Canada has had free compulsory government health care for over 50 years and, considering that in a socialist jurisdiction like ours everything not compulsory is forbidden, we should be getting pretty good at it by now. One would think. Unfortunately, there always seems to be some sort of connection between the free part and the compulsory part.

 

When my mother fell at home recently, she broke her arm and we took her to the local free government clinic (called a CLSC) where we waited for two hours. Her arm was very painful but she’s British, stiff upper lip, no complaints; she’s in her mid eighties. They took a look and told us they didn’t do 85-year-old-lady broken arms and sent us to the ER at a local free government hospital.

 

At the free government hospital, they said she needed a hospital card, as well as her government health care card, but she had a card from another hospital. No good. You need an official card for each hospital. They sent us to the office to get an official card for that hospital, but the office was closed for the day, so they sent us home. The arm was really hurting by now.

 

The next day we went back to the hospital for the official hospital card which took only 30 minutes. Then we waited for a doctor. After an hour, a nurse told us my mother could not see a bone doctor without a referral from a doctor at the free government CLSC. The arm was not a lot of fun by this time. Back we went to the CLSC where we were told there was no doctor available at which time the poor old lady started to get ticked off; the arm being really not a barrel of laughs. An unavailable free government doctor somehow appeared, provided the required referral to the bone doc at the free government hospital and off we went.

 

We waited from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. the next day. A young, courteous, competent, harassed orthopedics doc took a look at her arm and frowned. He did his magical bones thing; put on an optional, super deluxe, fast-dry cast which cost 55 bucks (so not everything is free but when you’re 85 you’re not saving for your old age.) Now she’s all beat to hell and hasn’t eaten for three days. But it was cheap, right?

 

Since the arrival of large numbers of third world immigrants in Montreal there are printed signs all over our hospitals announcing zero tolerance for violence toward hospital staff. This is new but I’m not sure which disturbs me more, the possible violence or the actual bureaucracy. Canadians with serious medical issues, including our entire political class who most generously gave us compulsory free government health care, always go to the U.S.A. for treatment. It looks like President Obama is going to change all that. So now I guess we’ll have to go to Mexico or Haiti.

 

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I would have been feeling pretty violent myself if my mother had to wait three days to get a broken arm set.  “We don’t do 85-year-old-lady broken arms” would be an absolutely unacceptable answer.