Like everything else in CANADA - Healthcare IS BROKEN (a rant)
Episode Stats
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Summary
A few weeks ago, I was in a motorcycle accident in which I broke my pelvis in two places. Now I can speak about our health care system from someone who wasn't in a life-threatening situation, but somebody who's pretty beat up.
Transcript
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Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel 445 a.m. Friday, August the 22nd with the Big Blue
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Mug of Coffee. Hope you're having a great day today, a day away from the weekend. Hope
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you've got nice plans for the weekend. I want to do something different today. You know,
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I could talk about the normal stuff. It's like we finally made it to the dog days of
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summer. Now that the Polyev by-election is over, we can kind of settle down for maybe
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a couple of weeks before government finally starts to sit once again. It has hardly sat
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for the whole year. Media is picking on Pierre Polyev. They're paid for by the liberals.
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It's what you expect. Carney can't get a deal with Donald Trump. The people who support Mark
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Carney still support their mediocre country and a mediocre government. But let's not get
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into that. I want to talk about our health care system because I just went through it.
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Now, I want to speak about our health care system from somebody who was in it recently.
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Now, for those of you who are new here, who don't know my situation, a couple of Saturdays
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ago, I'm riding my bike. A dog runs in front of my bike. I fly into the pavement. I broke
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my left collarbone and I broke my pelvis in two places. So, I can speak about our health care
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system from somebody who wasn't in a life-threatening situation, but somebody who's pretty beat up.
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Now, you may say, John, you look just fine. Well, actually, I feel fine, but I'm not fine.
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That's why I ended up back in the hospital on Monday. I may come around to that once again
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in this video. But there's something terribly wrong with our health care system, and most
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Canadians know it. But because Canada is a mediocre country, we accept a mediocre health
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care system. Now, this is not an indictment of the people who work in our health care system.
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They are all caring professionals and do a wonderful job. You get good care once you get
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into the system. It's what you would expect in a first world country from a health care
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system. It's not like picking a mechanic. You can end up with a bad one. You should get
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good health care once you get into the system. These people are great. I admire them. I thank
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them for helping me. But the health care system in Canada is sacrosanct. It's beyond
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criticism, folks. And that's why it never gets any better. Now, am I an expert on health
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care in this country? No, I don't understand how it works. But from what I saw, it doesn't
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work as efficiently as it should. I mean, it's like me trying to critique restaurants. I know
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nothing about restaurants. I've never worked in a restaurant. I'm amazed that I get my meal
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at a restaurant. I don't know how it gets there. But I know when I get bad service.
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Okay? Now, the service I got in the hospital wasn't because of the people. It's because
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of what I thought was inefficiencies. So let me just run you through what I learned from
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being in that accident a couple of weekends ago. I'm laying on a bike path and I'm waiting
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for EMS to show up. And a lot of what I'm talking about here deals with the people who are
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on the front line. These are the people that you are happiest to see if you're in a bad
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situation. You're happy to see a doctor, but that's the person you see when you're in the
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I'm laying on the bike path for about 45 minutes, which under the circumstances was really
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fast. I'm on a bike path and they had to walk with a gurney down a bike path from a parking
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area to get to me. And they get me into the ambulance and I'm diverted to a place called
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urgent care, which isn't really a hospital, which is halfway across the city. So we have to drive
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halfway across the city. And I'm talking to these EMS people as I'm going there. They suggested I
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needed to go to a hospital, but there's too many people lined up at the hospitals right now. Send
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them to urgent care. They get me into a wheelchair with excruciating pain, which causes me to pass out
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for more than a minute. Finally get me into a hospital bed where I see a doctor for a minute
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who suggests I shouldn't be at urgent care. I need to be in a hospital because I probably have a
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broken pelvis. Well done doctor without any scans or anything. You nailed it. I have a broken pelvis
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in two different places. So then I ended up getting to the hospital. And as I'm getting there, I asked
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them, so when do you go out to your next call? Well, they said, well, they have to wait with me at the
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hospital. I said, why are you waiting with me at the hospital? Well, because the EMS services here in
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Alberta are under the same umbrella as AHS, Alberta Health Services. They're separate in most provinces,
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but they're under the same umbrella here. They have to stay with me until I'm officially handed
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over to the hospital, which could take hours. And in some cases, you have people who are driving
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ambulances standing in hallways at hospitals here in Calgary all day. And the people that picked me up
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off the bike path were with me for two and a half hours, not doing their primary jobs.
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And you know what's fascinating about this? My discussion about EMS here is that this is sort
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of what I heard on two ambulance rides, because I took two, was that they're very critical of the
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system like I'm critical of the system. They believe that there's too much administration.
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They said that there's too much administration. And I said to them, administration doesn't want to see
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any efficiencies in the system because if you find efficiencies, you don't need as much
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administration. And they looked at me and said, you're absolutely right. You have fewer frontline
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people in healthcare in Alberta because there's too many paper pushers. Now, don't get me wrong.
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I'm not critical of everybody in administration. They're needed, but we probably have way too many
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here. They're also very much in favor of more private care here, which I found to be fascinating.
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These are people in the healthcare system who think we should have more private care.
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And the way it was explained to me by one of these EMS employees was that if you have more private
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care, it makes the lines shorter when you get into public care, which is absolutely true. And the
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argument of people on the left and on the people who continue to support and defend our mediocre
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healthcare system in this country is that if you have more private care, rich people get moved to the
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front of the line. And what people need to understand is that rich people can move to the
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front of the line anyway, because they can go anywhere to get their healthcare because they're
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rich. All right. What those people going to the private healthcare clinics are really doing is
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they're moving out of the line so you can move up faster in the public system. And the people on the
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front line understand this. They should be talking to these people. I heard that we have about eight
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ambulances in the whole city of Calgary of 1.2 million people on a Saturday afternoon. I was told
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that after my second, while I was on my second ambulance ride, that I could have waited for four or five
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hours. If there was something really critical happening in the city, they call it a code red, I could wait
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four or five hours laying on the floor in my living room. Now I understand that people who are in life
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threatening situations need to be cared for first, but it just doesn't seem right that we might have
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six. They said six to eight ambulances for the whole city on the middle of a Saturday afternoon. That's
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quite remarkable. I also found that these people make an average of about $70,000 a year. Now these
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people see patients at their absolute worst, life and death situations where everything that they do
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on the front line could mean life or death. And they get paid about $70,000 a year. And I just don't
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think that's right. Less administration would mean these people got paid more money. And I'm sending out
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my thumbs up to paying the EMS people in Calgary and in Alberta more money because they're great people
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and they're doing good work. Now I get to the hospital the first time. And here's the thing,
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there's just not enough space in our hospitals. And everybody knows this. If you waited in a waiting
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room in an emergency in Alberta, and you probably have, you know, you wait for hours. They have signs
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up telling you you could wait 10 hours just to get in to see a doctor. But once I got into the hospital,
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because I'm not in life threatening situation, but I'm pretty broken up. I ended up in emergency in a room
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with 15 other people. And it's absolute chaos. And I admire the people and don't envy the hospital staff
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who have to deal with this. You don't get any sleep. You don't have hardly any privacy when you're in this
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room. And you hear people begging to get to the next room where you can actually start getting the care you
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need to start getting better. I waited for more than a day just to move into a room to start to get the care I
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needed. So I could start to get better. And once you get into that room, you have 24 hour care and
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these people are wonderful. And they do great work. I mean, imagine, imagine working at a job when part
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of what you do is picking up bottles of piss or cleaning out bedpans because somebody like myself
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can't get to the toilet. This is what these people are doing, as well as giving you all the other things
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you need to get better. So you get great care once you get to the next phase, but it's all this other
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stuff that seems to get into the way. Now, the second time I went to the hospital, this is where
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things start to get interesting. So on Monday, I'm feeling fine. If you were to ask me on Monday how
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I felt, I feel fine. I'm laying in bed. I feel just fine. So you get this false sense of security.
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So I go to get out of bed. I get up the wrong way. I twist the wrong way. I'm in excruciating pain. My wife
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comes running down and eventually I end up falling face first into the floor. And my wife is concerned that
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I've done some more damage because I landed on my left shoulder, which is broken. And I've got a
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broken pelvis. Have I done more damage? Go back to the hospital. I get on another ambulance ride.
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By the way, if you have to take an ambulance ride here in Alberta, I'm not sure what it's like in
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Ontario. I think it's the same thing. It's not covered by your healthcare, but you pay out of
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your taxes. It's about $395 for each ambulance ride. I've taken two. Now, luckily, that's covered
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under my wife's healthcare at work. But if you don't have healthcare at work, you're out $400
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for an ambulance ride. Okay. So anyway, I have to go back to the hospital, which is way up in the
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northwest because there's the least line up there. And I wait around for 12 hours just to get a couple
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of pictures taken. Now, this is where I find it to be terribly inefficient as well. While I want to go
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to the hospital, do I have to wait 12 hours to get into diagnostic imaging? I know what the sign
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says outside the room because I visited it a lot over the last couple of weeks. Because every time I
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went to diagnostic imaging, there was hardly anybody there. Now, I understand. And from what I can
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understand about the way it works, there's maybe a doctor or two that are seeing all these patients.
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And they eventually come around to you after they see everybody because that can take hours.
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So you wait hours to see a doctor who finally says you can go to diagnostic imaging to get CAT scans
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and x-rays on my shoulder to see if I've done any more damage. Then it takes hours for them to look
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at them. Then it takes hours for them to actually give you a diagnosis. And then hours for you actually
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to get home. I'm wondering why there's not a lineup for people who need pictures taken.
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Just get it done and have somebody just looking at those pictures so you can get people in and out of
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the hospital quickly. I remember talking to a guy. Now, it's not exactly the same thing. But I
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remember talking to a friend of mine who owned a couple of Tim Hortons restaurants. And I said,
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why don't you have a lineup just for coffee? Because I always get behind all the people who have
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to order all of these different sandwiches which need to be double toasted or the person who's taking
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20 minutes just to pick out 12 donuts. If you had a lineup for coffee, I could get in and out in five
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minutes. Why not the same for somebody like myself on Monday who just needed a couple of pictures
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taken? It could have taken an hour or maybe two and I'd been gone instead of waiting all day long.
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It just seems like a lot of time spent being shuffled around in a hospital and not accomplishing
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anything at all. My wife, you've probably been there. I talked about emergency rooms.
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I had to see a doctor. I went to an emergency room. After waiting two and a half hours,
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she told me to go home. Within 15 minutes of me going home,
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she told me that the lineup at the hospital was 10 hours long.
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And I don't understand how that can be possible.
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Again, once you get into the system, it works just fine.
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But it just takes so long to get everything done.
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And nobody really wants to address the actual problems that we have.
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And this has been my experience over the last couple of weeks.
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I'm at home. I'm happy. I'm getting the care I need. I'm lucky enough in this province to actually
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have a family doctor, which I never had in Ontario because in Ontario, it was impossible.
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There was nobody. If we spent less time defending a system that's not working at its peak and spent
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more time actually talking to the people on the front lines who are doing the work,
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I think we could make our healthcare system a lot better in this country.
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That's my rant. Let me know what you think. Let me know what kind of experiences you've had
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with the healthcare system here in Canada, here in Alberta. But it's a mediocre system.
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Good people working in an inefficient system. We could save a lot of money, a lot of time,
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and make the care even better in this country if we would just rethink things. Anybody who tries to
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is shouted down as somebody who wants to have private care. And I'm perfectly fine with that.
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Best care I ever had was a private clinic. I got examined, x-rayed. The doctor looked at the x-rayed
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and treated in an hour and a half. An hour and a half. And when I was scheduled to see the doctor,
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that's exactly when I got to see the doctor. Best care I ever had. I paid $60 out of pocket. The rest
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of it was covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. Best care I ever had. We can do better.
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Thanks for watching. Bit of a rant today. Hope you have a great day. Let me know what you think
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in the comments. If you like the video, give me a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. Ring the bell
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for notifications. I'll see you in the next one.