they already cut payments on medicare 21% to doctors. doctors are saying they will have to limit the medicare patients or stop seeing them due to overhead costs...why dont they cut waste and fraud first..they could stop paying for all those expensive motorized chairs when a patient doesnt have the mental ability to run one...home healths has left some sort of unused equipment at my mothers for the past year and when i have it removed they send something else....she doesnt use and tell me she will use it later.
Here in Canada our socialized system started around 1970. As expected many doctors started to restrict services to people on the public insurance system because the reimbursements were too low. This led to the Canada Health Act in 1984 where the entire medical system was enslaved. Billing other than to the government became illegal for both the patient and the doctor. That is why it can take a year to see a specialist today and the chances of that specialist or generalist being trained in Canada or the US is very low. It’s a bonus if they even speak broken English.
This is what it all ends up like!!!
Aha, the family doctor! In Canada this is the gatekeeper to the system. If you have one (20% of the population doesn’t and can’t find one) every access to the system goes through him/her. That’s why that 3 hour wait. If you have a mole or wart that you want looked at you must see a GP who will then attempt to make an appointment with a dermatologist - 2-6 months.
The average wait with an appointment is probably 2 hours. The average contact time with the family doctor will be 7 minutes. In that time he will take your blood pressure, glance at the notes from your last visit and give you a requisition for the lab. You are not permitted to go to a lab on your own to reduce the time and number of visits.
If you have a true (triage makes the decision) emergency the system works here. Otherwise, it is an incredible pain in the ass. It IS the post office taking care of your health!