Morning Coffee Break Irony
I just couldn’t resist. The irony was too compelling, the contrast too stark to pass up. I was greeted in my inbox this morning by two seemingly unrelated emails. One notified me of an article published in the Ottawa citizen about wait times for knee replacement surgery. The other email was from whitehouse.gov-these actually have the potential to evoke laughter if there were not so many people in our country who believe the nonsense that pours forth as an oracle from “The One”.
So here I am cup of coffee in hand, and while the whitehouse.gov is “celebrating the fifth anniversary of Obamacare, the Ottawa citizen was celebrating a reduction in the absurdly long wait times for knee replacement surgery candidates. Now candidates only have to wait … get this…one year. Victory!
It was a supremely well-done Orwellian piece of journalism by a senior Ottawa Citizen journalist and a portent of what is to come here in the states. And it bears looking at the article in detail and recording for posterity. Later on I’ll be deemed prophetic and spot on…when really it was all right there in the Ottawa Citizen for anyone with eyes to see.
Here is the first quote
A few years ago, Soulière [a French person] likely would have faced a long, painful wait for surgery. But thanks to a central intake and assessment program that has sharply reduced wait times for people needing knee and hip replacements…
Yes thanks be to the government central intake and assessment system—Winston would be proud. They corrected an inefficient antiquated system of direct referral from physician to surgeon. The nerve of those people thinking they could bypass the government.
At any rate the new system was able to reduce by 40% of the number of people typically referred but that would not have ended up as knee replacement candidates. The article doesn’t tell us by what clairvoyant means the government was able to identify so called non-candidates but since the government central intake system personnel likely don’t have medical degrees I imagine it had something to do with money.
Quote Number 2
The old system also distributed patients unevenly among orthopedic surgeons, producing waiting lists for surgery that stretched to two years in some cases…Because the central approach distributes the surgical load more evenly among available surgeons, the long backlogs characteristic of the past have been largely eliminated, Sly-Haney explains.
There is a lot being said here between the lines. It seems clear that certain surgeons were favored over others by the referring doctor and/or the patients. I wonder why? Did the people get to pick their “new” doctor or were they simply assigned to one of the less poplar and/or less skilled surgeons?
Thank God for the central intake people, the poor slobs that are getting their knees done should NOT be allowed to wait for one of the best surgeons.
Quote Number 3
There’s capacity in the Champlain region to do more orthopedic surgeries, Schonberg says, but so far the province hasn’t anted up the necessary funding.
So glad the government will be picking winners and losers in the lottery for a new knee in the future.
Excess capacity and long wait times…Humm. Couldn’t they use the excess capacity to reduce the current wait times…oh that’s right …morale is so “good” among surgeons in Canada they must have a shortage.
It’s easy to see why this is working so well….
- Treat surgeons so poorly that there is a shortage of needed labor
- Weed out 40% of the candidates for surgery as determined by some actuarial table
- Force patients to be operated on by the worst surgeons
- Then declare a successful reduction in wait times
If only we had the government inserting itself in the midst of all of our problems.
Long Wait Times for Knee Replacement Surgery Coming
All this is coming to a hospital near year…despite obvious idiots celebrating Obamacare we have every reason to be worried. Mark my words it’s coming.
