I’m a family physician who moved to Canada from California 14 years ago, largely because of Canadian Medicare, the country’s national health insurance program. I’ve been much happier practicing medicine where my patients have universal coverage. It frees up doctors like me to focus on patient care and frees patients to focus on their health, instead of worrying about how to pay for it.
But I have never felt more grateful for the paintings in a universal formula for fitness care than the COVID-19 pandemic. I have a bad center for the millions of Americans who were given a bad physical condition and had to worry about how they would pay for the tests and treatments, who went to the paintings while in poor fitness about wasting their fitness policy or those who lost not only their jobs. However, their insurance, leaving them at risk of monetary ruin.
While no country is immune to COVID-19, Canada has expanded a much more effective response. The infection rate in Canada is only a small fraction of that of the United States, and is declining. Its fitness formula has two main benefits in the fight against the pandemic: the universal fitness policy and an easier administrative formula to deny.
Canada’s formula for publicly funded single payers covers everyone, regardless of age, fitness or work condition. No one loses their policy because of COVID-19. Canadian Health Insurance covers facilities such as hospital and emergency care, medical appointments, and lab tests, with no co-pays, deductibles, or medical bills. They are all in a single “network,” so there are no synthetic limits on which hospital or fitness provider a patient can see. As a result, Canadians are much less likely to delay detection or remedy for COVID-19 or chronic physical fitness disorders that increase the threat of serious illness and death from the virus.
Canada’s universal system also has made it easier for medical and public health professionals to respond quickly — and together — without the administrative headache of multiple insurance companies.
In my province of British Columbia, our ongoing history of collaboration between physicians and the provincial formula of physical care has facilitated the coordination of interventions in hospitals, number one care clinics and long-term care facilities. From the outset, emergency reaction committees held meetings to address demanding situations of hospital capacity, distribution of protective materials and equipment, testing procedures, personnel policies, telemedicine, COVID-19 protocols and employee safety. The B.C. The Public Health Officer offers normal updates and recommendations as we transition through the pandemic phases.
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Instead of closing number one care practices and forcing patients not to receive care, as has been reported in many parts of the United States, we have been able to make combined paintings in our province’s old “circle of family medicine divisions.” Most of us paint in personal practice, but we receive assistance to coordinate with another circle of family doctors to make sure shifts are covered, that our practices are safe, and that our patients get the care they want for the pandemic. I have not yet had to treat a patient directly with COVID, but I have been concerned about the extensive process of drawing up plans.
As fitness care has shifted from person to person virtual virtually overnight, the Canadian fitness government has implemented more provincial telephone classification systems, patient self-assessment protocols, virtual care software, and increased Internet in remote areas. The province has invested to satisfy the desires of vulnerable populations, such as Aboriginal communities and homeless people, living in rural areas, traveling through agricultural paintings, or struggling with intellectual diseases or addictions, equipment that has been disproportionately displaced by COVID-19 in the United States.
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Many of my American colleagues tell me that they’re burned out from administrative demands and anguished from seeing patients not get the care they need because of cost. Now it is worse, as the number of uninsured has soared with the pandemic. My message for them is this: I know we can do better, because I see it every day. It is worth fighting for a system that puts public health ahead of profits: Medicare for All.
Dr. Khati L. Hendry is working in private practice in British Columbia and has served on Ministry of Health-physician collaborative committees and the local hospital staff. She worked as a family physician and medical director associated with community health centers in Oakland, California until 2004.