And Still #CanadaWAITS

There are still rumblings up north about the wait times for patients.  The hashtag in this blog’s title is the new Twitter theme in Canada.  This article in the Huffington Post (Canada edition) talked about more stories being offered by patients:

Patients and physicians started tweeting out stories of ridiculously long wait times. Do you have lung trouble? You could wait a year to see a respirologist. Have a child with autism? Eight months seems to be the minimum to get services. Live in Nothern Ontario? One community has been waiting 12 YEARS for a new family doctor to arrive, another tweet suggests.

Yup, TWELVE YEARS FOR A FAMILY DOC!!

The politicians there are ignoring this crisis so the people are trying to get social media involved.  The article goes on to explain the problems in more detail and I recommend you read that.  They conclude that “we deserve much better healthcare that we are getting”.

Interestingly, I searched my own Authentic Medicine blog and found this entry I wrote FOUR YEARS AGO and it was titled…….you guessed……Canada Waits! It sure seems that I deserve credit for this hashtag!  I won’t get it but I have the proof and I am proud that we are usually years ahead of others in pointing out the bullsh%t in healthcare.

The only reason I care about Canada’s politics or healthcare system is to point out how they don’t have it so great either.  Their cost is very high, though not as high as ours, but at least our patients can be seen in a much more reasonable time period.  Their government-run system is not the fix for us but neither is our insurance controlled monopoly that we have now.  We need a true free market system.  One where a direct primary care doctor is paired with a cheap high deductible plan or health sharing plan.  This will allow patients to shop for lower prices and attract an Amazon or Amazon “lookalike”, which will make things easier, cheaper and more transparent.

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