Health Care Isn't Only About Emergencies

I recognize that health emergencies, surgery, and life-saving procedures are very sexy, engaging, and generally fascinating. Tales of citizens of the U.S. who cannot afford chemotherapy or surgery, or who get turned back from emergency rooms rightly set people's blood to boiling.

I wish, though, that discussions of health care, and in particular, socialized health care would pay some attention to the less glamorous, less dramatic advantages of providing health care to citizens: the health part:

• Annual checkups and tests, so that you have a baseline from which to track changes to your body
• The ability to visit a doctor and have an ailment diagnosed and treated before it becomes life-threatening and warrants a hospital stay
• Hassle-free sexual health exams and counselling
• Pre-natal and neo-natal treatment for moms and babies
• Adequate follow-up from surgical procedures and emergencies

In a lifetime of living in a country with socialized medicine, I've visited the ER possibly a double handful of times (stitches when I was eight; a broken arm when I was 9 or 10; a few rounds of dangerous dehydration and distraught boyfriend when I got sick in university; stitches after a bike accident when I was 21; a large first-degree burn (with some second) when I was in my mid-20s). I've had minor surgery three times (to remove a chelazian from my eyelid when I was 7; to remove my tonsils when I was 11; and to marsupialize a cyst when I was in my mid-20s). I've never had any serious surgery or a stay in a hospital longer than one night. I'm a healthcare lightweight.

( But I'm in the system! Boy, am I in the system! )