Why our health care system is awesome......

This is just a story from a girl who goes by the online name of "Mofi" writing about a very recent experience with Canadian health care. It's good to hear something positive for a change so I wanted to share this with you............................

"While I know there have been many threads in the past regarding the Canadian health care system, yesterday I was presented with another reason why I love our system and why I love Canada in general.

My boyfriend was managing the workers on one of his brothers contracted job sites ( his brother owns a cement finishing company, and can't be at all the different sites they are contracted for at once) when he was heading up to the roof to assist with something. Unfortunately he fell 10 feet from the roof to the floor below (thank god it wasn't off the side or he might be dead, I think it's like a 10 or 12 story building) and landing awkwardly has fractured his foot.

My boyfriend is still waiting for his his papers to go through, so technically he is still considered a refugee.
Even though he is not a Canadian citizen, he was able to receive hospital care, multiple x-rays and an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon, which cost him not 1 cent.

Even better is that he only waited a few minutes in emergency before they wheeled him off to do the many x-rays and evaluations that they did.

The bad news is he is going to miss at least 6 weeks of work, but the good news is it should all be covered through workers compensation.

So on that note, I think although we may have to wait sometimes, Canada takes a very good job of everyone, even those who are not Canadian citizens, when they really need it."

Source: playa.info

Smoking costs more than only your health!

A new survey suggest that smokers in British Columbia could save between $2,000 and $4,000 a year by quitting and that is only the half of it.

Smokers, their family and friends, who would be spared the perils of their secondhand smoke would all have a dramatically improved health outlook and lower life insurance premiums,

In addition, Dr Fred Bass, an expert in smoking cessation and consultant to the Health Heart Society of British Columbia, found that smokers and their cohorts across Canada could save the health care system more than one billion dollars a year.

He added, "About seven per cent of our total health care bill is attributable to smoking, and those costs are not just in the last years of a smoker's life.
Research shows that smoking also interferes with recovery from surgery and those who stop just two months before surgery face fewer pulmonary and cardiovascular complications and spend fewer days in intensive care."

There's no doubt that smokers themselves are most aware of the impact that smoking has on their wallets. What many smokers may not realize is how much it adds up to in the long term. The average 45-year-old smoker, who quits today and puts the money into savings, could have more than 100,000 dollars to spend during retirement while they enjoy their smoke free health, according to a survey commissioned by Pfizer Canada, a pharmaceutical company.

Almost five million Canadians, or 19 percent of the population, are smokers. According to Health Canada, close to half of smokers will die from smoking before they turn 70 years old.

British Columbia has the lowest smoking rates in Canada at 16.4 per cent, Bass said, although it jumps from a teenage rate of 12.4 per cent to 24 per cent between the ages of 20 to 25 when young people have money, are out of school, and are targeted by tobacco marketing.

ASH

Canadian health care costs are growing significantly

A new study warns that within three decades the Saskatchewan government will be dedicating 50 per cent of its budget on health care.

Provincial health-care spending continues to grow at an unsustainable rate and will consume more than half of all revenues in six of 10 Canadian provinces by 2035 unless changes are made, according to the Fraser Institute's report Paying More, Getting Less 2007: Measuring the Sustainability of Public Health Insurance in Canada which was released on Monday.

"If health-care spending continues at current rates without changes to our health care system, provinces are going to hit a wall where they have to choose between reducing other services such as education, or imposing further restrictions and rationing of health care,'' said Brett Skinner, the institute's director of health, pharmaceutical and insurance policy research, in a prepared statement.

"If Canadians refuse to embrace change or other policy alternatives, they can expect to continue paying more and getting less when it comes to health care.''

According to the report Saskatchewan would be spending 50 per cent of its provincial budget on health care by 2028, while Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador are the most urgent cases. Health-care spending in those two provinces could consume half of all revenues within 10 year.

Saskatchewan Health did not comment on the report.

The study noted that in 2006-07 the Saskatchewan health budget consumed 34.8 per cent of all provincial revenues.

The report notes several factors influencing provincial revenues that could change in the coming years, thereby affecting the percentage of revenues eaten up by health care spending.

Provinces, such as Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador have been affected by inflation in energy prices over the past five years, according to the Fraser Institute. It's report noted that it is uncertain if the economic conditions driving increases in energy prices will persist in the future, making it unclear whether recent growth rates for gross domestic product (GDP) and revenue will continue.

The report also pointed out that the growth rates for government health spending in Manitoba and the Maritime provinces are subsidized by federal transfers to a much higher degree than rates in other provinces.

The report goes on to conclude that public health insurance, as it is currently structured in Canada, tends to produce rates of growth in health spending that are not financially sustainable through public means alone. It adds that this is occurring while governments are restricting and reducing the scope of benefits covered under publicly funded health insurance.

In his report Skinner suggests a number of government cost-cutting alternatives such co-payments, user-fees, allowing patients to pay for medical services through private insurance or out-of-pocket, and permitting both for-profit and non-profit health providers to compete for the delivery of publicly insured health services.

"Medicare is a government-run health insurance monopoly. Its design is flowed because it is influenced by politics and not economics. It is not accountable to patients and is barely accountable to taxpayers,'' Skinner said.

"If we want to ensure we have a health care system that's affordable and sustainable, Canadians need to start looking at private sector health-care policy alternatives.''

Leader-Post

Canada's Expectant Moms Heading to U.S. to Deliver

"I just want to go home and see my kids," she said from her Seattle hospital bed. "I think it's stupid I have to be here."

Mothers in British Columbia are having a baby boom, but it's the United States that has to deliver, and that has some proud Canadians blasting their highly touted government health care system.

Jill Irvine: "I'm a born-bred Canadian, as well as my daughter and son, and I'm ashamed!" Irvine's daughter, Carri Ash, is one of at least 40 mothers or their babies who've been airlifted from British Columbia the U.S. this year because Canadian hospitals didn't have room for the preemies in their neonatal units.

"It's a big number and bigger than the previous capacity of the system to deal with it," said Adrian Dix, a British Columbia legislator. "So when that happens, you can't have a waiting list for a mother having the baby. She just has the baby."

The mothers have been flown to hospitals in Seattle, Everett, Wash., and Spokane, Wash., to receive treatment, as well as hospitals in the neighboring province of Alberta, Dix said. Three mothers were airlifted in the first weekend of October alone, including Carri Ash.

Canada's socialized health care system, hailed as a model by Michael Moore in his documentary, "Sicko," is hurting, government officials admit, citing not enough money for more equipment and staff to handle high risk births.

Sarah Plank, a spokeswoman for the British Columbia Ministry of Health, said a spike in high risk and premature births coupled with the lack of trained nurses prompted the surge in mothers heading across the border for better care.

"The number of transfers in previous years has been quite low," Plank told a reporter. "Before this recent spike we went for more than a year with no transfers to the U.S., so this is something that is happening in other provinces as well."

Critics say these border crossings highlight the dangers of a government-run health care system.

"The Canadian health care system has used the United States as a safety net for years," said Michael Turner of the Cato Institute. "In fact, overall about one out of every seven Canadian physicians sends someone to the United States every year for treatment."

Neonatal intensive care units in Alberta and Ontario have also been stretched to capacity, she said.

The cost of these airlifts and treatments, paid to U.S. hospitals by the province under Canada's universal health care system, runs upwards of $1,000 a child.

"We clearly want to see more capacity built in the Canadian system because it’s also expensive for taxpayers here to send people out of the country," Dix said.

The surge could be due to women giving birth later in life, and passport restrictions and family separation adds to the stress.

"I think it’s reasonable to think that this is a trend that would continue and we have to prepare for it and increase the number of beds to deal with perhaps the new reality of the number of premature babies and newborns needing a higher level of care in Canada," Dix said.

British Columbia has added more neonatal beds and increased funding for specialized nurse training, Plank said.

"There is an identified need for some additional capacity just due to population growth and that sort of thing and that is actively being implemented," she said.

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