I live in the Socialist Paradise known as Canada, where - if you listen to the AMA and various lobby groups - we all wilt away and die when we go to the hospital from thirty-hour waiting times. I know this isn't the case by reputation (since I know many of the doctors they cite in those ads), but I've never experienced an real Canadian ER in person, until tonight.
Around 11pm last night, while mucking around my apartment, I rolled my ankle in impressive style. Stepped off my bed, landed on the power block for my laptop, and subsequently to the ground - with an inability to stand up or put any weight on that leg. I wasn't worried, but could feel this was slightly more serious than I'd ever done before.
Flash forwards three hours, through two bags of frozen peas worth of ice, and I still couldn't stand on it - which was making me nervous. So from bed I called Telehealth, a free government health info service. It's a 24/7 (remember I was calling at 3am on our version of the 4th of July) 1-800 number that's staffed by RNs. You talk to them about non-emergency stuff, and they give you information and suggest when you should go to the hospital. In my case, the nurse told me that it was probably just a sprain, but since I couldn't walk on it I should go in to the ER to get it checked out.
Took a taxi down to one of the hospitals downtown that I had had some good family experiences with, and hopped into the ER. I was triaged in a few minutes, told it would be a while since I was CATS 4 (Less Urgent), and that I should go down to in-processing. There I gave them my info and my health card, and in return got a bracelet, some forms, and an invitation to have a seat.
Looking around, I seemed to be in pretty good shape compared to everyone else around me. A few people with cuts and bandages, a guy having a narcoleptic episode, a woman with heart problems, and a few people asleep in the corner. So I popped out my book, and started reading.
About 40 minutes later, a nurse called me and a few others into the inner ER, and put me on some chairs at the end of a hall. After getting everyone settled, he came back, poked and prodded my ankle, and said he'd have some X-rays done so the doctor could see what was going on in there. Ten minutes after that, a guy came, helped me into the X-ray room, and shot five or six of them of my foot from various angles.
Back to the chair in the hall for another two hours or so, with the original nurse coming by every half hour or so to make sure I was will alive and OK. This brings us to about 6am, where I was moved into a smaller ward/clinic area of the ER.
After waiting about 45min - and seeing my nurse have a nap and two rotations of interns come by for the morning rounds - the doctor came over. Asked the same situational questions, spent some time looking at my X-rays, and gave me the answer I expected all along: You've done a number on your ankle, but nothing's broken. It'll hurt for a while, but stay off of it and you should be fine. Here's some Tylenol, and the nurse will get you some crutches. I got my crutches, hailed a cab, and came back home and went to bed.
SCORECARD
Total time elapsed from calling Telehealth to getting back into bed: five hours.
Total cost to me: fifty bucks for the crutches.
Number of "government bureaucrats between [me] and [my] doctor": zero.
I'm OK with it having taken five hours, because I know I wasn't in a life-or-death situation. Going in, I was almost certain I knew what I would be told, but figured that it made sense to get it checked anyways just to be sure.
This is how healthcare should work - it's in the system's interest for me to have this checked out, because it prevents the much larger problem of my coming in a week later and still being unable to walk, and needing surgery.
Bottom line: universal health care works.