Posted on 07/24/2019 1:04:00 PM PDT by grundle
Bernie Sanders recently said the following regarding his health care plan:
“The system is going to work similarly to what exists in Canada, and what we are going to see is an expansion of Medicare where almost all doctors are now in Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child in this country.”
Since Sanders want the U.S. to copy the Canadian system of health care, here are some examples of what he is talking about:
When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, Canada, needed cancer treatment, he came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
And when Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach needed cancer treatment, she also came to the United States and paid for her health care with her own money.
And when Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams needed heart surgery, he, too, came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
If Sanders gets his way, and the U.S. adopts Canadian style health care, where will Canadian politicians go when they get sick?
And that’s not all.
Here are some horror stories about Canadian health care as reported in the New York Times:
Canada’s Private Clinics Surge as Public System Falters
The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada’s most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise.
Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years before receiving treatment.
Dr. Day, 59, says. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.”
Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services.
Canada has a national doctor shortage already, with 1.4 million people in the province of Ontario alone without the services of a family doctor.
The median wait time between a referral by a family doctor and an appointment with a specialist has increased to 8.3 weeks… Meanwhile the median wait between an appointment with a specialist and treatment has increased to 9.4 weeks
Average wait times between referral by a family doctor and treatment range from 5.5 weeks for oncology to 40 weeks for orthopedic surgery
And Sanders is proud of this?
And there’s still more. This is from the Toronto Sun:
Wait times for knee- and hip-replacement surgery at Southwestern Ontario hospitals are among the longest in the province
People who go under the knife to get their knees replaced in Strathroy have waited an average of 671 days for surgery
Stratford is running the second-highest wait in the province for those needing a hip replacement: the average wait there was 364 days.
In London, the region’s largest medical centre, patients waited an average of 307 days to replace a knee and 299 days to replace a hip
Caption from above photo: Judy Congdon shows how difficult standing is with her bad left hip. Congdon will wait two years for a hip replacement in London, Ont.
Londoner Judy Congdon waited more than a year to have her right knee replaced when her Strathroy surgeon told her he’d have to replace her left hip next. Told last year to expect surgery in September 2017, her date in the operating room was cancelled, and the surgery delayed a second year
I really don’t understand why Sanders thinks this is a good role model for the U.S.
And there’s still even more.
KOMO TV, a Seattle, Washington affiliate of ABC News, reported:
Some Canadian mothers forced to give birth in U.S.
SEATTLE – A problem in Canada’s hospitals is sending scores of pregnant women south of the border to have their babies.
Carri Ash of Chilliwack, B.C. was sent to the U.S. to have her baby after her water broke on Sunday, ten weeks ahead of schedule.
“And they came in and said ‘you’re going to Seattle,'” she said.
Ash’s hospital couldn’t handle the high-risk pregnancy. Doctors searched for another hospital bed, but even hospitals in Vancouver, B.C. didn’t have a neo-natal bed.
“So two provinces didn’t have enough room, so I have to go to another country,” said Ash.
Ash was sent to Swedish Medical Center where, nurses told KOMO 4 News, five Canadian women have come to have their babies in the past six weeks. Some were even airlifted at up to $5,000 per flight.
And a woman from Calgary, one of the wealthiest cities in Canada, had to travel to Montana to give birth to her identical quadruplets.
“We always regret when we have to transfer a baby or mother to another jurisdiction for care,” said Canada’s Health Minister George Abbott.
Aidan Nassey was born premature in Canada and developed breathing problems before his mother could even hold him.
“It was terrifying. And he was taken away and that was it,” said Courtney Nassey, his mother.
There wasn’t a hospital in western Canada that could take in Aidan, and a helicopter had to rush them to Seattle.
Vicki Irvine crossed the border to see her daughter, Carri Ash, give birth.
“You can’t even have a baby near home. It’s horrible,” she said.
Irvine and Ash are questioning Canada’s priorities when it comes to health care spending.
“I think it’s ridiculous that we can have the Olympics but not enough beds so I can have a baby,” said Ash.
The family says there is one benefit to their neo-natal nightmare — the newborn will have dual citizenship and, so far, they like what they see on this side of the border.
If Sanders’s health care plan gets adopted, where will those Canadian women go to give birth in the future?
The above article mentions a Canadian woman who had to go to the U.S. to give birth to quadruplets. Here is more info on her situation from canada.com
A rare set of identical quadruplets, born this week to a Calgary woman at a Montana hospital, are in good health and two of them were strong enough to be transported back here Thursday.
The naturally conceived baby girls — Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia — were delivered by caesarean section Sunday in Great Falls, their weights ranging between two pounds, six ounces and two pounds, 15 ounces.
Their mother, Calgarian Karen Jepp, was transferred to Benefis Hospital in Montana last week when she began showing signs of going into labour, and no Canadian hospital had enough neonatal intensive-care beds for all four babies.
There was no room at any other Canadian neonatal intensive care unit, forcing CHR officials to look south of the border.
Let’s take a look at some population statistics to put that into perspective.
Canada has a population of 37 million people.
And yet according to the last paragraph in that article, there was not a single hospital in all of Canada that could accommodate that woman giving birth to four babies at the same time.
Meanwhile, Great Falls, Montana, which is right across the Canadian border, only has 59,000 people, and yet somehow, it was able to accommodate this same woman when she gave birth to four babies at once.
So a relatively small U.S. city is able to provide health care that cannot be obtained anywhere within the entire country of Canada.
And Sanders wants the U.S. to copy Canada’s system?
In January 2008, the Globe and Mail reported:
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.
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.
If the U.S. adopts Sanders’s plan, where will Canadians such as those go when they need that type of health care?
Below is a video of John Stossel’s TV special “Sick in America.” In the video, he talks about some of the problems in U.S. health care. But then he goes on to show why the U.S. should not switch to the Canadian system. Here are some examples:
19:41 A Toronto man who had a hearth attack waits and waits in an emergency room because there are not enough ICU beds to give him the treatment that he needs.
20:15 A young girl who has seizures does not have a regular pediatrician, and cannot get a bed at a hospital.
20:23 “More than a million Canadians say they can’t find a regular family doctor. Some towns, like this one, hold a lottery. Once a week, the town clerk gets this box out of the closet. Inside are the names of everyone in town who wants a family doctor. She pulls out one slip, and then calls the lucky winner.”
Stossel then goes on to explain that in order to avoid such long waiting times, some patients have gone to private clinics where they spend their own money on health care, which is illegal in Canada. Even though it’s illegal, it’s actually quite common.
21:36 A businessman makes money by helping Canadians travel to the U.S. to get the health care that they can’t get in Canada. One such example was a woman who had a blocked artery that prevented her from being able to digest her food. She was starving to death. She’d lost 50 pounds. Then she hired the businessman to help her, and she traveled to Washington state and got the health care that she needed. The American doctor said that she would have died within a few weeks if she hadn’t gotten treatment. However, the Canadian government considered her care to be “elective.”
22:11 Stossel shows that at veterinary clinics in Canada, which are privately run and privately funded, animals can get medical treatment immediately, without having to wait. All of the latest high tech equipment is available and ready.
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liz2tXypFAY
So the next time that Sanders or anyone else tells you how supposedly wonderful the Canadian health care system is, and that the U.S. should copy it, you can show them these examples.
As a rich,powerful man he could have had his surgery in any hospital in Montreal...Toronto...Vancouver...or anywhere else.
But he chose to have his surgery in the United States of America.
It was a huge story in Canada...IIRC some editorials and op ed pieces basically called him a traitor.
I WISH EVEN ONE DEMOCRAT would tell the truth about Government Healthcare......when you are paying an extra 20% of your income in taxes to pay for your and EVERYBODY ELSE’S care, that does not mean you will get the care you need. And as for getting GOOD care, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!
bookmarked
But, you guys wanna talk Shiite about our country and our president?(republicans)
Note that some Canadian high risk births are delivered in Seattle due to lack of care up North, eh? Makes the babies US citizens.
bkmk
If a person is in a car accident, and a good Samaritan offers a glass of water and his front porch for the victim to rest for a moment, that doesn't entitle the victim to title in the home.
bookmark
...veterinary clinics in Canada, which are privately run and privately funded, animals can get medical treatment immediately, without having to wait. All of the latest high tech equipment is available and ready.
The solution is to self identify as an animal and make the vets treat them. /s
Government health care only works if you don’t get sick.
for later
This country spends twice as much per person on healthcare than just about any other country.
And the result is that women who are no longer ‘productive, in the eyes of the government, like the one in the above picture, don’t have to spend their their senior years practically crippled.
Sounds like a reasonable tradeoff to me.
By the way, the reason why poll after poll shows that people living under Canada’s or UK’s national healthcare like it so much is because it’s very easy to access, no forms, no insurance companies to argue against, just really, really, good care...for the 95% of the people who are not sick or have major ailments. But what of the other 5% who actually need EXPENSIVE care. Then things get much uglier (as in the above). The system is government-run, so they need public support (as in support of the voters). So how do you get votes? Spend 100k giving ONE woman like the above knees and hips, or spend 100k giving vaccines and pre-natal care to 200 people? Hence, while she may not like the system one bit, there are at least 19 people who love the system, since they haven’t (yet) needed expensive care.
That’s why their systems suck. The bean counters answer to the politicians in those countries. Here, it’s pretty much if the doctor recommends something, it gets done, and SOON.
The bean counters answer to the politicians in those countries. Here, it’s pretty much if the doctor recommends something, it gets done, and SOON.
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Not so much anymore
Great Falls MT has more neonatal spaces available than any hospital in Canada. Think on that for a bit. Great Falls is not a huge metropolitan center.
When Liam Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, fell and hit her head while skiing in Quebec, there was not a single medical helicopter in the entire province to get her to a hospital where she could receive treatment. My small town in SE Missouri has two. She died. Her head injury was the type that requires immediate attention which the local hospital was not equipped to provide.
I’d rather keep the health system we have, with its flaws, than trade it for the Canadian system, thank you Sen. Sanders.
The Coachella Valley, low desert area of Southern California, think Palm Springs, has a huge number of “snowbirds” who come down from Canada each winter. Guess where they go for their knee and hip replacements as well as other surgeries.
It is the major hospital, the Eisenhower Medical Center located in Rancho Mirage. The hospital has even designed attractive payment plans for Canadians.
Anybody wonder why Mick Jagger came to a New York City hospital for his recent heart surgery?
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