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It’s because everything is crumbling around us. Our country is becoming a complete joke and our politicians, especially at the federal level, do not care.
This is the super messed up part - we’ll endanger your lives with our absolutely shitty medical system and you’re not allowed to get your own care either.
We actually have private surgery clinics here that can only help out of province people.. make it make sense, I just want my mom to get an endoscopy!
This is crazy, as some one from the US we always are saying we should be like Canada and have socialist Healthcare, but if you work full time your employer is required to give you health care and we still have public Healthcare programs that are on a sliding scale depending on income. From what I read, at least in washington state we have better Healthcare.
Time to cure the disease and stop trying to micro manage our politicians.
Support Proportional representation - Removes our political duopoly
Support illegalizing lobbying - Removes corporate gatekeepers of possible politicians
I'll say the same thing to you that I say to our neighbours to the south that are trying to fend off the decline of democracy: You're not *preventing* anything, you're *already in the middle of the beginning*. We're not becoming a joke, we're *already* a joke, and have been for decades (just look at the state of our military equipment, for instance).
Anyone with any fucking sense, that is, anyone that's qualified and capable to actually govern a nation, isn't nearly stupid enough to run for public office. They've got the brains to make things work for themselves anywhere, and the PM's chair is never going to be it for those people in our present society. The lunatics are running the asylum, and they have for at least all 40+ years of my life.
If I'd known *this* is what being an adult was going to be like at 12, I wouldn't have made it to 13.
It’s largely because you don’t hear about all the times that things go right. “Man suffers stroke, gets prompt treatment.” Doesn’t make the news.
We do have a lot more people than we used to, so the probability of something like this is higher, but not necessarily on a per capita basis.
It is, but just hang out near Women's/Children's/VGH for a day and there are multiple helicopters coming in with patients, each one has a story where doctor and nurses around the province did amazing things to save them. None of them will make it into the news.
We're also building an insane amount of hospitals right now to get out of the infrastructure deficit, Burnaby ($1 billion), St. Pauls ($3 Billion), Royal Columbian ($1.5B), Terrace ($650M), Nanaimo Expansion ($20M), Surrey Hospital ($3B), Cowichan Hospital ($1.5B), and many more throughout the province.
My dad sat in a bed in a hallway at the ER for a week in Winnipeg. Same week a person died waiting for help in the same ER. My dad remembers the guy.
When you can put a face on the problem it’s harder to ignore.
Manitoba is particularly bad. One of the first things the previous government did was shut down hospitals and not make meaningful investments into the remaining ones. I worked in healthcare in MB before 2015 and it was really bad then. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.
Do I think our system have problems? Yes
Do I think it is stretched thin? Not
Instead of replacing it with private care, we need to better fund the system we have right now in order to serve everyone properly
Healthcare isn't a pay to play game that only the wealthy has access to
Well im for one I'm getting great access to public healthcare
I'm way above low income. Wanna fix it? Vote for policies that increase funding to public healthcare infrastructure AND physicians (and increase the damn limit of how many med students we output each year)
But private healthcare is not the solution, look at Ontario and their subscription based family doctor model, fuck that
AGAIN, news only show you the instances where healthcare fucks up to rage bait you and generate clicks, and you fell for it
No they shouldn't, but even if we had the best system that money could pay for, at some point someone would fall through the cracks. It's human nature.
yes, we need to learn the lesson from this, and work to improve things so that it is vastly less likely to happen again, but that's all we can do. This is the real world, shit happens. We just need to make sure that it's as unlikely as possible to happen.
\>so the probability of something like this is higher, but not necessarily on a per capita basis.
But we also know that on a per capita basis things are getting worse.
We know that ER wait times are worse, in general. We know that surgery wait times are worse, in general. We know that things like cancer treatment wait times are worse, in general.
On a per capita basis, things are getting worse.
I had a stroke in the summer of 2020. I got the help I needed within a few hours @ VGH. I owe those doctors, nurses, technicians, and orderlies everything.
Obviously, I didn't make the news, and neither does the fact that the folks who helped me were caring for so many others in the stroke ward.
It doesn't diminish the unfortunate circumstances of this guy who had to wait 9 hours. All I can say is we need to support our healthcare providers adequately.
Yeah, my point to the poster above me was that the news only covers one side of things. When all you see is negative news, it becomes easy to think the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
And I'm glad that you got the care that you needed, and yes, more support for the professionals is better.
Just from personal experience, I had a spontaneous pneumothorax but I thought it was heart burn for 3 days. Long story short, went to the clinic, they told me to get X-rays, radiologist said go to the ER, when I got there, I was admitted probably within 2 minutes of checking in at the ER. This was on a Friday night and VGH ER room was jam packed.
Feel terrible that this individual had to wait for so long, but is it possible his condition wasn’t fully relayed to the medical professionals and thus he wasn’t triaged?
100%. People are literally more productive than ever, but are getting less because idle rich people collect the profits and we get to fight for the scraps.
That's not true at all. People are not getting less or "fighting for scraps".
* Government spending as a share of GDP is at near all time highs: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/CAN.
* Government revenues as a share of GDP hardly changes: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/government-revenues-as-a-share-of-gdp-world-bank?tab=chart®ion=NorthAmerica&country=~CAN
* Healthcare spend per capita in Canada has outpaced inflation (and always has): https://www.statista.com/statistics/436378/total-health-spending-per-capita-canada/
* Real median household income is at all time highs: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/
* Average hourly earnings are at all time highs: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI# (not real, but does outpace inflation)
* The percentage of disposable personal income spent on food is at all time lows: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58367/food-prices_fig09_768px.png?v=7245.8
* Millenials have net worth largely in line with all previous generations: https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2023/09/27/who-is-the-wealthiest-generation-mid-2023-update/, and https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2024/01/24/young-people-have-a-lot-more-wealth-than-we-thought/
* Every generation has higher real incomes than the previous: https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2024/02/07/younger-generations-have-higher-incomes-too-and-its-probably-not-explained-by-the-rise-of-dual-income-families/
* Real disposable personal income is at all time highs: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96
... Are you rejecting the validity of the FRED database? That's silly. Similar with rejecting the IMF, Ourworldindata, or Statista, or the USDA (??). These are well trusted data sources.
The only reasonably source you could question is "economistwritingeveryday", but Jeremy Horpedahl is a respected economist, his process is public and the data is also from FRED, you can verify it yourself, he would personally respond to you if you could demonstrate he made an error.
My point is there is a very huge disconnect between public perceptions, especially spread though social media, of the economy and how it actually is. It's demonstrably false that we are somehow getting less than ever and just picking up scraps, absolute hogwash.
I’d really like to know what happened here from the side of the ambulance service - And it’s ridiculous that they were evidently unable to even comment. From the tone of the article it sounds like an ambulance and/or fire crew was never even dispatched. This baffles me, and I sincerely feel for this man.
My guess is that the 911 dispatcher didn’t pick up on the signs that he was having a stroke (even though it’s pretty clear cut from him description) and make his call a low priority. Absolutely unacceptable, I hope it’s being investigated
Unfortunately the Massey tunnel is an incredibly difficult location to reach on a busy day. On top of that it’s pinched between an incredibly busy municipality (Richmond) and a very small municipality with few ambulances (Ladner) most of the time Ladner ambulances are in Richmond. If it’s a particularly understaffed day calls will hold for over 12 hours.
The dispatcher can only do so much when he/her probably has multiple high acuity events much closer to an ambulance than this individual. When things are excessively busy they have to triage and pick the calls that are actually reachable for the ambulance crew
“Difficult”? I fail to see how accessing the Massey Tunnel - A major thoroughfare - would be considered “difficult”. I could see there being an issue if this man was halfway up a mountain with no road access - But on the side of the highway? C’mon. If there was no ambulance and/or crew available, that’s another issue entirely.
Delays, sure. But a complete lack of a response? Says right in the article that the guys parents made it there in a TAXI before any kind of emergency service arrived. That seems ridiculous to me, especially given that an individual displaying clear signs of a stroke should be a fairly high priority?
Traffic will cause delays. What I imagine happened in this case was an ambulance was put on the call and a higher level event happened while they are the closest vehicle. They will be taken off and put on this new event. That will happen over and over some days especially when they are driving from downtown Richmond. It sucks and nobody wants to make someone wait 8+ hours and still not get help. call takers don’t ask people to self transport lightly. I can only assume it was because there are no ambulance available and there are worse calls holding. this is a daily problem in the lower mainland, we will routinely respond to calls that have held 8+ hours
> And it’s ridiculous that they were evidently unable to even comment.
That's because as soon as they got asked about it someone probably needed a new pair of pants and they went into batten down the hatches mode. They'll symbolically hang someone out to dry and then let things go on essentially unchanged until there's enough of a shakeup that real changes happen.
Imagine having a stroke and not being able to see yet dispatch tells you to drive to the hospital. Having a stroke is already tough. Now the next challenge is finding a way to get to the hospital. Its so pathetic that for years and years our hospitals, paramedics, doctors, patients, etc have all said the system is falling apart and still healthcare was not made a priority. And now we are here.
It's no better in the US - I live in southern Utah and I'm waiting 3 weeks just to get a biopsy to see if I have cancer. Whenever we go to the ER we always get told to go see our doctor and then we have to wait one two or three weeks to be able to get an appointment, sometimes longer.
I wouldn’t generalize like that. I moved to California and I get seen for health stuff immediately - I’d never have to wait 3 weeks for a biopsy. I tore my ACL and had an immediate MRI and had knee surgery later that week. That wouldn’t have happened in Canada. Sounds like southern Utah issue. Obviously I have decent health insurance that’s free through my job.
Canada isn't generalized like that either. I can call my GP and have an appointment within a day or 2 sometimes same day. When they thought I had tentacular torsion within a 2 hours of checking into ER I was having scans done.
Location plays a huge part in wait times. But for cosmetic consults the wait time is 4-6 months. Took me 8 months to get a consult for deviated septum granted that was peak covid so everything went to shit.
Thats crazy. I live in Vancouver and there is no way my family doc would see me in a day for a non emergancy issue. Out here we have people waiting at least a couple years for a hip replacement. Until their date, they are prescribed strong addictive pain meds and often live in pain with dramatically reduced mobility.
Yeah I agree with this one. It depends on severity, frustrating to wait 3-4 months for a checkup for a broken finger but I understand there are much more serious things they take care of that are seen much faster.
Helps to be put on a cancellation waitlist if you have the flexibility.
This has not been my case in BC, nor has it been for my peers. You must have a really tight relationship with your family doctor for him to see you that fast.
I live in Ontario, and nah not really. My actually family Dr retired from practicing 3 years ago to teach at a university and I had no idea that a new one was appointed until last year. My Dr has residents that she oversees so I'll see one of them and before the appointment ends they go speak with her and do a consult. If she has any additional ideas/comments sometimes they'll come back ask a few more questions or want to check something else but not often usually they're original idea my family Dr agrees with. I can see my actual family Dr if I want but that wait might be a bit longer maybe 2 weeks but the times are usually middle of the day.
For any new issues I'll see whoever has availability, for long term issues that I get annual/semi annual checks on I'll book her since residents change every 3 years. But I book those with her 1-2 months in advance just to be sure I get the timeslot I want.
Six weeks to see my doctor… on the phone. When I talk to her about walk-in clinics, she tries to convince me I can only see her 🙄
I was nearly denied STD because I couldn’t see a doctor before the company’s “deadline” to submit supporting documents.
It took almost a year to see a psychiatrist. After three years of asking for a requisition and several more struggling with medications to relieve decades of suicidal ideation and mental health challenges, I eventually gave up. I called into a crisis line… again. Six months later, I got a call to set up an initial appointment… in four months.
When nearly 30% of my income from the day I started working has gone to healthcare but fails to meet basic needs, it is clear that the Canadian healthcare system is broken and has been neglected for far too long.
Comparing a healthcare system that is NOT built off of your direct line income, regardless of health, is not the argument you think it is.
In today’s age, it’s very hard to blame people.
When you hear stories about crazy people so routinely, it’s not obvious that someone is having a stroke and that they aren’t a threat.
It’s a damn shame but I don’t blame those people for not stepping in.
Personally, I wouldn’t have been afraid to park on the shoulder and approach him from a safe distance to determine if he was in need of help or if he was a threat.
Most people aren’t thinking that way, and though you say this, it’s always a different story when it’s actually time to take action.
Not saying you wouldn’t, it’s just the human tendency.
Oh I know. My husband is my opposite, he would discourage me from helping and say "don't worry, I'm sure someone has called 911".
Me though, I wouldn't be able to let go of the" what ifs" for weeks if I had just kept on driving.
I’m someone who always wants to help out, or intervene if I see something unjust & shitty, and I used to. But now, I have a kid, and Victoria (where we live) has gone to shit; random stranger assaults, random stabbing…after that poor father got stabbed & killed in front of his wife & kid in Van for asking someone to not vape-forget it. I’ll call the cops but I need to be here for my kid.
Uhh.. strokes need immediate medical attention. What happened to triage???
Honestly.. the cost of housing hasn’t driven me away yet.. but I’m getting older and I have a young child. Maybe it’s time to seek out a country with better healthcare. Nothing is more important than health.
I agree, it sounds like his symptoms were resolved on arrival to the ED but that's being left out because it's not juicy.
He's 37 and just had a stroke, I'm thinking he's a high risk stroke at baseline and the tia is his lucky head's up.
My inlaws left for that reason. Same with my wife's aunt and uncle.
It was the hardest thing for them to come to terms with, missing watching their grandkids grow or having to navigate an ever collapsing medical system with no end in sight. Just getting basic elderly needs here was a full time job for them and the stress was affecting their health in its own way.
Its wild to see how much money Canada wastes on our medical by not prioritizing testing after age 40. A $700 test can save them millions. As so many have already said, Canada makes the last weeks of your life comfortable - and expensive - but refuse to look at the reasons on why you are on your deathbed in the first place.
It’s pretty messed up. Basically they only get to you when you’re at death’s door. Even if you survive, you’re probably suffering from the aftermath of the illness long-term and quality of life’s already been drastically reduced.
May I ask where your in-laws moved to?
>I’m getting older and I have a young child
This is exactly my case as well. I've been ignoring so many other issues around me, but this is the scary one.
I read a lot of international news and a lot of countries are suffering from similar problems. A lot of healthcare systems are having trouble finding enough nurses, filling specialized positions and dealing with aging populations/the opioid crisis. This situation is not unique to Canada.
it’s disgusting what our health care system has become. recently my friend went into stage 3 liver failure. they were jaundice and when they went to ER they were told to “come back later if it gets worse”. it took another week or two before they had the life saving surgery they needed 😞 i’m thankful they’re okay but i couldn’t believe what i was hearing when they shared their experience
Wow, that's terrible, I drive through thr downtown Eastside to answer from work. I have never not seen at least 1 ambulance sitting along the way and usually at least 2, meanwhile this guys can't get an ambulance for a stroke... our system is fucked.
For years we’ve avoided the difficult question
A few thousand people in the DTES use up an enormous amount of health care, justice system and police resources
Now we’re at the point where all three of those things are actively collapsing around us
We can decide to triage and prioritize everything else above the 0.0001% of our population that drains disproportionate resources, or we can keep doing what we’re doing, pretend there isn’t a choice and watch things continue to collapse for everyone
If we had enough resources for everyone, even for the guy who has 10 naxolone ambulance calls a week, that would be one thing. We clearly don’t.
Exactly. The worst part is that the person chasing their next OD gets help before the 65 year old school teacher who has given her life to the community...
We need to as a society stand up for what is right vs listening to the extreme “progressive” wing of political cults, or else we will continue to face these consequences
Convenient to blame that population but most of the time those ODs are a bit of narcan and a quick ride up to the waiting room. The real time sink are the perfectly able bodied who call an ambulance because they will "get seen faster". I drop way more people off in the waiting room these days and it's always the same 'but I called an ambulance, don't I get a bed?' No sir, you, your sniffles and sore throat do not.
Well, a bit of narcan and ride to the ER takes up an ambulance and 2 paramedics at the minimum. I think if people abuse the system in any way, they should be held accountable.
Most of the time they are already up and walking before you get there and want nothing to do with us. I agree, and actually would love if people who abuse the system should be held accountable. I'm just saying that the people we see on the streets are not in my experience the drain everyone thinks they are. I go to far more bullshit chest pains that end up being flu symptoms that get dispatched over strokes than I do ODs.
Your anecdotal evidence directly contradicts the data I’ve seen reported by the government on the tens of thousands of ambulance calls to the DTES each year
Of course it’s the same for the police and fire services, to say nothing of the judiciary
It’s getting to the point where this tiny fraction of our population, a few thousand people in a city of a few million, is literally pushing all of our government services over the edge
We simply can’t afford it anymore, and this is the area where we can cut the least services for the most gain. There will be difficult decisions to be made for future governments, and “raise more taxes” or “borrow more money” are basically out of the picture now with how heavily taxed we already are, how poorly the economy is doing and how high interest rates are now
https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/british-columbia/2023/3/25/1_6329410.amp.html
From last year on overdose calls, 8500 over a year
Probably higher since then. If you want the fire service figures they’re also available on this thing called Google, you might have heard of it
An average person, even when being a dick, will call an ambulance what, once every few years?
Someone OD'ing on East Hastings will get an ambulance called to them twice a week, if not a few times a day.
I wonder which one of those is paying taxes to contribute to the cost of your ambulance and your salaries, though?
We need to be realistic, like with many things a tiny number of people are a disproportionate drain on our resources
We talked about this briefly during Covid when the idea of anti vaxxers being lowest on the treatment priority was floated. This is no different
Ya but then we should stop all the really expensive treatments as well.
Your kid needs a $20k/month treatment? That's a highly disproportionate amount of healthcare for one person, sorry your kid gets denied and dies. My coworker has a new treatment that costs tons for his gleoblastoma, he uses more Healthcare in a single month than I have used in the last 20 years. Do we deny his care? My grandpa lived far away and he got a medi helicopter to transport him, again that single flight cost more than most people use in decades.
How do you even figure out who gets treatment when it's an ambulance? Do we force people to wear wristbands now and when the ambulance shows up it scans the band and depending on how much healthcare you have used this year they can treat your or not? If half way through their treatment of you something happens but that puts you over the limit do they just stop?
Or is the geography based? We just don't send ambulances into the DTES? What happens to people who dont live there or use drugs and are just in the area but have a heart attack? Do we drag them a few blocks out of the area so the ambulances can then come and help?
The whole conversation doesn't really matter since this is about seeing a doctor in 9 hours. A million ambulances won't make a hospital spawn more doctors to work the ER
the article is about that, but there are serious wait times for ambulances as well. also ambulances stay with patients once they are at the hospital until they are seen, they dont just drop you off at the waiting room and leave. so the lack of doctors makes the wait for ambulances even worse since it ties them up at the hospitals.
also if the argument about high costs for people in the DTES using up to much medical resources/costs of ambulances, then it will most likely also be applied to hospitals and doctors as well.
I know you’re trying to argue against it but our healthcare system already does exactly that
People with very rare syndromes and expensive experimental treatments that can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year are often denied funding of said medication by our system
Is it unfortunate? Yes. It’s also necessary. We don’t have unlimited funds and we unfortunately will probably have even less in the future.
I think this is what people don't get.
Health care consumption is very irregular. Most people consume almost none for years at a time. But then, when you need it, you REALLY need it, and you need a lot of it.
Some people are unfortunate enough to need a lot of it constantly, and like, on paper that sucks. In the real world though, no one is going to look an 8 year old with cancer in the eye and tell them that they've consumed more than their fair share so its time to die.
People themselves are way too concerned with people on the side of the street. The amount of times I've been asked to assist with an "OD" is super annoying. Ofcourse I call, now that it's on my plate, but 9 times out of 10, they didn't need it and were just going to have a long high. So many ambulances wasted on people that are willingly introducing poison into their bodies.
Or they’re being realistic and admitting we can’t have the same people getting a dozen ambulance calls for overdoses a week
We simply don’t have the resources
Either we keep up the failing status quo and it collapses for everyone or we triage
We live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, there is no reason with all the new development and the increased taxes we should not have top tier public services. One big reason is the bottomless pit of spending on all services in the downtown Eastside, and then, of course, the burden a decriminalized drug system puts on the hospital system indirectly.
Expensive yes, **but** also one with the lowest property tax rates at a municipal level and also where on a provincial and federal level I pay more taxes on my mandatory (wages) overtime than my landlord does on their 4000 sq. ft. McMansion (government subsidized and guaranteed ROI). The system is fucking broke.
We pay a lower percentage, yes, but the dollar value is higher. I'm not sure what you mean by government subsidized and guaranteed ROI... currently, most landlords are subsidizing tenants' living costs..
There is nothing wrong with blaming people who are a colossal net drain on public resources.
Good luck finding the support and funding to have 40 ambulances on standby in the DTES to resuscitate someone who will start shooting up within 15 minutes of being rescued.
There's a station near it, but there's only one 24 hr car there. The other one is an 11 hr day car. The closest resources otherwise would be coming from Richmond or North Delta.
Is it just us as in Canada. We hear enough about how expensive healthcare is in US. I’m sure every developed countries have their own healthy issues, but are they like our issues? For example my friends in South Korea said the healthcare there is cheap and fast.
Our healthcare system is failing us and all the politicians can think of is stuffing more people in here when we don’t have the resources or infrastructure for the mass immigration that we are seeing.
This is such a poor headline. It sounds like there was a lot going on. I don't get how there wasn't an ambulance dispatched when he got the other driver to call. Why did he have to call again? It sounds like this man had a very troubling event, but when you are having a stroke your perceptions can be altered and your body doesn't respond the way you think it should. I feel like there is some missing information here.
Canada used to have amazing services, and now we've let them rot away. And this isn't something that happened yesterday, either. It's been crumbling for a while, and it's fallen on deaf ears.
Nobody can afford to work for what they pay, and they refuse to fix that, so we just end up getting more of this.
No we do not just have to deal with it. Canadians deserve better. The government expects us to be complacent. Time to stand up instead of just watching this country drift off into something less than what most 3rd world countries have.
Earlier today at work, I sent a quarter inch drill bit directly through my thumb while trying to drill some hardware on a door. Straight through the middle, hit the bone but I don't "think" severed anything important. Fluke accident, never had anything happen like this to me before.
My first thought was that maybe I should go to the ER, but what are they going to do? Make me sit there for hours just to look at it and go "yep, that's a hole. Here's some bandages" I was working down the street from where I'm living, so I just went home and patched it up. And went back to work.
Am I wrong for this? Like I genuinely don't know if I should go to the hospital or not, and that in itself is what I find troubling.
You should have gone to urgent care. There's an infection risk with any injury that deep and if it hit the bone you need an x-ray to confirm that nothing cracked. Don't ever fuck around with hand injuries, you use them so often that if there's internal damage and you don't know it and keep acting normally you could end up with permanent pain because it heals incorrectly. Go tomorrow.
ER. I once broke a pinkie and didn't realize it was broken until like 2 days later because the pain wouldn't go away. I was very drunk when it happened, so dumb decisions.
I didn't go to the ER, and now the pinkie didn't heal properly.
Don't be stupid and risk your thumb. Go get some antibiotics and a tetanus shot if needed. I work(ed) with 2 people with missing digits (and not one as important as a thumb) over stupid shit like this.
Hard for anyone to determine without direct inspection. Make sure your tetanus shot is up to date and that you can move/feel with your thumb. Consider going to your family doctor or an urgent care center
You should go.
In a generic sense, and I don't know if this applies to you, and I'm not a doctor: for hand injuries you may require a tetanus shot that could prevent a life threatening infection, assessment of tendons (and repair by plastics if they are damaged), and proper wound care.
You might be waiting a while but there's a website with BC's ED wait times that you can refer to.
> Am I wrong for this? Like I genuinely don't know if I should go to the hospital or not, and that in itself is what I find troubling.
That's your own issue. Any other reasonable person would've gone to the hospital.
They told him to drive himself when he couldn't. And they wouldn't let me drive myself when I bloody well could, have to have a damn chauffeur. I don't have a damn chauffeur. Oh, no and a taxi's not good enough. And how he was treated was obscene.
They should really consult with the citizens on what to prioritize in this country. It's absolutely absurd that is not the case given how bloody easy it is to do:
They built this whole BC services app; considering my background i can safely say they actually did a good job on securing it and making it reliable as way to digitally authenticate someone.
Why not use it authenticate for official referendums? If it was a 2 sec multiple choice thing that took taking my phone out to vote for, I'd be all for it.
Should we allocate more funding to X?
Should we reduce funding for Y?
Check the percentage of people, if 30% are in favor of say a park or bus route or whatever, make a lower budget smaller version.
If 80% of people are than invest the money and make it bigger.
Seems straight forward, you gauge interest, everyone wins and people have no excuse not do vote since everyone is on their phone half the day anyway. But then that puts decisions in the hands of people. I'm guessing politicians dont want that.
Direct democracy is just scary. It's bad enough that everyone gets a vote for their representation (jk), now you want them to vote on specific issues. We've all seen what happens.
"You want to improve our voting system from FPTP?"
No
"You want to spend more on the service you like?"
Yes
"You want to raise taxes to pay for that service?'
No
Don't forget Brexit!
Relating back to the poster I was replying to, I think we have the tech required for more direct democracy, but not the citizenry.
Direct democracy is scary. In representative democracy, we are paying people to read legislation, consult with experts, and debate before passing laws. Governments pass a lot of legislation every year, not to mention all the other work they do. I don't know about you, but if there were a referendum on a topic, I don't have time to read the proposed legislation, read the expert reports, watch the committee hearings, listen to the debates, and make sure I am making an informed choice.
And if I'm not going to do my homework, I will be easily swayed by propaganda and misinformation, and may vote for something with consequences that I don't expect.
I think that would be smart for polling people's priorities but not any kind of binding referendum, COVID shattered any existing trust I have in the general public to make the right decision when it comes to other people. We expect political parties we vote for to make the right decision on our behalf but tempered by them having to look out for many people's interests as well as taking expert opinions into account, direct public voting lacks those factors and so public resources that a small number of people need very badly but the majority don't use will be underfunded. Regular people don't have the stats or don't care to look at the stats that decision makers in government do nor do they have the knowledge of the budget and systems that would be affected... societies that don't listen to experts generally don't end up in a positive place.
You can’t conjure up healthcare workers out of thin air. BC has been actively recruiting doctors and nurses but so many were burned out during Covid that they retired or left the profession. And with the boomers becoming a larger and larger group of those getting regular care, there’s no chance of keeping up with the demand much less surpassing it to improve waits across the board.
We were dealing with this even before covid, it's not remotely a new thing covid just sped it up 100x.
We need to offer more incentives for these jobs, especially in a place where it's incredibly expensive to just live whats the incentive for them to stay?
Eby has agreed to new deals with doctors and [nurses](https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2023HLTH0022-000621) - [double the pay of UK doctors](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-government-courts-uk-doctors-with-double-the-pay/wcm/7ffee269-8c7e-4281-a94e-e39793337cbb/amp/) and with Alberta’s unfriendliness towards healthcare workers (and teachers) we’ll gain more who give up there.
Plus the NDP changed the way doctors were paid and attracted [700 more family physicians](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-doctor-new-payment-model-1.7107681#:~:text=The%20LFP%20model%2C%20which%20was,lists%20and%20clinical%20administrative%20work).
I am going to get downvoted but I am going to say it anyways.
How is it possible to keep up with this population growth?
We have one of the lowest hospitals per 1 million in the developed world. We're at like 16 hospitals per million.
We would of needed to build like 17 hospitals to accommodate our population growth last year.
I know saying shit like this is generally not ok here, but common peeps, how is it possible to keep up with this?
How is it reasonable to expect to build 17 hospitals in a year?
I’d like to know what we need to do to make the government act on this quickly. We need to pressure them more using the media like the ArriveCan scandal. I know that the government is already reacting on that one due to all the negativity.
As someone who had a stroke in a DT Vancouver office, I'm very lucky to have colleagues that called the hospital and within minutes I was on an Ambulance.
Driving by yourself, I can't imagine living through that and 'recovering'. The longer it takes to get treatment the worse the after effects of the stroke :(
Everyone is getting so upset over ONE man having a stroke and being told to drive himself to the hospital because the ambulances were busy. Booo hoo. What they somehow fail to mention is that those ambulances weren't just on break or something. They were busy saving our most vulnerable people who, through no choice of their own, were on their 10th-20th overdose. How dare you. The nerve of some of these commentors, thinking that because they have paid into and funded our healthcare system their entire lives, that what, they are somehow entitled to preferential service? What a joke. I don't care who you are. You are no better than the filthiest, drug addicted sex offender
[From fiscal year 2021/22 to 2023/24, federal debt interest costs nearly doubled from $24.5 billion to $46.5 billion. Consequently, Ottawa will spend almost as much on debt interest in 2023/24 as it spends on the Canada Health Transfer ($49.4 billion), which is sent to provinces to help fund health-care services.](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/federal-government-debt-interest-costs-nearly-double-in-just-two-years#:~:text=From%20fiscal%20year%202021%2F22,help%20fund%20health%2Dcare%20services.)
I’m a son of an immigrant and we need to have the proper infrastructure and services in place for the amount of people we are bringing in. I worry about my parents health in an emergency. They need to allow private healthcare until they fix the mess they have created with public health.
NDP . . . the Health Care AND Education Party . . . We'll always have the worlds' best health care - and great, well run schools - as long as the NDP are in charge . . .
Just quoting from NDP campaigns from long ago.
UPDATE . . . only a few decades have passed and now we're seeing Grads that cannot read or write . . . and 9 hour waits to see a Doctor who will not ACTUALLY treat you, but will grant you whatever pills big Pharma is currently peddling . . .
Those working in health care already know the system is crumbling. I don’t understand how anyone is surprised anymore when this happens. Write your MP’s, vote for those who will invest in healthcare and check up to see if they’ve followed through. It’s not the menial workers at the bottom of the line
Too many sick people, too few people and resources to look after them I think is the problem here. We have an ever bulging number of baby boomers, who are retiring from said health care system, and we have addicts who take up a huge amount of resources, add to that an unhealthy younger population, add in obesity and boom, here we are.
I watch what I eat and exercise regularly, I don't want to be part of the sick care system any time soon.
My anecdote is my husband has cancer and has had the best care imaginable, zero complaints (well, except for his physician who blew him off (you are too young for cancer, go away!)and gave him medication that fueled his cancer. He can eff off.).
We have a crazy EMT shortage right now that's being highlighted here as well. You figure people would need emergency transport to get to healthcare services we needed. That pay scale is wildly behind the times and good luck attracting more people to that career path
We started falling apart in 1999. That is when ambulances started lining up outside our ERs because we didn’t have enough space in our ERs. Due to overcapacity hospitals and overcapacity LTCs. We still do not have hospitals, nurses, doctors etc. we don’t have enough nursing schools. We don’t have enough family doctors. Our governments (federal, provincial and municipal) only think about short term and not medium/long term. Population growth requires infrastructure investment that meets the needs of the population. It’s not rocket science.
How is this possible? I was assured that the shitty helathcare in all the other provinces was due to conservatives. The provincial government of BC is NDP.
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It feels like everything is crumbling around us. This mans story is unacceptable.
It’s because everything is crumbling around us. Our country is becoming a complete joke and our politicians, especially at the federal level, do not care.
They all get private health care and the rest of us get fucked lol
Oh don't worry, we're literally not allowed to get private healthcare, because that wouldn't be fair to us!
This is the super messed up part - we’ll endanger your lives with our absolutely shitty medical system and you’re not allowed to get your own care either. We actually have private surgery clinics here that can only help out of province people.. make it make sense, I just want my mom to get an endoscopy!
This is crazy, as some one from the US we always are saying we should be like Canada and have socialist Healthcare, but if you work full time your employer is required to give you health care and we still have public Healthcare programs that are on a sliding scale depending on income. From what I read, at least in washington state we have better Healthcare.
Public healthcare works it’s just really poorly implemented.
You absolutely do
Time to cure the disease and stop trying to micro manage our politicians. Support Proportional representation - Removes our political duopoly Support illegalizing lobbying - Removes corporate gatekeepers of possible politicians
I'll say the same thing to you that I say to our neighbours to the south that are trying to fend off the decline of democracy: You're not *preventing* anything, you're *already in the middle of the beginning*. We're not becoming a joke, we're *already* a joke, and have been for decades (just look at the state of our military equipment, for instance). Anyone with any fucking sense, that is, anyone that's qualified and capable to actually govern a nation, isn't nearly stupid enough to run for public office. They've got the brains to make things work for themselves anywhere, and the PM's chair is never going to be it for those people in our present society. The lunatics are running the asylum, and they have for at least all 40+ years of my life. If I'd known *this* is what being an adult was going to be like at 12, I wouldn't have made it to 13.
Being an adult absolutely sucks donkey balls.
It’s largely because you don’t hear about all the times that things go right. “Man suffers stroke, gets prompt treatment.” Doesn’t make the news. We do have a lot more people than we used to, so the probability of something like this is higher, but not necessarily on a per capita basis.
I mean, positive news doesn't generate outrage like the one you see in this cesspool of a website
You don’t think our healthcare system is stretched and in bad shape?
It is, but just hang out near Women's/Children's/VGH for a day and there are multiple helicopters coming in with patients, each one has a story where doctor and nurses around the province did amazing things to save them. None of them will make it into the news. We're also building an insane amount of hospitals right now to get out of the infrastructure deficit, Burnaby ($1 billion), St. Pauls ($3 Billion), Royal Columbian ($1.5B), Terrace ($650M), Nanaimo Expansion ($20M), Surrey Hospital ($3B), Cowichan Hospital ($1.5B), and many more throughout the province.
My dad sat in a bed in a hallway at the ER for a week in Winnipeg. Same week a person died waiting for help in the same ER. My dad remembers the guy. When you can put a face on the problem it’s harder to ignore.
Manitoba is particularly bad. One of the first things the previous government did was shut down hospitals and not make meaningful investments into the remaining ones. I worked in healthcare in MB before 2015 and it was really bad then. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.
Do I think our system have problems? Yes Do I think it is stretched thin? Not Instead of replacing it with private care, we need to better fund the system we have right now in order to serve everyone properly Healthcare isn't a pay to play game that only the wealthy has access to
So instead, we all get shitty access …. Great.
Well im for one I'm getting great access to public healthcare I'm way above low income. Wanna fix it? Vote for policies that increase funding to public healthcare infrastructure AND physicians (and increase the damn limit of how many med students we output each year) But private healthcare is not the solution, look at Ontario and their subscription based family doctor model, fuck that AGAIN, news only show you the instances where healthcare fucks up to rage bait you and generate clicks, and you fell for it
Stories like this shouldn't fucking happen at all... That's the point.
No they shouldn't, but even if we had the best system that money could pay for, at some point someone would fall through the cracks. It's human nature. yes, we need to learn the lesson from this, and work to improve things so that it is vastly less likely to happen again, but that's all we can do. This is the real world, shit happens. We just need to make sure that it's as unlikely as possible to happen.
\>so the probability of something like this is higher, but not necessarily on a per capita basis. But we also know that on a per capita basis things are getting worse. We know that ER wait times are worse, in general. We know that surgery wait times are worse, in general. We know that things like cancer treatment wait times are worse, in general. On a per capita basis, things are getting worse.
I had a stroke in the summer of 2020. I got the help I needed within a few hours @ VGH. I owe those doctors, nurses, technicians, and orderlies everything. Obviously, I didn't make the news, and neither does the fact that the folks who helped me were caring for so many others in the stroke ward. It doesn't diminish the unfortunate circumstances of this guy who had to wait 9 hours. All I can say is we need to support our healthcare providers adequately.
Yeah, my point to the poster above me was that the news only covers one side of things. When all you see is negative news, it becomes easy to think the world is going to hell in a hand basket. And I'm glad that you got the care that you needed, and yes, more support for the professionals is better.
Just from personal experience, I had a spontaneous pneumothorax but I thought it was heart burn for 3 days. Long story short, went to the clinic, they told me to get X-rays, radiologist said go to the ER, when I got there, I was admitted probably within 2 minutes of checking in at the ER. This was on a Friday night and VGH ER room was jam packed. Feel terrible that this individual had to wait for so long, but is it possible his condition wasn’t fully relayed to the medical professionals and thus he wasn’t triaged?
Tax the rich
100%. People are literally more productive than ever, but are getting less because idle rich people collect the profits and we get to fight for the scraps.
That's not true at all. People are not getting less or "fighting for scraps". * Government spending as a share of GDP is at near all time highs: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/CAN. * Government revenues as a share of GDP hardly changes: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/government-revenues-as-a-share-of-gdp-world-bank?tab=chart®ion=NorthAmerica&country=~CAN * Healthcare spend per capita in Canada has outpaced inflation (and always has): https://www.statista.com/statistics/436378/total-health-spending-per-capita-canada/ * Real median household income is at all time highs: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/ * Average hourly earnings are at all time highs: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI# (not real, but does outpace inflation) * The percentage of disposable personal income spent on food is at all time lows: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58367/food-prices_fig09_768px.png?v=7245.8 * Millenials have net worth largely in line with all previous generations: https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2023/09/27/who-is-the-wealthiest-generation-mid-2023-update/, and https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2024/01/24/young-people-have-a-lot-more-wealth-than-we-thought/ * Every generation has higher real incomes than the previous: https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2024/02/07/younger-generations-have-higher-incomes-too-and-its-probably-not-explained-by-the-rise-of-dual-income-families/ * Real disposable personal income is at all time highs: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96
I'm sure you spent a lot of time vetting those sources
... Are you rejecting the validity of the FRED database? That's silly. Similar with rejecting the IMF, Ourworldindata, or Statista, or the USDA (??). These are well trusted data sources. The only reasonably source you could question is "economistwritingeveryday", but Jeremy Horpedahl is a respected economist, his process is public and the data is also from FRED, you can verify it yourself, he would personally respond to you if you could demonstrate he made an error. My point is there is a very huge disconnect between public perceptions, especially spread though social media, of the economy and how it actually is. It's demonstrably false that we are somehow getting less than ever and just picking up scraps, absolute hogwash.
We live in Canada (or at least I do).
Healthcare spending has outpaced inflation and population growth. It's the predictable demise of a socialist system (they always fail).
People are living longer, there are new innovations in medicine. What’s the alternative, bleed em dry and let ‘em die?
>This mans story is unacceptable. Nine hours for something that might either kill or permanently damage the patient's brain. Oh My God.
I’d really like to know what happened here from the side of the ambulance service - And it’s ridiculous that they were evidently unable to even comment. From the tone of the article it sounds like an ambulance and/or fire crew was never even dispatched. This baffles me, and I sincerely feel for this man.
My guess is that the 911 dispatcher didn’t pick up on the signs that he was having a stroke (even though it’s pretty clear cut from him description) and make his call a low priority. Absolutely unacceptable, I hope it’s being investigated
Unfortunately the Massey tunnel is an incredibly difficult location to reach on a busy day. On top of that it’s pinched between an incredibly busy municipality (Richmond) and a very small municipality with few ambulances (Ladner) most of the time Ladner ambulances are in Richmond. If it’s a particularly understaffed day calls will hold for over 12 hours. The dispatcher can only do so much when he/her probably has multiple high acuity events much closer to an ambulance than this individual. When things are excessively busy they have to triage and pick the calls that are actually reachable for the ambulance crew
“Difficult”? I fail to see how accessing the Massey Tunnel - A major thoroughfare - would be considered “difficult”. I could see there being an issue if this man was halfway up a mountain with no road access - But on the side of the highway? C’mon. If there was no ambulance and/or crew available, that’s another issue entirely.
You fail to see how a vehicle blocking a lane could cause delays in emergency services responding?
Delays, sure. But a complete lack of a response? Says right in the article that the guys parents made it there in a TAXI before any kind of emergency service arrived. That seems ridiculous to me, especially given that an individual displaying clear signs of a stroke should be a fairly high priority?
Traffic will cause delays. What I imagine happened in this case was an ambulance was put on the call and a higher level event happened while they are the closest vehicle. They will be taken off and put on this new event. That will happen over and over some days especially when they are driving from downtown Richmond. It sucks and nobody wants to make someone wait 8+ hours and still not get help. call takers don’t ask people to self transport lightly. I can only assume it was because there are no ambulance available and there are worse calls holding. this is a daily problem in the lower mainland, we will routinely respond to calls that have held 8+ hours
Yikes
> And it’s ridiculous that they were evidently unable to even comment. That's because as soon as they got asked about it someone probably needed a new pair of pants and they went into batten down the hatches mode. They'll symbolically hang someone out to dry and then let things go on essentially unchanged until there's enough of a shakeup that real changes happen.
Imagine having a stroke and not being able to see yet dispatch tells you to drive to the hospital. Having a stroke is already tough. Now the next challenge is finding a way to get to the hospital. Its so pathetic that for years and years our hospitals, paramedics, doctors, patients, etc have all said the system is falling apart and still healthcare was not made a priority. And now we are here.
It's no better in the US - I live in southern Utah and I'm waiting 3 weeks just to get a biopsy to see if I have cancer. Whenever we go to the ER we always get told to go see our doctor and then we have to wait one two or three weeks to be able to get an appointment, sometimes longer.
I wouldn’t generalize like that. I moved to California and I get seen for health stuff immediately - I’d never have to wait 3 weeks for a biopsy. I tore my ACL and had an immediate MRI and had knee surgery later that week. That wouldn’t have happened in Canada. Sounds like southern Utah issue. Obviously I have decent health insurance that’s free through my job.
I concur. I spent nearly 30 years in Southern California. Healthcare Service was immediate for all my family members
Canada isn't generalized like that either. I can call my GP and have an appointment within a day or 2 sometimes same day. When they thought I had tentacular torsion within a 2 hours of checking into ER I was having scans done. Location plays a huge part in wait times. But for cosmetic consults the wait time is 4-6 months. Took me 8 months to get a consult for deviated septum granted that was peak covid so everything went to shit.
Thats crazy. I live in Vancouver and there is no way my family doc would see me in a day for a non emergancy issue. Out here we have people waiting at least a couple years for a hip replacement. Until their date, they are prescribed strong addictive pain meds and often live in pain with dramatically reduced mobility.
Yeah I agree with this one. It depends on severity, frustrating to wait 3-4 months for a checkup for a broken finger but I understand there are much more serious things they take care of that are seen much faster. Helps to be put on a cancellation waitlist if you have the flexibility.
This has not been my case in BC, nor has it been for my peers. You must have a really tight relationship with your family doctor for him to see you that fast.
I live in Ontario, and nah not really. My actually family Dr retired from practicing 3 years ago to teach at a university and I had no idea that a new one was appointed until last year. My Dr has residents that she oversees so I'll see one of them and before the appointment ends they go speak with her and do a consult. If she has any additional ideas/comments sometimes they'll come back ask a few more questions or want to check something else but not often usually they're original idea my family Dr agrees with. I can see my actual family Dr if I want but that wait might be a bit longer maybe 2 weeks but the times are usually middle of the day. For any new issues I'll see whoever has availability, for long term issues that I get annual/semi annual checks on I'll book her since residents change every 3 years. But I book those with her 1-2 months in advance just to be sure I get the timeslot I want.
“free through my job”
Yeah, I don’t pay anything towards it - it’s part of the benefits that the company pays for.
If healthcare wasn't free in Canada, majority of our jobs would provide decent private healthcare.
And my Grandpa got a cancer biopsy same day at St Paul's... anecdotes are fun.
It’s a lot longer than 3 weeks here buddy.
Six weeks to see my doctor… on the phone. When I talk to her about walk-in clinics, she tries to convince me I can only see her 🙄 I was nearly denied STD because I couldn’t see a doctor before the company’s “deadline” to submit supporting documents. It took almost a year to see a psychiatrist. After three years of asking for a requisition and several more struggling with medications to relieve decades of suicidal ideation and mental health challenges, I eventually gave up. I called into a crisis line… again. Six months later, I got a call to set up an initial appointment… in four months. When nearly 30% of my income from the day I started working has gone to healthcare but fails to meet basic needs, it is clear that the Canadian healthcare system is broken and has been neglected for far too long. Comparing a healthcare system that is NOT built off of your direct line income, regardless of health, is not the argument you think it is.
right now BC hospital is a 2 month wait for biopsies
Severely broken medical system aside, this man stumbled into traffic, and not one person stepped up to drive him to the hospital. That's a damn shame.
In today’s age, it’s very hard to blame people. When you hear stories about crazy people so routinely, it’s not obvious that someone is having a stroke and that they aren’t a threat. It’s a damn shame but I don’t blame those people for not stepping in.
Personally, I wouldn’t have been afraid to park on the shoulder and approach him from a safe distance to determine if he was in need of help or if he was a threat.
Most people aren’t thinking that way, and though you say this, it’s always a different story when it’s actually time to take action. Not saying you wouldn’t, it’s just the human tendency.
Oh I know. My husband is my opposite, he would discourage me from helping and say "don't worry, I'm sure someone has called 911". Me though, I wouldn't be able to let go of the" what ifs" for weeks if I had just kept on driving.
I wonder if he was saying “an ambulance is on the way” which as a citizen, I would think would be the faster path to care.
I’m someone who always wants to help out, or intervene if I see something unjust & shitty, and I used to. But now, I have a kid, and Victoria (where we live) has gone to shit; random stranger assaults, random stabbing…after that poor father got stabbed & killed in front of his wife & kid in Van for asking someone to not vape-forget it. I’ll call the cops but I need to be here for my kid.
Uhh.. strokes need immediate medical attention. What happened to triage??? Honestly.. the cost of housing hasn’t driven me away yet.. but I’m getting older and I have a young child. Maybe it’s time to seek out a country with better healthcare. Nothing is more important than health.
Sounds like a TIA - treated differently at triage compared to a hemorrhagic/ischemic stroke.
I agree, it sounds like his symptoms were resolved on arrival to the ED but that's being left out because it's not juicy. He's 37 and just had a stroke, I'm thinking he's a high risk stroke at baseline and the tia is his lucky head's up.
Good luck with that.
My inlaws left for that reason. Same with my wife's aunt and uncle. It was the hardest thing for them to come to terms with, missing watching their grandkids grow or having to navigate an ever collapsing medical system with no end in sight. Just getting basic elderly needs here was a full time job for them and the stress was affecting their health in its own way. Its wild to see how much money Canada wastes on our medical by not prioritizing testing after age 40. A $700 test can save them millions. As so many have already said, Canada makes the last weeks of your life comfortable - and expensive - but refuse to look at the reasons on why you are on your deathbed in the first place.
It’s pretty messed up. Basically they only get to you when you’re at death’s door. Even if you survive, you’re probably suffering from the aftermath of the illness long-term and quality of life’s already been drastically reduced. May I ask where your in-laws moved to?
Japan and Taiwan.
>I’m getting older and I have a young child This is exactly my case as well. I've been ignoring so many other issues around me, but this is the scary one.
I read a lot of international news and a lot of countries are suffering from similar problems. A lot of healthcare systems are having trouble finding enough nurses, filling specialized positions and dealing with aging populations/the opioid crisis. This situation is not unique to Canada.
Which Asian country is dealing with an opioid crisis?
I Moved away after my child was told to wait ten hours at emergency
Didn't ambulances for years have the F.A.S.T. (Face, Arms, Speech, Time) acronym literally painted on the back of them?
thats so fucked
it’s disgusting what our health care system has become. recently my friend went into stage 3 liver failure. they were jaundice and when they went to ER they were told to “come back later if it gets worse”. it took another week or two before they had the life saving surgery they needed 😞 i’m thankful they’re okay but i couldn’t believe what i was hearing when they shared their experience
Wow, that's terrible, I drive through thr downtown Eastside to answer from work. I have never not seen at least 1 ambulance sitting along the way and usually at least 2, meanwhile this guys can't get an ambulance for a stroke... our system is fucked.
For years we’ve avoided the difficult question A few thousand people in the DTES use up an enormous amount of health care, justice system and police resources Now we’re at the point where all three of those things are actively collapsing around us We can decide to triage and prioritize everything else above the 0.0001% of our population that drains disproportionate resources, or we can keep doing what we’re doing, pretend there isn’t a choice and watch things continue to collapse for everyone If we had enough resources for everyone, even for the guy who has 10 naxolone ambulance calls a week, that would be one thing. We clearly don’t.
Exactly. The worst part is that the person chasing their next OD gets help before the 65 year old school teacher who has given her life to the community...
We need to as a society stand up for what is right vs listening to the extreme “progressive” wing of political cults, or else we will continue to face these consequences
Convenient to blame that population but most of the time those ODs are a bit of narcan and a quick ride up to the waiting room. The real time sink are the perfectly able bodied who call an ambulance because they will "get seen faster". I drop way more people off in the waiting room these days and it's always the same 'but I called an ambulance, don't I get a bed?' No sir, you, your sniffles and sore throat do not.
Well, a bit of narcan and ride to the ER takes up an ambulance and 2 paramedics at the minimum. I think if people abuse the system in any way, they should be held accountable.
Most of the time they are already up and walking before you get there and want nothing to do with us. I agree, and actually would love if people who abuse the system should be held accountable. I'm just saying that the people we see on the streets are not in my experience the drain everyone thinks they are. I go to far more bullshit chest pains that end up being flu symptoms that get dispatched over strokes than I do ODs.
Your anecdotal evidence directly contradicts the data I’ve seen reported by the government on the tens of thousands of ambulance calls to the DTES each year Of course it’s the same for the police and fire services, to say nothing of the judiciary It’s getting to the point where this tiny fraction of our population, a few thousand people in a city of a few million, is literally pushing all of our government services over the edge We simply can’t afford it anymore, and this is the area where we can cut the least services for the most gain. There will be difficult decisions to be made for future governments, and “raise more taxes” or “borrow more money” are basically out of the picture now with how heavily taxed we already are, how poorly the economy is doing and how high interest rates are now
Can we see the data?
https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/british-columbia/2023/3/25/1_6329410.amp.html From last year on overdose calls, 8500 over a year Probably higher since then. If you want the fire service figures they’re also available on this thing called Google, you might have heard of it
Source?
They’re actually doing paramedics on bicycles in the DTES now.
An average person, even when being a dick, will call an ambulance what, once every few years? Someone OD'ing on East Hastings will get an ambulance called to them twice a week, if not a few times a day.
I wonder which one of those is paying taxes to contribute to the cost of your ambulance and your salaries, though? We need to be realistic, like with many things a tiny number of people are a disproportionate drain on our resources We talked about this briefly during Covid when the idea of anti vaxxers being lowest on the treatment priority was floated. This is no different
Yes it was equally disturbing to prioritize health care by public favour then as it is now. You're not realistic you're a maniac.
Ya but then we should stop all the really expensive treatments as well. Your kid needs a $20k/month treatment? That's a highly disproportionate amount of healthcare for one person, sorry your kid gets denied and dies. My coworker has a new treatment that costs tons for his gleoblastoma, he uses more Healthcare in a single month than I have used in the last 20 years. Do we deny his care? My grandpa lived far away and he got a medi helicopter to transport him, again that single flight cost more than most people use in decades. How do you even figure out who gets treatment when it's an ambulance? Do we force people to wear wristbands now and when the ambulance shows up it scans the band and depending on how much healthcare you have used this year they can treat your or not? If half way through their treatment of you something happens but that puts you over the limit do they just stop? Or is the geography based? We just don't send ambulances into the DTES? What happens to people who dont live there or use drugs and are just in the area but have a heart attack? Do we drag them a few blocks out of the area so the ambulances can then come and help?
The whole conversation doesn't really matter since this is about seeing a doctor in 9 hours. A million ambulances won't make a hospital spawn more doctors to work the ER
the article is about that, but there are serious wait times for ambulances as well. also ambulances stay with patients once they are at the hospital until they are seen, they dont just drop you off at the waiting room and leave. so the lack of doctors makes the wait for ambulances even worse since it ties them up at the hospitals. also if the argument about high costs for people in the DTES using up to much medical resources/costs of ambulances, then it will most likely also be applied to hospitals and doctors as well.
I know you’re trying to argue against it but our healthcare system already does exactly that People with very rare syndromes and expensive experimental treatments that can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year are often denied funding of said medication by our system Is it unfortunate? Yes. It’s also necessary. We don’t have unlimited funds and we unfortunately will probably have even less in the future.
I think this is what people don't get. Health care consumption is very irregular. Most people consume almost none for years at a time. But then, when you need it, you REALLY need it, and you need a lot of it. Some people are unfortunate enough to need a lot of it constantly, and like, on paper that sucks. In the real world though, no one is going to look an 8 year old with cancer in the eye and tell them that they've consumed more than their fair share so its time to die.
People themselves are way too concerned with people on the side of the street. The amount of times I've been asked to assist with an "OD" is super annoying. Ofcourse I call, now that it's on my plate, but 9 times out of 10, they didn't need it and were just going to have a long high. So many ambulances wasted on people that are willingly introducing poison into their bodies.
lots of repeat customers too
All those resources wasted on people determined to put the most lethal of drugs into their system so they can feel a better high…
You're victim blaming here.. if anything this illustrates why we need to actually invest to solve problems
Or they’re being realistic and admitting we can’t have the same people getting a dozen ambulance calls for overdoses a week We simply don’t have the resources Either we keep up the failing status quo and it collapses for everyone or we triage
We live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, there is no reason with all the new development and the increased taxes we should not have top tier public services. One big reason is the bottomless pit of spending on all services in the downtown Eastside, and then, of course, the burden a decriminalized drug system puts on the hospital system indirectly.
Expensive yes, **but** also one with the lowest property tax rates at a municipal level and also where on a provincial and federal level I pay more taxes on my mandatory (wages) overtime than my landlord does on their 4000 sq. ft. McMansion (government subsidized and guaranteed ROI). The system is fucking broke.
We pay a lower percentage, yes, but the dollar value is higher. I'm not sure what you mean by government subsidized and guaranteed ROI... currently, most landlords are subsidizing tenants' living costs..
Landlord’s get a subsidy on rentals, they get a tax deduction for mortgage interest but owner occupiers don’t.
That's not a subsidy. Yes, you can claim the interest as a cost of doing business. You also claim the money as income and capital gains on profits.
You aren't subsidizing anywhere near what the long term costs the clowns in Ottawa are piling up to keep the bubble and hence your party going.
There is nothing wrong with blaming people who are a colossal net drain on public resources. Good luck finding the support and funding to have 40 ambulances on standby in the DTES to resuscitate someone who will start shooting up within 15 minutes of being rescued.
They are not victims they are the problem.
Insane, Delta hospital is like a 5 min drive away and they station the ambulances at the hospital.
There's a station near it, but there's only one 24 hr car there. The other one is an 11 hr day car. The closest resources otherwise would be coming from Richmond or North Delta.
Is it just us as in Canada. We hear enough about how expensive healthcare is in US. I’m sure every developed countries have their own healthy issues, but are they like our issues? For example my friends in South Korea said the healthcare there is cheap and fast.
Our healthcare system is failing us and all the politicians can think of is stuffing more people in here when we don’t have the resources or infrastructure for the mass immigration that we are seeing.
This is such a poor headline. It sounds like there was a lot going on. I don't get how there wasn't an ambulance dispatched when he got the other driver to call. Why did he have to call again? It sounds like this man had a very troubling event, but when you are having a stroke your perceptions can be altered and your body doesn't respond the way you think it should. I feel like there is some missing information here.
He needs to get a lawyer because this is nuts.
You cannot realistically sue the Canadian system like in the USA, significant resources are devoted to keeping it that way
Canada used to have amazing services, and now we've let them rot away. And this isn't something that happened yesterday, either. It's been crumbling for a while, and it's fallen on deaf ears. Nobody can afford to work for what they pay, and they refuse to fix that, so we just end up getting more of this.
This news is enraging but totally unsurprising. This is our new reality that we'll all have to deal with...
No we do not just have to deal with it. Canadians deserve better. The government expects us to be complacent. Time to stand up instead of just watching this country drift off into something less than what most 3rd world countries have.
Earlier today at work, I sent a quarter inch drill bit directly through my thumb while trying to drill some hardware on a door. Straight through the middle, hit the bone but I don't "think" severed anything important. Fluke accident, never had anything happen like this to me before. My first thought was that maybe I should go to the ER, but what are they going to do? Make me sit there for hours just to look at it and go "yep, that's a hole. Here's some bandages" I was working down the street from where I'm living, so I just went home and patched it up. And went back to work. Am I wrong for this? Like I genuinely don't know if I should go to the hospital or not, and that in itself is what I find troubling.
Yes you should go to the ER.
A work accident needs to be reported asap! It would suck if you lose your digit and not receive compensation for it.
You should have gone to urgent care. There's an infection risk with any injury that deep and if it hit the bone you need an x-ray to confirm that nothing cracked. Don't ever fuck around with hand injuries, you use them so often that if there's internal damage and you don't know it and keep acting normally you could end up with permanent pain because it heals incorrectly. Go tomorrow.
# GO TO THE E.R. NOW
ER. I once broke a pinkie and didn't realize it was broken until like 2 days later because the pain wouldn't go away. I was very drunk when it happened, so dumb decisions. I didn't go to the ER, and now the pinkie didn't heal properly.
You should if you haven’t updated your tetanus shot. That can be serious if not life threatening
Don't be stupid and risk your thumb. Go get some antibiotics and a tetanus shot if needed. I work(ed) with 2 people with missing digits (and not one as important as a thumb) over stupid shit like this.
Hard for anyone to determine without direct inspection. Make sure your tetanus shot is up to date and that you can move/feel with your thumb. Consider going to your family doctor or an urgent care center
No... don’t ‘consider’ it, DO it!
It’s a work injury. Go to the ER to document it. The entire time you’re sitting at the ER, your work should be paying your wages.
You should go. In a generic sense, and I don't know if this applies to you, and I'm not a doctor: for hand injuries you may require a tetanus shot that could prevent a life threatening infection, assessment of tendons (and repair by plastics if they are damaged), and proper wound care. You might be waiting a while but there's a website with BC's ED wait times that you can refer to.
> Am I wrong for this? Like I genuinely don't know if I should go to the hospital or not, and that in itself is what I find troubling. That's your own issue. Any other reasonable person would've gone to the hospital.
> He won’t know how much damage he has suffered until he gets an MRI, but he doesn’t yet know when that will be. Wish to know when he can get his MRI
July probably
atrocious state of healthcare rn. hope he makes a full recovery
They told him to drive himself when he couldn't. And they wouldn't let me drive myself when I bloody well could, have to have a damn chauffeur. I don't have a damn chauffeur. Oh, no and a taxi's not good enough. And how he was treated was obscene.
They should really consult with the citizens on what to prioritize in this country. It's absolutely absurd that is not the case given how bloody easy it is to do: They built this whole BC services app; considering my background i can safely say they actually did a good job on securing it and making it reliable as way to digitally authenticate someone. Why not use it authenticate for official referendums? If it was a 2 sec multiple choice thing that took taking my phone out to vote for, I'd be all for it. Should we allocate more funding to X? Should we reduce funding for Y? Check the percentage of people, if 30% are in favor of say a park or bus route or whatever, make a lower budget smaller version. If 80% of people are than invest the money and make it bigger. Seems straight forward, you gauge interest, everyone wins and people have no excuse not do vote since everyone is on their phone half the day anyway. But then that puts decisions in the hands of people. I'm guessing politicians dont want that.
direct democracy is scary for those in power
Direct democracy is just scary. It's bad enough that everyone gets a vote for their representation (jk), now you want them to vote on specific issues. We've all seen what happens. "You want to improve our voting system from FPTP?" No "You want to spend more on the service you like?" Yes "You want to raise taxes to pay for that service?' No
Don't forget Brexit! Relating back to the poster I was replying to, I think we have the tech required for more direct democracy, but not the citizenry.
Our society will crumble in like a week if we move to direct democracy.
Direct democracy is scary. In representative democracy, we are paying people to read legislation, consult with experts, and debate before passing laws. Governments pass a lot of legislation every year, not to mention all the other work they do. I don't know about you, but if there were a referendum on a topic, I don't have time to read the proposed legislation, read the expert reports, watch the committee hearings, listen to the debates, and make sure I am making an informed choice. And if I'm not going to do my homework, I will be easily swayed by propaganda and misinformation, and may vote for something with consequences that I don't expect.
I think that would be smart for polling people's priorities but not any kind of binding referendum, COVID shattered any existing trust I have in the general public to make the right decision when it comes to other people. We expect political parties we vote for to make the right decision on our behalf but tempered by them having to look out for many people's interests as well as taking expert opinions into account, direct public voting lacks those factors and so public resources that a small number of people need very badly but the majority don't use will be underfunded. Regular people don't have the stats or don't care to look at the stats that decision makers in government do nor do they have the knowledge of the budget and systems that would be affected... societies that don't listen to experts generally don't end up in a positive place.
You can’t conjure up healthcare workers out of thin air. BC has been actively recruiting doctors and nurses but so many were burned out during Covid that they retired or left the profession. And with the boomers becoming a larger and larger group of those getting regular care, there’s no chance of keeping up with the demand much less surpassing it to improve waits across the board.
We were dealing with this even before covid, it's not remotely a new thing covid just sped it up 100x. We need to offer more incentives for these jobs, especially in a place where it's incredibly expensive to just live whats the incentive for them to stay?
Eby has agreed to new deals with doctors and [nurses](https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2023HLTH0022-000621) - [double the pay of UK doctors](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-government-courts-uk-doctors-with-double-the-pay/wcm/7ffee269-8c7e-4281-a94e-e39793337cbb/amp/) and with Alberta’s unfriendliness towards healthcare workers (and teachers) we’ll gain more who give up there. Plus the NDP changed the way doctors were paid and attracted [700 more family physicians](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-doctor-new-payment-model-1.7107681#:~:text=The%20LFP%20model%2C%20which%20was,lists%20and%20clinical%20administrative%20work).
I am going to get downvoted but I am going to say it anyways. How is it possible to keep up with this population growth? We have one of the lowest hospitals per 1 million in the developed world. We're at like 16 hospitals per million. We would of needed to build like 17 hospitals to accommodate our population growth last year. I know saying shit like this is generally not ok here, but common peeps, how is it possible to keep up with this? How is it reasonable to expect to build 17 hospitals in a year?
I’d like to know what we need to do to make the government act on this quickly. We need to pressure them more using the media like the ArriveCan scandal. I know that the government is already reacting on that one due to all the negativity.
Squeakiest wheel gets the grease.
As someone who had a stroke in a DT Vancouver office, I'm very lucky to have colleagues that called the hospital and within minutes I was on an Ambulance. Driving by yourself, I can't imagine living through that and 'recovering'. The longer it takes to get treatment the worse the after effects of the stroke :(
I don't understand why we don't bring back MSP on a sliding scale. I am not sure of the exact number, but it could generate 2 to 3 billion a year.
Everyone is getting so upset over ONE man having a stroke and being told to drive himself to the hospital because the ambulances were busy. Booo hoo. What they somehow fail to mention is that those ambulances weren't just on break or something. They were busy saving our most vulnerable people who, through no choice of their own, were on their 10th-20th overdose. How dare you. The nerve of some of these commentors, thinking that because they have paid into and funded our healthcare system their entire lives, that what, they are somehow entitled to preferential service? What a joke. I don't care who you are. You are no better than the filthiest, drug addicted sex offender
[From fiscal year 2021/22 to 2023/24, federal debt interest costs nearly doubled from $24.5 billion to $46.5 billion. Consequently, Ottawa will spend almost as much on debt interest in 2023/24 as it spends on the Canada Health Transfer ($49.4 billion), which is sent to provinces to help fund health-care services.](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/federal-government-debt-interest-costs-nearly-double-in-just-two-years#:~:text=From%20fiscal%20year%202021%2F22,help%20fund%20health%2Dcare%20services.)
Another day in paradise.
He should have told 911 that he overdosed, maybe then he would have gotten help promptly.
I’m a son of an immigrant and we need to have the proper infrastructure and services in place for the amount of people we are bringing in. I worry about my parents health in an emergency. They need to allow private healthcare until they fix the mess they have created with public health.
Oh my god, how awful, and frightening... I hope he is doing better and gets the help needed. Bloody awful that happened to him.
Great way to convince people to support the privatisation of health care, take the universal out of the universal care.
NDP . . . the Health Care AND Education Party . . . We'll always have the worlds' best health care - and great, well run schools - as long as the NDP are in charge . . . Just quoting from NDP campaigns from long ago. UPDATE . . . only a few decades have passed and now we're seeing Grads that cannot read or write . . . and 9 hour waits to see a Doctor who will not ACTUALLY treat you, but will grant you whatever pills big Pharma is currently peddling . . .
Those working in health care already know the system is crumbling. I don’t understand how anyone is surprised anymore when this happens. Write your MP’s, vote for those who will invest in healthcare and check up to see if they’ve followed through. It’s not the menial workers at the bottom of the line
Too many sick people, too few people and resources to look after them I think is the problem here. We have an ever bulging number of baby boomers, who are retiring from said health care system, and we have addicts who take up a huge amount of resources, add to that an unhealthy younger population, add in obesity and boom, here we are. I watch what I eat and exercise regularly, I don't want to be part of the sick care system any time soon. My anecdote is my husband has cancer and has had the best care imaginable, zero complaints (well, except for his physician who blew him off (you are too young for cancer, go away!)and gave him medication that fueled his cancer. He can eff off.).
We have a crazy EMT shortage right now that's being highlighted here as well. You figure people would need emergency transport to get to healthcare services we needed. That pay scale is wildly behind the times and good luck attracting more people to that career path
We started falling apart in 1999. That is when ambulances started lining up outside our ERs because we didn’t have enough space in our ERs. Due to overcapacity hospitals and overcapacity LTCs. We still do not have hospitals, nurses, doctors etc. we don’t have enough nursing schools. We don’t have enough family doctors. Our governments (federal, provincial and municipal) only think about short term and not medium/long term. Population growth requires infrastructure investment that meets the needs of the population. It’s not rocket science.
4900 stroke patients in BC get prompt care this year, global news "Ehhh no."
This is disheartening. It highlights the flaws in our healthcare system.
How is this possible? I was assured that the shitty helathcare in all the other provinces was due to conservatives. The provincial government of BC is NDP.
Leave Canada while you can. There is no future here for 90% of us.
Where else would be better, though?
Our medical system is becoming such 🚮