…watching the health care in my province fall apart. Police are of no use either, apparently.
Another day another headline.
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Yikes that is too bad. I would be afraid to take an ambulance here in Kansas it would cost thousands of dollars
There are no beds in the long term care centers so there are seniors stuck in acute care beds that are needed to admit patients from ERs because they are occupying emergency beds and people are thus trapped in the waiting room. Also, there are no ambulances because the ERs are so backed up that EMTs are lined up out the doors with patients they can’t offload safely.
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Things are not trending for the better right now. Are they? I mean at least in some senses it’s really bad
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Speak truth to power!
In an already cold climate, during a colder season - that’s a horrible situation 
Not good @shutterbug it’s bad over here in the UK too.
I know this is controversial but I think it’s time the NHS as we know it went. I’d happily pay for health insurance so long as I could get it.
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What scared me was just over a year ago when I rang an ambulance for my neighbour who had a stroke. They told me at least 3 hours for one to arrive. Ugh. Scary stuff.
It is highly unusual for this kind of information dump to happen here. Means there are a lot more stories waiting to be dumped. I bet our provincial premier is in a rage over this. She doesn’t like being made to look bad.
SNAFU.
This statement may be a little political, but these are the trade offs with universal health care.
On one end of the spectrum you have everyone covered but there may be longer waits and a drop in quality.
On the other end not everyone is covered but service times may be faster and better quality.
Not saying which is better, both have their downsides and upsides, but that appears to be the trade offs you make..
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government funded universal healthcare, I should say.
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Getting really political, here are two problems:
- Our province ran a large campain called Alberta is Calling with the intent of luring Candians from other parts of Canada here. It worked. Too well.
- We had an excessive influx of immigrants and temporary workers. It was so bad that the damage was obvious and even the usual apologists who benefit directly from the system knew their goose would be cooked if they didn’t admit the obvious. Immigration is now severely dialed back and will likely stay that way for a generation.
The end result is that our population nearly doubled in this province in the last decade. At the same time the following happened.
- The pig in the python (Boomers) reached old age and they need more medical care.
- We have twice the population in Edmonton now than we did decades ago. We still have the same number of hospitals in Edmonton we did half a century ago. Very few new beds have been added, less than 10% of overall population growth. Other large centres have the same issue.
- Successive provincial governments have consistently underfunded the public system while trying to find ways to privatize (illegal in Canada) and enrich their friends/donors with solutions that provide worse care both privately and publicly at greater cost.
Anyhow, it’s a mess. Our current premier is antivax and a fan of The Cheeto and RFK. She buys into the health conspiracy of the week and once went on record saying that Stage 4 Cancer patients are to blame for their problems for not using holistic health strategies to prevent the cancer. And, oh yes, she split our health system into four separate health systems with four times the overhead to “increase efficiencies”. The real reason is that her rural, redneck hick, uneducated voter base has butthurt over pandemic restrictions and they’re breaking the system to make sure that can’t happen again. If no one gets health care because of that, they consider it a win.
My wife and I are looking for ways to flee this dumpster fire and move to a province where brains aren’t optional.
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I’ll go ahead and let you have the last word as, as you said, this is getting pretty political.
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