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FirstQuaker -> RE: Cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils: NHS begins rationing (8/1/2011 4:07:00 PM)
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Actually if I was going to point out the defects in NHS, the rationing of various prosthetic materials and procedures to use them would be far down on the list.
The major problems with NHS appear, at this distance, to be regarding the postal code health care lottery system, the disturbing difference in care the elderly and disabled receive, and the residual financial damages from the Labour Governments more creative trust funding of various facilities. The medical brain drain isn't pretty either, and it sound like the NHS may be suffering a "death of a thousand cuts" as the austerity measures are affecting it.
There are also slow waiting times for various procedures in Canada in certain provinces, B.C. Alberta, and the Yukon have done things to significantly tune them up. There is a doctor shortage, especially in northern central Canada, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario are the worst offenders in having a materially different stnadard of medical care once you get more then a few hundred miles north of the border, due to the doctor shortage. Again the western part of the Dominion seems to be doing far better in this regard, while northern Alberta, the Yukon, and Northern B.C. are by no means perfect in that regard, they have done markedly better then the eastern provinces. Also, affordable housing or at least places to stay can be a problem for many northern people receiving medical care and their families bringing them or visiting them, this has been a publicized scandal in places like Prince Rupert and Winnipeg.
There is a markedly different standard of medical care for those Europeans huddled in the cities along the US border and those few Europeans along with the Metis and First Nations living a few days travel to the north. Some think this is racial in nature, especially in northern Ontario, but the reality is likely the low pay or compensation Canadian doctors receive combined with the hideous cost of maintaining any semblance of a European lifestyle in Northern Canada.
The rural United States has similar problems with lack of doctors and facilities, though unlike Canada, the people can normally at least drive or be driven to medical facilities, while large parts of northern Canada require chartering an airplane or days or even weeks of travel by boat or on land to get to even a rudimentary medical clinic.
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