John Stossel recently wrote that “polls show most Canadians like their free health care, but most people aren't sick when the poll-taker calls.” Ideally, health care consumers would be polled about their level of satisfaction during a time when they were actually receiving health care services.
Many of the complaints about government controlled health care services have to do with wait times. This week if I were polled I’d have said I am pretty happy with my current private plan.
I get an annual mammogram due to a family history of breast cancer and a week ago I called to schedule it. After turning down an appointment for the following day, I chose an appointment on Tuesday of this week for 12:15 p.m. By 12:40 p.m. on Tuesday I had not only progressed from the waiting room to radiology, but had completely finished the entire procedure and was pulling out of the parking lot. I had not only gotten an appointment scheduled within a week, but had the entire procedure done in less than 30 minutes.
The story is not the same at my general practitioner’s office. I sometimes have to schedule non-urgent appointments (such as physicals) a month or two in advance, and it is not uncommon for it to take 3 hours from the time I arrive at her office, until the time I am seen. On a recent visit to the doctor, several other patients and I sitting in the waiting room got into a discussion about the long wait times. No pollsters called during the discussion, but the informal poll I did of the other patients was unanimous.
We all gladly waited because once we got in to see the doctor she took up to 30 minutes asking and answering questions. No matter how backed up her waiting room was, she did not rush us. As a result of that attention, she once correctly diagnosed a condition I had been incorrectly told by two other doctors was bronchitis. The level of satisfaction experienced by her waiting room full of patients was not due to the specific time it took us to get an appointment, or the time spent waiting to actually get in to see the doctor, but that we were able to choose whether or not we wanted to wait. At any time we could walk out the door and find a doctor with a shorter wait time if we decided her service was not worth the wait.
In contrast, my husband is a veteran of the U.S. military and has to occasionally schedule visits at a V.A. clinic. After he requests an appointment, he gets a letter in the mail telling him when the appointment is, generally at least a couple of months from the time it is assigned to him. There is very little choice involved.
Those are just matters of convenience though, not urgent medical necessity.
My daughter, on the other hand, has a chronic ear condition that has required she have several surgeries to remove cholesteatoma, which, if left untreated, can ultimately result in deafness and even damage to the brain.
Through various groups I‘ve joined, I listen to the comments of others with the same condition. I was saddened to hear a patient in Great Britain talk about waiting for many months to receive surgery to remove a cholesteatoma from her ear. The longer the condition is left untreated (and removal through surgery is the only truly effective treatment) the more likely damage to the delicate hearing bones and other much more serious damage will occur.
My daughter’s many surgeries have been scheduled a few weeks in advance, not months. I can’t imagine having to wait months for an appointment for my child knowing what the consequences of such a wait could be.
The experiences I have recounted are varied. My private health care plan allows me to choose whether or not I want the luxury of a short wait time, or to sacrifice it in order to see a doctor that provides what I consider a higher level of service. It also allows me to have my daughter’s serious condition treated in a timely manner when time can make a huge difference in the outcome. The price that is paid in the level of care when services are controlled by a government bureaucracy and offered “free of charge” is a cost that is not always mentioned during the discussion about the cost of health care.
Lorie Byrd's Bio
Lorie Byrd is a stay-at-home mom from North Carolina with a passion for politics. She is a columnist for Townhall.com and a contributing editor to the Wizbang Blog.com .
Posted
07-02-2009 1:05 AM
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