Quote:
Originally posted by AGDee
How long does someone in the US wait for health care if they don't have insurance, don't have a huge amount of liquid assets and it's not a life threatening problem?
|
I never had to wait that long when I lived in Atlanta. Granted, I had to use emergency room services (which meant that people with more serious problems were always put in front of me), but I never had to wait more than 6 or 8 hours.
Recently I had a health scare that I thought was pretty serious, so I went to Vancouver General Hospital's emergency room - and I sat there for about 6 hours. I was appalled. I thought I was dying, but I sat there for 6 hours before a doctor even looked at me.
There was one nurse working triage on a Saturday night (lots of shootings, and OD cases on Saturday nights) and she only spoke English. There was a Chinese woman puking into a bucket in the waiting room, and no one in her family spoke English, and the hospital didn't have a translator or anyone on medical staff available to find out what was wrong with her.
I'm so glad I work for a company that pays for additional health care and which will pay if I decide to seek treatment in the US. The Canadian Health Care system scares me. Canada does a lot of things right, but their health care system needs a serious overhaul.