This is a question aimed at our brethren in Canada and the UK. 

I don't want it to become a political argument or an anti-Politician A or pro-Politician B urination contest. I just have a genuine curiosity about how something works...

How does your healthcare system work? 
Here in the States, it is often characterized as a socialist cesspool of delay and death, but I rarely hear the impressions if an actual citizen living with/dealing with the actual results.

Are there terrible delays for non-life-threatening but necessary operations or procedures? (It has been reported as such...)
Is the wait for doctor's appointments, visits to specialists and/or the various red tape oppressive?
How do you like it?

Again, I ask my American Brethren and Sistren (?) to NOT turn this into a "My political leaning thinks your political leaning is stupid" discussion...I really don't care (I'm fairly apolitical and dislike all political parties unequally

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

In the Uk, the National Health Service is pretty much regarded as sacred. Some politicians on the right might wish to dismantle it and replace it with an Insurance based system of private provision, but they dare not propose it - it would be electoral suicide. What those politicians try to do is say "the NHS is safe in our hands" then if they're elected they try to sneak in big reforms. It's happening at the moment - the Tories said in their manifesto, "no top down re-organisation of the NHS and we'll match Labour's spending". It was a lie of course - as soon as they managed to negotiate themselves into power they set about the biggest reforms in a generation. They won't be allowed to change much, and they'll then be punished at the next election in 4 years time.

The NHS is far from perfect and many complain about it. The care is patchy depending on where you are in the Country. It's a money pit (but in truth it's the drug companies that take a huge slice of the budget). The recent target driven culture has generated some sharp practise with regional areas sacrificing quality of care and treatment to meet an admin target.

Margaret Thatcher crucified the service in the 70s/80s and successive Govts since have had to spend a fortune to bring it back from the brink of disaster.

Waiting times are currently an average of 18 weeks for less urgent operations. But thats going up.

Basic principles: All health care will be provided free at the point of need. No-one will be turned away. The Health care budget is about 9% of the National GDP. No-one pays to see a GP (unless they want a private consultation).

I have generalised massively here and some may point out something important I've missed, but you should get the idea.

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

The term Health Care in Newfoundland and Labrador has become an oxymoron. If you're not healthy the government doesn't care.The latest surveys by Statistics Canada show that we have the worst health care system in all of Canada yet ironically we spend the most per capita on health care.The biggest problem with our health care system is that it's top heavy with redundancy in mid and upper management.I spent over 30 years with our health care system and now it's the worst it has ever been.Back when I started over 30 years ago the saying was that there were "too many chiefs and not enough Indians"(my apologies to aboriginals)but now there is an inordinant amount of people in management positions getting paid obscene salaries for doing the same job as 5 other people.

Therein lies our biggest problem.With so many people making decisions one will eventually step on the toes of another with equal authority and a big SNAFU will take place.These situations aren't few and far between but a daily occurance in just about all of our health care facilities.If government and hospitals etc.streamlined their management and put in capable managers a big part of our problem would be solved.


Another big problem is that they stack mid-management with incompetent people who are too imbedded or well connected to fire but far too useless to get a good day's work out of so they put them in mid-management where they can do the least damage and they can be over ruled if they look like they are about to make a big SNAFU,I needed look no farther than my own department for this.When the division manager's job came about,2 people applied-the manager who was already there at a department level and had been the source of numerous complaints because of his ineptitude and the guy who trained him but had proven himself successful and a top notch manager.They hired the maladroit because they knew that he was a yes man and a pushover.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

It won't work at all soon if they keep cutting the budget.

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Rated "M" for meaty.

In Canada, each of the provinces manages their own Health Care System. They get funding from both the federal and provincial governments. Some people in some provinces have had complaints that wait times are long for non-critical procedures or operations. All of the provinces seem to be cutting back on staffing. This is not meant as a jab at our friends to the south but USA has ngatively impacted our system indirectly. The American system has always provided doctors with better earning potential than Canadian doctors typically have access to. What this does is create a brain drain on our system. Our educational facilities are funded largely by governement with only a small portion of the cost of an education coming from student paid tuitions. Our students become doctors or technicians on the Canadian dime and then head south across the border to make bigger money than they could in our system. This puts pressure on our system to raise wages and that's one of the main reasons why we keep seeing cutbacks in the number of hospital beds and doctors being funded. I am not entirely sure what will happen to our system if USA ever fully impements a publicly funded universal health care system. If I am reading the news stories correctly, it appears to us that USA is struggling over implementation issues that may take decades to resolve, if that ever happens at all.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Thank you for the information...I hope more people add to the discussion...this is very informative!

Adey, from what I gather, you're no fan of the Tories, which would make you Labour, correct? (I'm sorry if that's wrong, I know only the basic overview of the British political scenario, and I'm not trying to turn this into a political discussion).

From what you said, it seems that there's both support and dislike of the system within the government, but how do the people feel (the constituents, not the politicians)?

Guitslinger, it sounds as if the system in Canada (or at least in your province/region) is right in line with the US Medicaid system, which purportedly helps the poor with their health care. However, in Texas, if you live in a county that does not have a "County" Hospital (formerly called a "charity" hospital), and you are a working poor person, you will be billed for the full amount of the services...even if you live only blocks away from the county line in question. So much for helping the poor.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

Interesting Thread Subject there SA.
Even with your disclaimer it is courageous to bring up this topic.
As you may or may not know or have guessed, My family is French and My Grandmother passed away about 1 and half years ago..
She is relevant to the discussion since she lived in Southern France, for many years with my Aunt in Monaco, but eventually had to be put in a nursing home as she was too much to ask of a 68 year old to take care of her and one that has her own health limitations.

The system in France is similar to the UK, but it has Hemorhaged in recent years, well before the current economic malaise set in. It is fairly simple, it appears that corruption became rife within the system of Doctor to Patient to Pharmacy Prescriptions. In other words my Grandmother often had medication subscribed to her that (1) Was unnecessary, (2) often it was double the required if prescribed amount ( more revenues ) (3) It did not warrant a check-up with the doctor at the end of a prescription for a refill....

I gathered that the nursing home was in fact intolerable, although it was spectacularly expensive, sporadic supervision, difficulty or overly long responses to requests for aid.
( Yes I know senior people are often very needy, but that is part and parcel of being a care practitioner in a nursing home.)

Not to digress or elaborate further, I believe a National Health Care System for all is a Plus.
But it has to be stringently monitored by independent agency, one that is removed from the equation of Revenues for Medical services or supplies.
In this rich nation it is embarassing to think that we can justify spending trillions in Foreign Aid/Engagement But the homeland is replete with Now Millions who have fallen thru the cracks
due to unfortunate circumstances regardless of who is to blame.....

Our next door neighbor ( who approved us to buy our property, her niece being the Seller )
was 101 when she went to that last Dance, she used to come home up to her last month at around 11:00 to 12:00 midnight from a Dance or a Finnish/Sweedish Gathering. She went to a nursing home for about a month.......
It was like night and day, like visiting someone you knew as vibrant and Happy Go Lucky to visiting a breathing corpse.....It still creeps me out to this day...That is not the only nursing Home I have been to, most are that dysfunctional.....

Question in a zero sum game is....Where does the money go and how much goes to...
My vote is for everyone to be able to be assisted in their own homes late in life, not to be shipped off to a holding place until disposal time..... So it is not cheap but it is a necessitty not a luxury, I think that is where the discussion goes off-rail. WE all have to pay into a viably profitable HealthCare System, regardless of income status...

Aging has to be looked as a part of life which demands dignity..The Irony is that we are all going there.....Kicking and Screaming... but it's the last bus stop for all.
So healthcare that encompasses everyone is to be hoped for....Which also means that there are personal responsibilities. Cannot allow people to destroy their health and then be able to say I demand help, there needs to be checkpoints along the way....Same as we have for a Driver's license..Those checkpoints of course need to be intertwined with remedial processes, educating people about how little it takes to be healthy would go a long way in reducing expenditures.

Lets put it this way....A vibrant Healthy population is much more productive than a sedentary anemic population......One cannot think productively if the whole is sick....

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

Every damn time I hit "submit" on my post on this thread I get the "Sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties" page.

WTF? Some people here are fond of conspiracy theories. I'm beginning to wonder whether Sarah Palin has her finger on the Forum posting software, because she sure as heck wouldn't like what I want to write here.

...I wonder if it'll work this time?

CLICK

Cheers - C

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...Huh? Well that worked.

And yet each time I try to submit my actual post I get the "technical difficulties" page again!!!

For ****'s sake!

Try again...

Cheers - C

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Just send her a pic of Andy Big Hair She will then be occupied........

My apologies Andy...All in Jest..

I had the same problem for a moment on the Our Poor Forum Thread lost what I wrote......OK I can hear the back row exhaling in relief......

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

Have you tried editing one of these pre-existing posts?

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Rated "M" for meaty.

Try editing and pasting in...

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

Yeah - I started out quoting a section of SA's opening post. Can't see anything wrong with that; but now I've tried without doing that and it still won't work. I've tried re-typing, copying and pasting... I have no idea what phpBB coding rule I'm breaking.

What the stuttering **** is going on? Is the Forum in the hands of the dark forces of the medical insurance industry?

I wonder if this'll work?

CLICK

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Ceri, your post is prolly too long, maybe? I frequently get frustrated when I write a long diatribe and then get denied the ability to post it. Usually that's a good thing because it gives me a moment to pause and reconsider the rant.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

One trick I learned is that if you know your post is going to be quite long you can write it in Word, perfect all your grammar and spelling and then copy and paste.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.