A Health Care Horror Story

Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune at 9:35 AM on September 18, 2009.

As everyone knows Canada is the land of the worst health care system in the universe because it's socialized medicine with a Capital S:

I had my first gallbladder attack. Not life-threatening, just the worst pain I can remember being in since the last time I was in labor. It started up just before dinner Tuesday night. At 2 am Wednesday, still awake and in worsening pain, I found my keys and shoes, stumbled down to the car (leaving the rest of the family sleeping), and drove the 25 blocks down to the hospital. [...] 

[T]he waiting time between walking in the door and being admitted was literally about 45 seconds. [...]

... Moments later, a nurse appeared to check me in. With a quick swipe of my BC provincial care card, my complete medical files glimmered onto his computer screen.

He put a thermometer in my mouth, then confirmed the basic data while a printer spit out my wristband. The whole check-in process took under three minutes. "It's really quiet tonight," I noticed, trying to look nonchalant while clutching my stomach.

"Actually, we're pretty full." ... There were lots of people here -- but they were all already comfortably checked in and settled away in beds, rather than milling around the lobby waiting to be tended. In another three minutes, I was settled in, too. [...]

So it was that, minutes after my arrival, the ward nurse tucked me in and hooked me up to an IV drip with saline and anti-nausea medications. "Would you like some morphine with that?" she asked, in the same casual and pleasant voice with which a waiter might offer you cream for your coffee. My inside voice, battered after a long evening of agony, jumped up and hollered: "YESSS! Oh, HELL yes!" My outside voice sweetly smiled back: "That would be lovely." In moments, eight hours long hours of accelerating pain finally subsided -- and I went to sleep, waking only occasionally from my opiate bliss to find myself being wheeled out for this test or that as night turned to morning.

... Everybody in the BC health care system has their records in one big database, accessible within seconds in every doctor's office and hospital in the province. The doctors and nurses never have to waste a lot of time taking history, or guessing at the doses of the meds I'm taking ... or wondering where those X-rays disappeared to, or cross-testing my blood type. It's all there -- including digital copies of all the X-rays, ultrasounds, mammograms, and EKGs I've ever had here. Every doctor that writes a prescription knows exactly what else I've been prescribed. It's hard to overstate how much this improves the level of care, even as it cuts costs. [...]

[T]he last thing I noticed about last night was something that wasn't there. I'm talking about that little meter in the back of my head, the one that whirred and spun and ticked off every charge from the minute I walked into an American ER until the minute I walked out again. ... Even with good insurance, the co-pays alone on eight hours in the ER could bust the family grocery budget for the next three months. That big number hanging over my head was always a real distraction from dealing with whatever crisis actually put one of us there. [...]

Contrast that with last night, when my glorious morphine dreams were completely untroubled by the sound of that mental meter. By the time they checked me out at 10:30 am, I'd had a whole bank of diagnostic tests, including a long and detailed ultrasound exam that found twin bouncing baby gallstones. The ER then handed me off to an internist for further exploration of the issue. (I see her next week -- it's already set up.)

No bills. No worrying about how to pay for the surgery, either -- that will be covered, too. ...

Sounds gawdawful, doesn't it?

Tagged as: health care, canada