wrote in message
If you have big brother provided health care and big brother assigned
physicians (any warm body is equivalent to any other warm body), how
do you work around incompetence?

Doctors aren't assigned in Canada, unless you're referring to the doctor on
duty in an emergency room. A person is always free to request or seek
another physician. And as to formal complaints of incompetence, I believe
they're all looked into, however the College of Physicians has the
unfortunate reputation of being pretty lenient on many of their members.
But, sometimes they do take actions as confirmed by the resulting case of
Dr. Charles Smith, former chief forensic pathologist for the Province of
Ontario. Many, many lawsuits pending because of this guy's incompetence.

Of course, another doctor might not be available in the middle of the night
in an emergency room. In that case assuming the emergency isn't dire, one
can walk across the street to another hospital, which is something I've done
after four hours of waiting. Triage is a bitch sometimes. Going to another
hospital is easier to do in a place like Toronto, but relatively difficult
when you live up north where another doctor or hospital might be many hours
away.

And family doctors are getting increasingly hard to find in Canada. The USA
keeps thieving our doctors by offering better pay and few working hours.
Guess I can't blame them for that, but I think doctors graduated in Canada
should be required to commit a specified period of service in Canada before
they move lock stock and barrel to sell their Canadian acquired skills
elsewhere.