Truth,fiction and reality

Medicare ads subliminal brainwashing
By TOM BRODBECK

The fantazty

Have you ever seen those TV commercials telling us how great Canada’s health-care system is, where teams of co-ordinated health-care providers work with patients to provide them with “the right care at the right time?”
They’re government commercials — Health Canada to be precise — paid for by taxpayers to tell us how lucky we are to have such a modern, cutting-edge health-care system.
Officially, it’s some kind of awareness campaign to educate us on the concept of “primary health care.”
But in reality, the commercials are meant to brainwash us through subliminal messaging, hoping to make us feel warm and fuzzy about Canada’s medicare system.
They show comforting images like a happy-looking woman clutching her baby while on the phone, presumably accessing some tele-health service or making a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the night. They tell us how the system provides the “right care at the right time” and claim there are integrated teams of health-care providers who are available when you need them.
It sounds like health-care Utopia. But it doesn’t resemble anything close to what we have in Canada.
“Governments across Canada are working to improve basic everyday health care for every Canadian,” the commercial says. “It’s called primary health care where a team of health-care providers works with you.”

A team of health-care providers? Where? I’d love to know where I can access this medical pit-stop, where I can walk in and have access to a team of nurses, doctors, specialists and other practitioners, all hovering around me, sharing their disciplinary talents to help make me well.
Where do I sign up?
“Information’s available to improve co-ordination services,” the ad says.
It is? Where do I get this information? I know we have tele-health services, if you can get a live body on the other end of the phone. But most Canadians can barely find a family doctor.
And then my favourite:
“You can access the right care at the right time,” the commercials crows.
Really? Tell that to the guy who’s half crippled waiting for hip surgery or the person with severe blockage in his arteries who’s told he has to wait a year for bypass surgery.
“And a focus on healthy living keeps you well rather than just treating you after you’re sick,” the commercial goes on. “These are the four pillars of primary health care.”
Sounds great. What country are they talking about? It certainly doesn’t describe Canada’s health-care system.
What we’ve got in Canada is this:
Your first line of defence in health care is a family doctor. If you’re lucky enough to find one, you call your doctor when you have a non-emergency problem. If you’re fortunate, your doctor can see you within a couple of days, maybe a week, maybe longer. If you have a problem requiring a specialist, the doctor refers you to a specialist.
For most people, once the family doctor refers you to a specialist, the doc usually washes his hands of your file. You’re on a wait list and when the specialist can see you, you get in. There’s no “team” of caregivers working with you to make sure you get the right care at the right time.
If you don’t have a family doctor, you go through the same exercise with a general practitioner at a walk-in clinic. There’s no team to help you there, either.
The only “team” out there is a team of caregivers that send you from one person to the next, without any co-ordination or integration.
Patients often don’t even know the status of their files when they’re on waiting lists for surgery or other procedures. If they’re lucky, they have a dedicated family doctor who goes to bat for them to some extent. But GPs, under our government-monopoly system, are not usually paid to spend time advocating for their patients. Most of them are paid strictly on a fee-for-service basis and they can only bill government when they see a patient.
If you have an emergency situation, you go to an ER and you wait. Depending on the severity of your condition — and it’s often hit and miss — you usually wait for hours. There’s not much of a team at this level, either. You have a triage nurse who gives you a number and an ER doc who sees you. You’re either admitted into hospital and another doc treats you on a different ward, or you’re sent home, often without any supports whatsoever. You may wait in the hallway for days.
That’s Canada’s government-monopoly health-care system in a nutshell. There are pockets of excellence here and there where there is better co-ordination and something resembling the “four pillars of primary health care.” But not much.
And to spend tens of millions of dollars running ads trying to brainwash us that we’ve got this cutting-edge system is insulting.
They should put the money into front-line health care instead.