More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.So much for the myth of, "Sure, there may be some waiting for elective care in Canada, but if you have a true life-and-death emergency, then the Canadian system will be there for you..."
Most of the heart patients who have been sent south since 2003 typically show up in Ontario hospitals, where they are given clot-busting drugs. If those drugs fail to open their clogged arteries, the scramble to locate angioplasty in the United States begins.
"They rushed me over to Detroit, did the whole closing of the tunnel," said Eric Bialkowski, 47, of the heart attack he had on March 14, 2007, in Windsor, Ont. "It was like Disneyworld customer service."
..."We keep coming back to the same root cause," Dr. Day [Canadian Medical Association president Brian Day] said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. "The health system is not consumer-focused."
Patients first learn of the problem when they are critically ill.
If America adopts such a system, where will we send our critically sick patients after we destroy the last semi-free medical system in the world?
(Via David Catron.)
