Posted by
Bloelfed on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 12:00:00 AM
My Canadian friend is a specialist in Internal Medicine, Critical Medicine, General Surgery and Emergency Surgery. He spent 19 years in medical school.
This week, his wife had a heart attack. She had to wait to get basic tests for two days. She spent those two days in the emergency ward of a major city hospital.
His elderly mother fell and broker her arm. She requires Orthopaedic surgery to have her arm properly set. She has no idea when she will get that surgery because there simply is no operating space available in this city of over a million people.
His father-in-law who was recently widowed was in a car accident. He was admitted to the hospital at which my friend works. His care was given to a colleague of my friend. He called my friend about 6 hours after being admitted and told him that he was being sent home. My friend went back to work (he works at least 100 hours per week, because there are not enough doctors) and found out that his colleague discharged his father-in-law without looking at any of the medicine or the very difficult to get emergency CAT scan (forget about MRI's, the waiting list is about 10 months). After giving his colleague a third anal orifice, he had to take charge of his own father-in-law's care. Not an ideal situation.
This took place last week. Nothing has yet changed; his mother is at home in pain waiting for an operating room and surgeon to re-break her bones and set them properly. His father-in-law is staying at my friends home. He is in constant pain from his spleen injury (as well as everything else) and his wife is at home resting while waiting for more advanced testing to find out why her heart gave out. She is the last person in the world one would think would have a heart attack.
Because his two sisters are nurses, they are able to help take care of these people. Without them, he would have to miss work to care for his family himself.
This is what public health care really means. Shortages, high expenses, taxes at levels that would make American's burn down the White House.
This is the promise that Obama is really making.
Cheers,
Bloefeld