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 ...
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...
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