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An Inadequate Healthcare System
Spring is always a motivating time to accomplish everything that we’ve been putting off throughout the cold winter. All of those little tasks really start to add up, but once the hibernation period is over I find myself sorting out all of the things that I have been intending to do for months. One of the top items on my to-do list this year was to find a good general practitioner.
It had been far too long since I had last seen a doctor; the last one I saw was my paediatrician about 10 years ago. But with the increasing risk of various diseases and conditions, a concern for my health led me to dig out the phonebook and begin a mission to find a doctor. I had only two requirements: a) the doctor had to live inside Winnipeg (preferably around my neighbourhood, but I was willing to drive virtually anywhere inside the city to get an appointment), and b) I wanted a female doctor. I didn’t think that these conditions were too much to ask for. After all, Winnipeg is a good-sized city, and surely there would be at least one female doctor willing to take new patients.
Apparently, I was wrong. Phone call after phone call left me feeling more and more dejected as the receptionists informed me that the doctor was not taking any new patients at this time. In some instances I spent long periods of time on hold, only to have a very weary-sounding receptionist finally come to the phone and cut me off mid-sentence to briefly explain that they couldn’t take me in, followed by an abrupt click as they hung up the phone.
At last, one receptionist gave me the Family Doctor Connection hotline (786-7111, for anyone interested), and so I picked up the phone one last time and tried them. The nice woman on the other end of the line informed me that there are no female doctors in Winnipeg currently accepting new patients.
What?! How is that even possible? I resignedly asked for the names and numbers of all the physicians in Winnipeg that are currently accepting new patients. She gave me three.
Healthcare is currently in very high demand, which has the unfortunate consequence that not only is everyone working in the healthcare industry overworked, but many doctors are also unable to take more than one or two questions at a time during appointments. Because everything in the body is connected and one problem is often related to another problem, this means that only one issue at a time is addressed when you go to the doctor, which will not be beneficial to your body at all. A more complete, all-around examination of the body is necessary to understand exactly what is wrong, how it came to be so, and the best way to treat the ailment as well as prevent it from recurring.
What will this do to us, I wonder? Surely this is terrible news for our bodies. I’m a firm believer that we should treat our bodies as our temples; they should be attended to and waited on and cared for as top priority. But the sad truth is that they’re not. We don’t look after our bodies, and our healthcare system doesn’t do a whole lot in the way of helping us to look after our bodies, either. Slowly we slide into neglect. And then we’re surprised when later on down the road we have a whole host of problems/diseases/conditions that we were unaware of that are steadily doing more and more damage to our bodies as the years pass.
A corresponding problem with our overworked and inadequate healthcare system (the people themselves involved in the industry are quite capable; it is the system itself that is the issue) is that the focus in health today is generally more of treating conditions and diseases rather than working on preventing them. Whereas hundreds of years ago people would be dying from many diseases that are now commonplace, today they can be easily treated with medications. However, this does not factor in important changes to our diets and lifestyles, and so our bodies fall into disrepair. Rather than emphasizing the importance of a healthy diet and lifestyle, we instead fill up on supplements and medications prescribed by doctors who are too busy to really understand what is going on inside of our bodies.
Clearly, it is necessary for us now to rework the Canadian healthcare system and determine a better way to look after our bodies so that we can improve our overall health. It’s never too late to start doing our own research on preventative factors and altering our lifestyles to live in the healthiest way possible.
Sagan Morrow is currently studying Rhetoric at the University of Winnipeg. She writes a health and wellness blog and is the Living Well columnist at The Uniter. Read more by Sagan Morrow.
Try getting sick in the US. I spent 3 months in hospital a few years ago….in the US it would have left me in bankruptcy…..here it left me in good health
Yes there are problems….but get really sick and the system is good
#1. Posted by jim sibley on April 21st 2008 at 10:49pm
I agree that if you do get sick, our system will absolutely cater to your needs. However, it would be ideal if the healthcare system placed more of an emphasis and effort on preventing people from getting sick in the first place.
#2. Posted by Sagan on April 22nd 2008 at 5:27pm
I can commiserate. I have been looking for a doctor in winnipeg since I moved back to the city 7 years ago. Same thing. Looking for a female doctor.
very frustrating
#3. Posted by janice on August 7th 2008 at 9:37am
I didn’t claim that it was a good solution, it IS very bad, of course. But the reality of the matter is that it is a realistic look at the way things are. And how would we make more information available to everyone? For the most part, it is available to everyone. The thing is though, a lot of people don’t care enough to look.
And I would like to hear your idea about a good healthy meal for very cheap. Because what often times people are competing with are unhealthy meals that are convenient and can cost as low as $1.00, and up to $5.00. See if that’s what you’re paying for for a meal, and sometimes even less, the stuff that’s more expensive, for most meals, will actually over time work out to be huge spendings. For people who are single parents raising multiple young children it’s an easy decision.
So let me ask, do you have any dependents? I’m going to take an educated guess and say no you don’t. Consider your current earnings combined with your current bills, then consider the amount you spend on food, add in clothing and gas or bus fare, and school and multiply the bills and payment by 3 or 4, at the end do you have the money for all that? You’d be very lucky to say “yes”. And I’m gonna take another stab and say the answer is actually no.
#4. Posted by Gabe on September 15th 2008 at 11:42pm
Yes yes, I know, I am a nay-sayer. But what could be done in the first place? Do you know why our hospitals are over crowded here in winnipeg? It is BECAUSE it’s free. The mindset of the people is this: Yeah I can go ahead and do this because worst comes to worst I go to the doctor, for free.
Now to consider this further, what is it people are doing that are landing them in the hospitals in the first place? There are many things, but poor general health is certainly a factor. One thing you should consider though, is why are these people being unhealthy? Sometimes out of ignorance, sure. But dollars to donuts a lot of them cannot. The reality is that most of the time, it’s much more cost effective to eat badly. There are a lot of families not necessarily making ends meet, and yeah sometimes that means having to buy a 50 cent boxes of KD for supper than spending upwards of 10.00 on a proper meal.
Also, what is healthy? Ask that to most people and they won’t be as well learned as you. There are many things to consider, and I think that in the end the real problem will not be fixed by that, the actual amount of time it takes to become a practicing doctor is phenomenal. Not to mention the cost of it too. Do you know people that have become real doctors? If you do, ask them how much time and money it took, and they’ll tell you, it’s not cheap. The actual ideal ratio for doctors to regular folk is MUCH higher than our current situation. If we needed more doctors then the people higher up would make it cheaper to become a doctor.
But the real truth is that most things in our day is a business. Universities and medical schools are no different. Neither is the healthcare industry. Why have empty pharmacies and hospitals when there’s SO much more money to be made by repeat customers? People who need their monthly perscription. People who need their daily meds and check-ups and physicals. The list goes on and on. The end result is that it IS a way to make money. And if you can, why not? Reality is they, in all likelihood don’t actually want to make cures, know how much money falls into cancer research per year? The amount of millions is staggering. If they cured all the known diseases there would be a lot of empty pockets and a lot of doctors out of work. These things, while from the perspective of someone forced to follow the system, seem terrible, must be considered anyway. The real problem lies in the people exploiting the system, not in the helpless victims of it’s vice.
#5. Posted by Gabe on September 16th 2008 at 10:05am
You’re absolutely right that poor general health lands people in hospitals and that healthcare is a business. But I still feel that there is a real and desperate need for more information to be available to everyone. Yes, there are many people who cannot quite make ends meet and resort to buying unhealthy foods because it appears much cheaper, but I have looked into costs and with some careful searching, it is very possible to find healthy food that comes cheap. The problem is that oftentimes we are not willing to spend the time and effort to find those healthier foods. And eating unhealthy food because it looks cheaper isn’t going to be beneficial in the long term, either, because it will just wind up with having health problems and then that will cost even more.
#6. Posted by Sagan on September 17th 2008 at 5:48am
Mm, mm, mm. Playing the avoiding game eh? I never said anything about fast food. When you’re ready to address my questions then let me know. You are after all, the author.
#7. Posted by Gabe on September 18th 2008 at 2:27am
True, that people often don’t care to look, but it is also difficult to find. In grocery stores, for example, it is incredibly hard to sort through all of the nutrition labels and ingredients lists when there are misleading “heart smart” symbols and such stamped everywhere.
When it comes to healthy meals for cheap, its all about thinking long term. If we make our own bread, yes it will be more expensive in one day to buy the flour and the yeast and the butter and so on than to buy a fast food meal, but just think about how much bread all of those ingredients will make. In the end, it will save tons of money.
Given that making bread takes a very long time (unless you’re using a breadmaker- although it is another expense that will take a while to pay off), even buying a loaf of bread at the store and some sandwich ingredients will be cheaper in the long run than buying fast food at every meal.
#8. Posted by Sagan on September 18th 2008 at 5:52pm