From CBC News:

A shortage of urologists has become so pronounced that patients’ lives are at risk, managers of a St. John’s-based health authority have been warned.

In a powerfully worded letter to the Eastern Health regional authority, urologist Dr. Douglas Drover said an “excessive volume of work” in the specialty has meant waiting times of almost a year for patients seeking treatment.

Drover, who was attending a medical conference last week, was not available for an interview with CBC News.

However, his letter lays out a litany of problems. For instance, about 300 patients are waiting for operating room time so that surgery can be performed.

Drover is one of just seven urologists practising in Newfoundland and Labrador. He urged Eastern Health to hire more specialists, warning that not to do so would be “tantamount to medical negligence.”

Andy Grant, a member of a prostate cancer support group in St. John’s, said he is afraid that people will die — or already have — while waiting for surgery.

“First of all, [patients deal with] the shock you might have prostate cancer, then the shock of being confirmed with prostate cancer,” he said. “Now you have the shock of saying, ‘I have to wait until next year?’ ”

New Democratic Party Leader Lorraine Michael said she was disturbed to learn of the problems that Drover outlined.

“I think the word I would use is ‘horrified.’ I could not believe what was in his letter,” she said.

“We’re sounding like we’re in a developing country and not in a province that has the resources that we have.”

Odd, here in America where the markets run wild and free our prostates live in constant fear of being prodded by some private medical practitioner. In socialist Canada prostates live sheltered lives of isolation and seclusion until their owners die a painful death from cancer.

I don’t know which I like better, being close to the age where someone will no doubt tell me that I need to be digitally sodomized by a doctor.

But technically the good ‘ol U.S.A. and our evil capitalist medical system wins this again. Take that hippies! Tila Tequila, we’re looking at you.

h/t Moonbattery