Re: your Feb. 28 article, “Universal health measure revived�:
Sen. Sheila Kuehl's “healthcare� plan is wrong for California.
Before you support her plan to provide care like Canada's or Great Britain's, here are some things to consider:
In Canada, you will wait 40.3 weeks for orthopedic surgery, 4.9 weeks for cancer surgery, 31.7 weeks for neurosurgery, 3 to 8 weeks for an ultrasound, 10-plus weeks for an MRI and so on. In Great Britain, you may wait eight months for treatment of your cancer - so long that it becomes untreatable. This happens to one in five with colon cancer. If you are a little past middle age, you will not be eligible for dialysis.
This is a piece of what it means to get healthcare in those countries.
Our system may be broken, but inviting the California legislators to be judge and jury between you and your healthcare choices is not the way to fix it.
- Martha Highfield, RN, Ph.D., Agoura Hills
(The writer is a professor of nursing at CSU Northridge.)
Leave a comment