Well, yet again, I have to call insurance today. Meanwhile, here is an
account of an experience with universal single-payer health care.
A couple days later on Saturday she got her regular twice-a-week visit from the public HomeCare nurse, a friendly and highly competent Nigerian immigrant, to check her meds and general condition. She looked at Mom’s wrist and said “Get her an appointment with her doctor, they’ll probably want an X-Ray.”
I called up her doctor at opening time Monday. The guy who answered the phone said “Don’t have any appointments for a couple weeks but come on over, we’ll squeeze her in.” So we went in after morning coffee and waited less than an hour. The doctor looked at her arm for 45 seconds and said “I’m writing a prescription for an X-Ray” and there was a radiologist around the corner and she was in ten minutes later. The doctor called me back that afternoon and said “Your mother’s got a broken wrist, I got her an 8AM appointment tomorrow at the Regina General’s Cast Clinic.”
The doctor at the clinic looked at her wrist for another 45 seconds and said “Yeah, put on a cast” so they did and we were home by ten. I’d pessimistically overpaid a couple bucks for hospital parking.