Healthcare That's Free

"You have free healthcare, though," the American said to the Canadian. "I mean, I have to pay about $50 dollars for one every month for my son who has asthma."

"That's a lot of money. However, I am on the waitlist to get knee surgery done."

"Yeah, you waiting for like a week?" the American assumed outloud.

"Five months, but it might be six."

Welcome. This is our free healthcare system. Canada is currently the number 1 country with the longest wait times. I remember being admitted to the hospital for pain that I rated an 8 out of ten, and how long did I wait? I waited in that waiting room, in pain for twelve hours. I was leaving when the sun was already up. That is just one example of how broken our system is.

Since moving to a new province, I need a new family doctor. I was informed that I should get on the waitlist right away. How long is that waitlist, you ask? Three years, yes, three years just to have a family doctor (who are supposed to give you referrals to other services, which might take another three years to see), I don't even want to know what the wait time is to see a specialist.

In the states, if you have great insurance, you can leave the hospital with a few small fees, and the wait time to see a doctor takes 45 minutes. That would be express service and unheard of in Canada.

The resources and funds in Canada make it hard for tests such as CT's MRI's make the waiting time longer. It might spark the question of "Well if Canada has scarce resources, why doesn't Canada buy more and help more people?" Because hospitals have a fixed budget to keep. This is why nurses are constantly overworked and burnt out. Also, our healthcare system is largely underfunded. Nurses have asked managers, "Can we hire more casuals to help us?" The answer will most likely be no because we don't have the budget for it. Well, now that you know the situation with the nurses, imagine trying to buy a billion-dollar or thousand-dollar machine? And on top of that, hire more staff to manage the machines? Yes, that is not happening. So with Canada's tight budget, it's hard to get the proper funding for new machines, and new scans are making wait times longer than necessary.

The consequences of this lead to another issue: patients are severely suffering, or some patients, instead of waiting, are choosing medically assisted dying instead. That does open a whole other debate about ethics, but some patients are choosing to die rather than wait for that open spot on the list to get the help they need.

Another consequence is that families are choosing to go to a private clinic or outside of the public sector to get the help they need, and then they are walking out with that thousand-dollar fee that Americans complain about. Others are choosing to travel to other countries to get the help they need in time to save their own lives. I've known patients who went to the states who would rather pay that ridiculous bill rather than wait to see if their diagnosis worsens.

So you can praise Canada for having free health care, but if you need a major surgery or even a minor surgery, you are waiting for everything. If you need to go to the emergency room and it says that the wait time is four hours, that is a joke. You will be there for another eight hours waiting to see the nurse, and then they make you wait another hour just to see the doctor. If you ask me, that is a broken system...