Gail and Catherine with Ruby, October 2005 @ Zed'sBaby Boomer Health Issue Woes in Canada
We are well and truly into the Christmas hype of things around here. Bob has bronchitis, on his way to pneumonia, and needs to check back to the clinic on Thursday to get a requisition for a chest Xray. The doctor thinks that might be a good indicator of pneumonia, but I am pretty worried about it. The last chest Xray he took showed some kind of spot in the lower right lung. Not having a family doctor is just so bad. And yet politicians are constantly bulling up our failing health care system.
For the Baby Boom generation (ours) the peri-retirement years should be the last, relaxed hurrah before the calm. Yet how many of us can truly "relax", knowing that our steadily-waning health issues are not being addressed at any level of provincial or civic medicine? There are NO family doctors. There are lots of medical clinics where family doctors occasionally practice on a rotational schedule to boost up their annual salaries. So if you go to a clinic 3 times a week, you could be seeing three different doctors. How much of a continuum is that? You find yourself repeating the exact information three times and getting three different diagnoses. So, in effect, BC MED has been billed thrice for the same problem. If there were more doctors practicing family medicine OR if the "system" would allow family doctors to bill as many hours as medical clinic doctors, the problem would resolve itself.
You see? The core of the beast is the fibrillating, monetary heart of provincial politics. Each municipality has different hours for the cap number of hours any family doctor can bill: the hours that can be billed for medical clinics, with their extended hours, are much higher. Is it any wonder that doctors prefer to work in a clinic? They went through gruelling university experiences because they love their profession. Come on, GOVERNMENT, let them DO their jobs! Extend billing hours for family physicians so that those of us nearing retirement or already seniors, can derive some benefits from a medical system largely funded BY US, over our working lives since the 1960s.
Dying is inevitable. Dying of a cold, that is really bronchitis, that turns out to be double pneumonia, is a crime in our society at our level of medical awareness. If we who are well-educated and savvy, cannot get adequate medical intervention...
Who the hell can?
~~*Pacific Myst*~~
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