In January, I wrote about Canadians coming to the U.S. in search of I.C.U. beds. Well, it would appear that emergency cardiac patients are also being rushed southward for care. The Globe & Mail reports the following:
421 emergency cardiac patients have been sent to the United States from Ontario since the 2003-2004 fiscal year to Feb. 21 this year.
Many of these patients receive unsuccessful treatment in Canadian hospitals and must be sent to the U.S. for heart catheritization. The Globe & Mail describes the case of Kaukab Usman:
[Usman] had a heart attack after a gym workout in Windsor on Dec. 9. She was rushed to hospital and given clot-bursting drugs. When they failed, she was sent to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where she had angioplasty on one clogged artery and two stents inserted.
So, why is the vaunted Canadian single-payer system unable o provide proper care for these patients? Canadian Medical Association president Brian Day offers the following:
‘We keep coming back to the same root cause,’ Dr. Day said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. ‘The health system is not consumer-focused.’
In other words, the people who run Canada’s single-payer system are insulated from their “customers,” and thus have no incentive to provide good service.
We are told that government-run health care would be cheaper and more efficient that the current U.S. system. Well, the costs of Canada’s system are rising at unsustainable rates and it can’t provide necessary care.
Is this the kind of system we need in this country? I don’t think so.
Comments 9
Hmmm - so the Canadians are sensibly making use of nearby facilities and getting the job done for patients, who of course do not have to pay. Meanwhile of course many thousands of Americans travel abroad for affordable care. For example:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-11-02-health-overseas_x.htm
Greg Goodell flew from Iowa to India to have his arteries unclogged. Rick Thues made the trip from California for a new hip. John Terhune ventured from Indiana for a hip-and-knee combo.
Combined, all three saved about $140,000, including the cost of travel and hotels, by having their surgeries last month in New Delhi instead of America — where the health care system had simply failed them.
All in their 50s and fully employed, these men are among the estimated 500,000 Americans who are taking their health into their own hands by choosing medical care abroad. Many are stuck in a growing gap of uninsured or underinsured who are too young for Medicare and left with only losing health care options: siphoning their retirement, living in pain or possibly dying.
“Our share of the American dream has been lost in the past five years,” said Thues, 53, a computer consultant from Orange, Calif. “Look at what we’ve outsourced — I’m even outsourcing my own health for God sakes.”
Posted 02 Mar 2008 at 8:23 am ¶Most Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. The most cost-effective and life span-enhancing plan for Canada appears to be in setting up a more efficient transportation infra-structure to get complex sick patients over the border and into the United States: more multi-lane freeways, high speed rail lines, helicopter paths, all heading south!
The Provincial Health Plans can specialize on doing what they do best: exploiting resentful, passive-aggressive primary care doctors and stealing pharmaceutical patents.
Leave all that high tech stuff to the Americans!
Posted 02 Mar 2008 at 8:47 am ¶Dr. Sodaro, shame on you, you know as well as anybody that when a cardiac patient arrives at a hospital that doesnt do stents, they are shipped to the CLOSEST hospital that does, it has nothing to do with technology or the choice of health care systems, give me a break. The depth of hipocracy is stunning, earlier on this blog you and your free market moron buddies hammered the WHO stats and the people who use them, then you take a joke of a story like this and spin it to represent what you believe???? very sad, I am personally ashamed to have the same number of paired chromosomes as you.
Posted 03 Mar 2008 at 12:00 pm ¶Nice ad hominum raving, incoherent gibberish there, “dr matt.”
The Canadians are being sent south in large numbers, genius. Americans are not being sent north.
Not that you have even the slightest capacity for rational thought or personal insight. Or a sense of humor. You are one puppy who didn’t get all its shots.
Posted 03 Mar 2008 at 2:06 pm ¶Wow, drmatt!
I do not know the facts here, but I would like to know if it is common practice for Canadian hospitals to send patients to the nearest cardiac-capable hospital, or is it the nearest _Canadian_ cardiac-capable hospital? There must be a mandate in the Canadian provinces for this, I think we should know what it is.
This is a question that needs to be answered, IMHO, before you skewer our colleague.
Posted 03 Mar 2008 at 2:32 pm ¶“You are one puppy who didn’t get all its shots.”
LOL. Great line Dr. S.
Posted 03 Mar 2008 at 7:23 pm ¶Drmatt, I deleted your latest comment on this post because it contains more ad hominem cheap shots. Gotta get that under control, dude!
Posted 04 Mar 2008 at 11:07 am ¶David, what makes this different?
Posted 04 Mar 2008 at 11:11 am ¶“Not that you have even the slightest capacity for rational thought or personal insight”
I dont mind being censured if is going to be done justly, but one sided censurship?
“What makes this different?”
The difference is that Dr. S was responding to your ad hominem shots, which included words like “hypocrisy” and “moron.” It also included the following phrase: “I am personally ashamed to have the same number of paired chromosomes as you.”
If I hadn’t been too busy yesterday to read your original comment carefully, I would have deleted that as well.
Posted 04 Mar 2008 at 12:08 pm ¶Post a Comment