
How Canada’s Health Care System Helped Create a Killer - fern12
https://thewalrus.ca/how-canadas-health-care-system-helped-create-a-killer/
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52-6F-62
The Walrus is normally a magazine with high standards, and very good quality
content, but I find the headline a little misleading or at least sensational.
Canada's healthcare system is beloved, and has surely saved a far greater
number of lives than it has put at risk. That said, most would prefer it be
expanded and improved upon its current state.

Canada's healthcare system has long needed improvements in mental health
capacities. I figure that is what they're trying to explicitly illustrate
here. The result has been iterations of separate mental health institutes,
leading to driving efforts like CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health)
in Toronto. Sadly, many remote regions do not have ready access to these kinds
of resources. The northern regions of the provinces are particularly starved
for social and medical resources.

Hopefully the article will have the enlightening and impactful effect I
interpret its author having intended.

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katastic
>beloved

What a strange word to apply to a medical system. I mean, really think about
it. That's like saying the "DMV is beloved". It's just a strange word usage
that makes me wonder if you're more of a "fan" of their system than an
unbiased source.

My Canadian friend I regularly play PUBG with, remarked that non-life-
threatening illnesses like a broken arm can have waiting times _measured in
months._ (Sounds like our VA.) And he lives in one of the large cities. He is
glad that nobody goes bankrupt but he would NEVER use the world "beloved" to
describe it.

"Better than the USA"\--probably, I'd easily give you that without raising my
brow. But "beloved"?... I'm sorry, I just can't get past that word. It's so
out-of-place. If this was a novel I was reading, I'd have to set the book down
for a moment and go, "Really?"

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acidtoyman
"... non-life-threatening illnesses like a broken arm can have waiting times
measured in months ..."

It astounds me that people can hear stories such as this and actually believe
them. No, of course people don't wait months to get their broken arm taken
care of. I broke my foot and had it in a cast that night, and the only reason
it took as long as that was because I didn't realize at first that I'd broken
it.

~~~
katastic
My friend... lives in Canada... and his relative had to wait that long.

I'm not going to throw away his experience because it doesn't fit into
someone's worldview.

Just because you had a good experience doesn't mean he can't have a bad one.

~~~
acidtoyman
I ... am Canadian ... and have never in my life heard anything so absurd. I'm
not going to throw away a lifetime of experience because of some ridiculous
and obviously false comment on the internet.

Use your head: a society that couldn't deal with broken bones without months-
long lineups would grind to a halt. How can you seriously believe something so
ludicrous? Notice how many other Canadians are jumping in to tell you your
statement is totally untrue.

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dleslie
> The doctors were talking about what they’d decided, and one of them was kind
> of joking about it, saying there’s no homicidal plot or something. They
> said, ‘We think Johnny just got mad at the cat ­because the cat scratched
> him.’

Sadly, that doctor will likely continue their practice.

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maxxxxx
Would this have been handled better anywhere? It seems really hard to decide
when to take action. I knew a family whose autistic son regularly injured them
but they still kept him. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had killed them
at some point.

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dafty4
Terrible article. Canadians live 2 years longer on average than Americans. And
you're telling me the US mental health system would have been more pro-active?
Come on.

"Hers was Sault Ste. Marie’s sole homicide of 2013."

How many small towns in the US can you say that of?

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raisspen
Classic case of whataboutism. I didn't see anything discussing the quality of
the US mental health system. It's a Canadian website discussing a Canadian
case. It failed here and the author of the article is trying to point out
where it failed. This is an attempt to prod the system to improve.

~~~
scoggs
Definitely agree. I saw virtually no comparison to what the US does / would do
nor how America handles similar cases, etc. America was mentioned zero times
in the article (0) and United States was mentioned twice in the article (2)
and that was only to mention background information about the victim and her
family, nothing to do with health care, mental illness, violence, or anything
else to do with the editorial.

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phkahler
I was annoyed at the way the victim was portrayed. They just kept dancing
around it.

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oktobercrisis
Not surprising...people always slip through the cracks in Canada's healthcare
system.

~~~
kylnew
It’s not perfect but we get access to lots that an American would go out of
pocket for. The poor never even have a chance.

