Canadian Health System - Really so?

LOL!

It was a movie, trying to make a point. I live in Montreal, and hospitals are modern and very well equiped. Personnel (doctors and nurses) are quite competent and devoted.

The biggest problem we have is the wait in the emergency ward. Triage is very quick, but if your emergency does not warrant immediate treatment (like you took a bullet in the head and you're not dead yet), you can wait a couple of hours. Also, to get some tests done can be long.

Oh, yeah, the point of the movie is that getting really sick (like having cancer) and having to depend on others, losing dignity and independance is a shitty situation, and no matter what treatment you get, especially if you're a baby boomer suddenly confronted to your mortality, *everything* is lousy.

Also, the heroine bit in the film is stupid. Doctors here have no problem giving you as much morphine as you need to stop the pain.

BTW, I'm not in the medical profession, and I write from observations and descriptions given by friends and family.

I hope this helps.

I appreciated the film's comedy in portraying some of the problems with our healthcare system from the major (beds in the hall yet unused rooms/floors, and stressed and overworked nurses) to the minor (getting someone to fix Remy's roommate's TV and the crammed quarters that families often have to share within the rooms).

For a couple of years I was a frequent visitor to the two major hospitals in Victoria, BC, the capitol city of Canada's western province. The biggest problem was getting into the hospital through the ER, where the waits were incredibly long and there were frequently not enough beds or rooms, providing situations like those shown in the film.

In my case I was turned away from any actual help despite having a gaping wound in my stomach which was bleeding. The first time I went in I was bandaged up and sent home because no one there was qualified to do any more than that for me, and when I returned two hours later because I was still bleeding I was simply rebandaged, loaded up on morphine and sent home again since there were no beds for me.

The next day I returned in even worse shape and was finally found a bed that could be crammed into a storage area until a bed in a room opened up for me. And all this time there were rooms not being used, just not enough staff for them (I'm guessing here - I don't know why else every fifth room would not be used). Unfortunately my parents didn't have Sebastien's money or creativity to get me set up in my own room ;) I should mention that private rooms were available, although they cost a fee of I believe $40 a night.

Our health care system does have its problems, but in my opinion it is still a good system. The surgeries, medication, supplies, and homecare that I received here for FREE would have nearly bankrupted my family had we lived in the USA and not had great health coverage. On the other hand, I did consider the possibility of having the surgeries in the US since the standard wait down there was 3 weeks between surgeries and I had to wait nearly a year due to the backlog in our system and the fact that my second surgery wasn't considered "Urgent" but rather "Necessary".

Sorry about the long ramble.

yeah i have heard that there is the most barebones care available in some cases.

It's actually illegal to provide private health care in Canada. Everyone must receive services from the government, apart from some specially designated areas that are left open.

The good part of this is universal coverage. Everyone gets treated.

The bad part is that there is no incentive for efficiency or service. Resources are apportioned Soviet-style, by the ministry from above, and the signals that markets provide aren't available. So there is a LOT of waste. (The bureaucrat in the movie is symptomatic of how the health care system is run.)

It's too bad Canadians are so ideologically wedded to a public-only system (of course we are lucky we have the United States, like you saw in the movie, for people who can afford to pay for better care). Bureaucrats won't even countenance the private provision of public services, ie suppliers all get the same $$$ from the government and then let them do as good a job as they can.

It's also really hard to find a doctor, and many doctors are leaving, because they are treated like state property and taken for granted.

(I'm a Canadian and a doctor's son, and lucky for now, healthy.)

Hi, Dan888.

In a nutshell, I would have to say yes and no. For don't forget this is satire. So to questions such as : "Is American TV in 1976 as awful as depicted in Sydney Lumet's Network?" or "Is the Italian prison system in 1971 as awful as depicted in Nanni Loy's Detenuto in atteso di giudizia?" or "Are the pro and con militants engaged in the abortion issue as crazy as described in Alexander Payne's Citizen Ruth?", the answer is always "yes and no, because this is satire". But well, as a famous story teller, Hans Christian Andersen, said : "It is from reality that our tales of imagination take their substance."

More to the point : what degree of exageration is this specific satire putting on exactly? Well, I'd say : outrageously exagerated in Network (to the point of undermining the film's credibility in a couple of scenes), quite exagerated in Citizen Ruth (but most arrows are well on target! bing! bing!) - and only slightly exagerated or "concentrated" in both Detenuto in atteso di giudizia and Barbarian Invasions. (As a matter of fact, Arcand's type of tragicomic, popular satire is more reminiscent to me of Cinecittà's golden age of dark comedy (1958-1978) than of Hollywood. But it is true that you guys in the USA missed most of commedia all'italiana, didn't you? Ah, poor, poor you, if only you knew what you missed...)

The frightening opening sequence in the hospital corridors gives the key. I live in Montreal. I've just had an accident two months ago (serious enough but luckily I'm all in one piece). So my passage in a crowded Quebec emergency yard is fresh to memory. Plus it was at Hôpital Saint-Luc, in downtown Montreal : one of our worst hospitals when it comes to waiting time. What I can tell you is that the emergency corridors were overcrowded, for sure, but not as overcrowded as you seen in the film (less overcrowded by, say, 15 per cent?) The personel was exhausted, but more friendly by at least 15 per cent than what you have in the movie. All in all, the guy's at Saint-Luc did a fine job on my poor, unattentive bicyclist's body. It's just that I had to wait six hours to get it done... That's a bit long, for sure. But as a citizen I accept it as the price to pay to have a health system that is available - if not readily - to everyone, regardless of revenue.

Maybe I could phrase it like this : on the worse day of the year (let's say the Working Day long week-end), a hospital yard - in Montreal, that is : much less likely in other, less populated cities - COULD look a lot like what you have in Les Invasions barbares's now famous opening sequence. But if you draw an average, no. Satire is an alarm bell : and I can at least tell you that the movie's tremendous success in Quebec and it's surprising success abroad most certainly has contributed a great deal to put more pressure on our governments (not unlike yours, our country works with two levels of government, one provincial, one federal) in order to solve at least the most evidently dysfonctional aspects of the puzzle.

I must also add that the whole episode where Remy's son bribes his way into the health system is the fruit of a sarcastic imagination. In reality, if such a thing happened, there would be a huge first-page scandal all over the country, and a commission d'enquête, and at least a couple of heads would roll. (As a matter of fact soccer in increasingly popular around here).

Cordialement,

Arca1943

[deleted]

Well, I don't know about the rest of Canada, but I'm a french-canadian from Québec, and it really is this way... I hate to go to the hospital, because I'm scared of getting sick...

«Je sais que le fantôme de l'Opéra
Est là, en moi»

I was horrified at the commentors message on the original page that said that Canadian health care systems were failing. I'm a Canadian and am extremely happy for the care i receive. We have full and manatory health care in my province of Ontario unlike the US and other countries in which you must pay for care and our doctors are some of the best in the world. Hospitals are top-notch and medecine is widely available. No, our health care system is not decrepit and the movie's portrayal of it i think is just a background and helps to portray the failings of a family and a person.