Saturday, August 22, 2009

Oh, and that wonderful socialized medicine scheme in Canada?

Don't plan on going there for surgery.
Vancouver patients needing neurosurgery, treatment for vascular diseases and other medically necessary procedures can expect to wait longer for care, NDP health critic Adrian Dix said Monday.

Dix said a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority document shows it is considering chopping more than 6,000 surgeries in an effort to make up for a dramatic budgetary shortfall that could reach $200 million.

“This hasn’t been announced by the health authority … but these cuts are coming,” Dix said, citing figures gleaned from a leaked executive summary of “proposed VCH surgical reductions.”

One of the excuses?
“It is a planning document. It has not been approved or implemented,” said spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo.
Ah, so you're just planning the cuts, so that makes it all wonderful...
Dr. Brian Brodie, president of the BC Medical Association, called the proposed surgical cuts “a nightmare.”

“Why would you begin your cost-cutting measures on medically necessary surgery? I just can’t think of a worse place,” Brodie said
.
Because you have government bureaucrats in charge of it all, and cutting out surgery to save money makes sense to them.

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