately got better :) The next time I hear someone at home complaining about the Czech system I think that I am going to slap them.
Freddy is suppose to be taking it easy and not walking around, so we are going to have to brain storm a way to shoot the next workout. We will figure it out, so check back.
Best,
Zuzana

Go there and gawk till your hearts content by the way.

God help us if Obama Care is not stopped.