On 03/22/2010 05:48 PM, Dave Balderstone wrote:

As a Canadian I understand the problems of a socialized medical system.
The response from a specialist here today to someone close to me when
asked to book a colonoscopy was "Sure, we can put you on the list, but
don't hold your breath."

I'm a Canadian too. So far my own experiences and that of my family has
been pretty good.

My father-in-law had two hip replacements when his mobility was
impacted. My aging and diabetic aunt-in-law had what appears to be
excellent care after a heart attack and several follow-up incidents. My
brother had orthoscopic knee surgery when some cartilage came loose. I
had steel pins pulled out of my knuckles after an accident abroad. My
wife and I spent days in the hospital (many hours in a jacuzzi tub) for
our first child and are using a midwife (also covered) for our second.

To be fair, we had to wait months to see a pediatric
gastrointestinologist. My sister had quite a wait to see a
dermatologist. Both were non-life-threatening issues, though annoying.

Given that financial resources are limited, nothing is ever going to be
perfect. You can lean towards providing coverage for everyone but maybe
not the best (especially in remote communities). Alternately you can
provide really great (but really expensive) coverage for a smaller
number of people. Or maybe there's a third way where we take a long
hard look at the system and try and figure out better ways of doing
it--neither the USA nor Canada does very well in the
health-care-results-per-dollar-spent charts. I suspect there's some
sort of asymptotic curve going on.

Where I think it's going to get interesting all over is as the baby
boomers get older and us genX and genY folks get left holding the bag.

Chris