Comments on: Why did Canadian premier Danny Williams come to the United States for heart surgery?

By: Deborah Sonego

Deborah Sonego — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:35:29 +0000

Don’t be fooled. Most Canadians receive excellent care at home. I have received care for 2 live births, one miscarriage, total hysterectomy for borderline ovarian cancer (caught in time), tonsilectomy, and broken wrist not to mention all the regular doctor visits for the price of parking. I have family members who have had cancer and heart disease – all of whom feel that they were treated properly and in a timely fashion. We are a nation of 33 million people who often live closer to major hospitals in the US and are sent for treatment there – all paid for by our medical system. You have 10X as many people – that’s why you can offer more care to rare cases – it won’t change if you get public health care. You win more gold medals than us in the Olympics and it isn’t because we have socialism here! Once you get public health It will mean that you will get wait lists because lots of your fellow citizens can’t afford to get health care – better a wait list than a barrier to care! Just like your vet – lots of pet owners don’t access vet care cause they can’t afford it or they ask for the cheaper care! There is no waiting for deep pockets!

By: Deborah Sonego

Deborah Sonego — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:23:45 +0000

Re: Danny William; had an uncle who passed away about 10 years ago now at age 82. He was from Vancouver BC Canada. He had angina and wanted a quadruple bypass. Doctors in BC told him no as it would kill him. Told him to go home and live his life. He and his wife decided to take a vacation to Mexico where he had a mild heart attack. He was flown to Texas and stabilized. Two days later the surgeon there talked him into the quadruple bypass – paid for by the Canadian taxpaper of course. He agreed and underwent surgery. 48 hrs later he was dead from multiple strokes. There was no question that the surgery was performed properly…the problem was it should never have been undertaken. The Canadian doctors were right. They, however, were not driven by the profit motive – their only concern was the patient’s welfare. The Canadian government did pay for the surgery so the Texas hospital gains whether the patient survives or not. Should have had to supply a warranty if you’re going to run on the profit motive. ie you survive 30 days or it’s free!

By: liz4cps

liz4cps — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:08:54 +0000

I run a patient support site (Peace in Chronic Illness) which has people from all over the world, including quite a few from Canada. My observation in talking to patients in close to four years is that the Canadians consistently do not have what they need. I don't really know what the problem is but wait times are bad. One woman actually lives in Newfoundland, in a very small remote town. Still, I was very surprised when she told me once that she needed to wait a week for an xray to be read. When she told me that, all I could think was that my vet reads xrays in under an hour. It might have been that they needed a specialist to take a look at it but a week?

By: Wellescent Health Blog

Wellescent Health Blog — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:29:56 +0000

Coming from such a low population region of the country, Williams would have to go outside the province if he needed anything at all involving a specialist. How many cardiac specialists would one expect in a city of 500,000 let alone a whole province with that population. In terms of public perception, however, any such act would result in criticism even if he had stayed in country. That said, care in Ontario would at least have avoided uninformed commentary on the quality of Canadian health care.

By: docwrite

docwrite — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:45:38 +0000

In most if not all parts of the world, access to everything including healthcare is determined to a great extent by the person’s socio-economic status. Individual cases of travelling for getting healthcare are not a determinant of overall quality of the nation’s health system. Lets face it, lots of people from the US go abroad for treatment giving rise to full-fledged industry of medical tourism. I don’t think that we can conclude that health/medical care in the US is inferior to that in many emerging economies such as India.

By: amy

amy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:00:06 +0000

Anonymous, this guy does not live in the middle of the cornfield. If you live in a big city in the US, you can see a doctor in a few days. Now, if you are a Medicaid recipient (read “charity to the state”), it may be more difficult…

By: ninguem

ninguem — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:45:06 +0000

When it’s two-tiered healthcare in the USA it’s because of our evil capitalistic system; we should become like Canada.

When it’s two-tiered in Canada, it’s because some are rich impatient snobs.

By: Doc99

Doc99 — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:00:24 +0000

The major centers in Toronto or Montreal weren’t good enough? A few years back, there was such a lack of neonatal beds in this G8 nation that a woman with multiple pregnancy was flown to a Montana town of 50,000 for care and delivery. Jay Leno was right – If the US enacts these so-called reforms, where will the Canadians go for care?

By: anonymous

anonymous — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:52:35 +0000

I’m not sure this is much different than what anyone in more rural areas of the United States would experience. The last time I saw a primary care doctor, I had to wait 7 weeks. A relative of mine needs orthopedic surgery; the earliest available slot on the surgeon’s schedule is 2 months out.

The wealthy and/or the impatient will often travel somewhere else. It’s just how it is.

To somehow read this as an indictment of the Canadian health care system does not seem warranted.

By: ninguem

ninguem — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:52:29 +0000

The ones that I saw personally were not border-crossing for convenience, they came from major metro areas. It would have been far more geographically convenient to go to their local centers. They were coming for fairly ordinary surgery, not some one-center-in-the-world sub-sub-sub-specialty work. When I would ask, the response would invariably be about getting the surgery done in a timely manner. The wait list number is at variance with what the recipients of care were telling me. It seemed to revolve around the Disneyland effect. You wait in line to wait in line. The wait time for the consultation, the wait time for imaging, the wait time for surgical consultation, the wait time for surgery, are in series, not parallel.