Posted on 06/30/2009 5:13:32 PM PDT by WhiteCastle
Health Reform: A critically ill premature baby is moved to a U.S hospital to get the treatment she couldn't get in the system we're told we should emulate. Cost-effective care? In Canada, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for.Ava Isabella Stinson was born last Thursday at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Weighing only two pounds, she was born 13 weeks premature and needed some very special care. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's — or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario, it seems.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Single prayer??
Just a little something....
This is no Joke, its the truth:
If people want to get somewhere (example movie theater, grocery shopping...etc..) They will call an ambulance, the ambulance will drive them to the hospital located near the theater or grocery shop this way they don't pay for taxi!!!!
People go grocery shopping, since they don't want to pay for a taxi home, they enter the emergency room go through triage this way they get their taxi payed for...WITH MY TAX MONEY
If any one tells you that medicare is free over here, its NOT!!! I pay 28% tax for my medicare system....
Its the same shitty medicare for every one....
My oldest daughter was born at this gestational age and was the same weight.
Without the NICU here, she would not have made it. Her hospital bill was over a half million dollars. Insurance covered it all.
If Premature babies in Canada are finding it difficult to get the care they need, the health care situation there is dire.
BTW, after a very trying first year, my daughter did great. She is now a happy, healthy and normal 10 year old.
>Single prayer??
You noticed that too, I see
you are truly blessed.
OK , So, what province do you live in?
I’ve read quite a lot of these stories of people being sent from Canada, by the Canadian health care system, to US medical facilities, but I’ve never once read an accompanying explanation of who pays the bill. Can anybody help out with this? If we’re giving these people free or discounted care, we shouldn’t be, because we’re artificially propping up Canada’s lousy and evil healthcare system with US taxpayer dollars. And if we’re sending the full sticker price bill to the Canadian government and they’re paying it, shouldn’t the Canadian people be asking some hard questions about why this money isn’t being spent to improve and expand the Canadaian facilities?
Canada's perfectly planned and cost-effective system had no room at the inn for Avabelieve it or not, "No room at the inn" is a VALID MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS!!!
Quebec
I’m calling BS. Ambulance rides here in Ontario cost $45 billed to the patient, higher if the MD at the hospital reports that it was not medically necessary.
If the patient is referred by a Canadian hospital, the provincial health plan here pays the bill. If the patient goes directly to a US hospital without a referral, they pay out of pocket.
I know a group of physicians in another state that are moving their highly regarded practice to Costa Rica. My BIL is A General Surgeon and is getting out... I plan on some opportunities broadly speaking in the industry here in the U.S. but it will be in the self-pay mkt which will unfold as hc consumers are denied, stalled, denied, stalled, denied, stalled some more.... Now If Osama proscribes that free mkt exchange, too, well, that's quite a dilemma. Costa Rica and Panama are only so big!
You don't understand. Obama is exempt. Members of congress are exempt. They will have their own superior plan.
Congress critters will always take care of themselves. There will always be providers. For them.
I agree with you about physicians for the rest of us. Those I know over 50 are socking it away now while tax rates are relatively low. Once tax rates go up, they’re retiring. They’re only making 40 - 50% of what they bill now. They don’t even bother to bill medicare. It costs more to bill them than what they get in return. The system will kill the golden goose.
I am hoping/counting upon the industry as a whole will opening up to cash customers due to rationing as I mentioned. Sure don’t foresee too many exceptions, either if it follows other countries’ models of care. There may be some mix of ins & pvt payers, but that could get quite tricky (who knows what restrictions might be imposed on the ability to offer a mix of services no matter the industry segment? ie play our way or not at all) I don’t see how anyone involved in the field cannot be thinking in these terms. And yes, I’ve been in hc for years, and not a doc.
Hillary Care prohibited outside competition. As soon as liberals discover private care is making OCare look bad, they’ll ban it, too. That is, assuming the ban isn’t in the original bill.
I spent a couple of years pushing a health insurance approach that would have recognized the fact that some form of government involvement was inevitable, but kept it to a minimum. I got nowhere. Republicans wouldn’t touch it because it had a tiny payroll tax associated with it. Now we’re all going to end up living with the consequences of that pigheadedness. Very disheartening.
The NHS’s botched assignment scheme a few years back was pretty effective at taking jobs away from new graduates too. I followed that on NHS Blogdoc.
And here in South Africa, it looks like we will end up going the same way with a Government which is touting the Canadian system as something to emulate. This is the same Government which has detroyed what 15 years ago were world-class State hospitals like Groote Schuur in Cape Town. These are now unhygienic cesspools.
But then I've heard in Quebec you need an appointment to make an appointment , so nothing from Quebec suprises me. .
You should know by now that things are not always as they seem. The article makes reference to Karen Jepp of Calgary , a Canadian woman who gave birth to four babies in the US because there was no space available at any Canadian neonatal care unit .
Foothills Hospital has 20 neonatal beds. Seventeen where in use. Do the math.
The Calgary Health Region paid for the babies' U.S. health care - from $1,500 to $2,000 a day for the mother, Karen, and from $6,000 to $7,000 a day for each of the four girl's stay in intensive care. Had Karen delivered in Calgary, her care would have cost $800 a day, and it would have been $2,500 a day for the quads.
The cost of each air ambulance trip will be $10,000 to $15,000.
AND Ava Isabella Stinson.
June 28, 2009 Dana Brown THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR BUFFALO -- The parents of a critically ill Hamilton preemie have been reunited with their daughter in a Buffalo hospital. Natalie Paquette, 29, and Richard Stinson, 39, have been separated from Ava Isabella Stinson, since last Thursday several hours after she was born.
Ava was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital shortly before 12:30 p.m., but with no room in the neonatal intensive care unit at McMaster Children’s Hospital, the baby was sent to Buffalo that evening. She was 14 weeks premature.
Without passports, as per new American border rules that went into effect June 1, Ava’s parents could not get across the border to be with her, leaving their new daughter alone in the Buffalo hospital.
Paquette said on Sunday morning, the couple received a call from the border police, who told them to come to crossing. There, the pair were able to get over the border and were finally reunited with their daughter.
And lefties base their worldview on the assumption that
“everyone is basically good”.
The incidents that you posted about - those are simply evil wastes of resources.
And of course, if anyone called them on it, it would be “blaming the victim”.
Three years out of residency. Sigh. The older docs can retire but the rest have to either grin and bear it or look for alternatives. It’s been getting bad but the badness has accelerated. It’s so bad that some practices don’t even bill medicare. It costs more to bill them than can be collected.
Hang in there. Things will change. Hopefully for the better.
So given that this seems to be happening fairly frequently with certain conditions that require specialized equipment and units, aren’t the Canadian people asking their government why the money that magically becomes available to pay full sticker price for these cross-border transfers, isn’t being spent to beef up the Canadian facilities? Births seem to be a big part of this phenomenon, unless that’s just reporting bias because it makes a catchier news story than some fat old geezer being brought over for an emergency bypass. I’ve even read reports of mothers having normal, uncomplicated, singleton births being sent over the border for lack of space is regular obstetric units in Canada.
If your on welfare all is FREE...Look it up
your = you are
Free or otherwise I've been in enough 911 calls and ambulance responses to know that it wouldn't fly in Ontario and I suspect in the rest of Canada.
As for Quebec. Far be it from me to put a value on the average IQ of ambulances drivers , or the doctor/person who should say "Non" to that kind of foolishness in Quebec .
But if they're like some the French Canadians I've known , I'm checking out my shoe size.
I hope the Americans don't screw up their medical system...
But you also had to spend a decade and a half in higher education just to enter your specialty. I should hope you are very well compensated for the effort it takes to get where you are and for the tremendous responsibility you have to exercise in your decisions and actions. If "Obamacare" takes away the incentive for the best and brightest to go into medicine, we will all be much worse off in the future.
The problem is that health care is the third rail for Canadian politicians (IOW touch it and you’re dead), so we just get more money thrown at it. All serious efforts to reform our health care mess have failed because our politicians don’t have the cojones to point out that “free” health care is costing us a fortune.
No to worry. Look for a young lady who is a lawyer and marry her. Lawyers will make out very well. What else is new.
Sadly, from my point of view over on the US side of the border, the apparently impending demise of the last vestiges of our private health care system, may end up helping Canadians start to dismantle their mess of a socialized medicine system. It seems to be hanging on only because of the pressure valve provided by the US — both by the Canadian system shipping patients over the border, and by wealthier patients skipping the waiting lists and shipping themselves over the border. When the situation on the US side is as bad as in Canada, that pressure valve will be blocked, and more Canadians will be ready to draw a line in the sand.
As a third generation back surgery patient, I can appreciate your expertise. I'd hate to have all the progress in surgical techniques frozen to eliminate further advances.
My mother had surgery at age 30 in 1967 prior to the introduction of surgical microscopes and CAT scans. She had two surgeons, an orhtopedic surgeon and a neurosurgeon. One of them diagnosed her myelograms indicating a herniation at L5-S1 on the left side; the other surgeon diagnosed a heriation at the same level but on the right side. Her surgeons had to make a 6 inch insision and found that she had heriations on both sides surrounding the spinal chord. It took months for her to recover. She had to lie in the back seat of a car, because she couldn't comfortably sit in a moving car.
I had surgery in 2001 after 5 years of worsening pain. The myelograms and CAT scans showed I had a massive herniation at L5-S1 that completely surrounded the spinal chord and compressed it to a diameter of about 1/4 inch. My surgery was done as day surgery. The surgeon was able to use just a 1 inch incision to enter the spine. I was walking 2 hours after my surgery and was released from the hospital that afternoon. A week later I no longer had to take Vicodin. Prior to surgery, I had to take 4-5 Vicodins a day, and I still had excruciating pain if I stood up too long or tried to walk more than 50 feet. A month later I went on a trip with my father, driving throgh Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. I was able to hike up and down mountain trails.
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