This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

SHOULD HOSPITALS SCRAP PARKING FEES?
EDITORIAL SAYS CHARGE HINDERS ACCESS TO CARE
Save in Library
November 29, 2011
Do some hospitals provide parking-centered care instead of patient-centered care? An editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) this week makes a case for abolishing hospital parking fees, arguing that they limit access to care.
According to the journal's interim Editor-in-Chief Rajendra Kale, some patients have no choice but to drive to hospitals and park in their lots, which can charge by the hour, creating an "avoidable stress to patients who have enough to deal with."
Kale suggests that these fees also can interfere with clinical consultations. For example, "some patients (who have often waited several weeks to see a doctor) try to end a consultation abruptly when they realize that they will have to pay for an additional hour for parking."
According to Kale, parking fees likely account for only 1% of total hospital revenue, a sacrifice hospitals can make to "facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers" under Canadian law.
However, Ontario Hospital Association CEO Tom Closson says the fees provide critical funding for hospitals. For example, he says $230 million is raised each year from parking fees in Ontario (CMAJ, 11/28; Brennan, Toronto Star, 11/28).

Parking fees are terribly minor compared to what people with CCSVI are up against!!
At least there are excellent options in the US now for Canadians. And change will come.

I can't help myself here...

"From the London Times: A well-Planned Retirement
A perfect example of government mismanagement

Outside England’s Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years. It’s parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant, The fees were for cars (£ 1.40), for buses (about £7).
Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day off work, he just didn’t show up; so the Zoo Management called the City council and asked it to send another parking agent...

MS is a particularly inhumane disease. I would like to see every person, everywhere, who is a candidate for CCSVI treatment receive that treatment.

I know of many people who have had the procedure done in the last year, covered by Medicare or Medicaid, so at least they got theirs in before the window closed. If the way to re-open that window involves randomized controlled trials, then we need those underway, and Canada is doing right in sponsoring trials. We just need it done well and done fast.