A little note about the Canadian Healthcare System. Apparently your healthcard can become INVALID if you move and dont update your address with the Ministry - meaning you can be denied healthcare regardless of your citizenship. EVEN if you returned to the same walk-in clinic 5 days ago, and the same Doctor thats working told you to come back if you werent getting better...TOO BAD FOR YOU! Full Story For the last week I have been horribly sick. It started with strep throat, then the flu and now a very dry heaving cough that feels as though I am going to cough up my bowels. 5 days ago I went to the walk-in clinic to get some antibiotics for the strep. The Doctor said to come back in a few days if I wasnt getting better as I had symptoms for the flu and a cold. As I believed I was getting better this little dry cough started making its way into my throat. It got persistently worse over the last few days to the point of where I am today - my throat feels like sandpaper and my coughs sound like I just inhaled a gas pipe (not a crack pipe). I head back to the same walk-in clinic I went to 5 days ago and Im coughing up a storm to the point I cant even finish a sentence when speaking with the desk staff. I give them my health card and sit down. About 10 mins later the woman calls me to let me know my healthcard is INVALID (huh?). Im completely flabbergasted as I know it doesnt expire till 2016, and she has no idea as thats all Service Canada will tell her. So I call them and they tell me that since I moved and didnt tell them they cancelled my healthcard. For some reason I think that explaining how dire the situation is they say ever so politely, Sorry, theres nothing we can do. My (not so fast and easy) options are to: 1. Go to Service Canada with your ID and a few documents that prove where you live and they will give you a new Healthcard 2. Renew it online with my Birth Certificate Im then told it will take 3-4 weeks to receive the new card in the mail. Im also told that because walk-in clinics are privately run that just having the healthcard number alone might not be satisfactory to all walk-in clinics and I will have to figure out which ones will accept just the number, until the actual document arrives in the mail. SOOOO because Im sick and I shouldnt really be wandering the city trying to get this sorted I grab some more not-to-effective over the counter stuff and head home. I follow Service Canadas recommendation of getting this sorted online to receive an error message that my request cannot be processed online. ALAS!
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 02:20:51 +0000
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