Many single-payer advocates got the vapors when Rudy Giuliani quipped, ”If we ever got Hillarycare in this country, Canadians will have nowhere to go for health care.” Well, this Globe & Mail article suggests he was on to something:
More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here.
But not before they endured purgatorial delays in the ER:
Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care.
And these delays took their toll on the patients:
“There have been very serious health-care problems that have arisen in neurosurgical patients because of the lack of ability to attain timely transport to expert neurosurgical centres in Ontario,” said R. Loch Macdonald, chief of the division of neurosurgery at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
But surely this is a new problem that Canada’s health care bureaucracy will move quickly to remedy? Nope.
[Provincial] governments were warned of a shortage of neurosurgical services five years ago. In August, 2003, a report co-authored by Chris Wallace, head of the division of neurosurgery at Toronto Western Hospital, said that “increasingly, the resources are not available to handle neurosurgical emergencies.”
Ontario has the worst situation. So here’s the response of Alan Hudson, the head of that province’s waiting-time strategy:
He immediately struck a panel to study it. “The solution to fix this is within sight,” said Dr. Hudson, a former neurosurgeon and hospital president. “What it requires is some organization.”
Man, what a hero! Superman and Green Lantern, to paraphrase a lyric from the ancient past, got nothin’ on him. I’m sure Ontario’s neuro patients take great comfort in the knowledge that such people are on the case.
Wait a minute! Canada has a single-payer system. They call it Medicare. Isn’t that the kind of system that’s supposed fix all our health care woes down here below the 49th parallel?
So, why would the lucky beneficiaries of Canada’s version of “Medicare-for-All” need to avail themselves of our “evil for-profit” medical system in order to get decent care?
Hmm …. Must remember to ask Shadowfax about this.
Comments 4
But the people in Canada, well Ontario anyway, are equally as unable to get ICU beds. They have equal access to ICU beds.
Posted 20 Jan 2008 at 1:00 pm ¶Many of these poor souls, near dead to begin with, probably didn’t survive being transported 100 miles to the US.
But at least they had a chance.
At least they were not left to die like dogs in the street in the medical hellhole of Canada.
And speaking of hell, these is a special place in aforementioned nether region for the truly despicable, dishonest Michael Moore and the US demcrat party leadership propagandizing for Canada’s nightmarish plan.
Posted 20 Jan 2008 at 3:20 pm ¶Get a grip people. Do you think that people aren’t waiting and dying in emerg rooms in the U.S. because there are no beds available? My quick search came up with these examples in 1 minute. Get off your high horse. And to smartdoc, calling the Canadian system a “hell hole” is funny. YOu’ve probably never set foot in a Canadian hospital.
Posted 15 Feb 2008 at 9:45 am ¶http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3322309&page=1
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19207050/
http://legalmedicine.blogspot.com/2008/01/wait-times-getting-longer-in-emergency.html
After reading these stories, I’ll keep our hell hole, thanks!!
To the PieMan, I have seen Canadian health care, and it is YOU who know not of what you speak.
Yes, the Legal-medicine blog you linked noted an average 30 minute ER wait time, but that is compared to nearly 21 hours in Quebec (http://sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/the-waiting-game-er-wait-times-in-canada-vs-us/)
And, the ABC news report you cited is from Martin Luther King hospital in LA, a notorious event that lead to its’ long overdue closure in 2007. However, what you fail to note is that MLK is the epitomy of what the Obamacare would create. It was a County run hospital, staffed with government union employees. Compared to Cedars, UCLA or Century City hospital is was considered a killing ground for decades since I completed my training in the area back in 1985. The poor performance of MLK should serve as a cautionary tale to you and other advocates, who seem to know so much yet in fact know so little. Talk to a doctor sometime rather than relying on Oberman to give you your opinions. One of us would tell you very quickly that Government controlled medicine, even in the US (think County Hospitals, the VA), is substandard, outmoded, inefficient and loaded with bureaucracy. Stories like this abound in facilities which represent exactly what Obama envisions for us all.
Posted 24 Aug 2009 at 4:19 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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