Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults
theguardian.comSeems obviously BMAA but clearly the government don’t want to say so because it will destroy the lobster industry.
We should all be terrified of BMAA and it’s here because of climate change.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190124110834.h...
Climate change is making the oceans and fresh water toxic and very deadly. We’ve seriously fucked the earth.
Have you ever heard weasel words more reminiscent of a cover up:
“ But experts nonetheless warn that testing itself is also more difficult than the public realizes.
While some medical tests can provide quick and definite results other types of investigation require far more work.
“What people are talking about really amounts to a full research investigation, because then we know what we’re looking for precisely,” said the federal scientist who was familiar with both the cluster and the testing process. “Right now we don’t have a way to interpret simple data that you might get when testing a person’s brain tissue for a particular toxin. For example, how much are ‘elevated’ levels of a neurotoxin compared to the rest of the public? And when does that become a cause for concern?”
The scientist said teams are ready to begin the research, but “New Brunswick has specifically told us not to go forward with that work”.”
Seems more likely the old mines in the area are causing the contamination with BMAA and that it is being consumed in shellfish. BMAA contamination is often associated with old flooded mine shafts, and there are several in the area where these people are getting sick, most of them upstream.
Not sure why you're assuming this has anything to do with climate change. What could be the link there?
I do wish that "climate change" was not lumped into every environmental concern. For example, if painting one of the blades black on a windmill means the birds don't fly into it and die, then let's do it! Connecting it to a larger climate battle in order to win that war ("See wind power doesn't have that downside anymore, so more wind power to fight climate change") only gets in the way of solving the immediate problem.
Cyanobacteria blooms are a cause of BMAA accumulation, and are very much linked to global warming.
Solving the immediate problem is nice but knowing about the root cause is absolutely important.
> Connecting it to a larger climate battle in order to win that war ("See wind power doesn't have that downside anymore, so more wind power to fight climate change") only gets in the way of solving the immediate problem.
Personally I feel that splitting up interests that are inherently to do with climate change and ecology into individual issues is detrimental. However, you're probably right that capitalism is inefficient and utterly ineffective at large scale projects, and that splitting everything into isolated issues that cannot be seen to lead to anything bigger is a more "efficient" way to solve the general problem under capitalism, sure.
This is not artificially splitting anything up.
Mines contamination has no relation at all with climate change. Birds death due to impact with windmills have nothing to do with climate change.
It's lumping those things up that is artificial. And if you add noise to your goal, don't be surprised when people start to question if your actions actually lead to your stated goals or if you have a hidden agenda... because you do have a hidden agenda. It's hidden because of bad communication, but people can't tell the difference.
The guy you're talking to views the world through a lens of 'capitalism vs [utopian vision]', capitalism being everything wrong with status-quo economics. Don't waste your time suggesting practicalities.
I'd point out that the mechanism you're proposing is itself an anthropogenic change in the environment. We've altered more than just the atmosphere of this planet. Their overall point, "we've effed this planet, and I believe that's caused this specific problem," would still hold, whether or not they were sufficiently precise with their language.
The ways we've "effed" the planet are so numerous and interconnected that it makes sense, at least to me, to lump them together into an umbrella term everyone is familiar with. There is no clean separation between our mining practices and what has happened to the water and what has happened to the atmosphere - they are intimately related.
This compound was new to me. Here's more info on it.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/10/2/83/htm
Seems to accumulate in bivalves and crustaceans but not fish.
More info from 2012 on the NIH site:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295368/
This has been known for quite a while.
Not nitpicking but to clarify a bit, that study says
"Such blooms are a regular feature of Australian inland waterways and are increasing due to nutrient run-off, reduced river flows and climate change."
So while climate change (i.e., warming in targeted areas) doesn't help, it's more of the final nail in a series of nails we've been driving into Mother Nature's heart.
The idea we could be so negligent and abusive of our own home without repercussions is a great narrative for profits, but not so good for our home.
The leading cause of toxic algae blooms like this is nutrient runoff.
The leading cause of nutrient runoff is over-fertilization of industrialized farmland.
I've never heard of climate change associated with these until now, but I've only worked tangentially with these phenomenon, and am not an expert.
You also get algae blooms when the water is warmer, because algae grow faster in warmer water. This leads to less oxygen in the water and less mixing of water layers. Warmer water bodies often occur during drought and that often means more artificial irrigation... https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/climate-change-and-har...
> runoff is over-fertilization of industrialized farmland.
And I'd say that the leading cause of that is the increase of world population which necessitates the "industrialized farmland". In other words there's always a balance between more people on this planet vs more wild-life.
partially. Over fertilization, which causes nutrient runoff (by definition wasteful and not cost effective) is not required to grow the amount of food that we grow.
Targeted fertilization or erosion control can both mitigate it by reducing waste, saving money and reducing occurance of side effects at the expense of a reduction fertilizer sales worldwide.
Tech can help here. See precision agriculture and other related topics
Don't think precision agriculture would scale. And even if it would scale, meaning we would theoretically be able to grow a lot more food on a lot less land, it would only mean that we'd grow more food and especially that we'd have even cheaper food. The Jevons paradox is real.
Sure, maybe PA will not scale. But re: over-production and runoff of nutrients, tech can help, as evidenced by small-scale experiments in PA.
There's nothing about PA that guarantees more food from less land. It may. The goal I've seen is same food with less waste.
Like insulating your coffee machine. it doesn't produce more coffee, but it uses less electricity.
Compounding factors.
> a great narrative for profits
Pollution from Soviet collective farms isn't any better.
Does that not still boil down to profits? Political, financial or something else the system demanded?
No, "something the system demands" is not a useful definition of anything. "The system" demands people have food to eat. Survival is not profit in any meaningful sense.
The parent used the term profits to distinguish free-market and state-controlled activities, and to assert that state-controlled food production has historically been just as environmentally damaging.
Consider what I was replying to, which laid pollution at the doorstep of profits.
Thanks for this clarification.
This was previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28979532
The linked article is about how NB went out of their way to shut out federal investigators. If it’s environmental, it’s possible the NB government is trying to cover it up.
This is also briefly touched on in this article:
> The scientist said teams are ready to begin the research, but “New Brunswick has specifically told us not to go forward with that work”.
That signals a splendid research candidate.
…for a large legal firm. The science would be interesting too.
This should be unsurprising. Governments consistently represent business interests over the well-being of their population. As a result the right is already running on populism and the left is not far behind with all the labor organizing that’s happening. We’re in for a wild ride over the next decade.
I’m not sure I disagree with your broader point, but I don’t understand how labor organizing equates with right-wing populism. To me greater efforts at unionization are simply a rational economic response. What am I missing?
Labor organizing is largely being driven by left-wing populism in the face of unrelenting corporate ghoulishness from the Democratic Party. Once the right went hard populist it became the meta because business interests fled to the other side and pissed them off too. And historically, high levels of populism in politics usually ends up in authoritarianism. I’m actually very sympathetic to left wing populist positions; but at the same time it’s very easy for charlatans to prey on.
It looks like the province of New Brunswick is pursuing the "Don't Look Up" strategy in dealing with this.
The federal government should step in and force the province's hand on investigating this.
Previous reporting on the issue; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/mystery-brain-...
'Forever Chemicals' are known to get concentrated in shellfish - I wonder if that is an issue?
I'd love to see the comparative numbers of similar cases in other environments - this seems very high but I have no idea what the baseline for this sort of thing is.
As someone that grew up with the spector of 'mad cow disease' (bse/cjd) in the UK, it is horrible to think about the affects in these people and their families. The fact that care givers are also falling ill is very interesting and concerning.
You really should never eat shellfish from unknown sources, because these are either from unsustainable farms pumped full with chemicals to keep diseases in check or from the sea. Either way, very dirty food in more than one way. If you really gotta eat shellfish, get it from local closed-cycle industrial farms. That's of course more expensive, because you're paying for what you're getting.
As someone that did a lot of research into aquaculture for work a couple of years back, I'm now very picky about where I get fish, whether finfish or shellfish.
Safety, processes, practices and quality vary wildly by region and farm.
Do you have any high level suggestions?
I'm in Scotland, and in general I'll select wild fish from Scottish waters or farmed fish from Norway, as the Norwegians have very good standards.
I'll also swerve fish (such as salmon) from Chile, as standards are relatively low there - for example, they permit a much higher sea lice count than anywhere in Europe.
For shellfish, I prefer wild Scottish sources, but Scottish farmed is OK too. I'd swerve shellfish (typically prawns) from Bangladesh, as despite farming often being done in a small scale, standards can be low.
Farmed salmon from Norway is the main kind available at fish counters in German supermarkets, so that’s good to hear.
I was pretty impressed with Maine's lobster catch regulations. Most notably, the license holder has to be the one to physically pull up the traps, which puts a very small upper bound on how big a single lobster catching operation can be. They also have catch regulations to keep the practice sustainable, which makes sense given that it's a large part of their economy.
>The 3 referring physicians in New Brunswick engaged the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System (CJDSS) to actively investigate the possibility of human prion disease, but to date, all test results have been negative for known forms of human prion disease.
https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/ocmoh/cdc/neu...
So it does not seem to be prions, despite the similarities.
Which at least is good - be aware Prions are very hard to detect or categorize (and most forms of infectious prions seem incredibly hard to destroy). We don’t have a generic ‘prion’ test, and there is a non-zero chance of a different type we haven’t categorized yet.
Until relatively recently they were considered some kind of ‘wake up sweating and dismiss the nightmare as just fantasy’ type cause that should be dismissed by rational people, though there were a number of serious known diseases that no virus or bacteria could be shown identified as causing.
Not actually knowing what causes a disease is a lot more common than people think though, including for a number of relatively common diseases.
The ones we’ve shown a prior cause for had a big question mark next to them despite concerted effort. They were also generally in either remote populations that were practicing some taboo things (human cannibalism), a few families, or in animals (scrapie), and clearly fatal.
In the mid 60’s it was becoming apparent these diseases were not likely caused by the most common theory of a ‘slow virus’ or any known bacteria, as even biological sterilizing agents, viral killing agents, hard UV, and high levels of ionizing radiation didn’t stop samples from being infectious, and searches to find the actual cause started looking for more novel sources, despite a lot of skepticism.
The term prion, after decades of research, was only coined in ‘82, and only generally accepted as the actual source of the disease (instead of a red herring for a disease caused by a not-yet-isolate virus) in the late 90’s to early 2000’s. One of the most prolific researchers on the topic got a Nobel prize for his work proving they exist - but only in 2017.
A brief history [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626585/]
So not likely, but until another cause can be isolated, best to not fully rule it out either, even if it is negative for all known prions.
With how good many of our tests actually are, it’s easy to overweight their accuracy in categorizing unknown phenomenon. Somewhat of a CSI type effect.
I'm not sure "known" is very comforting when we have no reason to believe that we have a complete inventory of all possible prion diseases in humans.
I'm surprised that Chronic Wasting Disease (a prion disease similar to CJD or BSE but found in wild and farmed deer, moose etc) isn't mentioned. A quick search however brings up this article linking prion disease, sewage sludge pollution and these cases.
https://www.cp24.com/news/ask-questions-but-don-t-panic-abou...
CWD is everywhere in the US. We’d be seeing this everywhere if it were CWD related.
>> But in January, the province of New Brunswick is widely expected to announce that the cluster of cases, first made public last year after a memo was leaked to the media, is the result of misdiagnoses, which have mistakenly grouped unrelated illnesses together.
If they want to say that, I think they are obligated to also provide the correct diagnosis.
I hate when people say "we know it's not X" without proof and without a specific alternative.
I'm not sure about this case, but wouldn't it be okay to say something like that if none of the diagnostic criteria for a disease are met?
This is a new mystery disease, there is little known about it. I'd say they need to positively identify a case as something else to say it's not the new thing.
They can't say that, because their point is that these are all existing diseases, so for that point to be true they'd have to meet the criteria.
Contagious dementia? What a terrifying article.
Pretty scary, can't wait to read the book on it in 10 years.
Unless this new pathogen is the pandemic that takes us to the brink of extinction.
New contagious prions? Bacteria that generate prions? Viruses that code for prions?
Netflix docudrama.
Head to the woods to make a small hike, at least once in a week. Avoid polluted environments.
And take every precaution possible against ticks. Untreated Lyme is debilitating.
Many of the natural areas in Florida are maintained with the use glyphosate. Assumption now is pollution is everywhere.
Upvoted because that's solid advice. The problem is you may not know about polluted environments. This may well be the case of a private contractor burying very dangerous chemicals in a clearing in the woods and polluting the surroundings, in which case hiking there is not gonna do you any good.
Environmental pollution is everywhere industrial capitalism is. All the major scandals about waste disposal in Europe (including nuclear waste disposal!) should make us think twice before we as a society find it acceptable to allow anyone to produce that kind of dangerous substances.
Environmental pollution is everywhere industrial capitalism is
Also where industrial communism was? Where industrial democratic socialism is?
Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?
Probably true, or perhaps:
Wherever regulators have not been carefully selected and sufficiently empowered.
Some might say that the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Well that's a nitpicking argument which depends on your definitions. From what i understand, what you call "communism" i call "State capitalism" and what you call "democratic socialism" i call "liberal capitalism". Under all these systems, there's privileges: people who have more and people who have less, while communism is usually defined as a stateless/classless society (including by marxists).
> Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?
Indeed! Yet this formula ignores the ties between the two concepts. Industrialization and capitalism grew hand in hand with extractivism and colonization starting in the 16th century. Without the industry to build boats to exploit the overseas, capitalism could not exist: yet without massive accumulation of wealth, industry as we know it could not be created.
This is not to say pollution is impossible without capitalism. But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment, and because there will always be more areas to exploit and pollute: our overlords are now openly talking of colonizing Mars once they're done fucking things up over here!
If you have intellectual curiosity for critiques of industrial capitalism, i strongly recommend the "End: Civ" documentary.
That sounds to me like no true Scotsmanship.
The 'But communism polluted us too" comments here are a touch too defensive, and I don't get the point.
It's a thought-terminating cliché that has the useful side effect of getting everyone to talk about the sociopolitics of authoritarism or the Cuban Missile Crisis or anything other than the fact that modern industrial society doesn't have to be as polluting as it is.
Ah yes. The old “Nobody has ever tried Communism (or socialism)” argument.
I'm not saying nobody has done it. I'm saying those actual examples (eg. 1936 revolutionary Spain, until the stalinist then franquist takeovers) are not what people refer to when they talk about "communism" as a scapegoat. Unless of course "communism" refers to dictatorship of the proletariat, which surprisingly both leninists and capitalists agree about.
> But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment
Ok. So what are the viable political/economic alternatives?
Self-determination and self-organization on a wide scale. There's much less incentives to affect your environment and community negatively when decisions are taken collectively, than when decisions are taken by a minority reaping benefits but not suffering from negative consequences (pollution, bad working conditions, etc).
If anything, the COVID crisis has shown that health workers care and will go to great lengths of creativity to counteract the bureaucracy and lack of resources (remember the trashbag suits? the homesewn masks?). Now imagine if these people were in charge of organizing healthcare instead of managers? I can only imagine much better outcomes for everyone involved. And the same is true across most (all?) industries and areas of life.
Anarcho egoism ♡
Interesting what happens when doctors no longer work for you, but can only work for the government monopoly.
This is an annoying indirection in this discussion.
Doctors working for everyone also means they work for the highest bidder. Remember the tabaco industry in the US and the doctors literally advertising it?
How about doctors near areas of chemical spills getting $£€¥ from the companies to keep quiet about them?
How about the opioid crisis that has killed thousands of Americans?
Yeah. So, if you want to bring up a misleading example, at least think of the entire cycle of the "other side" of this.
At the end of the day the thing is "interesting what happens when doctors are incentivized with capital and success is measured by how rich you are"
You're right, and the worst is that private clinics and practices are allowed in Canada, and they have no interest in getting involved with this.
There are almost no private clinics in Canada
I doubt that's true, and for what its' worth, health care is run by the individual provinces, not the federal government.
At any rate, there are a bunch in Montreal. Here's one: https://www.rocklandmd.com/en/medical-clinic.html Here's another: https://cliniquesmedicaleslacroix.com/en/ You can certainly find more by searching for "[Canadian Place Name] private clinic"
Heck, here's a news article about the Quebec government outsourcing some work to private clinics to clear COVID-related backlogs. For there to be $100M worth of contracts, there must be a decent number of clinics.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/private-clinics-queb...
That is untrue. There are almost a dozen within 30 minutes of where I live.
Please provide links.
Doctors are not able to work in both the public and private systems, they have to choose.
There are a few clinics that provide care entirely outside the public system but since the demand is low they are rare beyond MRI clinics in a few provinces.
But please, send me links to the dozen of private clinics (dont work in the public system) that are 30 mins of where you live.
I'm not going to doxx myself.
Demand used to be low, it is increasing steadily due to mismanagement.
If you don't trust me, type "private clinic toronto" into Google Maps.
I see clinics doing sports medicine, endoscopies and sexual health. Lots of comments about “super expensive”.
No hospitals or major research centers that would actually be anywhere near the issues happening in NS.
I never said hospitals. I said clinics. Research is not something the private sector wants to do in this domain, because it's not profitable.
If all you saw was endoscopies and sports health, you weren't looking. There are tons of generalist clinics.
What kind of community clinic would see this? The "whistleblower" in this article is a member of the health authority. You expect a generalist seeing rich people for their arthritis to be diving into this?
That's exactly the point. Private healthcare is not interested in this case at all, nor in any cases like it. It's not profitable.
Also the whistleblower isn't a member of the health authority. He's an employee of Vitalité Network which has a contact with the health authority but is also allowed to operate privately under some provisions.
Huh? Your logic makes zero sense. Why would a private GP even have the connections to the Health Authority? You claim it's because there is no "profit", I say because "that's not their job".
You seem not to understand the Canadian health system. Privately owned clinics are allowed to enter in contract with the provincial government and be paid by the public insurance system for services provided. This is the framework under which the doctor was operating.
Doctors of all stripes are allowed to open their own practice take on cases privately. There is simply no profit in opening a private practice to deal with difficult to diagnose cases affecting generally poor people requiring dozens of experts to investigating over multiple years. That's why no doctors decided to set up a private practice to deal with these patients - there is no profit motive. Too much work, and too little pay.
This is only news because doctors resist. They’re doing great.
Private clinics and practices exist in large numbers in Canada. Apparently, they aren't interested in helping.
Private clinics in Canada are not allowed to provide services provided by the government system.
Nope, that is incorrect. They are allowed to provide services that aren't specifically outlawed. Duplicate care is allowed. For example, from your link:
> For example, obtaining an MRI scan in a hospital could require a waiting period of months, whereas it could be obtained much faster in a private clinic.
We must be very, very careful before assuming that the government and health authorities are lying here. The guardian usually goes for "the worst case scenario" and it is easy to see all kinds of causal relationships in a series of anecdotes when our fear response is triggered.
Canadian healthcare is scary, and it's made worse by these politicians that always go to the US for care.
The joke is that it's gotten so progressive that no one gets better, we all have to equally suffer. You can see clearly how this situation was mishandled.
> The joke is that it's gotten so progressive that no one gets better
I don't think that's the reason. Public health systems in Canada/France/Belgium have (had?) a very good reputation because they were in fact really good until the neoliberal turn on the 80s/90s. When you have health workers running the show with a fair budget, wait times are low and results are good, and everyone is happy. Now introduce some managerial feudalism (see David Greaber's talk at CCC last year) and micro-management/benchmarking and things start to degrade.
Add to this mix that big corporations don't pay their dues and the government keeps reducing budgets and pretending they don't know why there's no more money flowing in and suddenly you've got health crisis on a wide scale and most people you know working in hospitals are depressive, either quitting or on the verge of suicide due to contradicting objectives: they want to help people but they're not given the means to do so. Social dues fraud is dozens of billions of euros every year in France, it's well-known and well-flagged and no government wants to do something about it.
If you're working in IT, think about it this way: management is benchmarking how many functions you write per day and does not care about the state of things as a whole. You are incentivized not to produce tests (which would indicate failure from your team specifically) but rather to ship away at once. Are you gonna produce good code?
EDIT: I should make it clear when i talk about social dues fraud, i don't mean individuals gaming the system to gain funds they're not owed (which is < 1% of fraud), and i'm not talking about small companies not paying their dues (the State is really good at harassing those until money flows in), i'm talking about CAC40 corporations who make billions of profit every year. They are the ones responsible for the social security hole ("trou de la sécu") and that's public knowledge.
Honest question: what social security hole are we talking about here? What kind of fraud? The gross majority of the social charges of a large company depend on employee wages. Having worked for a few CAC40 companies, knowing the makeup of their workforce, and looking at their public financial data, the numbers seem square.
On the other hand, every day I see small businesses with significant undeclared revenue and obvious money laundering schemes going on. France makes it very easy to anonymously report all sorts of crimes, from domestic violence and child neglect to terrorism, but only a selected few can report to TRACFIN.
Personally I can't wait for France to adopt a fiscal data module like the Belgian HoReCa black-box [0], and given the overreaching arms of the French fisc I'm surprised it hasn't already.
[0] http://www.salesdatacontroller.com/belgium-prices-are-10-hig...
About unpaid dues (fraude aux cotisations), the highest financial authority (Cour des Comptes) estimated between 6.8 and 25 billion euros fraud annually in 2014, depending on the evaluation method. [0] Then there's dues exemptions. A study estimated 57 billion euros were exempted in 2015, 57% of which was compensated by the State's budget. [1]
We could also mention tax evasion and other schemes, which affect the ability of the national budget to compensate frauds. Despite arguments about the exact number, most agree big corporations pay less taxes than the small on average [2]. It's interesting to note the evolution over time of subsidiaries of CAC40 companies in fiscal paradises. [3]
Overall, there's plenty of fraud and "legal" exemptions on all levels. Quite enough to close the social security deficit.
> Personally I can't wait for France to adopt a fiscal data module like the Belgian HoReCa black-box
I think that's happening. The law is clear that accounting software has to be certified since a few years (which has been a major hurdle for FLOSS projects). Personally, i'm not so much interested in such measures as most of the fraud is committed by the very wealthy and such measures could affect smaller businesses and common people in some ways: need to invest in more expensive accounting equipment/software, more difficulty for undocumented people to find honest jobs (though they'll still be able to work for big industrial groups who are famous for exploiting them).
[0] https://www.ccomptes.fr/system/files/2019-11/20191202-synthe...
[1] https://www.cairn.info/revue-de-l-ires-2015-4-page-3.htm
[2] https://www.liberation.fr/politiques/2017/02/24/les-entrepri...
[3] https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/les-entreprises-d...
Canadians are generally very satisfied with the quality and availability of healthcare in Canada. The issue in this case is not the quality of care but the possibility that the provincial government is suppressing testing that might reveal that a naturally-produced neurotoxin has contaminated bottom-feeding crustaceans such as lobster.
Canadian healthcare is great if you have a life threatening acute problem or you have no ability to or willingness to pay for healthcare. If you have anything in the middle its a giant slog against a large bureaucracy to actually get it treated. And you have ti have some conviction in what it is otherwise diagnose and adios as they say.
> Canadians are generally very satisfied with the quality and availability of healthcare.
I'd love to see the list of people you surveyed to draw this conclusion. In my metropolitan area availability is abysmal and (in my experience recently) quality is not great. I am contrasting this to my recent experiences in the US system.
That makes some sense - US healthcare is great if you are wealthy and barely existent if you are not. Canada strikes me as middle of the road - moderate quality for nearly everyone.
If you are one of the lucky 10% at the top of the heap US healthcare will outperform.
Nonsense. Middle class employment comes with health insurance that makes healthcare generally affordable, barring stories about catastrophic bankrupting illnesses that are actually rare.
Edit: what, am I out of touch? Is health insurance only provided to employees in the top 10%?
>>healthcare generally affordable, barring stories about catastrophic bankrupting illnesses
I think you're being down voted for the 'generally affordable' and 'bankrupting illnesses' parts. "Middle class" doesn't usually equate to tech level salaries or benefits. Family health insurance can be very expensive for middle class families. The extremely high family out-of-pocket max plans can turn even non-catastrophic illnesses into a financial crisis.
I notice you said recently. Keep in mind that we’re in a pandemic and elective procedures/many types of testing have been postponed. That’s because it’s a pandemic. I’m not so selfish to expect healthcare workers to work 24/7.
> Canadians are generally very satisfied with the quality and availability of healthcare in Canada.
If any of us are it's because of the pervasive anti-American propaganda spewn about.
My GF is from the Czech Republic (where we currently are) and since we got here she's been getting all her standard check ups done. Here she can make an appointment only a day in advance (as opposed to weeks or months out in Canada), there's no wait time (in Canada you usually wait even with an appointment) and dental/drugs are included in Czech Republic (in Canada only the most basic care is included, everything else is extra and quite expensive).
Czech Republic is seen as a second-rate EU country (at least what I've heard of it) but health care here is so far ahead of Canada we might as well be a third world country.
Edit - I should add, even before observing European health care, I knew a shocking amount of people who've gone to the US and even Mexico specifically for medical treatment. Canada's health care is abysmal, our politicians just convince everyone that everything is OK because it's "free" (never mind that we pay European-level taxes for far worse care).
Also, I come from the richest (per capita) Canadian province with the best health-care funding, which in my experience is the best in Canada, but still lacking...
Czech here. In theory, our healthcare system should work the way you described. In practice, a shortage of doctors is developing in less lucrative regions. You will always have good service in Prague or Brno, but elsewhere, you may run into problems.
This article shows a hundred-strong queue of patients waiting to register to a newly opened dentist office. Some of them waited overnight.
https://www.idnes.cz/ostrava/zpravy/lhotka-ostrava-fronta-zu...
Mind you, this is Ostrava, the third largest city in the country.
Fair enough. We're in Karlovy Vary region and everything has seemed very efficient.
One thing I have noticed is that Czechs are very critical of their country, which to my eyes seems to function quite well, for what it's worth.
Canadians put up with far worse and yet will defend it. Also, our whole country has a doctor shortage. No sane doctor stays in Canada when the US pays multiples more...
There is definitely a tendency towards some self-flagellation in CZ, though I think this is vastly more widespread elsewhere (just witness the ritual meltdowns in English language media whenever some election does not turn out perfectly "right").
I like to think I am pretty resistant to that. So, some earned praise: Czechia is a very safe country which was able to get some things work better than many others (we even have a functioning gun culture without too much machismo or regular bloodsheds - the compulsory safety and legal tests are a good filter against crazies). Our healthcare is fairly decent, though necessarily limited by the overall economic level, which is, by the standards of Western Europe, second tier.
What is really f_cked up is the real estate market. Our construction permit bureaucracy would make the Byzantine courts blush, a normal block of flats may spend a decade in permission limbo before the first shovel touches the ground. As a result, prices have gone absolutely mad in the last few years, especially in Prague.
(Meanwhile, similarly sized Polish capital Warsaw built 100 000 apartments in five years or so and housing is much more affordable there as a consequence.)
> What is really f_cked up is the real estate market.
Cries in Canadian...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-...
New Zealand and Australia have really pushed on since that was published. It's 12-15x median wage here in Auckland now. Depressing.
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/house-price-income-multi...
I’m Canadian and am extremely happy with the state of healthcare. It has nothing to do with propaganda but personal experience.
Please don’t claim to speak for me. Your view does not match the typical Canadian’s.
I'm Canadian and since living abroad I can only say how impressed I am with health care systems OTHER than Canada's. Getting a specialist appointment in Canada can take weeks to months and even then the specialist barely has time for you.
I have friends from Europe who (now) have dual citizenship and fly back to their country of origin for anything beyond a basic checkup.
In Asia I go to the hospital and I get all the results in a folder and can review them myself. There are no hidden mysteries like in Canada -- what are they hiding in Canada? I've asked for a copy of my medical file and they've looked me like I'm a lunatic!
In Canada:
"So when do I get my test results?"
"We'll call you if there is a problem."
No joke!
In Quebec I always have to pay $500 a year for medical -- I guarantee you I can get A+ coverage for that amount of money in any SEA country. So it's definitely not "free".
Canadian health care is most certainly a better financial deal than the US system if stories are to be believed. But it's most certainly not the best world wide.
If you're still in Quebec, have you tried the Carnet Santé website? https://carnetsante.gouv.qc.ca/portail
It should have most of your testing, albeit with a 30-day delay that is supposed to let someone discuss potentially-scary test results with you.
How often do you, personally, use healthcare? I was fine with it too because I'm a very healthy man (let's face it, men don't use health care as much as women for obvious biological reasons) in my 30's. The fact it's so shit doesn't affect me, personally.
But it's objectively bad when compared to every country at our level of income, and bad when compared to most first-world countries. We pay more and receive less. My girlfriend is pregnant (part of the reason for all her medical appointments) and legitimately doesn't want to move back to Canada (where we met) because of the state of health care (and education, and infrastructure, and housing costs, but healthcare is a big one with a child on the way).
Edit - in a comment to another person you're saying you're OK with things being postponed in Canada because it's a pandemic. Nothing is postponed or shut down here... We've been getting appointments just fine. Literally made my point.
No Canadians are not satisfied. It's the biggest complaint of everyone outside of the top few large cities.
The government is clueless, but also the healthcare isn't very good beyond common issues.
It's not like in the US where you have multibillion dollar facilities dedicated to a disease.
Unfortunately the same doctor treating you for cancer is the same doctor putting stitches in some kids finger at the local hospital and not a specialized medical team at the Johns Hopkins Center.
Everything here is treated with Amoxicillin, Tylenol, and if they trust you enough with the hard drugs, maybe some diclofenac.
Just chiming in here as a Canadian to express my immense satisfaction with our public health care. I just got an appointment for a minor issue in less than 24 hours. We recently had a baby and got top shelf care at a new hospital, better than the San Diego hospital my friend just had a baby at. All of it was free. Except the parking. Friggen' parking, amirite.
This case clearly has basically nothing to do with public 'health care' this is clearly political and health research related.
Still living 3 years longer then the Americans.
Closer to 4 now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_ex...
American obesity may be the explanation here.
It's not obesity alone. All of our food contains an excessive amount of salt.
Japan does just fine with a higher salt consumption than the US and has the highest life expectancy in the world.
Isn’t the implication obesity + high salt content?
Canadian healthcare is indeed in rough shape.
Our health outcomes have plateaued, wait times increased and costs rocketed.
The inevitable nature of uncompetitive systems.
>Our health outcomes have plateaued
Healthcare is messy. That plateau might be the best we can accomplish given our current technology, science, healthcare, politics, and culture. It's not necessarily a measurement that always has to go up (like USA stocks).
If you want to put this on non-competitive systems, the USA has a competitive system and it is probably worse than Canada. If not completely worse, then certainly worse on major dimensions like cost and accessibility.
I'd be interested in what these health outcomes measured if you have a link handy.
Unlike here in the US where we have a mostly private health care system.
Our health outcomes are actually dropping, wait times are bad, and costs are the highest in the world.
> The inevitable nature of uncompetitive systems.
This is highly misinformed. The problem is precisely the introduction of competitiveness in a system which previously worked well. This is for example explained in Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap Part 2 [0] which you may find online in many places.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(British_TV_series)
This neurological disorder is not baffling to me. It is expected because of mental health issues that come from poverty, homelessness, water pollution, food pollution, air pollution, climate change, toxins in manufacturing plants, toxic chemicals that oil companies release into our Earth's environment, unrecycled trash causing methane, dehumanizing censorship, cut-throat politicians, and so forth damaging Earth's environment including people's well-being. Impulsive consumers are consuming carcinogenic junk food, alcohol, products for smoking, etc. So, this neurological disorder does not surprise me one bit. It is the corporate oligarchs who pretend this is baffling to hide their profit-driven agenda to control our world at the expense of our well-being and Earth's environment.