National Post columnist traumatized by having to wait his turn

http://www.diemer.ca/Docs/RadicalDigressions4.htm#December262006
Diemer, Ulli

Publisher:  Ulli Diemer / Radical Digressions
Date Written:  26/12/06
Year Published:  2006   First Published:  2006
Resource Type:  Article/Report/Letter
Cx Number:  CX7927

Columnist thinks people with money should get quicker treatment in emergency rooms than people who are poor.


Abstract:  This particular horror story - Kay calls it his "run-in with the system" - begins when he shows up at his local hospital's emergency room with an infected knee. The trouble is with his left knee, he tells us - reinforcing his belief, no doubt, that anything on the left is unreliable and troublesome. The inefficient socialistic health care system sends him off for treatment within ten minutes - not too shabby, most of us might say - but it takes a lot more than efficiency and high-quality appropriate care to please a National Post columnist. Soon he is lying in a public hospital bed, intravenous clindamycin trickling through his veins, and thoughts about how much nicer a private hospital bed would be flooding through his brain.
Mr. Kay returns to the hospital the next day for a follow-up treatment, and this time - the horror! - he has to sit and wait before he's seen. In fact, he tells us, "all but the most acute cases" have to sit and wait their turn. There is - hard to believe, but it's true - no special queue for the affluent and the privileged.

Subject Headings

• Access to Services
• Emergency Care
• Health Care Access
• Health Care Delivery
• Health Care Funding
• Health Care in Canada
• Health Care in Ontario
• Health Care Privatization
• Immigrants to Canada
• Private Health Care
• Seniors/Health Care
• Two-tier Health Care
• User Fees