Unique topic

My sympathies and god speed for your Prius. I thought they were easier to get in Canada?( one of the many advantages of living in Canada like health care, legal filesharin for the moment, etc).

 

Health care... Prius...

Yeah, I think they are easier to get. The system is: you order your car, they make it in Japan, they ship it to your dealership, you pick it up, you pay MSRP, end of story. You get exactly the car you want, and you generally get it in between 6 to 12 weeks.

I was told that the wait was a little longer for those people who placed themselves on the waiting list before the car was commercially available, but that now the backlog is cleared up.

I have been wondering whether this smoother system is due to less demand.

Funny you should talk about Canadian health care.... I have been playing around with an analogy between Canadian and American health care and Prius allocation systems. I'm not sure how well the analogy works, but here goes.

In Canada, certain basic health care services are readily available, easy to access, and the price (generally free!) is known. In other words, the allocation system is understandable and the wait times and price are known and predictable. BUT, if you need something a little more complex, like an MRI or surgery, things become a little more unpredictable. Sometimes you have to wait a very long time, or go to the States and pay great wads of cash to get your service sooner.

Now, for Priuses in Canada, there are two and only two packages available for sale. Like basic health care, the price and wait times are predictable (not free, but predictable) and known. However, if you want something complicated like NAV or Bluetooth, you've either gotta wait a long time (i.e. until the 2005 or later years become available!) or you've gotta buy your own after market system, or go to the States and pay wads of cash for an American model.

In the US, health care allocation seems mysterious to me. There's a myriad of choices available, but it's unclear where to go, how to get it, how much you have to pay, and how long you have to wait to get it. Nothing about it seems known or predictable. (This is an outsider's point of view, however. You Americans probably understand you own health care system better than a foreigner would).

Similarly, US Prius allocation is a mysterious thing. There's a myriad of choices (much more than in Canada), but their price and wait times vary widely and are hard to predict. You have to work hard to find the Prius you want at the right price, unless you're lucky.

Gee, I guess I must have been bored to spend so much time on this idea.

At any rate: one thing is almost certain. In Canada, it takes longer to get heart surgery than to get a Prius.

 

Very interesting anaylysis of the US and Canadian systems ,but, serously, if a Canadian doctor(GP?) recomends an MRI, does it cost anything and how long is the wait? Can the wait be shorter if one is willing to travel to another area?

 

Yeah, this site has been really helpful to me, too. I've picked up all kinds of little tips. Now I only wish that I could find someone to share them with! I haven't had many Prius sightings here in the Ottawa area.

 

Left Vancouver to go to the Okanagon for a little holidaya and saw a white 2k4 in the east end of the valley and then saw a silver 2k4 outside of Penticton, and saw a driftwood in Penticton. 3 in one day. Way to common now.

 

Procedures like MRIs and CAT scans, etc. are scheduled using a combination of referral date, severity of condition and sometimes good timing. Here are some recent examples.

In 1999 I had a cornea transplant. The referral for surgery was in May. I had the surgery in August. (I was interviewed at that time for a news show about waitlists for Canadian surgery. I pointed out that an American friend had to wait over a year for similar surgery... she had to save the money so she could have the surgery.)

In 2003 a friend was referred for hip transplant. He expected a wait of six to 12 months. A couple of weeks after referral he received a phone call saying he could have surgery the next week if he was available and could travel to a hospital in a community about an hour's drive from his home. He had this flexibility, so his wait was less than a month.

A couple of week ago I passed a kidney stone. This included about 9 hours in the hospital, morphine and a CT scan.

On August 16, I was referred for MRI for my knee. This is non-urgent. I received a call a couple of weeks later to schedule the MRI for October 12. I will be in Mexico then, so the MRI has been scheduled for the week after my return.

After the MRI, I will likely be scheduled for arthroscopic surgery.

All of these services are covered by our provincial medical services plan.

 

Kidney stone, been there, done that, got 4 T-shirts, and a pile of empty morphine bottles, and the Dr. wouldn't email me a copy of the CAT scan. Took 2 weeks to pass it. So you also know the meaning of pain.