This is tragic, but we dont want the American health care system here, despite what the conservatives are trying to push
I was in the ER in the U.S. three times in 2022/2023. This is a town with two hospitals in a metro area of less than 100,000 people.
The shortest wait time, when I got there at 4 am and no one was around, was six hours. Which was when he gave up and went home in Canada.
My wife is an RN and I work in a hospital in a non-clinical logistical role that oversees throughput at multiple facilities. USA.
Right now for the past trending weeks with respiratory illnesses rising through the holidays given travel, family gatherings, shopping, etc. — our average length of stay has been 10+ hours. Unfortunately when we’re practically in a triage situation, it’s extremely difficult to see every single person in a timely manner — especially when vitals are stable.
All this recent talk has brought back up all the research I did around a decade ago on healthcare in America. The bottom-line is this:
- We spend upwards of 2x the amount of money per capita on healthcare than competing OECD nations.
- We achieve worse or at-best equal results (depending on your quality of insurance; most people believe their insurance is good when it isn’t).
- Somewhere around half of Americans forego seeking medical attention for fear of medical bills. Naturally this causes problems to snowball and, getting more complicated and costly to fix in the first place.
- The vast majority of bankruptcies in America is a result of medical debt; the majority of whom had health insurance at the onset of their illness.
At the end of the day, I’d still rather have Canada’s system than ours.
Oh yeah, I hear nursing shortages in the U.S. are crazy and I’m sure that was a big part of the long waits. I wouldn’t want to be a nurse in this age of entitled assholes. Especially not after the way they were treated during COVID. Just a thankless job. And that isn’t even about our capitalist system as much as just America being filled with people with an overinflated sense of entitlement.
But of course, capitalism just makes it all worse.
Im in the EU and the longest I’ve ever had to wait in an ER was four hours. That was because they were doing lab work on my blood though. They took the blood maybe ten mins after I arrived. I think the longest I’ve ever had to wait until seeing a doctor was maybe an hour.
You’d probably have to be gushing blood out of every orifice to have less than a four hour wait in an American ER at this point.
And if you need pain relief, good luck.
I’m Canadian in a city of around 1.5m and recently spent nearly ten hours in the ER for possible appendicitis (it wasn’t luckily). I spent around 15 minutes of that actually talking to anybody.
The Conservative premier of Ontario and other Conservative premiers are desperately trying to underfund our healthcare to the point where we ask for a US style system. “Starve the beast”. It feels like it’s working though because at this point I don’t even really feel like we have any healthcare.
Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking the US has much faster ERs or appointments.
I drove someone to the ER last year with a massively swollen neck and was burning up. We didn’t see a doctor for at least four hours.
We finally saw someone and they were like oh dear let’s see if there’s a room available.
They found a room and did the MRI but the specific surgeon who could do the operation wasn’t available. They wanted to send my buddy on a goddamn ambulance to a hospital two hours away. He was so upset because all he could think about was how much the MRI was and how much the ambulance was going to cost. I tried to get him to let me drive him there but he just wouldn’t let me.
Every single business is purposely running a goddamn skeleton crew from a Walgreens to a hospital
I fucking hate the “Average ER Wait Time” signs outside of hospitals. Most of the time, this measures time you wait between entering the door and your information being entered into the system. It rarely means the amount of time of wait between when you are triaged to when you are seen by a healthcare professional, which can be hours.
Your Canadian government has been fucking over the universal Healthcare system there in Canada for quite sometime. Purposefully underfunded it and stretching it thin in order to actually make its citizens WANT privatization of Healthcare.
Y’all are letting them slowly fuck you.
Just to clarify for you, it’s been the conservative provincial governments that have been shredding Healthcare in this country, federal doesn’t do much beyond attempting to allocate funds as requested/required to the province, the province is then responsible for spending it and asking for more if needed.
Lol no one here is in favour of private healthcare. Well over 80% support with what we have going.
That’s still just 4 out of 5. If you were dentists recommending a toothpaste, I’d barely except your recommendation.
after doctors made sure he wasn’t in a life-threatening condition, he was moved to the waiting room, where he sat for six hours before deciding to pack up and go home.
I don’t know why they’re trying to spin it as a difference from the US system.
I had the same exact experience in the US. multiple times. You go to the ER, for whatever reason, they look at you and, unless you’re literally bleeding to death you’re gonna be told to wait many many hours.
So, I guess Canada is the same on this, but at least they won’t send you a huge bill to pay.
That last bit makes all the difference though. Canada has issues that need resolving, the US is just fucked
Exactly. It’s called triage. It’s not first come, first served. If someone is bleeding out, they get treated before you. Your turn will come as soon as there are resources available to take care of you with no one dying. And if the people holding the purse strings are reducing staffing levels, then your wait time is going to a lot longer than it would be if they weren’t trying to cut corners.
The only reason this is news is because when it happens in America it’s too common to be considered novel
I swear to god if the US or Canadian media start using the current state of our healthcare system to advocate for an American system I’m going to lose it. This is exactly what the right wants. They’ve been underfunding the system to the point where it might as well not even exist and now they’re turning around and saying, “look, it doesn’t work”. It’s “starve the beast” to the letter and apparently it’s working.
They take something that works (albeit not always perfectly) for everyone and defund it, pass legislative stumbling blocks, create chaos, wait, then say, “it’s broken and only we can fix it!”. How do they fix it? By selling it piecemeal to corporate vampires.
Watch as the USPS, one of the last remaining US government corporations, is dismantled.
Admire how the NHS in the UK has been torn apart.
Get your bankruptcy forms ready, folk. American style “health care” is coming to Canada.
Which character will you play in the Mario Party?
Admire how the NHS in the UK has been torn apart.
This is going on in Finland as well. Way increased privatisation and defunding public systems.
Fucking right wing.
I always love when they knock the wait times in Canada because in the US the alternative for most would be avoiding going to the hospital at all costs until it’s too late anyway.
