Reply #17: My 2 cents...

[SidDithers]

Waiting lists are more myth than reality. I'm not saying they don't exits - they do - and can be ridiculously long for some things (knee or hip replacements for example). However, we never, and I mean NEVER, are in the situation where we have to choose between seeking treatment and buying propane to heat our house. I'm in Toronto, and I saw how SARS shut us down last year. I shudder to think how an American city would deal with an outbreak like that, if so many people would just ignore their symptoms, because the can't afford to see a doc early.

If we need to see a doctor, we would usually try our family doc first to see if they can squeeze us in. If not, we head to emergency, where you'll have to wait depending upon how serious you need care. If the triage nurse fast tracks you - as in the case of the father of the poster above - you go right in and get immediate care.

Here's our real life example. In August, my wife goes to see her family doc for her annual checkup. The doctor finds a lump in her neck (thyroid) and refers us to get an ultrasound. Results from ultrasound come back in a week, and are inconclusive, so we're referred to a surgeon for a needle biopsy. It takes 2 weeks to see the surgeon, and another week to get the results back, which are again inconclusive. The surgeons decides to remove the half of the thyroid with the lump, and surgery is scheduled for a week later. After surgery (2 nights in hospital), pathology takes a month (a long month, when you're thinking cancer) and confirms our fears, it's thyroid cancer. Surgery is scheduled for the following week to remove the other half of the thyroid (another 2 nights).

Start to finish, from finding the lump, to removing both lobes of the thyroid was about 3 1/2 months. It might have gone faster had we gotten confirmed test results on one of the earlier tests. At the end of the whole process, we received an invoice from the hospital for $40, because we had a phone in my wife's room.

My wife now sees an endocrinologist every 6 months and will be taking thyroid medication for the rest of her life - at about $15 every 3 months for the pills.

There is no way that you could ever justify to me that private health insurance can do a better job of protecting a population than single payer, government run health care.

Sid