Posted on 09/06/2009 2:36:29 AM PDT by Scanian
The Times Colonist, a newspaper in British Columbia, is reporting bad news from the Victorian Island Health Authority for residents seeking an MRI. Though already overwhelmed with demand, the health authority is looking to reduce usage of the expensive diagnostic device to make up a $45 million deficit:
The cuts likely mean patients will wait in pain even longer for treatment and surgery -- and already they are waiting twice as long as last year.
VIHA spokeswoman Shannon Marshall said patients are being booked for March, six months away, for elective MRI scans. Last year, wait times for MRI scans were only three months.
The Canadian government controls half the country’s GDP and still can’t find the money to adequately provide MRIs.
To give that failure perspective, it’s important to note that the British Columbian health care system carries a fraction of the complexity of a would-be Obamacare system. (The province has 12% the population of California and has a health budget of 1.6% of the CBO’s cost estimate of the health care overhaul.) Because America has one of the largest and most diverse populations on earth, Obama’s vision of health care “reform” has the potential for disaster on a scale beyond even the worst Canadian nightmare.
The Colonist report does have some good news. The wait times for elective surgeries are down about 50%. The bad news for Americans staring Obamacare in the face? The list of “elective” surgeries includes “things such as hips, knees and hearts.”
On a local-issues radio show on KFRU 1400AM here in Mid-Missouri
(Columbia, MO), one local civic booster mentioned an interesting factoid.
Each year, more CAT and MRI scans are done in Columbia, Missouri’s
hospitals (which include the University of Missouri, Boone Hospital,
Columbia Regional and our VA Hospital)...
than in the whole of the province of Alberta.
And Alberta is the province, with it’s energy resources (including
oil shales) and agriculture...most like a prosperous state like Texas
(even the mayor of Calgary, AB said such about 20 years ago).
My beloved Canadian relatives love their Canadian health-care,
but seem to usually “get a second opinion” when they visit the heartland
of the USA to visit their prosperous children that chose to become
US citizens.
And one of them got in to take care of a crisis health problem here
in the USA in ONE DAY, when they’d have been on a lenghty wait-list in
Canada.
I have the good graces to never point out how much they’ve benefited
from “American-style” healthcare when they sing the praises of Canadian
healthcare.
As I type this, I am in a rehab hospital recovering from surgery to remove a malignant spinal cord tumor. Fortunately, I live safely south of the Canadian border by ~80 miles. I’ve had 2 MRIs and a PET with, no doubt, more to come.
Many of us will be praying for you!
I wish you a speedy recovery under the best medical care possible!
About 35 years ago a US federal health planning initiative sought to drastically limit the number of CAT scanners and other new technologies as a cost saving measure. The same program sought to limit the number of hospital beds to no more than 4 for every 1000 population. Had that program succeeded the US would be experiencing the same problem with a lack of CAT and MRI scans as Canada now is facing. Thank Ronald Reagan for ending this federal health planning program in 1983.
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