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.
