As I have said before, since there are only so many doctors and other medical professionals, there are only a couple of ways to manage a healthcare system:
- You can tinker with supply. That is, you can increase supply by making it easier to be a doctor, which carries its own liabilities, like lowering the skill level of the professionals performing brain surgery and the like; or
- You can tinker with demand. There are two ways to do this, as far as I can see. You can either allow price to control demand, or you can let a government official set quotas and a waiting list.
The US has chosen to (mostly) control demand by allowing prices to dictate what people can afford. Canada has gone the route of price controls and government setting quotas with waiting lists. Let’s check to see how that is going:
Meanwhile, patients who need an ultrasound get one at my hospital within 30 minutes of it being ordered. An MRI takes a bit longer- we usually can get someone in within a day or two.
8 Comments
@HomeInSC · September 3, 2025 at 6:27 am
Deporting 30M illegals might take some of the pressure off.
Joe Blow · September 3, 2025 at 7:42 am
While I recognize the healthcare industry impacts you personally and more directly than most of us here… as an outside, I see a system that is terminally fucked.
Not your doing – that’s the sad part. Lots of smart, hard working, caring people work in the field – my daughter is on her way to PA school! I’m adjacent as well now! That being said, its about as corrupt as any industry I’ve ever seen.
The insurance industry as one giant grift and scam. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of horror stories, wife works in dentistry, and we’ve all been personally impacted by denied claims, etc. There’s something fundamentally wrong w/ the way the system works, and it all comes down to greed. I don’t know if we as a people can devise a system that can’t be corrupted – frankly I believe capitalism does the best job of this. Regardless, the current system, is well and truly fucked. In the entire western world, not just the US (your use of CA’s medical system is a great foil to the US-based system). The two extreme’s are evident, and both fail miserably.
I think it was fucked up and broken before the Government got involved, but obummercare was a giant nuclear bomb in the middle of all of it. It can’t be fixed – scrap it and start over. There’s a D.O. in my AO, and I’ll be going to him if the need arises. In the interim, I’ve simply avoided medical care for the last several years entirely, and intend to continue for as long as possible.
Divemedic · September 3, 2025 at 10:40 am
The issue is that the people who ask for healthcare are separated from those who are paying for it.
SiG · September 3, 2025 at 7:54 am
Dude: “I tore up my knee playing softball.”
Gubmint: “We’ll do nothing for two years but it let it heal. Which means it will heal incorrectly, which will leave you handicapped, and complicate the surgery if we ever allow it.”
Dude: “You’re making me suffer for two years before you’ll do anything?”
Gubmint: “Sucks to be you. But it’s free health care! You could drive down to the US and get it fixed next week, but think of how much it will cost you.”
Steady Steve · September 3, 2025 at 4:03 pm
And if it’s too much of a burden on your life we can offer Medical Assistance In Dying.
Himself · September 3, 2025 at 9:00 am
When this story came out some time ago, it turned out that if your dog needed an ultrasound, you could get one straight away.
Sad that they have to cross the border to do this.
FWIW – I had a bump in my neck. Took a week to get a needle biopsy. when they got the results, I was at an ENT oncologist by the end of the week. He ordered a pet scan, and I waddled over and got it that afternoon.
Within a month, I was in treatment.
SoCoRuss · September 3, 2025 at 11:13 am
This is clearly some right wing 2A supporters lies. EVERYONE knows just how wonderful the socialized medicine systems in Canada and Europe are!
This must be shut down now. The left must riot, cancel this misinformation and demand fairness in reporting monitored by the true patriots of the CPUSA!!!
Any sane person realizes this is pure bullshit to be done to people and yet the Canuckies allow this to happen to them. Just like the American sheeple allow the shit show they live in.
The programing is world wide….
TLF · September 4, 2025 at 4:15 am
Australia restricts supply and access, too. I run, and noticed on a runners’ message board once an Australian woman who said she needed surgery for ITBS (a partial tendon resection). The only problem for her was that it had been seven years since her diagnosis, and she finally had her surgery date approaching. She had long ago given up running, and her question was, “Is there any point to doing this now?”
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