Oh Canada, let your people ENT

After traveling 7 hours and 53 minutes, another Canadian patient was welcomed to Bridger ENT today. Having been dealt with delays, offals, and denials from the Canadian health system, my new patient was happy to have someone who was willing to listen, provide a medical opinion and treatment plan which would be tailored to accommodate her distant residence. If she had agreed to wait for her Canadian ENT, she would have been seen sometime in 2027.

Obviously, a socialized medical system, like Canada's, has it's pluses (it's cheap), but from my perspective there are a ton of minuses.

Before you start patting yourself on the back, U.S. Healthcare, the U.S. ranked last in overall performance among 10 high-income countries, with poor performance in equity, access, and outcomes, though it ranked second in care process.

The article How Does the U.S. Healthcare System Compare to Other Countries states?"Healthcare spending is driven by utilization (the number of services used) and price (the amount charged per service). An increase in either of those factors can result in higher healthcare costs. Despite spending nearly twice as much on healthcare per capita, utilization rates for many services in the United States is lower than other wealthy OECD countries. Prices, therefore, appear to be the main driver of the cost difference between the United States and other wealthy countries."

So, the U.S. isn't really better than Canada-- we have higher prices, better access if you have money, and "ok" quality of care.

Unfortunately, in the U.S., the patient was expelled from the "grown ups table" long ago- leaving the management of patient insurance and care to insurance CEOs, politicians, and hospital systems. This self-serving cabal created payment structures which favored overly complex, large systems which squeezed out small, efficient and patient-centric private practices like mine, all the while padding their pockets with lots and lots of profit. Somehow, this corporate system convinced patients their medical care has to be expensive (and more expensive every year).

Interestingly, while insurance gets more costly, physician's payments, from both government and private insurance, don't increase with inflation, with the consumer price index, or any other economic measure tracking cost of living--- in fact, many years, inexplicably, physicians get paid less from these insurances than they did the year before.

I chose medicine to improve people lives by improving disease while corporations see patient disease, largely, as a commodity to be bought and sold.

It is appalling and sad.

Those of us who can practice medicine in it's true form are truly happy- I can honestly say I am happy every day I come to the office.