The City Square: The future of health care under Obama

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The future of health care under Obama

In Vancourver, Canadians are considering making their already long waiting lines for medical care even longer:

According to the leaked document, Vancouver Coastal — which oversees the budget for Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals, among other health-care facilities — is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting in September and to cut 6,250 surgeries, including 24 per cent of cases scheduled from September to March and 10 per cent of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.
The plan proposes cutbacks to neurosurgery, ophthalmology, vascular surgery, and 11 other specialized areas.

The president of the Canadian Medical Association is aware of the problem:

The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.
"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press. [emph. added]

UK health care is also in crisis:

Instead of improving access to NHS dentistry the reforms have made it worse, the report by the House of Commons Health Select Committee found.
The number of dentists working in the health service has fallen, the number of NHS treatments carried out has dropped and in many areas patients are still experiencing severe difficulties in finding a dentist to treat them.
Worryingly, complex treatments carried out on the NHS have dropped by half while both referrals to hospital and tooth extractions have increased.
This suggests dentists are simply removing teeth rather than taking on complicated treatments because they have become uneconomical to provide. [emph. added]