Flag Football uncovers Provincial Conspiracy

I must say this summer has been busy. In between showers and drought I have found time to hit the river, rack up a few penalty minutes in summer hockey, sun burn and bust a finger.
Seer, my ring finger got twisted up as I was executing a pathetic swim maneuver to get past a much younger O-lineman during a game of flag football. As exciting as this sounds, the weird feeling of breaking my first bone is not the purpose of this month’s rant.

What I want to talk about is the fun I had trying to not take up space in an emergency waiting room. To be honest, I did wait a few days before seeking medical help hoping that my turned and offset finger would find its way back to a more normal resting place somewhere between my pinky and middle digits. After four days and the setting in of a weird colour and odour I was sent to get things dealt with. Really, with a clinic only a minute’s walk away at Superstore I didn’t have any good excuse not to go. So at 9:30 on a Sunday morning I left home slightly sick to my stomach at the thought of some horse doctor pulling my finger into place. I was actually relieved to find that the clinic was closed. My relief was short lived as I quickly sent (I really don't get to control very many of my own actions) back out to Beddington Mall accompanied with a new task - finally get the blood work done I was asked to complete months ago but had been putting off due to my aforementioned distrust of white coat wizards. It was still early, and luckily I hadn’t eaten yet as the blood work required an 8 hour fast. As this was likely the only time in the last 4 years I have had such a long stretch of nutritional abstinence it was a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone… as long as I wasn’t one of the birds.

The blood lab at Beddington was closed, but from the aging medical form in my hand I was able to discern that Market Mall had a lab that was. There is also a medi-clinic at that locale so the two birds cliché was still useful. I was back on track and after a bucket and a half of blood was letted, I was ready to deal with my busted appendage except that the the attached clinic was closed. A lab tech informed me that I was in luck because the Beddington Clinic was open. Yup, lucky me.
So back to Beddington where I was examined by a surly prison physician who had the foresight to realize that my finger was indeed not up to par and that I would need x-rays to confirm his brilliant diagnosis. No problem, it's just down the mall, right…? If that was the case, you wouldn’t be reading this right now, it was obviously closed. That’s’ OK, because I was in luck… Market Mall had an x-ray lab that was open. So down a gallon of blood and in need of some breakfast I was on my way back to the where I was just an hour and a half before.
The x-rays were easy, quickly downloaded onto a disk which I was to take back to, you guessed it, the Prison PHD who would eventually tell me I could to keep the disk (I would later find out that he was just saving effort on his shredder as the pictures needed a special program to view... so no cool Facebook profile pic).

Pulling up to the desk at the Beddington clinic the now familiar receptionist had the nerve to ask me if I had been there before! Quite revved up despite my lack of blood sugar I politely asked the Doc how this all made sense. Why not just have all three services open at on place rather than making people go all over the city when really they just want to be at home on the couch with some Tylenol 3s, a beer and maybe some McNuggets or a burrito or anything at this point. He responded that each of the services, the lab, the clinic and the x-ray tech were independent and they were just doing what they had to do to make money. I retorted that the only one making money today was the Husky gas station that had to fill me up as I put over 80 kms on my Suzuki to have a $5 splint taped to my hand.

So how do we fix this… what is the easy solution? Ok, so maybe i don't have one. As our province continues to dismantle and privatize our health care system I am afraid that things are just going to get worse. Yes there is an arguement for efficiency and saving the tax payer money, but at some point we are still talking about a public service. See a public good can't just be about making money, if that were the case we would have no police officers, just private security guards and mercenaries. Police just make sense, so does public health care. Is it paranoia to think that the our province's complete disregard for an effective (and coordinated) community health solution is our government's way of depriving of us of quality service so that we beg for private health care? Our our lives (and fingers) being put at risk to convince us that at least those that can afford decent service should have it (though this didn’t work out to well for Michael Jackson and his private Doc – oh, sorry - too soon?).

Unfortunately those that are already struggling to make ends meet are quite literally in for a world of hurt. Any citizens relying on public transit may do better taking an online medical degree than trying to get medical attention on a Sunday. And so to those that are responsible for this lunacy and the private HMOs they want to usher in, I give the splinted and purple one finger salute…