Canada's health care

Friends,
Here is an unedited email from my Canadian cousin born and raised there. I had contacted her to hear exactly her thoughts on socialized medicine. When I spoke out at the health care forum I was right on. Read it for yourself. And as usual, don't sit on this, forward it on to enlighten people.
Carey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`


Hi Carey,
As far as Canada's Universal Health Care System goes......for many years it worked very well. However, as time went by, people, unfortunately began to take advantage of the fact that health care and the medical visits were free. People were going into medical clinics for a paper cut on their finger.....or they would take an appointment just to have their blood pressure checked. Clearly, the doctors were at fault here as well because they would swipe the medicare card of these "patients" thereby charging the government a fee for their very unecessary visit. This, as well as the fact that our doctors are paid substantially less than doctors in the USA because of our universal healthcare plan has caused a mass exodus of our best doctors....most leaving for greener pastures in the USA.
This has been very bad for us, as many of us now have to go to clinics or hospital emergency rooms to be seen for whatever ails us....often sitting and waiting for several hours. It also means that at any given appointment, we never know which doctor will be treating us....there may be up to 6 or 7 GP's in a clinic each working different days and times so you never know who you are going to get. Not very comforting for patients.
The idea of Universal Health Care is a good one ....but with limits. Somewhere between Canada's and France's health care systems is the perfect plan. The USA is a great country and the government should be able to come up with a plan that takes care of it's citizens. Maybe a plan that is comiserate with a family's income level.
Whatever plan the USA decides on...I hope it will be a fair and equitable one for all your citizens.
Let me know your thoughts on this...I would love to see what you wrote.

Take care,
Darlene