N.S. Tories make pandemic, health care top priorities as power transition begins (msn.com)

Houston also repeated his campaign promise that his party will improve the health system, including by increasing the number of doctors and shortening surgery wait times.

Meltdown99 said:

Zod said:

Meltdown99 said:

People wait up to 3 hours for an ambulance in NS.  They better fix that…

I was more or less disparaging it, because it's a problem across the whole country.   Here in BC you can't get a GP, the Walking Clinics are overrun.  If you don't show up before it opens and get in line, you're probably not going to see a Doctor that day.   The only real thing people can do is to to emergency at the hospital and spend 5 hours trying to see a Doctor.   The only other option is to use one of the various apps that let you consult a Doctor via videochat (which can work amazingly well for things like renewing a prescription) but other than health care is pretty rough here.

I'm not sure this is something fixable.  It probably needs a few things.  The first is that many Doctor's only want to be Doctor's.  GP's here have to run their own clinic.  People going to med school don't want to deal with that.  Their choosing careers where they get a salary and benefits and don't have to run their own business.  When you factor all the expenses of running a business you make more choosing a career that pays a salary with benefits.  I think if the government want to solve the Doctor issue, they would need create their own government run clinics and change how they pay.  All of which would cost the government more money.   Money they probably don't have to spend.   Ergo I doubt any goverment in our country is going to figure that one out.

We've had massive immigration the past 15 or 20 years, but we haven't scaled up the Doctors with it, so there's an overall Doctor shortage.

It's only going to get worse.  The oldest boomers are only just getting to the age where they need a lot more health car, but it's got a 20 year tail on it.  As the population hump ages into health care it's going to get worse and worse :(  No matter what the government does, I'm not sure they'll be able to keep up with it.   IE any thing they do to try and change it probably won't keep pace with the demand :(

Wow.  I did not realize healthcare was that bad in BC.  The problem is that healthcare is chronically underfunded…

Remember when healthcare came into existence the feds contributed .35 cents of healthcare dollar, now it’s down to .22 cents.  Currently the liberals (taxpayers) are borrowing or plan to borrow up to 127 billion to pay for daycare and child benefit welfare…lmfao…yet these nimrods have no money for healthcare.

why the fuck should my senior dad and I and other taxpayers fund your lifestyle choices.  If you can’t afford kids, don’t have them…

the only people that should get childcare help is the poor and working poor.  

And if Trudeau really cared about the environment then I would think encouraging people to breed and bringing in refugees that make breeding an Olympic sport…

As far as the feds go when it comes to healthcare, it’s a fuck you.

and those provinces that sign onto that daycare bs will see their healthcare get worse…

they’ve just signed up for another program the feds will bail on…just like healthcare.

you’ll now have 2 huge social programs that will be underfunded…

Technically under the constitution Health Care is a provincial expense.  It's optional for the Feds to contribute to it.   I'm not really sure how the Feds pitching it started, but it definitely became something depended on.  That being said I believe we had programs up until around the Cretien government (that might of been started under the Trudeau government?) of 50/50 matching for various social programs.  The problem is that spending spiraled out of control.    Whatever the provinces were spending, the feds were matching, and we had those big deficits in the 80s and early 90s.  The federal government capped what they spend on health care to get the expenses under control.

I completely agree with you on your 2nd point. I have no idea why we're trying to create new social programs when the existing ones are struggling so much.   For me, it's more important to focus on fixing existing programs before starting new ones.

All I really want is a government that wants to focus on the environment and try to fix existing programs (aka Health Care).  I cringe any time we're getting promised above and beyond that :(

Zod said:

Meltdown99 said:

Zod said:

Meltdown99 said:

People wait up to 3 hours for an ambulance in NS.  They better fix that…

I was more or less disparaging it, because it's a problem across the whole country.   Here in BC you can't get a GP, the Walking Clinics are overrun.  If you don't show up before it opens and get in line, you're probably not going to see a Doctor that day.   The only real thing people can do is to to emergency at the hospital and spend 5 hours trying to see a Doctor.   The only other option is to use one of the various apps that let you consult a Doctor via videochat (which can work amazingly well for things like renewing a prescription) but other than health care is pretty rough here.

I'm not sure this is something fixable.  It probably needs a few things.  The first is that many Doctor's only want to be Doctor's.  GP's here have to run their own clinic.  People going to med school don't want to deal with that.  Their choosing careers where they get a salary and benefits and don't have to run their own business.  When you factor all the expenses of running a business you make more choosing a career that pays a salary with benefits.  I think if the government want to solve the Doctor issue, they would need create their own government run clinics and change how they pay.  All of which would cost the government more money.   Money they probably don't have to spend.   Ergo I doubt any goverment in our country is going to figure that one out.

We've had massive immigration the past 15 or 20 years, but we haven't scaled up the Doctors with it, so there's an overall Doctor shortage.

It's only going to get worse.  The oldest boomers are only just getting to the age where they need a lot more health car, but it's got a 20 year tail on it.  As the population hump ages into health care it's going to get worse and worse :(  No matter what the government does, I'm not sure they'll be able to keep up with it.   IE any thing they do to try and change it probably won't keep pace with the demand :(

Wow.  I did not realize healthcare was that bad in BC.  The problem is that healthcare is chronically underfunded…

Remember when healthcare came into existence the feds contributed .35 cents of healthcare dollar, now it’s down to .22 cents.  Currently the liberals (taxpayers) are borrowing or plan to borrow up to 127 billion to pay for daycare and child benefit welfare…lmfao…yet these nimrods have no money for healthcare.

why the fuck should my senior dad and I and other taxpayers fund your lifestyle choices.  If you can’t afford kids, don’t have them…

the only people that should get childcare help is the poor and working poor.  

And if Trudeau really cared about the environment then I would think encouraging people to breed and bringing in refugees that make breeding an Olympic sport…

As far as the feds go when it comes to healthcare, it’s a fuck you.

and those provinces that sign onto that daycare bs will see their healthcare get worse…

they’ve just signed up for another program the feds will bail on…just like healthcare.

you’ll now have 2 huge social programs that will be underfunded…

Technically under the constitution Health Care is a provincial expense.  It's optional for the Feds to contribute to it.   I'm not really sure how the Feds pitching it started, but it definitely became something depended on.  That being said I believe we had programs up until around the Cretien government (that might of been started under the Trudeau government?) of 50/50 matching for various social programs.  The problem is that spending spiraled out of control.    Whatever the provinces were spending, the feds were matching, and we had those big deficits in the 80s and early 90s.  The federal government capped what they spend on health care to get the expenses under control.

I completely agree with you on your 2nd point. I have no idea why we're trying to create new social programs when the existing ones are struggling so much.   For me, it's more important to focus on fixing existing programs before starting new ones.

All I really want is a government that wants to focus on the environment and try to fix existing programs (aka Health Care).  I cringe any time we're getting promised above and beyond that :(

Healthcare needs to be fixed.  That’s a given.  

Zod said:

Meltdown99 said:

People wait up to 3 hours for an ambulance in NS.  They better fix that…

I was more or less disparaging it, because it's a problem across the whole country.   Here in BC you can't get a GP, the Walking Clinics are overrun.  If you don't show up before it opens and get in line, you're probably not going to see a Doctor that day.   The only real thing people can do is to to emergency at the hospital and spend 5 hours trying to see a Doctor.   The only other option is to use one of the various apps that let you consult a Doctor via videochat (which can work amazingly well for things like renewing a prescription) but other than health care is pretty rough here.

I'm not sure this is something fixable.  It probably needs a few things.  The first is that many Doctor's only want to be Doctor's.  GP's here have to run their own clinic.  People going to med school don't want to deal with that.  Their choosing careers where they get a salary and benefits and don't have to run their own business.  When you factor all the expenses of running a business you make more choosing a career that pays a salary with benefits.  I think if the government want to solve the Doctor issue, they would need create their own government run clinics and change how they pay.  All of which would cost the government more money.   Money they probably don't have to spend.   Ergo I doubt any goverment in our country is going to figure that one out.

We've had massive immigration the past 15 or 20 years, but we haven't scaled up the Doctors with it, so there's an overall Doctor shortage.

It's only going to get worse.  The oldest boomers are only just getting to the age where they need a lot more health car, but it's got a 20 year tail on it.  As the population hump ages into health care it's going to get worse and worse :(  No matter what the government does, I'm not sure they'll be able to keep up with it.   IE any thing they do to try and change it probably won't keep pace with the demand :(

You're not correct in your reasons for the shortage of physicians in Canada. It isn't related to the business model for medical clinics, and it isn't a short term issue that can be solved by the federal or provincial governments. There are many, many more applicants for medical school than there are spots, and current practice models are not turning people off. 

The physician shortage has a few major causes, most of which are the result of deliberate policy changes starting in the '80s but which were really implemented in the '90s. Due to a combination of poor projection of future need for physician services and a wish to limit future health care expenditures by reducing the ease of access to physicians, medical school enrollment was deliberately reduced by 10% starting in 1997 onward, on top of an earlier reduction that some provinces undertook in the late 1980s. Inaccurate modelling at the time suggested that if no changes were made there would be a physician surplus, and the fear was that physicians would bill unnecessary services and procedures in order to make a living. So, fewer students were admitted to medical schools, fewer graduated and went on to residency training, and fewer ended up in practice. Taken in conjunction with changes in residency training which led to the elimination of the rotating internship and institution of formal residency training for family doctors, and reduction in acceptance of international medical graduates (again, due to fears of oversupply), and you end up with the situation we have now.

There has been some increase in medical school spots over the years since, but not enough to alter the outcome. In any case, any increase in funding will take more than a decade to produce more licensed doctors, given the time involved in expanding spots at medical schools (which involves recruiting more teaching staff, getting more space, etc.), expanding the residency training spots, expanding the examination process, etc. 

It's not an easy problem to fix, and try as one might, it can't be laid at the feet of the current Liberal government . Establishing clinics for doctors to work in conjunction with other health professionals like nurse practitioners and RNs can help to spread the load and improve care, but the pandemic has kicked the butt of other health professions as well, with so many nurses leaving practice that every day we face nursing shortages and have to scramble to cover even basic staffing of hospital wards and long term care facilities.

As someone who works in health care and sees the impact of medication cost on people every day, I am in favour of a national prescription drug plan. I see it as separate from the physician shortage and important in its own right. 

come for the constant blackface pics, stay for the misspelling of the word "moo". 

I have a question for those of you with a couple of laps around the sun. My last duty station when I was in the USN was Whidbey Island WA in the mid 1990's and we a detachment of Canadian Navy personnel at our facility. They loved using our base medical facilities and had nothing but bad stuff to say about the Canadian medical system. Their complaints are the same as the ones I have been reading about on here; long waits, inefficient, etc. Has the health care situation there gotten better or worse in your opinion from years ago?

JeBurkhardt said:

I have a question for those of you with a couple of laps around the sun. My last duty station when I was in the USN was Whidbey Island WA in the mid 1990's and we a detachment of Canadian Navy personnel at our facility. They loved using our base medical facilities and had nothing but bad stuff to say about the Canadian medical system. Their complaints are the same as the ones I have been reading about on here; long waits, inefficient, etc. Has the health care situation there gotten better or worse in your opinion from years ago?

JeBurkhardt said:

I have a question for those of you with a couple of laps around the sun. My last duty station when I was in the USN was Whidbey Island WA in the mid 1990's and we a detachment of Canadian Navy personnel at our facility. They loved using our base medical facilities and had nothing but bad stuff to say about the Canadian medical system. Their complaints are the same as the ones I have been reading about on here; long waits, inefficient, etc. Has the health care situation there gotten better or worse in your opinion from years ago?

You're asking this question 18 months into a pandemic that has had a major impact on the health care systems around the world, so that's going to colour the answers. Many hospitals are struggling, there can be long waits in the ERs, staff are overworked and burned out, elective surgeries have been delayed, sometimes indefinitely, and there's no end in sight. The need to alter essentially all aspects of day to day procedures adds tremendous time and hassle to everything that has to be done in health care right now, which I think is something that doesn't get recognized if you don't work in the system.

On a larger scale, I think that the issue with shortage of family doctors is the major negative change over the years. Pre-pandemic, things had been improving with respect to wait times for elective procedures and such. Quality measures for non-elective procedures have always been good. Covid has been a major drain on health care dollars and has taken the focus away from almost everything else - but no one here goes broke because of health care costs.

I also think that most people would prefer to use one-stop shopping base medical facilities, assuming the quality there is good, because it would be more convenient. 

JeBurkhardt said:

oftenreading said:

JeBurkhardt said:

I have a question for those of you with a couple of laps around the sun. My last duty station when I was in the USN was Whidbey Island WA in the mid 1990's and we a detachment of Canadian Navy personnel at our facility. They loved using our base medical facilities and had nothing but bad stuff to say about the Canadian medical system. Their complaints are the same as the ones I have been reading about on here; long waits, inefficient, etc. Has the health care situation there gotten better or worse in your opinion from years ago?

You're asking this question 18 months into a pandemic that has had a major impact on the health care systems around the world, so that's going to colour the answers. Many hospitals are struggling, there can be long waits in the ERs, staff are overworked and burned out, elective surgeries have been delayed, sometimes indefinitely, and there's no end in sight. The need to alter essentially all aspects of day to day procedures adds tremendous time and hassle to everything that has to be done in health care right now, which I think is something that doesn't get recognized if you don't work in the system.

On a larger scale, I think that the issue with shortage of family doctors is the major negative change over the years. Pre-pandemic, things had been improving with respect to wait times for elective procedures and such. Quality measures for non-elective procedures have always been good. Covid has been a major drain on health care dollars and has taken the focus away from almost everything else - but no one here goes broke because of health care costs.

I also think that most people would prefer to use one-stop shopping base medical facilities, assuming the quality there is good, because it would be more convenient. 

The pandemic has impacted it for sure. It is doing the same here in larger areas and areas with high COVID numbers. I was thinking more of overall in the years since I was around the Canadians. It seems from the responses that it is easier to get into a Dr. in the US, but once you do, you often have to jump through hoops to get the insurance companies to approve procedures and then hope you can find a provider that is in your network or will take the insurance you have. And you are correct, the cost of medical services, even with decent insurance is out of hand.   

Brock Lesnar (WWE/UFC) has a cottage in my province and goes hunting up here. He came down with a serious case of diverticulitis and was hospitalized and actually nearly died (his account). After he recovered and went back to the States, he infamously kept telling anyone that would listen that Canadian health care is what he imagined would be third world health care. 

I suppose if you don't get all that money can buy, you call it "third world". LOL.