07.17.2009

My father is in his late seventies, and has been a very active person, golfing many times a week. He lives in Florida in the winter, and in Northern Ontario, Canada in the summer.

This winter, he began to experience considerable knee pain. When he returned to Canada in April, he made an appointment to see a doctor about the pain, and an MRI was scheduled — for July! — 3 months later.

Not willing to wait, my father left Ontario and paid a few hundred dollars for an MRI in May, and brought the results back to his doctor, who he will see NEXT WEEK! So 3 months to get an appointment to review the problem.

Based on the comments on the MRI, it looks like it will be arthroscopic surgery .. a few hour procedure.

His expectation (and I will provide and update when he finds out) will be yet another 3 month wait!

Even for full knee replacement in the United States, the average wait time is 3 weeks! So why would a much simpler procedure take 3 months after diagnosis, and 3 months to get the diagnosis (versus 2 weeks in the USA).

If suffering with aliaments for long periods of time while waiting in line for care is your prefernce, then you will like the current government healthcare proposal in the USA. If not, let’s look for other, more creative options to repair the “ills” of the US system

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by liberal | Tags: , , Filed Under healthcare | 1 Comment