Personal experiences with health care in US and Canada

[JMDEM]

I'd like to share with you some of my personal experiences with healthcare in both the US and Canada. I have lived in the US most of my life, but went to Canada for four years to attend a graduate program and was eligible to put myself and my family on the Canadian health insurance plans.

I had to go on COBRA in the US on two separate occasions, and the cost for my family and I were $1000 and $1300 a month, respectively. Of course, I had to pay this at a time that I did not have a job or any source of income. I had to choose COBRA becase pre-existing conditions made my wife and I ineligible for any private insurance. I had to cash in 401K plans to pay for health insurance.

On another occasion, when I was single, I was self employed, and tried to get private health insurance, and was turned down by every company. The reason? During one brief period (for a few months), a doctor had given me prozac to see if it would help with insomnia problems I was having at the time. He thought that mild depression might be causing my insomnia. Boom -- nobody would cover me later on, because I must be a psycho or something. And this was at a time when every 4th ad on TV was for some type of anti-depressant. I was able to finally land some ridiculously priced catastrophic coverage.

Immediately upon getting married to my wife, I tried putting her on my insurance plan. But the insurance company kept stalling stalling stalling for some weird reason. Finally, after two months, they reported that they had lost the paperwork and we had to start over again. But she had gotten pregnant in that period. No insurance company would cover her, for any reason, for any amount. I had to pay $20,000 for the birth of my son, due to some complications during pregnancy. I am sure, to this day, that it was the unwritten POLICY of insurance companies to stall on insuring newlyweds for the very reason that so many get pregnant right after marriage.

My wife gets migraine headaches. One insurance plan we were on would only allow her 8 Imitrex pills a month for migraines. So on a few occasions, she has run out of Imitrex, and has gone to the emergency room because the pain was so severe from a migraine. The cost for these visits (billed to insurance) has averaged around $1,000 a visit. They always do the same thing -- 5 minutes with a doctor, a shot if Imitrex, a shot of anti-nausea medication, let her sit for an hour, then send her home. $1,000.

Now -- move to Canada.

My wife suffers from rather severe pain due to a neck injury she received in an auto accident shortly before moving to Canada. She desparately needed a pain specialist. Well, there were very few pain specialists in the province of Alberta. She got put on a waiting list to see one, and stayed on that waiting list for 4 years, and never saw one. She never moved up on the waiting list. We were told when she first went on the list that she would have to wait 1 1/2 years. We were told at the end of 4 years that she was still 1 1/2 years away from seeing anyone.

To combat her pain, she had to take ever increasing dosages of pain meds. Then they refused to raise the dose anymore, and instead slapped her with the label of "drug addict". They forced her into a drug withdrawal program for a month where she basically sat in a hospital bed with almost no help for 30 days. She left on her own due to the excrutiating pain she was in. She eventually found a family doctor that was willing to put her back on pain meds, with an absolute ceiling on the amount prescribed.

Her neck injury involves a rare condition where there is a bubble of fluid in her spinal cord. She really needs MRIs and CT scans to monitor this situation. In the entire province of Alberta, there are exactly 2 CT machines -- one in Calgary, and one in Edmonton. It typically took MONTHS to get a CT scan, IF they decided that you should get one. Otherwise you were shit out of luck. In her case they allowed her ONE CT scan in 4 years. One. And it took 3 months to get.

While we were in Canada, the Liberal party started complaining about the ridiculous waiting lists for getting treatment, given that Alberta was awash in oil wealth at the time. Canada, or at least Alberta was mass generating "drug addicts" (like my wife) who had to wait 5 years for knee replacements and shoulder replacements and the like, and in the meanwhile, got hooked on oxycontin and other similar drugs. So the Conservative Party's response (they were in power) was to do nothing about the waiting lists but to, rather, crack down on the pain meds, making them more and more difficult to get, until these poor people (like my wife) were labeled drug addicts and forced into rehab when their only sin was massive pain. Doctors became absolutely paranoid about prescribing any pain meds because doctors were being prosecuted for this. The message to the liberals? Don't complain, or we will make things even harder on you.

In a one year period in Calgary, there were two deaths in hospital waiting rooms from pregnant women hemmoraging and bleeding to death -- right there in the waiting rooms. These were big scandals, indeed, but they happened.

Our entire family knew that you had better REALLY need to go to the hospital if you went due to the atrocious waiting times. One time I took my daughter in for an apparent allergic reaction to something (we weren't sure what, but she had red bumps all over). They DID see her pretty quickly (3 hours) because they considered it potentially life threatening. However, there was an 80 year old woman there with the flu who had been waiting 12 hours. Her family was taking 4 hour shifts staying with her. She still hadn't been seen when we left, and I have no idea how long she had to wait past the 12 hours I knew about. Our family finally realized that we would only go to the hospital if it was serious enough to be taken by ambulance, because then you were treated within a couple of hours or so. Otherwise -- forget it. And we also realized that this was conscious policy on the part of the health care system there -- constant pressure and intimidation NOT to seek help if possible.

I had some serious medical problems too that I don't want to go into. However, I continually ran into the situation that if something was life-threatening, it was taken care of. But if it wasn't -- forget it. I had an operation that saved my life, but then later on I needed a second operation to repair some significant damage caused by the first. That second operation never happened. Forget it. I was even lectured by a doctor that "how dare I insist on a non-critical operation that could take away medical services from someone needing the help to save his or her life". I am now seeking that second operation in the US, and the doctors are absolutely shocked that they would not do it in Canada.

These are just my direct experiences of both health care systems. Neither is in anyway satisfactory. The "for profit" situation in the US is absolutely brutal and inhumane. However, my experience of the Canadian system (at least in Alberta) was that it was completely neglegent in many ways. I do not know the answers for either system. Well, in both countries, people obviously must complain. Canada's system would work with one simple fix -- more resources being pumped into the system. (2 CT machines in all of Alberta is completely ridiculous). But my experience is that, for some reason, Canadians simply put up with this neglegent system for some reason. Canadians put a very high emphasis on cooperation and getting along with one another, but in this case I think this goodwill is misfounded.