Posted on 02/23/2010 4:48:42 PM PST by Kaslin
Health Care: The premier of Newfoundland had heart surgery this month in Florida, bypassing his country's state-run system for American medicine. If Canadian care is so good, shouldn't he have stayed home?
'This is my heart, it's my health, it's my choice," said Danny Williams, who told his province's NTV news that the mitral valve procedure he had at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami "was not offered to me in Canada."
The Toronto Globe & Mail reported Tuesday that Canadian cardiologists have "fervently" countered that such surgery "is available in his home country."
But Williams, who maintains he has "the utmost confidence in our health care system," has said that "I had to leave the province because it was recommended to me by my own doctors that for this particular type of surgery I should leave the province."
It's unlikely we'll know all the factors that led to Williams' decision to be cared for in America. This we do know: Tens of thousands of Canadians buried in their country's sometimes deadly waiting lists seek treatment outside the border each year.
One group of patients that regularly travels to the U.S. for care is expectant mothers. In 2007, at least 40 mothers left British Columbia alone to deliver in America because Canadian hospitals didn't have room. That year, a Calgary woman had her quadruplets in the modest-size city of Great Falls, Mont., due to a shortage of neonatal beds in her hometown of 1 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
of course, Mexico gets away with that too....
it tough being the responsible big brother....
Paging Senator Lautenberg...Senator please pick up the white courtesy phone when you feel up to it.
Lautenberg had his ambulance take him to Sloan Kettering...NOT the closest hospital (per the HC regs for us mere mortals that he wrote).
Pot. Kettle. Black?
I am sick of these socialist countries extolling the virtue of their systems then sneaking over here to the great satan to partake of our horrible healthcare system. I propose that from now on if you are a citizen of a country with socialized medicine you can not be treated here. Maybe that will get the politicians from these idiotic countries to change their system or suffer the consequences. I HAVE HAD IT!
I met a Canadian family on an Alaskan cruise. We had a discussion of our health care systems. They seemed perfectly satisfied with theirs, but believed that people often died in the U.S. from lack of health care. I had a hard time disabusing them of that notion. They seemed unaware that Canadians often come to the U.S. for care, and that we pay the cost of development of drugs. Ignorance is bliss.
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