One of the headlines today says that Ontario Premier Ford, Health Minister set to make joint announcement. My immediate reaction was whether it was about hips or knees.
While it isn't directly about hips and knees, it is about private clinics being publicly funded for surgeries. The first stage is cataract surgeries, followed by knee and hip replacements. So I guessed right.
There are 130,000 hip and knee replacements in Canada a year. Ontario has 24,105 knee replacements and 22,727 hip replacements.
One article gave this indication of cost: Generally, patients who have hip and joint replacements stay in the hospital for 4.5 days. This amounts to nearly $10,000 per person in inpatient costs, not including physician payments and rehabilitation, and totaling over $1.2 billion year-over-year.
Another gave this: "Antoniou and colleagues compared the hospital cost of hip-replacement surgery done in Canada with those in the USA (three hospitals). In Canada, the average total cost for the procedure was $6,766; this included both direct and overhead costs [20]. The total cost in the USA was over $13,000."
The $6,800 figure is what is reported most often.
Here's a close-up of part of the Bird of Paradise flower.
Have there always been this many lists? Since the internet we can find out so many things with a search, organized nicely into the top 5 and top 10.
5 things to look out for from the Weather Network
1. The South Will Be Cooler Than Average, The North Warmer 2. The South Will Be Wetter Than Average 3. El Nino Isn't the Only Player 4. California Could See Some Minor Drought Relief 5. We Don't Know When or Where It Could Get Ugly
What kinds of Fun can we expect in 2016?
We can expect the Mazda CX-3 to be stylish, efficient and fun, or the 2016 Mazda MX-5 to be plain, simple fun. The most striking thing is that cars dominant the "fun" results.
If you are looking for FUN: Did you know that the acronym FUN stands for Florida United Numismatists? We can go to the FUN show the first week of January.
Here are two images for 2015 as it passes and 2016 as it arrives - A Time for Peace and Bird of Hope.
