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>Did you know you cannot choose where to take these tests?

Welcome to the Canadian Healthcare system. It's free, but not without issue, even ignoring the long wait times and inability to get a doctor in most places in the country.

Did you know I'm not allowed to go get my blood tested privately, even if I pay for it? That I require a requisition from a doctor (which I don't have, so I have to go to a walk-in clinic and take up the time of a doctor who could care less what they are signing)? And that the results then get shared back with said doctor, who's discretion it is what data he shares with me? It's bizarre.

I often see Americans pointing to Canada's system as a shining example. I mean, sure, we don't have crushing medical debt, which is AWESOME. But our healthcare system has so many problems itself...

What use case is there for getting your blood tested without getting a doctor involved?

If you're bio-hacking, taking steroids for `recreation' and monitoring testosterone, just curious, etc, it does seem reasonable that you should be able to pay for and get your own tests. There are options that facilitate that, though it's a burgeoning market given that the overwhelming majority are ordered, and paid for, through the public system.

Tracking your own health metrics when your curious to see how your diet, excercises, etc change

Allowing private access to healthcare is a slippery slope. Anyone paying for a service is someone who is also taking the place of someone using that service as a basic right.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be an option for blood tests in particular (as is your example) but there are multiple things to consider when you start opening those up to anyone willing/able to pay.

No normal user of the system is mandated to use any particular lab provider -- a doctor gives you a requisition form and you bring it wherever you want. There aren't that many options, generally, but there are as many as the market will bear (and as new upstarts grow they get swallowed up by the incumbents). This particular person's issue has to do with immigration.

Do you really think a walk-in doctor "could care less"? What a ridiculous statement. They're just as professionally governed and concerned as any doctor.

"Did you know I'm not allowed to go get my blood tested privately"

There are private blood testing services in Canada, though it's a small market given that the workflow of labs is overwhelmingly geared towards the public market. Most labs will happily provide you your own blood test results (a cursory search of both LifeLabs and Dynacare, two of the most common, show their patient portals).

"I often see Americans pointing to Canada's system as a shining example"

Canada is almost always the punching bag for the US -- usually based upon lies or the singular complainer, for instance I and my family have had a family doctor everywhere we've lived, have always had a great experience, etc -- and of course -- like every complex system in the world -- it has flaws. But it isn't as good as France's system, or a couple of others.

> You are more or less forced to use LifeLabs because the doctors designated by the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) only partner with LifeLabs to do these tests, it’s an ugly monopoly that is impossible to fight as an immigrant.

The other main option is Dynacare. Besides those two, who else is there? Both have built up convenient infrastructure where results are fed back into doctors' EHR systems.

I wouldn't be against more competition, but it seems that there are certain economies of scale that make bigger more efficient:

* https://healthydebate.ca/2015/02/topic/private-medical-labs-...

* https://toronto.citynews.ca/2017/12/22/lab-industry-need-ove...

Side note: LifeLabs is owned by the OMERS pension fund.

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” —Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

I like to think of Sisyphus a bit like someone waiting in line for a rollercoaster or a ski lift. The pushing is a slog, but then you reach the top and WOW BOOOM the rock cascades down the hill and it's AWESOME! Time to start pushing it back up again.

Yes yes I know Sisyphus is a metaphor for the pointlessness of life - but that doesn't mean you have to take it at face value.

> pointlessness

or perhaps that the work itself is the reward

> The pushing is a slog, but then you reach the top and WOW BOOOM the rock cascades down the hill and it's AWESOME!

In the original myth the rock rolls down alright, but it rolls down over our hero and then he has to go down and push it back up again knowing what will happen.

Canada is full of such stuff. Ditto banks, telcos, dairy, eggs, liquor and so on.

There's something in this story that doesn't ring true.

You knew from the moment you walked into the laboratory that their data handling practices were inadequate and prone to being hacked/leaked. How?

You tried to explain this to their secretaries and nurses. Why bother when it's obvious they can't/won't do anything about it? Why not contacting their management or IT?

> You knew from the moment you walked into the laboratory that their data handling practices were inadequate and prone to being hacked/leaked. How?

The laboratory is divided into small rooms where the patient talks with the nurse and/or doctor, each room looks something like this [1] along with a computer that is connected to whatever system LifeLabs uses. When I arrived for my appointment the nurse left me alone in the room for approximately 15 minutes, the computer was on, and the user session (which I believe was created using the doctor’s credentials) was still alive, I could have done a lot with that computer while the nurse was outside checking the other patients.

Later, the doctor came to do the initial physical checkup and then left for another 10-15 minutes to talk with another nurse. This gave me more time to “snoop around” and in fact, I took the opportunity to take a picture of the computer screen [1]. Ironically, you can see in the picture that the doctor uses a Post-it Note to cover the webcam, which means they do care about their privacy but not the privacy of their patient’s.

You may think “this is not LifeLabs fault but the doctor’s fault” but this is how social engineering works and as people say “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”.

> You tried to explain this to their secretaries and nurses.

> Why bother when it's obvious they can't/won't do anything about it?

> Why not contacting their management or IT?

Yes, good point, but this doesn’t disprove the rest of my anecdote.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor%27s_office

[2] https://i.imgur.com/c0tXTEK.png

To be fair to life labs, at least they don’t dox you aloud to an entire waiting room.

I witnessed that happen to a few prominent financiers in Toronto while I was getting some bloodwork done. It was terrifying within about 5 minutes I had all the personal information I’d need to do some seriously nefarious things.

This happens on most every occasion I visit a clinic in Canada. Nurses and secretaries do not care.

I wonder if it's more that they just don't understand - also habits are hard to change. "it's always been this way"

Not sure what the solution is.

Happens in the US too. As I was waiting for my doctor's appointment, I was just listening to the secretary call up patients to obtain payments. She was just reading out their credit card information out loud. I was honestly tempted to just take one down then call the credit card company to let them know it was compromised.