Comments by "" (@AdamBladeTaylor) on "Fantastic New Ad Warns Against For-Profit Private Health Care" video.

When my dad had a heart attack, he was rushed to the hospital, went through bypass surgery, spent three weeks in the hospital recovering (in a nice room with a TV and a window overlooking the garden), then spent the next year doing rehab to get back to top health. He was on a host of medications to help with blood pressure and such as well as antibiotics and other things to help recover from the surgery. The only thing we had to pay for was parking. Meanwhile some years back a friend of mine in the US, who's dad had a similar heart attack... died. Because the bypass surgery that my dad got done immediately and for free, they had to first find a hospital that would do the surgery that their medical insurance would work with... and then were told it would cost them over $100,000 for the surgery (that's AFTER the insurance paid what they would cover, which was only about $20K). PLUS the cost of medications and other things. Which they couldn't afford. So he had to die because of a for profit system that puts money over lives. If they were rich, they could have saved him without a thought. Or, if they were in Canada, he would have been saved by the system.
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Everyone was screaming that trying to change the free healthcare system to a for profit system would be disastrous and ruin the lives of countless people. And in the few small scale tests they've done so far, all have failed miserable. Wait times up for everyone except the rich. Lower quality of care. Less access to doctors. Reduced options in medications. Etc...
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There was a small privatization effort in an area in southern Ontario, where they claimed having a private system means more doctors because doctors would make more. In the end, it basically reduced the amount of doctors available. In the private system, some doctors signed up, and made slightly more money. And they reported how they rarely saw any clients, because nobody could afford to under the new system, and many ended up going back to the public system. Meaning because doctors left to go to the private system that reduced the number of doctors available in the public system, which drastically hurt services there. It's slowly recovering as doctors are coming back. But the damage was done.
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@euanreid6682 LOL! When we know we're going to be there a lot, we usually get a monthly pass, which is like $30. Which is a great deal, as a single day might cost you $12-15.
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@JustMe-vk4fn Canada has a telehealth system. It's completely free of course. And it is staffed by trained professionals. But it's also to be used as a referral. You call them up, go through symptoms, they give you a list of possible issues and recommend who you should see, whether you should hit an emergency room or just book a doctor's appointment, and they'll help you set it up. But it's not a replacement for actual doctor's visits.
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@JustMe-vk4fn It's useful to help manage patient intake. Instead of having a ton of people showing up at the ER for trivial things they can get over the counter fixes for. Helps fight the clutter at hospitals and waiting rooms.
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@sh0werp0wer They were telling the doctors they'd get paid more, because it's for profit, so they could afford to. Of course, because people couldn't afford the for profit system, the doctors had no patients to see, and thus weren't making any money. Meanwhile, because those doctors moved from the public to the private system, it meant the public system now had fewer available doctors, making wait times much longer. The government tried to claim that having the choice between public and private would give people options. It only is an option for the rich. Nobody else could make use of it. And most rich folks, already have private doctors. So they're not going to go to a "public" for profit hospital when they have their own doctor on call.
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"There's rationing in a public healthcare system." Yes, but they triage, so that those who need help first get it first. And generally everyone gets service. Yes, some people have to wait, which is unfortunate, but they are the people who can afford to wait. They aren't dying, just inconvenienced. In a private system, EVERYONE is rationed, and ONLY the richest get service. Everyone else gets NOTHING, because unless they can afford insane bills, they get no medical coverage. If you can't pay $50K for a surgery, you don't get the surgery and are left to die. A private system ONLY helps the handful of richest people in the country. Everyone else suffers. Period.
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