Canadian Health Care, good system or bad?

Been too busy/tired/lazy to write in the block for such a long time. I guess it took something to get me really annoyed to start again.
Watching the debate about health care going on in the United States, I see an amazing example of misinformation. One example of this is even though President Obama insists that he’s not aiming for a Canadian style health system, his opponents insist that he is! Even those who are on his side use the Canadian system as an example of one to be desired.
Anyhow, I’m not an American, so I won’t get into the debate as to what you guys should do. Well, other to make this comment: aren’t you embarrassed that millions and millions of your citizens have no health insurance, that sick or injured people actually get turned away from emergency rooms if they can’t pay? That the infant mortality rate in the richest country in the world is thirty third on the list of countries?

The actual purpose of this entry is to balance some of the horror stories that have been spread about the Canadian health system. I won’t be giving government propaganda or statistics; just my own family’s example.

I have been living in Canada for thirty five years. During most of that time we didn’t have occasion to use the medical system any more than the average family with four active boys might do.

Then, about ten years ago, everything changed.

Our youngest, a seemingly healthy sixteen year-old, was rushed to emergency with appendicitis. There was never any question as to whether he would be treated! We had to show our health card, of course, but nobody gets turned away from a Canadian ER. If one is a foreigner, or isn’t in the system for any reason, financial details are sorted out later.

Then came the shocker, our son has Crohn’s disease. If you don’t know what that is, follow the link. It’s debilitating, it’s painful, it’s currently incurable, and in the US it would be financially ruinous to my family.
In the last ten years, my son has had many stays in hospital; we’ve lost count of blood and other tests. There are expensive drugs, and the constant care of an MD and a Gastroenterologist required.
A short time later, my wife was rushed to hospital with life threatening haemorrhaging. A complicated hysterectomy followed.
In the last four years, after more than sixty years of never having to go to a doctor except for small injuries, I have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, had a prostatectomy, an appendectomy and a hernia operation.

The Canadian health care system is far from perfect, but apart from the monthly dues, all of the above has cost not a penny!

My retirement funds have suffered lately, but if I were a citizen of a certain other country, they would have been wiped out.

So, even if every negative over the top comment you’ve ever heard about our health care system were true, it’s still better than the nothing that millions of other people have.

And I, for one, am very thankful.