Thanks for everyone's thoughts and concerns. I'll be finished chemo in less than a month.
It's taking a toll on my strength, but I know that by late November I'll be able to start regaining it.
I've received a number of emails from the US asking if I have sufficient medical insurance. The answer is that in Canada we have a single payer system ( as it's called in the US). Health care for everyone is the same as education though high school, which no one has argued about for about 100 years. It's simply paid for out off our taxes.
I've had countless CT scans, Bone Scans and MRIs. I've had two major surgeries, one of them at least some 8 hours followed by 13 days of hospitalization, and now some months of regular chemo. Oh, yes, regular home visiting nurses when I was first home from hospital, all drugs included, 24 hour hotline to specialist nurses if there were questions.
My total cost? Zero. Pre-existing condition exemption? Not in our vocabulary. Co-pay? Not in our vocabulary.
Universal health care, for every resident of the country, available freely to all. Just as in most advanced industrialized countries around the world for the past 50 years plus.
Why am I preaching here. Because for the first time my life was in the hands of the system, and I do mean "life". Delays? I went from detection of a T3 bladder cancer with node involvement to surgery in less than 10 days. Change Doctors? Any time one likes, and I've done it before.
Does the Canadian system work? Yes. Is it perfect. No? Nothing ever is. But contrary to the misinformation that we hear daily on US TV it works well enough, and none of us would trade it for what we see across the border.
If some see this as a political encroachment on an inappropriate forum, so be it. But if you're considering the slow development of modern health care administration in the US as the topic comes up, talk to friends across the border to see what their first-hand experiences have been. Some will undoubtedly not be a simple as mine, but I'll bet that not a one of them would trade it for what exists currently in the US at the moment, even including Obamacare. Obamacare is simply a band-aid on a sick system that needs major surgery.
Michael
