“How’s Aboot That Hip Replacement, Eh Buddy?” by Pat Conrad MD

With all the recent excitement over the tax cut, Hawaiian missile alerts (they had it coming), and angry women marches, we might have forgotten all about health care.  So to catch you up: 1) ObamaCare had it’s funding significantly disrupted, but is still the law; 2) your premiums are still going up; 3) we are still on a downward path to fully nationalized care.

To start the health care debate anew, let’s all remember what we are really signing up for.  This article about Canadian care by Sally Pipes in IBD might give you a little mental chew:

– “In Ontario, for example, the number of hospital beds has plummeted from more than 33,000 in 1990 to just 19,000 in 2016.”- “According to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, the median patient waited about 20 weeks for “medically necessary” treatments and procedures last year.”

– ” …the median patient waits nearly 47 weeks for brain surgery.  One Ontario doctor estimated that the earliest that one of her patients could see a neurologist was four and a half years.”- Orthopedists are unemployed, and OR’s stand empty, despite high demand and long waits.  i guess no one is paying for them?

– And yet, “In 2014 and 2015, a whopping 100,000 patients left Canada to obtain treatment elsewhere.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders just got back from a tour there, “declaring that there is not ‘any debate’ about whether ‘the quality of care is as good or better than the United States.'”

Nah, no debate at all.

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