Letters To The Editor
Medicare Monstrosity
As a physician who worked in Canada’s government healthcare system for 13 years prior to my last 18 years working in the United States, I concur with Rebecca Terrell’s excellent article “Is Medicare for All the Cure-all?” (January 6 issue), answering with a resounding, “No!”
When I was medical director for diagnostic imaging for Thunder Bay Regional Hospital in Thunder Bay, Canada, the wait time for an MRI was 13 months, and for a CT it was seven months.
Healthcare in Canada is covertly rationed by limiting the availability of equipment and services, such as CT and MRI scanners. A part of my job was to triage patients, based on limited clinical history, and decide how long they would have to wait for their scans. At times, I would triage patients to the end of the line, only to read their scan months later and realize that they had an out-of-control tumor or rampant infection that should have been addressed months earlier. I could not sleep at night working in such a system.
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