I'll just tell you my personal experience without going into too many explicit details about my illness. I was diagnosed with a rare tumor in 2007, I joined a community with the few others that had this type of tumor, since it's considered rare the community had people from all over the world posting so the board was pretty active. Those of us from the US were diagnosed pretty quickly and had surgery pretty quickly. I was diagnosed a couple of weeks after my symptoms became extremely noticeable, had a CT Scan the same day the Doctor suggested it, went for a surgical consult within a week and a half, had a biopsy done, tumor was determined to be benign but of course they need to remove the tumor to be 100% positive, surgeon told me I could have surgery in 3 weeks if I wanted. That's my story, what were the stories of others who had socialized medicine? 1 guy from Great Britain took months to get diagnosed via CT Scan, he had a biopsy done, since the biopsy came back as benign the health system in Great Britain said he'd have to wait up to 18 months to have surgery, and as I said before, even if the biopsy is benign you need the tumor out to be definite. Numerous people from Australia had to wait 6 months to a year for the surgery, 1 person in Canada said screw it because of the wait time, she ended up borrowing the money and had the surgery within weeks at the Mayo Clinic. Another person from Canada had to travel over 200 miles for a PET Scan because that was the closest 1 available, whereas in my area? within 20 miles? there are 8 PET Scan machines available.
The wait times for appts. in Canada are outrageous, even for a PCP, a specialist is longer, why else are private clinics in Canada booming? why are Canadians coming here if they can afford it? in Great Britain the system is going broke, and in some instances Great Britain is outsourcing medical care to India, it's cheaper to fly people to India for treatment then to treat them in the UK.
