My own way of being responsible for my health is to do my hexercises every morning - hexercises is when you cast spells on people whilst using the treadmill - and paying out for health insurance. This is because I am in limbo between the two systems. Of course I can still get treated by the British National Health Service, but in case of emergency that could get tricky. Had I chosen one of our other Commonwealth countries to move to, for example Australia or New Zealand, I could have been treated because of reciprocal arrangements, sadly not so with Canada.
Canada, like Britain, has a National Health Service and I think this is something for both countries to be very proud of. It is a national pastime in Britain to complain about the NHS, but we sure wouldn't want to be without it. Of course there are people who abuse the system. When I was over recently, I saw a news item saying that one of the Health authorities had introduced an initiative to combat the curse of the crashingly stupid. They had found that it reduced costs considerably to have the Ambulance part of the 999 service staffed by paramedics. When people rang up to request an ambulance for something trivial, the paramedics could evaluate whether it was a real emergency, eg, kid having nosebleed, not an emergency. And that's an actual example passed to me by a friend who works for the Health Service.
Canada is also a front runner in the field of medical research, and their findings are frequently reported in the press. Britain too spends a lot of money on research and I wonder whether it's the stranglehold of the Animal Rights Terrorists that results in such toe-curlingly embarrassing reports as yesterday's 'Sunbathing blamed for skin cancer increase' headline on netdoctor. Are they serious? I suggest they do a study to find out whether stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork causes problems with vision.
The Swiss are not doing very much better. They have discovered that binge drinking causes a higher preponderance of injuries.
"Swiss researchers claim that the risk of alcohol-related injury is highest during a bout of binge drinking, with the risk of injury greater among people with high alcohol consumption in the 24 hours before hospital admission. "
In the course of conversation with Kevin the other day I discovered that there was one noticeable difference between the Canadian and British health services. We were discussing the number of medications his Aunt had and how the pharmacist had to check that they all worked together. I'm reconstructing,but something like,
'But then the Doctor must surely look it up first when the patient is still in the surgery,'
'Well how? During a consultation there isn't time to look up things like that,'
'It only takes a few seconds to look it up on the computer,'
'But that would mean the doctor leaving the patient and going off somewhere else,'
'Um it would mean she just looks at the screen she's sitting in front of,'
'Doctors don't have computers in the room with them,'
'Yes they do, they always sit behind a computer, otherwise how would they have your records, how would they have the results of your tests, and then print off your prescription?'
The reason I find it odd that Kevin's experience of consulting a doctor here doesn't involve his records being held on a central database is that Canada is one of the most computer literate countries in the world with a higher percentage of the population having access to the internet than, I believe, any other country.
So what is the explanation? I have no idea and nor am I qualified to speculate, but Kevin feels it is to do with a North American stress on privacy. I'm not sure that in Britain we could cope with such niceties. It's a small country with twice the population of Canada, and we also have to be able to travel within Europe and still be covered by the NHS. Britain has recently issued European health cards to replace the old E111's - a form that had to be filled in, stamped at the Post Office and carried around in mainland Europe - and about time too. But this complex a system of cooperation has to be dependent on computerisation.
I don't know what the answer is, nor whether there would be any benefit to all Canadians being on a National Health Service database. I do understand the Big Brother/Sister type concerns, but well, I don't know, think of the research opportunities offered by such a scheme. With all of that information to play with, they might come up with such gems as 'getting older makes your health deteriorate' or 'disease leads to hospitalisation'.
I jest, but personally, I'm happy for the government to hold health information on me, I just don't want the telemarketers getting hold of it.
Nothing new under the sun
3 years ago
2 comments:
Thought I would add my own little note in praise of the E111. I made this sound like it was a bit of a nuisance, but it wasn't, it was a life-saver for those of us who used to take kids to mainland Europe. In spite of the ease of obtaining it, you would always get some parents who would drag their feet until the last minute..or beyond. Had I been able to get away with it, I'd have sent out a letter to parents that went something like this :-
Dear Parents or Carers,
Please get your child an E111 form. This won't take very long, the forms are on clear display in the main Post Office, they are simple to fill in and the only piece of information you may need is your child's National Health number. Take the form to the counter, they'll stamp it, they won't ask you anything difficult, charge you anything or hold you up in any way, then you need to get it to me somehow. I do not have the authority to stop and search your child on the way into the classroom, otherwise believe me, I would.
The reason these forms are important is that, although your child is perfect, as soon as they are on the coach, my staff, who you think are away on a free holiday abroad, will in fact be dealing with the following.
Your child will block the toilet on the coach,be sick on the cross channel ferry, leave their coat on the same, not have the right change for the toilets at service stations across France, Belgium, Luxembourg and finally Germany. H/She will insist on wearing their pyjamas on the coach so that they can sleep, but will complain they are cold when they get off at the toilet stops in the aforementioned countries.
In Germany, my staff will have to accompany them to the British Embassy because they have lost their identity cards, take them to police stations in France and Germany because they have lost things as a result of not following instructions. I will have to organise a late night search of every hotel room that we occupy because your child has told me that items which in fact they have misplaced/borrowed by their friends have been stolen by the cleaners.
My staff will have to deal with your ex-partner who wishes to pick up your child from a service station in Belgium and who shouts abuse at us.
We will have to confiscate all the alcohol, weapons, fireworks and other illegal items they have bought, and negotiate with shops where your child has been accused of shoplifting.
After all of this we will have to take your child to a hospital in a foreign country because s/he has jumped on another child and both have broken their collar bones and the only thing that means we can leave there the same day is that we have the form E111 which can just be photocopied and given back. It's easier than you having to fly out and pay the hospital bills, which you will have to do even if you have expensive travel insurance. It even gets round the possibility that you have handed your child into our care when they had a fever and have to be hospitalised in Germany/France whilst you and your partner have flown to the United States.
My staff will do all of this on about three hours sleep a night because they are also having to administer counselling to your child who keeps breaking up with his/her friends on a nightly basis, and explain, also on a nightly basis that the green and orange things in the hotel food are actual vegetables. They will have shown your child for the fourteenth time how to work the shower, let them into their room when they have lost their key after first alienating all the other people in the room and allowed them to ring home on the schools' mobile phone because they have run out of credit on their own.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any queries, which I know you will because you phone me at my desk from 8 in the morning until about 18.00, long after the switchboard has closed because they have given you my extension number to get rid of you, in order to complain about members of my department insisting that your child should do homework.
Yours, etc.
I have a good abuse of the emergency number story. My friend's husband, let's call him Enrico (not his real name), had a bad sore throat one evening. You know, the kind where life just sucks. He phoned 911 and said he had a sore throat and felt his breathing was a bit blocked. My friend, mortified, left the room, shrieking out something about his blocking the line from people having heart attacks and children choking. Hee hee. She never asked what the operator said but the ambulance never did come.
I was once thrilled to discover that I had tied up traffic on the Lions Gate Bridge, in both directions, for hours after a car accident when I needed the ambulance. Because I lived in North Van at the time, they took me to a hospital there. Unfortunately, my friend was told St. Pauls and had to drive hours through the traffic to get there and then turn right around.
oh, good times.
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