Medical Malpractice

I have been to a Canadian hospital once and it sucked, why is Canada's HC system so overhyped?

It was in Vancouver, British Columbia and I was in a car accident. I was fine but me and the person driving were nevertheless taken to what seemed to be typical of a public Canadian hospital. It was understaffed, the ambulances were on strike, the sheets were dirty and the hospital looked like something you'd see in a typical Eastern Bloc nation, the walls and columns were all a dreary grey concrete. I live in Cleveland, OH and have been to the Cleveland Clinic as well as several hospitals in Cuyahoga County and all of them were nicer than that hospital, I later asked my Canadian friend if all the hospitals in Canada were like that and he told me that university hospitals were the only exception.

Public Comments

1. Cool, now pretend like you got in an accident in the US and didn't have any insurance. Jacob W: Yeah, and guess who pays for it. You do, and it costs way more than paying for his insurance. Canada's government spends a smaller amount of its budget proportionally than ours does on health care and ours leaves 45,000 people behind every year.
2. In June 2005 the supreme court of Canada ruled that people had a right to go to private hospitals because the waits at the public ones were so bad.
3. Welcome to Socialized Medicine! Is that what people want in US hospitals? Granted, ours in the USA are understaffed and overcrowded but at least the ones I've seen have clean sheets and freshly painted walls.
4. Well, the rich and the health insurance companies package our hospitals nicely, go down town and look at the people under the bridges that cant go to the hospital like you were allowed in canada. Plus, no one in america is making our system a government run single payer system, so you can not compare. Still, canadians get better healthcare than the americans do because americans turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands that cant access those PRETTY HOSPITALS WHERE PATIENTS GET STAFF INFECTIONS....
5. Well, I live in Vancouver (a suburb just outside it) and it's hyped because it's cheap and affordable. Is it perfect? Absolutely not... my knee surgery took place 6 months after I injured it. But the more critical injuries are taken care of immediately, and with little cost (which helps poorer people). I don't know why Americans take issue with our healthcare system, it isn't terrible. Both our countries can definitely learn from each other. I'd like to see a hybrid system implemented somehow... one that allows people who can afford it to seek private healthcare, and one where poorer people can have access to a public option. But that's just one man's opinion. Sorry that your trip up here wasn't fun! I do hope you come back soon enough :) PS: All the hospitals I've been to have been extremely clean, I'm not sure what hospital you went to?
6. So you have a problem with the color of the walls...and everything else you mentioned is quite often a problem in most United States hospitals as well... It most certainly is at the local hospital in my area. So, since you decided to completely dismiss all Canadian hospitals on the appearance of ONE hospital...would it not be just as "logical" to dismiss every American hospital on the basis of the appearance of one hospital? At which point we must then accept that Mexican hospitals are clearly the best choice. And I don't mean those legal ones. I'm talking about those little adobe hut ones where they give you a couple of shots of tequila, a chile pepper, some herb grown out back, and then put their entire trust in that immune system that God gave you...
7. LIBERAL SPIN
8. Funny how foreigners think you cannot get emergency treatment in the USA without insurance. Don't they watch TV? There are many shows documenting the trauma centers in America. When some inner city poor kid gets hit by a car and is whisked by helicopter to a first class trauma center, gets X-rays or CAT scans, surgery whatever all within hours, do you think he has insurance? *
9. I'm a nursing student and I can tell you there are hospitals like that her in the U.S. People die waiting in ER's...have heart attacks while sitting in a waiting room. You can't compare Clevland Clinic to any old county hospital. Some are just better than others.
10. Don't worry, once Obamacare passes you can enjoy that level of care all the time. Without having to leave the US.
11. I remember the Canadian system being much better about twenty or so years ago. But it was running us into debt. The federal government stopped giving transfer payments to the provinces in order to pay down the debt, and the health care system has suffered ever since. And that was the liberal government that did that not the conservatives.
12. Because Canadians who aren't mooching off the system are jealous of us.
13. Your friend was mistaken on the quality of other hospitals in Canada. I worked for our health care system in a position where I was working within the 3 hospitals in our city. Not one of them could be likened to a hospital in and Eastern Bloc nation, and one has one of the best Neonatal Intensive Care units in the world. One is even undergoing a major upgrade which will have a new ward and 100 new beds in their mother-baby unit, all in private rooms, by 2010. Even if our hospitals were all sub-par, my thought is that I would rather know that I am always, without a doubt, 100% covered for any sort of situation that I may run into instead of having to settle for being a product of the system, and having to worry about my insurance company denying me coverage. Tell me this...in the US, when you walk into a hospital, are you automatically treated (or put into a waiting room) or does the person at the triage desk ask you for an insurance card and check your records before you are offered treatment? Or if you have cancer or another serious health condition that would render you unable to work, do you have the option to quit your job and still have insurance coverage (actually, up here we can take a leave from our job so that we don't lose it altogether) or do you have to remain at work while undergoing difficult chemotherapy because you can't afford to lose your insurance?