Healthcare Lottery in Canada

I live in a country that puts fairness first. I thought Canada's two most vaunted values were fairness and common sense. This desire to lighten the burden for others led to the establishment of the National Health Plan. But the National Health Plan is no longer sufficient to meet the needs of those who are sick and need help in Canada.

I've lived in Canada for 25 years. I've learned to endure the discomfort of a number of ailments; but now I must have surgery. The debilitating nature of my disease isn't important. What's important is that I haven't been able to get surgery for almost a year now, and last Wednesday I was sent home from the hospital the morning of surgery. I'd undergone the difficult 24 hour prep and was lying on the pre-op bed, wondering why everyone else had left. I finally asked a nurse to find out. My surgeon had been called into the E.R. for another operation. I was kicked out, put back on the doctor's waiting list; sent home in great discomfort because, as my surgeon explained: "We don't have sufficient resources. We don't have enough hospital beds."

When I asked the surgeon what I could do he said: "Phone your MLA. Tell other people. Publicize this anyway you can."

In Canada we need a affordable private option. My family already pays a thousand dollars a year for our public plan, but it isn't enough to get surgery when it's needed, not for everyone. Some specialties are undersubscribed. Most aren't. I need one of the most in demand, a gastroenterologist; and according to my surgeon they are in short supply across Canada.

I would be willing to pay much more for a real option; surgery when I need it. Doctors who would work for me instead of the hospital and treat me like a person, not just a number to usher through the ward. Not just someone to see for twenty minutes, take a short history, tell me I'm relatively healthy because I don't have cancer and then leave me on a waiting list for a year.

When there is not enough to go around, fairness is no longer the issue. Rationing of health care, here in Canada, is a reality. Cancer patients always come before any other patient at St. Paul's Hospital. The limited number of beds available and further cuts just announced mean fewer beds, fewer surgeries and more people like me. Common sense suggests that rather than having to leave Canada to get help I should be able to find a hospital or doctor and pay privately. As more and more of the country joins the senior population we need better solution. My family doctor tells me there are thousands like me, just in Vancouver, waiting more than a year for their surgery, in pain and suffering. This is not about fairness. This not about leveling the playing field so everyone has access. This is about a system that doesn't work.

It's time to stop pretending that government alone can afford to support education, infrastructure and healthcare. No government can afford that burden and survive. Without a private plan we are sentencing ourselves to a future with even tighter controls and rationing; picking and choosing who gets a full and happy life and who has to lie sick in bed waiting and waiting for their chance at the healthcare lottery.

A Good Season for Blogging

Reasons for writing a blog:

My children no longer answer my long discursive emails. I try posing questions, ask their advice about online etiquette and suggest moral quandaries all to no avail. I think I've lost my audience. Those three sons used to engage me in intellectual and politically stimulating dialogue. They're all in their twenties now, suspicious of my good intentions (she's trying to get us to think like her!) and looking for their own paths. I can't see the markers they're following; I must be blind to this generation's method of deconstructing truth from falsehood, clear paths in the forest from tree-strewn disasters. So I need to let them go.

My good husband listens to my political rantings politely at first and then fixes me with his gimlet gaze; suggesting the exact opposite of whatever I have proposed. "You mean we should never support ANY kind of public health care?" he'll assert, as if engaging in logical argument. I've lived here long enough to recognize the signs of a hopeless discussion. Taking the opposite position from that of your partner in a discussion is the fastest way I know to start an argument. Or to send them out of the room in frustration. It means you haven't been listening; you just want to make the point that you are smarter than your partner and will show them the fallacy of their ways.

I'm hoping to find other conversations. Ones without the ranting that so often passes for conversation online. Without the blinders and assumptions that if you say red, you mean Right, if I say blue, it's code for Liberal. I believe we're mix of many different belief systems and values and mine, anyway, have grown deeper and stronger and more clear as I've aged, but they've also gotten much, much simpler.

Can we talk online without the "Aha, you phail, moron!" language? Are we stuck with a conspiracy on every corner, a vast underground plot that has only to be revealed for truth to conquer our enemy? Since this attempt to uncover truth and thus defeat some undefined evil has done little but cause everyone grief, perhaps we could resurrect the idea of engaging in courteous conversation online. Maybe we could start looking for our commonalities instead of differences, ways to share ideas and beliefs instead of divide ourselves into tribes. The phrase "And the truth shall set you free" referred specifically to spiritual truth, not any worldly or political or personal cause. Gotcha journalism has taken that motto and made a mockery of truth. (Moral relativity and truth; two words that don't play well together.) Can we talk about our lives with civility and kindness? I suppose by posting this I'll find out.