Sad story about what socialized medicine is really like and Obama wants this for us?

Canadian Nightmare

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from Vern Hodgins, a longtime subscriber from Canada, who recounted an opposite experience with Canada's health care system. Read this carefully, because if Obama gets his way, the happy story I recounted above is not the future:

"My wife and I relocated to a new community. For my wife, that meant finding a new doctor, which became a six-year wait. During that time, she had to do with a local outpatient clinic, which rotates its medical staff.

"It is rare to see the same doctor twice, which renders continuity feeble at best. As well, the rules do not allow rotation doctors to provide full physical examinations; only a family physician may do that.

"While waiting in line for a family doctor, my wife became ill. Typically, a patient gets about 10 minutes with a community clinic doctor, which for my wife meant cursory examinations and referrals to physiotherapists and chiropractors.

"My wife's condition worsened, and we could not do anything about it. Finally, the government granted her a family doctor. That doctor also gave her a cursory exam, diagnosed her ailment as a sports injury and referred her to more physio and chiropractic treatment. Her condition worsened still, and still her doctor insisted it was a sports injury.

"Fed up with my dear wife whimpering her nights away in pain, I visited her doctor. The doctor's receptionist rudely rebuffed me, saying my wife had to wait in line just like everyone else because despite what I thought, she was no more or less special than anyone else.

"The next morning I described my wife's condition to a work colleague who is a doctor. Having never met my wife, and with only my description, that doctor told me to get my wife into a hospital immediately because she was certain it was a metastasized cancer.

"Sure enough, as soon as the hospital emergency staff saw my wife, they knew; it was advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which had dissolved some of her collarbone. My wife had to be told her prognosis was not good, that she had to prepare for the worst.

"Fortunately for me, my doctor colleague, a high-profile media individual, used her influence to get my wife the best specialists in the country — which, yes, meant that my wife is somewhat more special after all. She survived. She endured the most aggressive treatment regimen there is, and though she's left with considerable damage from the radiation, she's alive.