Canadian Public Health "who" care(s)?

I've looked for a photo that could show the disgust on my face while talking about health care in Canada in this post. I couldn't find anything, but thought I looked fairly unimpressed in the photos that I will use.

Good Morning, Afternoon, or Evening Steemians.

I wanted to write you to share with you the experiences that my darling wife and I have had regarding Canadian Health Care over the past seven months.

I felt the conversation may shed some light on what it is to live in (this) country and experience the "free" public health.
I've got an ambulance bill in my lap that says I owe:

I want to be clear. I'm not opposed to paying for health services. I feel that most of them ought to be paid for by the person receiving the treatment, service, medicine, etc. Someone who's got type II diabetes got there by themselves, and I don't believe my tax money should pay for their poor health choices. (I selected type II diabetes because you cannot flame me for this statement. I got type 1 when I was five years old).

I feel there's a relevancy to this post when it comes to looking at the green grass on the other side. As always, I welcome questions, comments, and in this case really encourage debate.

A good portion of the fine people, and some of the just-people that follow me ;) are neighbors to our south, the United States of America. I have little experience with their health care with the exception of the fact that one of my families dear friends is the head Oncologist in the DFW area, and I've had the chance to pick his brain regarding their system versus ours.

There's a ton of info I feel the need to share here regarding what lead to this post, but I will try not to stretch out my stories like I often do, save for this little tidbit:
Recently in a post that I made regarding unfollowing one of the "permaculture" whales, and asked for some suggestions on who to replace them with. My buddy @peppernrino suggested I follow his lady because of her political reaction posts and I boldly stated that I had left politics out of my feed and that I was quite content with that. I lied apparently... So here I go throwing caution to the wind - lets dive in.

Justin Trudeau is the Prime minister of Canada.

People do a good job of accentuating how ignorant he is, and displaying what silly things he does and says. I could write post after post on this, but will keep this part short by just using a meme with one of his quotes, and then a family photo to show what I'm talking of.

So embarrassing. If you care to get a good laugh at Canada's expense: go ahead and look up "stupid things trudeau says".

Why I bring this up is: Yesterday over lunch I said to @elfmyselfandi "I feel like there's no one to verbalize my concerns and frustrations to! I can complain to you, or to MPs, or friends and family, but NO ONE can do anything to change it!"
She replied: "couldn't your arch nemesis do something about it?" (refering to trudeau)

This filled my brain with all sorts of wise guy responses such as "what's a substitute drama teacher going to do to improve our health care?"

This problem we have with our health care system isn't because of him. It's been faulty for a great long time.

In November I had to go and get a medical done to be able to renew my drivers license. I need to do this every five years because of my diabetes.

The dr who I went to see, I later found out that he doesn't ACTUALLY have a Doctors license, but gets to practices based on a technicality which he went to court to fight the government over. He was a trained medic in the south African military a few decades ago. So basically he's a prescription writing EMT that's CLAIMING to be a credible doctor.
This self proclaimed diabetes "specialist" wrote me a prescription for a new type of insulin and an MRI. (remember, I went in for a drivers medical - which of course he did, for a fee).

A few days later (November 12th) I ended up at the hospital because I woke up with a hypoglycemic episode and took a 2 mile run down the highway with no clothes on. Fortunately it was only -7ºC, or 19ºF that night, and the frostbite that I received wasn't so severe that they needed to amputate my feet. Thank goodness.

When I returned to the dr and explained what had happened, he explained that it was first: my fault, and then second that there's no way it was a hypoglycemic episode, because when that happens you "just feel tired".

C'mon man, I've had diabetes for 29 years. My blood sugar monitor said that my blood sugar was low. What else would have made me run out of my house, through a canola field, leap through a barb wired fence, and run down the frozen highway in my birthday suit?

The afternoon post-my naked run my beautiful wife and I found out that we were going to be having a baby! Minielf is due on the 16th of July, and we cannot wait for her to arrive.

Wife has a condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Without getting into the details - basically she's got hypermobility, and her body doesn't produce collagen the same way that most does. This puts us in the High Risk category, and means that we require some extra "care" through the pregnancy. So it started off that we went to the PCN (primary care network) for our first prenatal appointment. We saw the Doc for 2 and a half minutes. Enough time for him to refer us to the local specialist.

We also got a referral to the local dietitian (the first of four that we have seen now for pregnancy). This woman made me mental. She asked about what wife eats, and what supplements that she's taking. Right after we told her what supplements we were taking she said "well there's no proof that vitamins ACTUALLY do anything for us. So you need to make sure that you eat lots of good food, and make sure that you take your prenatal vitamins." ... .. ... .. if vitamins don't work, why do you insist that we take these prenatal vitamins?

We met with the specialist, who admitted that he didn't know anything about Ehlers Danlos syndrome, and referred us to the big city group of specialists.
I want you to remember that every time is use the word refer, or prescripe that it cost Canadian tax payers about $150 dollars, or about $118 USD paid to the doctor. (topped out at a max of three per visit.. we wouldn't want the doctors taking ADVANTAGE of the system, right?)

Since then, we have had a visit on average about every two weeks to the Doctor, Ultrasound, OB, or Doctor. I mentioned doctor THREE times there. We have now seen a total of (I think) five different doctors in the city. The "specialist" changes every time we go in. This is awkward, because each one that comes in seems to have a different story. NONE of them talk to one another, and the soap notes that are left seem to be just regurgitated soap notes that they likely use for each patient, because when we reviewed them yesterday there was a resounding tone of "no, they did not!"

Three weeks ago we met with the OB and she suggested that he ultrasound doctor should give us their suggestion on when we should be induced. This was exciting news for us because we figured that we may get some insight as to when Minielf would be joining us. When we asked the ultrasound doctor to leave the notes in the file, like the OB asked, she said "what do you mean?" and "well you only have EDS, so it's no big deal" then "if we induce early, the chances of your child having developmental issues are much higher" so "lets wait until next month to talk about that. We can make an appointment for you after this appointment".
It seems like a lot of the appointments we've made are just so that we can make another appointment.

The doctor who we had yesterday for the first time.. I asked her "will we see you again?" "no" is all she said.

SHE DID SAY HOWEVER that the next appointment we have there that we would be referred to a specialist in the morning, then have our meeting with the OB, then with the ultrasound tech and doctor. Then ALL OF THE ONES WE HAVE SEEN SO FAR (I'd like to see that) would meet and discuss when they think we should be induced. So the meeting we have with the three doctors next time is so that they can have a meeting to discuss our case FOR THE FIRST TIME, so that then they can make another appointment with us to inform us what they have had a meeting and HOPEFULLY, hopefully get an answer.

I was quite fed up with all this nonsense a while back. Yesterday it had an impact on my tone. I asked the new doctor a few different questions that she couldn't wrap her head around. We told her about how one of the doctors we dealt with told us that wife may need to be induced at 32 weeks. She said "I don't know why they would have said that?" Also, asked about what the twat of a dr told us last visit about how "you just have eds, it's no big deal, you can go to full term" and she said "I don't know why they would have said that?"

I asked "what's the policy in diagnosis? Do you typically take ONE symptom, and then list off the the patient all of the different things they COULD have and then let them consider those things, and then bounce them around to all the other doctors you know so they can give their first thought of what's going on without actually looking into the situation, doing any assessment or consultation? If so, that could be extremely stressful to your patients, and I'm quite certain that it's illegal."
She said "oh no, we wouldn't do that..."
When I asked why they felt it was okay to do this with us it's like something in her brain broke. She couldn't make sense of what I was asking at all. Of course.
She landed on: "well, I don't see anything in your file about this"

Ya think? None of the "professionals" we have seen have left notes regarding what they have said, except for the second dietitian who apparently told us that Wife needs to take more calcium. This too, is incorrect because what actually happened was that we told her we WERE taking more calcium via a Calcium Magnesium vit D combo.

I said (again, over lunch at DANG GOOD) that I feel like if we directly paid for a health professional to take care of our situation that they would have the responsibility to be on top of our case, to do the research and find out what Ehlers Danlos Syndrome actually is. That if we were unhappy with the service, we would have the option to replace them with a professional of OUR choice.
Surely if I needed to pay for all of the health practitioners we have seen over the past seven months out of pocket, I'd be unable to. At least 7 doctors, who knows how many techs and nurses, multiple dietitians (the last one who had fat wings by the way, which tells me her education is failing her), not to mention days booked off work, and a 70 mile trip to and then from the city each time we go.

My question is: if I were in YOUR country, what would this look like?

@elfmyselfandi has a different perspective on this because she's from Sweden, where their health system is much smoother and more efficient than it is in Canada. Their health care is "free" also, but they do it much better than we do. I have this perception that health care in the USA is so much better, when I noticed while driving around the DFW area that you can even go so far as to select what hospital you want to go to based on your religious preferences.
Our hospitals have two options. A room to go pray to allah or mohammed or whatever those savages do, or a room that say's "come unto me" on the side of it with a bunch of gaudy trinkets. I verbalized when I saw this that "if that had been taken literal then there would be a lot less people in the prenatal department than there are.

I've ranted here forever it seems, and not really discussed much of anything.

What I'd like to know is:

What's your experience been like in your country? (and what country are you from please)

What can we do about these health practitioners wasting our time? (the world WHY is my favorite with health folks. Often it makes them come unhinged because they haven't thought about the things they say, and have been taught. We also decided yesterday to ad the question "what are we going to accomplish by making this appointment?"). Any other recommendations?

Is there a proactive way to make a positive change so that less people find themselves having their time and tax money wasted?

As always, like mentioned before: I welcome all your comments, feedback, rage, flames, questions, etc.
IF we don't actually discuss these things, I'm just some miserable jerk that just wasted way too much of YOUR time.

So many countries out there think that our health care system is really great here in Canada, because it's free. I dare to say: Sometimes you get what you pay for.