# Canadian / European / Australian Healthcare Horror Stories **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 15, 2010, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105 "2010-01-15T18:51:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/101 "2010-01-21T06:30:57Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > Now that I think of it, back in 1960 when my tonsils were removed, I was promised, “all the ice cream I could eat!” > > Needless to say I was never given ice cream until I was returned to my parents loving care 2 days later. > > Lying Socialist Bastards! Seriously? When my tonsils came out in 1979, not only was I delivered to my parents (and then to my grandmother’s house) on the same day: after what seemed like an eternity on a steady diet of flan and ice cream, I was ready to murder someone for solids! For years I though that one of the two scars hadn’t healed up completely, as that spot will hurt (and sometimes bleed) if I’m sick and cough too much. Turns out that tonsil has partially grown back, the bitch! ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/102 "2010-01-21T06:45:44Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Seriously? When my tonsils came out in 1979, not only was I delivered to my parents (and then to my grandmother’s house) on the same day: after what seemed like an eternity on a steady diet of flan and ice cream, I was ready to murder someone for solids! I think tonsillectomies have come a long way since the 1960s. Mine were also taken out when I was a child in the 60s, and I also spent a couple of days in hospital before heading home. And in my case, while I was also promised all kinds of ice cream, all they gave me was orange sherbet. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/103 "2010-01-21T06:52:44Z")
Maybe it’s Ice Cream Science that’s advanced. All Grandma was able to get was: - plain vanilla, - so-called chocolate/vanilla (the chocolate was about as chocolatey as an ATM’s screen), - so-called strawberry (even blander than the vanilla), and in order to get them in amounts greater than one dose, she had to get them from a local bar, as you couldn’t buy them at the supermarket. Nowadays there is Carte d’Or, and Häagen-Dazs, and, and… excuse me, I think I’ll go get some Red Berries in Cream frozen goodness. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/104 "2010-01-21T08:55:18Z")
Had my tonsils out in the mid '80s. No ice cream, just plenty of toast, corn flakes and some horrible purple mouthwash stuff to gargle with. The idea, as I recall, is that eating rough food keeps the wound clean and prevents it from scabbing. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/105 "2010-01-21T09:03:53Z")
Where was that, **Kal**? It sounds like a pretty painful diet. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/106 "2010-01-21T09:32:54Z")
UK. It was painful, but I had soluble painkillers and that foul purple mouthwash helped. Mind, I wasn’t bothered by scabs at all. Reading up on things, having them drop off sounds revolting. ---
**Author:** ![wolf-alice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9e8a1a/32.png) [@wolf-alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf-alice)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/107 "2010-01-21T11:36:26Z")
My 86 year old Grandfather was admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties, was not provided with a bedpan or otherwise assisted and so got up to use the lavatory, fell and broke his hip, died over days. There was an inquest; hospital staff had neglected my Grandfather, lied and falsified records. So, that was not a nice situation. And ultimate outcome aside, the lying and mismanagement aside, and at the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader, attitudes of the nursing staff were… Odd. Half of the nursing staff were attentive and caring and clever and marvellous, the other half were downright hostile. I remember Granddad was frightened and agitated and needed a sedative, I found the ward sister and told her, all smiles and pleases and thank yous, and she wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Wouldn’t talk to me. There isn’t another side to this story; I hadn’t punched a nurse, I hadn’t made a fuss. That’s it; my Granddad was dying and she treated me like… I don’t know what. Worse than an inconvenience. I don’t know what the fuck that was about, but it was upsetting and weird. You can come across some weird people in the NHS, thinking on. For a more mundane experience, I went to casualty the first time I had an ocular migraine (vision disturbance, limb weakness, facial numbness, “brain fog”), and they told me to go to the optician. I think that was pretty poor, really, since I _couldn’t see_, couldn’t feel half of my face and one arm, couldn’t speak and couldn’t think, and was concerned enough to be driven into hospital at midnight. I don’t think that should have been dismissed as “needs new contacts prescription”, really. What infuriates me is the big to-do that is made of the “choice” I have to go to, say, a drop-in centre or to choose my hospital (as if I can choose a hospital!), and how “choice” in general is a mantra of the NHS, but how this translates as a “choice” between waiting two hours in the crap drop-in centre on my doorstep that ultimately cannot help, or “choosing” to wait two weeks to see my GP. Woo hoo, _choice_. I don’t want a fucking choice, I want consistency. Drop-in centres in particular are, in my experience, worse than useless. I’ve been twice in desperation, and both times I’ve left in tears. I was told that a particularly butchery UTI was my period (Oh no, it wasn’t. I went into shock on the lavatory and, weeping and shaking, bodged something with an expired box of co-proxamol and someone else’s leftover Amoxicillin, before passing out. I was subsequently chastised for using antibiotics not prescribed for me. _Huh_), and a particularly obnoxious medical I-don’t-know-what patronised the living shit out of me and “couldn’t feel” the enormous neck lump that I was worried enough to bring to her attention because - shock - I couldn’t see my doctor for two weeks. (The doctor could feel it just fine and agreed with my concern, and ultimately I’m fine, but the point is that I was made to feel like a fool and a timewaster for bringing it up). GPs, in my experience, are not particularly joined-up. I can’t see a doctor out of work hours unless I wait two weeks (and if I call _the split-second_ the office opens at 8am, otherwise the one appointment I can make is taken). If the doctor agrees that I need a blood test, that’s another two weeks to see the nurse, and another two weeks to see the doctor again, and then another unspecified time to see a specialist - I don’t know, I haven’t got that far. This really sounds like I’m down on the NHS. I’m not; I’m team socialised healthcare, woo. I just wish it were more joined up, less bureaucratic, and that some people in it were retrained or fired or something, because when you encounter a horrible, incompetent _fanny_ when you’re ill, it’s so much more affecting and terrible than if you do it, say, in a bank. I would trust the NHS to sort me out in an accident. I would. And I know that so many people in the NHS are downright saintly and hard-working and brilliant, and I’ve had personal experience of several, though this is not the thread. And I know it’s wrong to be bankrupted over medical bills, so there you are. I’ve just had some bad experiences over - apart from Granddad - fairly mundane stuff. I wish it worked better. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/108 "2010-01-21T11:39:46Z")
> [@Kal](#): > > Had my tonsils out in the mid '80s. No ice cream, just plenty of toast, corn flakes and some horrible purple mouthwash stuff to gargle with. > > The idea, as I recall, is that eating rough food keeps the wound clean and prevents it from scabbing. I had mine out in the early 80s and was given potato chips (crisps) and the other things you mention to eat - don’t recall purple mouthwash, but anything’s possible. I don’t remember a lot about it (I was about 6), but my mother remembers it as the time I cried for a solid week. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/109 "2010-01-21T11:50:22Z")
Well I finally heard back from the CBT thing. Which is run by MIND - which is a fucking **charity** , not the NHS. I’m on the waiting list for an NHS psychologist. It’s _30 weeks_. That is truly shocking. Not sure if BUPA can help. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/110 "2010-01-21T14:35:25Z")
This would have been in the late 90’s in the Ontario Province and is 3rd person. My co-worker’s Canadian Father in-law needed heart by-pass surgery. Not sure how long the diagnosis took but the surgery was delayed for over 6 months and in that time his health deteriorated significantly. By the time he was eligible, the surgery was further delayed because he was not stable enough to operate on. ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/111 "2010-01-21T16:31:12Z")
**jjimm** -psychology is desperately underfunded in the NHS (and most clinical psychologists would rather work in the private sector- I know, my sister in law is one of them). BUPA may be of help, but I suspect if you want to see a psychologist quicker than that, paying yourself is your best bet. The recommendations are that GPs should be treating mild to moderate depression, anxiety and OCD themselves, and only referring on severe cases to psychiatry. Obviously major mental illness (eating disorders, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia) is a psychiatric issue and warrants an immediate referral. In my last psych job it was a maximum of 2 weeks from referral to appointment for major mental illness or serious depression and often much quicker. Psychiatric emergencies were same day. The primary metal health team dealt with less serious illness and I think their referral window was less than 4 weeks. [this](http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/therapies/cognitivebehaviouraltherapy.aspx) website might help in the meantime- some of the online CBT resources are quite good. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/112 "2010-01-21T17:02:42Z")
> [@wolf-alice](#): > > My 86 year old Grandfather was admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties, was not provided with a bedpan or otherwise assisted and so got up to use the lavatory, fell and broke his hip, died over days. There was an inquest; hospital staff had neglected my Grandfather, lied and falsified records. > > So, that was not a nice situation. And ultimate outcome aside, the lying and mismanagement aside, and at the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader, attitudes of the nursing staff were… Odd. Half of the nursing staff were attentive and caring and clever and marvellous, the other half were downright hostile. I remember Granddad was frightened and agitated and needed a sedative, I found the ward sister and told her, all smiles and pleases and thank yous, and she wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Wouldn’t talk to me. There isn’t another side to this story; I hadn’t punched a nurse, I hadn’t made a fuss. That’s it; my Granddad was dying and she treated me like… I don’t know what. Worse than an inconvenience. I don’t know what the fuck that was about, but it was upsetting and weird. You can come across some weird people in the NHS, thinking on. > > For a more mundane experience, I went to casualty the first time I had an ocular migraine (vision disturbance, limb weakness, facial numbness, “brain fog”), and they told me to go to the optician. > > I think that was pretty poor, really, since I _couldn’t see_, couldn’t feel half of my face and one arm, couldn’t speak and couldn’t think, and was concerned enough to be driven into hospital at midnight. I don’t think that should have been dismissed as “needs new contacts prescription”, really. > > What infuriates me is the big to-do that is made of the “choice” I have to go to, say, a drop-in centre or to choose my hospital (as if I can choose a hospital!), and how “choice” in general is a mantra of the NHS, but how this translates as a “choice” between waiting two hours in the crap drop-in centre on my doorstep that ultimately cannot help, or “choosing” to wait two weeks to see my GP. Woo hoo, _choice_. > > I don’t want a fucking choice, I want consistency. > > Drop-in centres in particular are, in my experience, worse than useless. I’ve been twice in desperation, and both times I’ve left in tears. I was told that a particularly butchery UTI was my period (Oh no, it wasn’t. I went into shock on the lavatory and, weeping and shaking, bodged something with an expired box of co-proxamol and someone else’s leftover Amoxicillin, before passing out. I was subsequently chastised for using antibiotics not prescribed for me. _Huh_), and a particularly obnoxious medical I-don’t-know-what patronised the living shit out of me and “couldn’t feel” the enormous neck lump that I was worried enough to bring to her attention because - shock - I couldn’t see my doctor for two weeks. (The doctor could feel it just fine and agreed with my concern, and ultimately I’m fine, but the point is that I was made to feel like a fool and a timewaster for bringing it up). > > GPs, in my experience, are not particularly joined-up. I can’t see a doctor out of work hours unless I wait two weeks (and if I call _the split-second_ the office opens at 8am, otherwise the one appointment I can make is taken). If the doctor agrees that I need a blood test, that’s another two weeks to see the nurse, and another two weeks to see the doctor again, and then another unspecified time to see a specialist - I don’t know, I haven’t got that far. > > This really sounds like I’m down on the NHS. I’m not; I’m team socialised healthcare, woo. I just wish it were more joined up, less bureaucratic, and that some people in it were retrained or fired or something, because when you encounter a horrible, incompetent _fanny_ when you’re ill, it’s so much more affecting and terrible than if you do it, say, in a bank. I would trust the NHS to sort me out in an accident. I would. And I know that so many people in the NHS are downright saintly and hard-working and brilliant, and I’ve had personal experience of several, though this is not the thread. And I know it’s wrong to be bankrupted over medical bills, so there you are. I’ve just had some bad experiences over - apart from Granddad - fairly mundane stuff. I wish it worked better. That’s all. Sorry to hear about your Grandad. ☹ How odd their behaviour was. You seem to have had loads of bad experiences! I’ve had far fewer and used the NHS a lot more - perhaps you had my share of bad luck. 😃 Is there another doctor you could change to? I had one GP, back in Essex, who was, frankly, a bastard, but my GPs here in London are absolutely perfect. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/113 "2010-01-21T18:47:13Z")
I’ll add another generality to the list of generalities about Americans - as with the others, these may or may not apply. YMMV, and all that. There’s been a lot of talk about those “death panels” and who decides whether someone will get treatment or not. “Rationing,” I think it was called. I think one of the issues behind the outrages that those topics caused is this: for all Americans think and talk about health care, they don’t have any real understanding of how it works. Everyone was all up in arms about rationing or not getting the health care to which they thought they were entitled. The reality is that American health care already is rationed. Everyone yelled about how inefficient the government is and “I’m not going to let some gov’t bureaucrat tell me I can’t get procedure X!” The reality is that Americans are told that they can’t get procedure X all the time. The difference is that right now it’s the Insurance industry telling them these things and rationing their services. IMO, too many Americans don’t realize this - their fears are already reality and it’s the Insurance company that’s the enforcer. Why it’s acceptable that some insurance actuary is telling me what I can and cannot get rather than someone actually connected to heath care in some way is not is beyond me. Americans may talk and worry about health care all the time, but I don’t think they really think about it enough. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/114 "2010-01-21T19:03:39Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > When I lived in Germany, health care was pretty good but there were problems. You used to get a booklet with sort of “coupons” a doctor would take when you visited. Sounds fair enough - except the doctors only got a set amount from each coupon/visit. Thus, you could go in with blood spurting from your eyeball and he would snatch a coupon, take your temperature and tell you to come back again next week (so he could grab another coupon). Only after he got a couple of coupons after several visits would he take a look at that blood spurting from your eyeball. > > OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but the point is; they would insist on multiple visits before you ever got a straight answer out of them. I believe that has changed since then, but it was annoying to go to a doctor, knowing you were most certainly going to have to make multiple appointments before any real treatment and/or diagnosis was going to be made - just so they could grab as many of those coupons as they could snatch out of your health plan booklet. These forms would have been _Krankenscheine_ - a patient’s certification of being enrolled in a particular _Krankenkasse_ for the current quarter. You wrote downthread that you were enrolled in _Barmer_ - that is one of the _Krankenkassen_ in the statutory system. There seems to have been a misunderstanding on how to use _Krankenscheine_ - you were supposed to hand in one only for the first visit of the quarter. (The _Krankenscheine_ were superseded in the early 1990s by chip cards valid for five years). That a Krankenschein was good for a certain amount of treatment was also a misconception in whoever told you that - it was the authorisation for the doctor to bill all his medical services for the current quarter to the _Krankenkasse_, vis the _Kassenärztliche Vereinigung_ which aggregates the money flow between Krankenkassen and medical practices. From what you write it looks to me that, not being used to the usage of German doctors, you just left it for the doctor what to do. In my experience, you can get any necessary or potentially necessary treatment from a German doctor, but _he won’t press them on you_ - except in emergencies or when delay could be dangerous. If you aren’t pushy enough to ask for a treatment, your doctor will mostly operate on the principle that most conditions either kill or disable you (immediate referral indicated) or are self-correcting (come again in a few months if it doesn’t get better) Some examples: [ul] [li]I _mentioned_ to my respective GP’s, for a decade or so, that I regularly took antacids. They nodded. When I _asked_ for a treatment against acid reflux I was immediately referred to gastroscopy, on the next day but one, and subsequently got prescribed a proton pump inhibitor, which I have taken for the last 9 years at no cost to me and a cost to the _Krankenkasse_ of AFAIK some 20 €/month. All well and good, only in the decade that I was too dumb to _ask_ for a treatment against too much stomach acid, my upper and lower teeth got etched down by about 5 mm respectively, i.e. about 1 cm in total.[/li] [li]Being a fatty I had slighly raised blood pressure (not enough to need medication). GPs told me to exercise more, took my BP, come again in a few months. When I decided to change my lifestyle and _asked_ for treatment I got referred to a four-week weight loss inpatient treatment (paid by pension insurance in my case - I made the case that my girth would possible meant premature disability), beginning some two months later, my salary paid by my employer, and later the _Krankenkasse_ subsidized my first regular gymnastics course. All almost free for me (copay for the inpatient part 10 €/day) and to good effect - but I had to _ask for it_.[/li] [li]When my late mother became unable to walk, my father already being in his eighties and not able to push her the about 1 mile to the town center, she got the loan of an electric wheelchair, with maintenance on demand courtesy of the Krankenkasse - but we had to _ask for it_.[/li] [li]flu vaccinations - always given to me at once when asked for, the doctor commending my thoughtfulness, but never mentioned first by the doctor to me.[/li][/ul] Germans in general are demanding customers of the medical system - the average German visited a doctor’s office 18.1 times in 2008 (a world record [cite - german language](http://www.morgenpost.de/printarchiv/wirtschaft/article1242118/18-Mal-im-Jahr-beim-Arzt-Praxisgebuehr-wirkungslos.html) - the Japanese being second at 13.6 doctor visits/year. 92.9 % of Germans had at least one visit at a doctor’s practice. Half of us are diagnosed with more than seven conditions.) - so you as a modest and reticient foreigner might have been categorized by your doctor as “does not insist - probably self correcting” category. That’s probably one thing that German doctors’ attitude could stand being adjusted about - the ill-educated and immigrants probably lose out due to it. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/115 "2010-01-21T19:15:30Z")
It seems that most American’s fears can be summed up as: “If you think our healthcare is bad now, just think if government bureaucrats are in charge of it!!” They currently have some pretty bad experiences with health care - just look at the complaints about being denied treatment by insurers, losing coverage due to pre-existing conditions,etc etc. They then just imagine that the government will make things worse. Americans on the whole do not like “government”, they prefer that things are done by individuals or profit making companies, because there is an underlying assumption that a company will do things better and more efficiently. Those of us in other countries have different experience and expectations of government run services. **Snickers** is right about most Americans not even consciously realizing that their healthcare is CURRENTLY rationed. Of course it is. Not everyone gets the $300,000 experimental treatment that prolongs their lives by 3 months. It’s rationed by the amount and quality of private insurance you have. This thread really shows that the number and quality of “horror stories” in countries with UHC does not seem to match up to the equivalent in the US, with people dealing with private insurance companies. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/116 "2010-01-21T20:55:29Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > I’ll add another generality to the list of generalities about Americans - as with the others, these may or may not apply. YMMV, and all that. > > There’s been a lot of talk about those “death panels” and who decides whether someone will get treatment or not. “Rationing,” I think it was called. I think one of the issues behind the outrages that those topics caused is this: for all Americans think and talk about health care, they don’t have any real understanding of how it works. > > Everyone was all up in arms about rationing or not getting the health care to which they thought they were entitled. The reality is that American health care already is rationed. Everyone yelled about how inefficient the government is and “I’m not going to let some gov’t bureaucrat tell me I can’t get procedure X!” The reality is that Americans are told that they can’t get procedure X all the time. The difference is that right now it’s the Insurance industry telling them these things and rationing their services. > > IMO, too many Americans don’t realize this - their fears are already reality and it’s the Insurance company that’s the enforcer. Why it’s acceptable that some insurance actuary is telling me what I can and cannot get rather than someone actually connected to heath care in some way is not is beyond me. > > Americans may talk and worry about health care all the time, but I don’t think they really think about it enough. I’ve even read in newspaper articles that Americans with insurance don’t get rationed healthcare. I suppose the people who say such ridiculous things think that the insurance companies have completely unlimited budgets. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/117 "2010-01-22T01:46:53Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > I’ll add another generality to the list of generalities about Americans - as with the others, these may or may not apply. YMMV, and all that. > > There’s been a lot of talk about those “death panels” and who decides whether someone will get treatment or not. “Rationing,” I think it was called. I think one of the issues behind the outrages that those topics caused is this: for all Americans think and talk about health care, they don’t have any real understanding of how it works. > > Everyone was all up in arms about rationing or not getting the health care to which they thought they were entitled. The reality is that American health care already is rationed. Everyone yelled about how inefficient the government is and “I’m not going to let some gov’t bureaucrat tell me I can’t get procedure X!” The reality is that Americans are told that they can’t get procedure X all the time. The difference is that right now it’s the Insurance industry telling them these things and rationing their services. > > IMO, too many Americans don’t realize this - their fears are already reality and it’s the Insurance company that’s the enforcer. Why it’s acceptable that some insurance actuary is telling me what I can and cannot get rather than someone actually connected to heath care in some way is not is beyond me. > > Americans may talk and worry about health care all the time, but I don’t think they really think about it enough. Perhaps other non-US people have a better sense of this than me but, for me, ‘rationing’ was right up there with ‘death panels’ in the bizarre stake. I mean rationed how? Last time I heard of rationing was after WW2 . . . I also never understood why Americans thought politicians would make healthcare decisions, as if they’re in some way qualified . . . why would anyone think that would work come election time? Maybe I didn’t understnad the arguments. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2010, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/118 "2010-01-22T06:21:22Z")
> [@](#): > > Everyone was all up in arms about rationing or not getting the health care to which they thought they were entitled. The reality is that American health care already is rationed. Yup. It’s just that they think " government run= teh EVIL. Gotta privatize privatize privatize up the wazoo! ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2010, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/119 "2010-01-23T08:58:21Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > This would have been in the late 90’s in the Ontario Province and is 3rd person. My co-worker’s Canadian Father in-law needed heart by-pass surgery. Not sure how long the diagnosis took but the surgery was delayed for over 6 months and in that time his health deteriorated significantly. By the time he was eligible, the surgery was further delayed because he was not stable enough to operate on. Ontario is weird for health care and we are probably the best province in Canada if you are in need of something. Toronto is the epicenter of health care in the province and has the majority of the balanced health treatment centers, but the farther out into the frontiers of the province, that drastically changes. The fact of the matter is that if we wanted more doctors , we could grow them. Easy, anyone who is currently paying for med school, has already graduated but has a boat load of school debt, and anyone who wants to come from overseas, that can pass our requirements. The catch, your in the army for five years and you get deployed in country where ever we need you, same with nurses and med techs. All tuition and bills paid for. But that means tax money and we seem to be satisified with the current way of doing business. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Torpor\_Beast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/71e660/32.png) [@Torpor\_Beast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Torpor_Beast)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2010, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105/120 "2010-01-23T09:40:33Z")
My only bad experience with the services provided by the national health insurance in Finland is the time when my mother got an adverse effect to a painkiller during her cancer treatment and started hallucinating. This being the case of some sort of malpractice did occur to me, but we did not press the issue, since the episode went away fairly quickly and did not happen again. Otherwise the treatment was very efficient and the nurses and doctors were friendly and helpful. Unfortunately the cancer had already spread throughout her body when she first consulted a doctor about it, so there was not much to be done. A couple of years later my 70 year old father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was scheduled for brachytherapy in a teaching hospital 250km away, with a months or so wait. The treatment and our trips there were paid by the national insurance, and I stayed at a hotel room for a nominal cost while he was in the hospital. The treatment was a complete success and his PSA count has dropped dramatically, with minimal complications. I myself have worked in a hospital’s IT department while doing my [Civilian Service](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_service). We used to use the same break room with the nurses and doctors. And every single one of them was an exceedingly cool person. The nurses showed genuine concern for their patients. I did run into bureaucrats too, but they weren’t the ones making the decisions about individual people’s treatment. This particular hospital had a ward for patients with chronic and/or fatal diseases. Many times you would see a nurse crying in the break room because they’d tried everything to help some patient and there was nothing to be done. Someone commented earlier about migraine treatment they got. My experience was a bit different. Some time after I’d turned 18, I got my first migraine attack. I lost vision from my right eye, kept vomiting and had the worst headache of my life. I went to a local hospital’s ER, and since I was pale as snow, they immediately realized that something was wrong. I was quickly diagnosed, given painkillers and a mild sedative and shown a spare hospital bed and slept it off in 4 hours or so. After that I got an appointment to a doctor to get a recipe for migraine meds, which I had to wait for a couple of days. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-european-australian-healthcare-horror-stories/525105.md?page=7)