this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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I feel like it's a no win situation.
Here in Canada, my coworker has needed back surgery since last year in September. He just got into a specialist for a consultation last week to get surgery scheduled. He's been living for almost an entire year on light duty at work with back pain.
I feel over the past 10 years our Government has mismanaged their financials and our healthcare and education systems have taken the beating for it. Public services are only as good as the people who are trusted to safeguard them.
That's still better, cause if I needed back surgery I'd just suck it up because I know (see OP photo) is waiting for me if I do go
Unless I have money for good insurance.
Sounds like your coworker is getting healthcare.
In America he'd just suffer for the rest of his life and then off himself when he was too old to handle the pain and still work.
That's what happens when people vote the Conservatives in. They fuck up healthcare funding, and quality goes down the drain. Then the Liberals do fuck all to restore funding and fix it, and over time it just gets worse.
And I'd argue that Conservatives are trying to balance the budget after the Liberals reckless spending habits. Though the older I get the more I start to believe that that is what they want. You and me fighting over left and right when they both are there just to serve their own needs.
Do you still believe this to be true? Conservatives consistently push for lower taxes and higher military spending. The taxes are the big part, taxes on the wealthy are drastically lower than they were a generation ago.
You've been fighting over right and far right. Liberals are not leftist.
They don't balance the budget, they haven't in decades. All they do now is enrich their donors and friends. If they really wanted to balance the budget they would raise taxes on the rich, not cut essential services.
In America, similar wait times for specialists/surgeries are common as well. You just also have to pay for them. My grandma's husband has been waiting years for a hip replacement which keeps getting rescheduled. My husband is scheduled for a colonoscopy 2 months from now. It normally would be free/low cost under insurance, since it is "preventative," but in his case it is a follow up check for a health problem which he has to get done every three years as a man in his 30's, so insurance no longer considers it "preventative." Therefore it will cost about $2500 after insurance (which he also pays for.) It's just ridiculous. Also the $2500 is only a ballpark figure based on the last time he had this done; there is no way to get anyone to tell you exactly how much a procedure will cost. They bill you afterwards, and it will change based on different "variables." It's sometimes difficult to even get them to tell you how much an office visit will cost. They do this so that you cannot shop around. Usually you will get several different bills at different times, for things like labs, fees, etc. Nobody in the process makes it transparent how many bills you will get. Some places are shadier than others, and will add fees that you shouldn't have even incurred, and you then have to call and ask for an itemized list to fight it, which is not normally provided. Most people don't bother to call, and end up owing thousands that go to collections, messing up their credit.
That makes me so incredibly sad to hear. I had a small sliver of hope that there would be a trade off with speed vs the cost, but it sounds like you will get medical attention no quicker than I would.
Pretty much, UK here and the NHS is also such a mismanaged joke at this point that private health insurance is looking a lot better for me. I've had a friend of mine whose dad succumbed to cancer because the NHS didn't get to him soon enough before it went terminal and then they proceeded to blame him for not coming sooner. This was before the COVID pandemic but these stories only increased afterwards.