What's the worst condition (if you don't mind saying) you've had where you had to use the Canadian system? Generally, socialized medicine works fine for routine care but badly for catastrophic (i.e. expensive) care.
- Severe pneumonia (1 day in emerg, 9 days in ICU followed by 8 in an inpatient ward)
- Total pericariectomy (2 days in postop ICU, 3 days in ward)
Among other stays/issues prior to these.
The latter surgery was the culmination of outpatient medical care over 3 years with multiple specialists (cardiologist, internist, and cardiac surgeon), along with multiple CT, MRI, cardiac catheterization, countless blood tests, many of which were sent to Winnipeg (the equivalent of the CDC) for rare disease scanning, and over a dozen echocardiograms ... none of which I had to wait for longer than a day or two ... And none of which I had to pay for (just my medication through private insurance). In fairness the surgery itself wasn't critical, so I waited 6 months. They were willing to expedite if my condition deteriorated (it didn't). And after regular cardiologist visits , after I was stable, it could take 8-10 months. If I had an issue they'd expedite me in though.
I am not saying the Canadian system is ideal. Just that it is a reasonably functioning system.
There are some cases where it is both very frustrating and inspiring. I have a dear friend who has a child with a congenital heart defect due to an extremely rare genetic connective issue disorder that is similar (but different) to Marfan syndrome. The Canadian system has been fantastic to senior levels of provincial administration in managing this case, involving international hospitals, breeding zebrafish to replicate the specific mutation, working to manage the treatment of this complex child who is close to turning 5 but likely would have died in the first few weeks after birth in another era.
Keeping this child alive (he is in and out of the hospital about 50%) has easily cost a tremendous amount of public money, but the insurance system risk pool is designed to handle these sorts of outlier cases to ensure future cases can benefit and that this child can have (mostly) a good life in between and during hospital stays. This child gets world class care and has been kept alive due to the system mostly working.
That's the good part. The bad part is that managing complex care in general is a mess as in many health systems, making it a full time job for at least one parent to juggle the various specialists, appointments, tests, medications, history, etc... Which is difficult if you're a single parent. It's almost easier to go on welfare than to work if you are a parent to a critically ill child. So you can get nursing staff to help at home but it's debatable what is covered and what is not, medical expense deductions have some arcane regs like you can't expense a trip under 40km, yet this child has on average 280 trips to the hospital or a clinic a year... Adding up to a lot of expense. Some things like specialized child formula weren't covered by health insurance either until recently (which can cost upwards of $1400 monthly, really sucks when your child can't eat anything due to esophageal issues and has a G-tube and needs this formula to stay alive..)
So, not ideal... But Is this all socialized medicine ills? Sort of I guess? I can see the same problems in a private system.
