A new poll says long wait times lead half of Canadians to avoid seeing a doctor or going to the hospital.
The poll was conducted by Léger and commissioned by right-leaning think-tanks the Montreal Economic Institute, SecondStreet.org, and the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
The percentage of respondents who say they avoid consulting doctors because of wait times is highest among women, people over 55 and Quebecers.
I had sharp chest pains and waited 7 hours in the emergency room in the USA. Granted it was stress, but it felt like I was having a heart attack.
If you’re not dying in the next 2 hours, don’t go to the ER. And even if you are that’s not a guarantee. I’m sorry that this part doesn’t matter what side of the border you’re on.
That’s smart, I’ll have to remember the next time I want to go to the ER to checks notes ask my doctor if it’s serious enough to go to the doctor
You have a doctor? What’s that like? I have a clinic.
If you can avoid going to the ER because you would have to wait, then you don’t need the ER obviously
Or, alternatively, you’ve scheduled an appointment with your doctor and he said he can see you in two weeks. Hopefully it doesn’t get worse before then. And if you don’t have a doctor, sucks to be you I guess.
A health problem is either an emergency or it is not an emergency. If it’s not, you can wait the two weeks.
If it is, you shouldn’t be making an appointment anyway, you should be seeking immediate help.
If you think it’s an emergency, and a medical professional tells you it’ll be X amount of time before you can see a doctor, that means you’ve been triaged and it may not be as much of an emergency as you think it is.
If you think it’s an emergency, and a medical professional tells you it’ll be X amount of time before you can see a doctor, that means you’ve been triaged and it may not be as much of an emergency as you think it is.
Or it may be more of an emergency than they think it is.
Tragedies can happen, yes. In a perfect world, we would have enough medical manpower to see everyone immediately, every time, all the time. We don’t live in that world. The article is particularly interesting given the original context of the post here. Should that person not have gone at all? They’d still have died.
Based on the article we’re discussing, I wouldn’t have blamed them if they didn’t. And if they didn’t, someone would have almost certainly assumed it must not have been a real emergency then. Someone else commented in this thread about sitting in the ER for 7 hours with chest pains. Fortunately in that person’s case it was not a heart attack, but in both cases it was “not an emergency”. That’s the problem. Not having a family doctor adds to that problem, but that’s the problem.
The poll was conducted by Léger and commissioned by right-leaning think-tanks
This is the point at which you should stop reading this obvious bullshit.
Jean Marc Léger himself is more and more a right-wing propaganda person. He uses polls as ways to create right-wing news.
10 to 20 years ago, it was considered unbiased, but today it has a clear bias.
It’s important to fight all attempts to introduce private healthcare as any kind of norm or quick fix. This will deteriorate social programs and Canada will quickly become the USA.
I’ve been fighting with SunLife to get a treatment covered and it straight up reminds me of the hell I used to go through in the US
- It took 2 months and at least a dozen calls to convince them that it’s covered, when it says right in my coverage doc that it’s covered
- They don’t tell you any status updates. Everything is a letter sent through snail mail, and they refuse to tell you anything over the phone
- They withheld a secret third form from me for over a month, after the initial two forms they made my doctor fill out
- Their phone system has a bunch of robo-loops built in. When you finally get someone there’s a chance they’ll just hang up on you
- Even after I filled out and submitted all forms via their online portal, multiple times, they didn’t “receive” the forms for about two weeks
- Now that I have a letter from them saying it’s covered 100%, they pretend they don’t do direct billing and require me to first get the procedure and pay the full $31k then hope for a refund. Besides the insanity of assuming people have $31k just laying around and can wait months to get it back, I don’t trust that they’ll keep their word
- Despite sending in my initial estimate in fucking august, I still don’t have a date due to their delays
SunLife can go fuck itself. My coverage ends in December so it really feels like they’ve been purposefully dragging their feet. For-profit health insurance is a scam.
I had a 30 day lapse in coverage and I had a medical need that set me back $30,000 because I did not have insurance.
Obligatory reminder that the EU has private health care and is not the USA.
In Germany someone I knew only had a hospital bed before they died because they had private insurance.
You just described Canada today. My mother’s immune system is compromised. She needs one. She also has private insurance. That’s still not guaranteed.
So that’s a call for more public funding, not more private for profit care
It’s a call for both, like they do in places like Germany. It is possible to have a properly run two-tier health care system. If your comparison is the US, you’re not actually arguing against what I said but against what you heard.
If you have properly funded public healthcare, then there is no need for private. German has it because of conservative types pushing for profit driven models. As soon as profit is the metric, then patient quality of care suffers
It is very possible to have a two-tier health care system, still value the public health care model, and have a right wing government. They’ve done it for years in Norway. And even in Germany, no one significant is pushing for full privatization. That is strictly an American concept and Canada would do well to train itself out of it. Especially since we’re turning away from America and toward the EU.
I live here in the United States. During the brief period of my life when I moved to Dallas, TX, for a job with health insurance, my wait time for an appointment for a new patient physical was 1 year. Canada, private coverage isn’t going to do shit to fix wait times. If you want to fix wait times here’s what you gotta do, increase the # of doctors. To do that you’ll need to:
- Reduce how much it costs for doctors to get trained.
- Pay doctors a livable wage that’s takes into account costs of undergrad and med school.
This will require the rich to pay taxes. When it comes to collecting those taxes, you’re probably going to have to pry it out of their cold dead fingers
We could probably also get the money by:
-
Demanding the feds pay what they used to pay (50% of funding for this stuff used to come from the feds unti lthe 90’s)
-
Not wasting the money on stupid shit, like a highway we don’t need, a tunnel we don’t need under an existing highway, or cancelling contracts early and resulting in penalties… just to name a few.
Not buying a private jet for the Premier probably wouldn’t hurt either.
This will require the rich to pay taxes. When it comes to collecting those taxes, you’re probably going to have to pry it out of their cold dead fingers.
Yes, I read that. And I pointed to a few things (trust me, there’s a laundry list of them) we could be doing before we reach that point.
Also, I feel it necessary to point out that there are a lot more billionaires in California alone than all of Canada, nevermind the rest of the US. Taxing your rich would have a whole lot more of an effect than taxing ours.
Also, I feel it necessary to point out that there are a lot more billionaires in California alone than all of Canada, nevermind the rest of the US. Taxing your rich would have a whole lot more of an effect than taxing ours.
I agree. Tell it to nazi.world.
If they won’t listen to you, they sure as hell won’t listen to me.
-
I avoid going to the hospital whenever possible, instead going to a newer walk in clinic with few patients so I get in quickly.
I know there are going to be wait times, but whenever I’ve had a serious issue the though “I might have to wait” was not enough to make me not go.
The real issue is we have a lot of people got to the hospital for things their family doctor should be able to do, but we’re understaffed and they can’t book in time.
And wait times are not as bad as they were during covid. If they are a problem, hiring more auxiliary staff like nurses to streamline doctors time is a good investment.
I won’t go to a hospital unless I’m literally dying. Because unless you’re literally dying, every hospital I’ve been to as a patient makes you wait at least 6 hours. Fortunately I was personally very rarely a patient there, but being there for 6 hours while the person you’re with is trying to keep themselves upright isn’t fun either.
Well, kinda good? You shouldn’t be going to a hospital for much less than that. That’s what family doctors are for.
And if I had one, I’d agree. I have a walk-in clinic instead. And if I develop a problem after about noon, that’s me fucked until tomorrow and hopefully it doesn’t get worse between now and then.
Ironically, people avoid the hospital in the US because we can’t afford it, and yet somehow the wait times in my country are still atrocious.
Don’t let the pedo billionaires ruin your healthcare, Canada!
Don’t worry, the “pedo-billionnaires wannabe” will take care of it, no need for the real thing
Here’s the actual data:
https://ontariohealth.ca/system/reporting/performance/time-spent-in-emergency-departments
Perception is not reality: 2.1 hours. This is just feeding the myth that privatization will reduce wait times.
US wait times: 2.35 hrs, then you get a $10,000 bill for a hangnail.
Source?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the link gives it away.
Cool. I didn’t see anything about a $10,000.00 hangnail. I must have missed it.
Enjoy your limb. I guess that’s really nice for you.
That’s what you’re questioning? Alright, then.
There’s a reason he probably got banned from Reddit and came here.
I must have missed it.
Half? I wasn’t asked. No one in my household was asked. What was their sample size? Spin doctoring fascists working for the corporate class.
yeah and if your not going to the doctor because of wait times Im guessing whatever you have much not be that big a concern. I remember being in the us at one when I was a kid and it was super crowded and a guy was waiting with his arm all wrapped up in a bloody towel do to a chainsaw accident. He was not wild about the wait but was not going to call it quits.
Ya, that’s not how surveys work.
I recognize that. That’s why I asked about sample size. Distribution matters. What was the z score, etc. The headline is incredibly misleading.
and that doesn’t shorten the wait times ?
I wait less time at the hospital than I do at a walk in clinic in BC 🤣
Edit: for now atleast, shits gonna probably get kinda shitty for a bit here.
I experience less time waiting at a walk-in clinic than I do at the ER. But only because the walk-in clinic eventually closes.
Haven’t been to a doctor let alone a hospital in nearly 8 years, yay for free health care but it’s meaningless if there aren’t enough people in the profession to sustainably cover the country.
I’ve never not had a GP, and we have walk-in ERs all over Ontario. People who make these comments are full of shit.
People who make these comments are full of shit.
So you’re saying you know me better than myself?
Uhhhhh…where are you (province)? Ive always had a family doctor / specialists in eastern Ontario and southern alberta.
BC, I’ve tried contacting local family doctors and setting appointments but always got the “we’re not accepting new patients” or “we’ll get back to you”, I simply don’t have the ambition to drive 2-3 hours back and forth across town just to see a doctor so I eventually just gave up on the hunt.
On the bright side at least I have a dentist!
My family doctor is a walk-in clinic. Good thing I don’t need them, because I’d need to basically show up when they open. Yay for free health care indeed.
