Did Canadacare kill Natasha Richardson?
Dr. Cory Franklin had a provocative piece in the New York Post yesterday exploring whether Canada’s government-run health care system contributed to the tragic skiing death of Natasha Richardson. He writes:
Richardson died of an epidural hematoma — a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive.
Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada, no. In many US resorts, yes.
Between noon and 1 p.m., Richardson sustained what appeared to be a trivial head injury while skiing at Mt. Tremblant in Quebec. Within minutes, she was offered medical assistance but declined to be seen by paramedics.
But this delay is common in the early stages of epidural hematoma when patients have few symptoms — and there is reason to believe her case wasn’t beyond hope at that point.
About three hours after the accident, the actress was taken to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien, in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, 25 miles from the resort. Hospital spokesman Alain Paquette said she was conscious upon reaching the hospital about 4 p.m.
The initial paramedic assessment, travel time to the hospital and time she spent there was nearly two hours — the crucial interval in this case. Survival rates for patients with epidural hematomas, conscious on arrival to a hospital, are good.
Richardson’s evaluation required an immediate CT scan for diagnosis — followed by either a complete removal of accumulated blood by a neurosurgeon or a procedure by a trauma surgeon or emergency physician to relieve the pressure and allow her to be transported.
But Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts is a town of 9,000 people. Its hospital doesn’t have specialized neurology or trauma services. It hasn’t been reported whether the hospital has a CT scanner, but CT scanners are less common in Canada.
Actually, it has been reported that Richardson received a CT scan at Centre Hospitalier Laurentien. The hospital does have the equipment.
Defenders of universal health care think this ends the debate and accuse critics of Canada’s system of “exploiting” Richardson.
But health care blogger Dr. T points to the government-engineered lack of specialists in Canada:
Neurosurgeons are not so easy to find in Canada where subspecialization is not rewarded, and 50-60% of boarded neurosurgeons leave the country to practice somewhere else within 2 years of their certification.
The last good data I could find listed only 174 neurosurgeons in the entire country. In the U.S. we have 3,500. A study on the need of neurosurgeons listed the density of neurosurgeons in the U.S. to be about 1/55,000 people which means that an analogous number of neurosurgeons needed in Canada would be about 604.
It is true that neurosurgeons eschew emergency room coverage in the United States, but it is for completely different reasons than in Canada. Here, our ED’s don’t want to pay what it takes to hire a neurosurgeon for coverage; in Canada, no one wants to even be a neurosurgeon.
So, in a sense, the Canadian model for health care failed Natasha Richardson because of an artificially created shortage of subspecialists, which is a purposeful design meant to keep costs low in a taxpayer-funded-system. The U.S. would very much like to go in this direction and the plan is to broaden non subspecialized care options while reducing higher-tech procedures, diagnostics and physicians.
But as we go towards a single-payer system, we can all expect that when we need it most, the system will not be there for us, as it was not there for Natasha Richardson.
Additionally, Matthew Vadum and a top Montreal doctor point to Canada’s woeful lack of a medical flight system.
There’s no shame in asking what went wrong, how our health care system can minimize preventable deaths, and whether current proposals to radically alter our health care system would increase these tragedies.
It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.
***
Read this. Hat tip – Greg Pollowitz:
Connie and Donald McCracken were watching CNN one evening last week when they learned of the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson from a head injury. Immediately, their minds turned to their 7-year-old daughter, Morgan, who was upstairs getting ready for bed.
An injured Morgan McCracken has benefited from awareness after Natasha Richardson’s death.
1 of 2Two days earlier, Morgan, her father, and brother had been playing baseball in the yard of their Mentor, Ohio, home when her father hit a line drive that landed just above Morgan’s left temple. A lump formed, but the McCrackens iced it down and the swelling subsided within an hour.
“For the next two days, she was perfectly fine,” Donald McCracken says. “She had no symptoms. She went to school both days and got an A on her spelling test as usual. There were no issues whatsoever.”
But after hearing about Richardson’s death, the McCrackens wondered if Morgan was really as OK as she seemed. After all, Richardson had been talking and lucid immediately after her fatal injury.
When they went upstairs to kiss Morgan good night, she complained of a headache. “Because of Natasha, we called the pediatrician immediately. And by the time I got off the phone with him, Morgan was sobbing, her head hurt so much,” McCracken says.
The McCrackens took Morgan to the emergency room at LakeWest Hospital in neighboring Willoughby, where doctors ordered a CT scan and immediately put Morgan on a helicopter to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, with her father by her side.
“I knew it was bad when she had to get there by helicopter in six minutes, instead of the 30 minutes it would have taken to get to Cleveland in an ambulance,” McCracken said.
When the helicopter arrived at Rainbow, the McCrackens were greeted by Dr. Alan Cohen, the hospital’s chief of pediatric neurosurgery. He whisked Morgan into the operating room, pausing for a moment to tell McCracken that his daughter had the same injury as Richardson: an epidural hematoma.
McCracken remembers standing in the emergency room, feeling like the life had just been sucked out of him. “My heart sank,” he says. “It just sank.”
Unlike Richardson’s, Morgan’s story has a happy ending.
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As we will never know for sure given the nature of Miss Richardson’s injury and the length of time it took her to seek medical treatment. It wouldn’t surprise me, however, if her death would have been avoidable. Canadian hospitals have been woefully lacking in trained staff (such as MRI technicians) and waiting periods in ERs and for specialised surgeries and treatments are quite long at times. Ask any Canadian who has had experience in Canadian hospitals and they’ll tell quite a few stories. I know some but I’m not sure I have the space to tell them all.
my friend suffered with a kidney stone for nearly a year in canada care. he finally became so sick his wife drove him to detroit from toronto where they finally x rayed him and surgically had to remove the stone it was so big. in nearly a year of going to canada’s hospitals and doctors, he never was x rayed. i can get that care at my local veterans hospital, and lessons in pashtu at the same time.
Given the sparsity of the local area, it would be easy to say that the same could, at least theoretically happen here as well. It would depend on the area in which the accident occurred. However, given her status as a “rich and famous” actress, it is doubtful that she would be skiing somewhere here that did not have a relative glut of doctors. If it was some kid in West Virginia going down a slope on a sled, the results would likely be the same. The area is very poor and “High dollar” doctors do not usually stick around any more than they have to.
It is an interesting theory and I can see some merit to the argument, but there are places here where such care would be impossible to attend to as well. As much as I abhor the concept of socialized medicine, I would not fight too hard with this as my primary example.
Socialize medicine kills people. A socialized economy spreads poverty. Socialized newspapers spread misinformation…oh, we might already have those.
I hope this story has legs.
One of the reasons so many of our “betters” in the media and politics support socialized medicine is because they know, in advance, that they will recieve better care than the average person. In Canada, care is rationed for the average working stiff, but the rich and famous are seen immediately, and always can get state-of-the-art care by running South of the Border.
But now their precious Canadian single-payer system has failed one of their own. Perhaps this tragic and needless death will make a few of them change their minds.
What is the population of Aspen? Is there a hospital with a CT Scanner nearby?
A strikingly clear look into the future of medical care in America if Obama gets his way … of course that will only apply to all of us outside the political circles …
Thanks Michelle
I said this from the beginning. Having lived and worked in Montreal for a few years during the late ’90s, I know the Canadian health care system well.
Also my wife who’s a doctor and Canadian citizen graduated from McGill University went to school with a friend who became a neurosurgeon and just like the article states, he left Canada upon graduation and now practices in Texas. He is well renown and has published many articles in medical journals and such.
Why did he leave his country? The same reason my wife did, why go to school for 7 years do a residency, be taxed heavily and in the end only to make as much as someone with much less education, responsibility and commitment.
By the way my wife left Canada right after graduation also and did her residency in New York. It’s called the “brain drain” in Canada and is very common.
I think critics of Canada’s healthcare system, and those, including you, who reprint these articles, are exploiting Miss Richardson’s death.
Just my $0.02.
Once we have Nationlized Healthcare, all your medical needs will be addressed by government trained nurse practicianers. My suggestion is kill yourself now! We have to keep taxpayer costs low!
I don’t think drawing legitimate comparisons is exploitation at all. just my .00002 worth (after taxes)
Wait until a Nurse/Practitioner is reading your CT scans to keep costs down.
I also know someone who’s brother died in Canada because the cancer drug that is standard here is considered “experimental” there. By experimental they mean “costs more so tough luck.”
At least Natasha did not die in vain, her death saved the life of this little girl.
Rogue, #10, we had the same thought about nurse practitioners but you type faster than I do…:)
If, and I believe we will, we get UScare big brother will decide who gets what care. The older of us, not working to give money to big brother, will have all our health care restricted. If we need a knee, hip, heart or liver transplant etc. we will not be given one. Only the productive will get that care. I can not imagine our wounderful doctors staying here letting big brother tell them how much they can charge or make. There are other places ourside the US they can go.
L
Ya but I think you spelled it right Ha!
Keep the change. If we never learn any lessons in life, will we or the world improve?
Several. All within minutes in a helicopter.
Canadians don’t think about it too often but it really is frightening to know that your healthcare is being rationed by a faceless bureaucracy and that trained individuals who can leave do so because staying in a mediocre system will drive them to the brink of insanity.
Oh great, now MM will get flack for being insensitive.
My 80 year old mother recently received a new hip, which would never happen under a nationalized system at her age!
Coming soon to your state: socialized health care-induced long lines.
In this false, socialized economy, rules of supply and demand go out the window.
Incredibly, we let foreign nationals walk into the country illegaly to supply labor for jobs “Americans won’t do”, and impede foreign nationals from coming here legally to fill positions for jobs where there are no Americans to fill them!
Quotas on H1-B visas are filled within days of being released. Filipino doctors are lined up to come to the US in order to work as nurses. Having our hospitals and clinics filled with nurses holding doctorates sounds like a good idea to me.
Here’s my Canada healthcare nightmare… I was temporarily living in Toronto. One afternoon while bike riding, I was hit by a car. The impact threw me off of my bike and I landed on my head (I wasn’t wearing a helmet, but I’ve learned my lesson and always do now). At the emergency room, I was put in a small room where I waited nearly two hours to be seen. When the doctor finally came to see me, he asked me how I felt, felt the lump on my head, and had someone sew up a cut on my leg. Before being released several hours later, the doctor told me to stay at a friend’s house so they could wake me up every hour to see if I was ok. That’s it, no xrays, nothing.
Compare that to a recent mountain biking accident of mine here in Richmond (yes, I was wearing a helmet). Upon arriving in the emergency room, I was taken immediately for xrays and a CT scan. Afterward, several specialists came by to check me for different things. Each gave me a detailed list of symptoms to be aware of and another set up a follow-up appointment the next week.
The thought of Canada style health care in the US gives me nightmares.
Coming soon to the U.S. ……..Obama-Care. But you KNOW that the Washington elite will still be rushed to Bethesda by chopper while you and I are waiting for them to jump start the old broken down ambulance assigned for prole transport to Nightmere General Hospital.
From the Aspen Valley Hospital Website:
Alas, none of it matters, because under ObambiCare:
1). Socialism is caring and fair and affordable; and,
2). Capitalism is venal and unequal and expensive.
What matters is liberal intent, not greed-driven results.
We know this because an endless supply of liberals constantly remind us.
They’re nearly all millionaires, of course, but they can be trusted with their millions.
Conversely, we minions cannot be trusted with our thousands. Instead, we need Mommy Gummint to take care of us.
*I spent 20 of my adult years in Canada; Believe me, we do not want nationalized healthcare; It is woefully inadequate and not only is it not free, taxes are sky high because of it.
*One example I can think of is that there are more CT machines in the Atlanta area than in all of Canada; That is but one example.
*Biggest problem over here, in my opinion, is that there is too much of a disconnect between the patient and the doctor/provider; People don’t have to deal with the costs, so they don’t pay attention with their usage; Insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid are barriers to a true one on one cost for service relationship.
*I have a high deductible major medical HSA and cash flow all that I do; And besides, I don’t weigh 400 lbs, smoke, abuse alcohol or drugs, or hatch a kid every 10 months with no visible means fo support.
My daughter was taken down by ski patrol to an Emergency Clinc at the base of a ski resort in Colorado a few weeks ago. I could have sworn on the phone call that they said they were air-lifting her out, which scared the
out of me. (not the injury but the cost that would have been involved)
The clinic was fully staffed with all of the equipment it needed.
From now on I think I will drive to the ski resort for all my emergency needs. She was transported, assessed, processed (with all requite x-rays) medicated and released, faster than I have been admitted to regular city hospitals.
Oddly there were NO ILLEGALS bogging down the system.
Medical services are rationed in Canada and England. If we adopt Nationalized Healthcare, people over a certain age may be refused services if it is too costly or the person is no longer “useful” to the country ala Tom Daschle.
Heart surgeries that are routine for people over 65 may be discontinued because of cost or preceived life expectancy. SO, if genetically, your family lives until 90 and you need a surgery in your 60′s, because the average life expectancy is, say, 72, you could be denied the service because your specific details don’t matter.
You shrivel up and die, thereby saving the state on your healthcare as well as your social security/pension. And they’ll tax the crap out of anything you may have saved.
The real question is, where will people go to a) either practice medicine after spending years getting educated and trained, b) go for treatment if they can afford to pay cash and c) where will the dictator world leaders go for treatment that they can’t get in their own countries?
Up to now, the U.S. has been the place to go.
Do the illegals ski in ASPEN?!?!
Silly goose.
One of Washington’s biggest complaints about medical insurance is that it “rations” quality health care to those best able to pay. Washington’s solution? Let Washington ration everybody’s health care. It won’t be rationed according to who’s best able to pay because we’ll all be paying for it. It will be rationed according to who is (or isn’t) worthy of receiving it. And Washington decides who’s worthy. How nice. Would Ms. Richardson have qualified as worthy? Maybe not. She was “ultrarich”, don’t you know?
When I say “we’ll all be paying”, I mean anyone who has something taxable above a certain value. Which isn’t everybody.
Even though they had a CT scanner, it would seem that no one was able to correctly interpret the images. Further, there were no neurosurgeons close enough to perform the needed surgery.
Alas, this is what the Great Obama wants for all of us. Are you liberals happy? I bet you’ll be singing a different tune should a loved one of yours become the victim of a system like that in Canada. A system that Obama will be responsible for implementing.
But since Obama has no issue with allowing unborn children to be killed, I doubt he’ll lose any sleep over some dead ER “customers”.
I echo what Living in the PRSK said (#29). If you need dialysis, cancer treatments, MRI’s or heart procedures, in the UK and Canada you are put on a waiting list. If you survive the wait you may end up having treatment.
In the USA, no matter if you have insurance or are illegal, you will be treated in any ED with the same protocols.
We do not want universal health care.
Actually, I think I’d trust a decent emergency room physician with a Black and Decker to relieve the pressure, if they could actually read the CT.
BTW, newer CT scanners are light years better than the old ones I hear – maybe theirs is an antique.
As far as the government is concerned, it isn’t helping people with “universal healthcare”. It’s about power, and power only. They love to point to the Sweden system of healthcare. Yes, you’re right, you don’t get on THE waiting list anymore. You get on a waiting list to get on THE waiting list. So much for womb-to-tomb coverage. What the heck can I do with an “hospice appropiate” patient that could have been treated successfully, 10 months ago?
O/T
(my boss discovered I didnt have enough to do this afternoon (duh) otherwise I would be on the slopes today
)
No, they just work there.
We can thank The Beatles for the CT scanner:
The McCrackens were very lucky to live so near Cleveland. About the only thing that doesn’t suck here is the hospitals (note the large number of foriegn dignitaries that come to the Cleveland Clinic, Robin Williams transferring from Florida for care last week, etc.)
On the flip side, we have the terrible habit of electing democrats and rinos every chance we get. There are currently more Democratic officials, in jail or under investigation by the FBI or the State than not.
Why am I ranting about the dems in response to this thread? (besides the facts that I can’t pass up any oppurtunity to complain about them?)
Consider this from today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer:
CLEVELAND — Northeast Ohio’s hospitals — including the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals Health System and the Sisters of Charity Health System — said in a meeting Thursday in The Plain Dealer offices that they will be forced to consider cutting charity care and more than 1,800 jobs if a “franchise fee” remains in Gov. Ted Strickland’s two-year budget proposal.
Make no mistake, Cleveland sucks, but we do have great health care. The dems are determined to screw it up. They can’t tax non-profits so they come up with “fees”. Of course when their fees result in 1,800 people losing their jobs, a rise in costs and less charity they will demonize the hospitals and issurance companies.
Thus, the slippery slope. The McCrackens are lucky their daughter got injured todayand not 10 years from now
Tragically, Natasha was responsible for her own death, as she declined medical treatment, turning away emergency services.
CanadaCare may suck, but they are not the scapegoat for this sad loss.
Natasha’s mom, Venessa Redgrave is an activist.
After some time, I would hope that she would investigate this out of anger, grief and the hope to keep this from happening to someone else. The whole family has the resources and the interest of news outlets to get to the bottom of this and really make a difference in the direction of health care in the US, Canada. My mind moves to Michael J Fox for stem cell research just before the 2006 elections. It worked (election-wise).
Yeah. And someone who actually knows something about head trauma should have been on the horn saying “I know you think you feel okay now, but you could have something very wrong. We need to check you out.”
When you ski in Canada, you’re really on your own for medical care for slope injuries.
At Sun Peaks a couple years ago, our friends kids crashed into each other with the ski making a huge gash in one of their foreheads, requiring stitches. The mom (an Nurse Practitioner) took their child to the Medical Station. They had no one staffed to do any thing more than bandage and ship to the ER at Kanloops about 40 minutes away. They didn’t even have a suture kit or the Mom or I could have taken care of it (we both now care a suture kit while skiing in Canada).
Off to the ER they go, to sit in a waiting room for about 6 hours while the staff worked on stabilizing a bunch of gangs who gone at each other. Then, after spending an enternity in a waiting room of all sorts of unsavory types, they were informed informed the staff was done for the night and, since it wasn’t life threatening, they needed to come back the next morning when someone could stitch the boy up properly. It’s about the same if you break your leg skiing. After a visit to the ER, someone may determine that the NEXT DAY someone will set the bones and cast.
Skiing during December can take this to a new level because the government may run out of money to pay the doctors so many of the MDs and staff take the month off. In the late 80s/early 90s, this happened once in Kanloops (same town as above), leaving the local vet (animal doctor) and a family MD to run the ER for the area.
Canadacare, got to love it. Coming soon to your hometown.
A former sister-in-law was in Canada teaching on one of the outer islands. She detected the dreaded lump. It took months for her to see a physician and he wasn’t a cancer specialist. Months later and a double mastectomy and removal of the lymph nodes, she came back to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery. They’d removed the cancer but left her disfigured. Guess that wasn’t in the budget.
My niece’s best friend had the same type of skiing accident on the same day as Natasha Richardson. The difference was, she had her
accident in the US and was helicoptered to an hospital and immediately
placed in a drug induced coma. She stayed in the coma for several
days and is now recovering.
I understand that Quebec does not have a medical helicopter. They are
the only province that does not have one.
Since I have seen first hand what a difference the helicopter and the
induced coma made, I do have to say that the way this case was handled made all the difference in MS Richardsons survival. Universal healthcare is the same as no healthcare.
Sadly, the solution our government is pursuing is to simply not to give the professionals any alternatives.
Did you read the article?
As a former emergency services person, when someone says they do not want further medical attention, (and in the US they sign the little form that C’sYA) then you cant make them do anything they do not want to do. Your keyword above is correct…. “could”.
Intracranial trauma is difficult to assess in the field without obvious external signs (blood, black eyes, lumps, confusion, etc) and/or continual monitoring.
Only a doctor can diagnose. Anyone less than a doc can only ASSESS.
There is a Canadian film from a few years ago that conservatives really missed the boat on. It was called “The Barbarian Invasion” and concerned a dying man who was cared for under the tender mercies of Canadian health care. It was one of those half serious, half comic films and Saturday Night Live could not have been more brutal on Canadian health care. It was bribes to get a decent hospital room, Pakistanis cooking with open fires in a ~shared~ hospital room, patients lining the hallways on gurneys while a whole floor was left empty, etc., etc. The family of the protagonist brought him across the border to the U.S. when he needed an important procedure and the U.S. hospital was portrayed like the film Pleasantville….all calmness and Musiac and quiet efficiency.
Unfortunately, the film is in French with English subtitles but still very enjoyable. I think it got the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Not to late to get it from Netflix and see our future.
She killed herself.
Let’s leave it at that, shall we?
No point in using the dead as a bat with which to beat socialized medicine.
I hate useless litigation and lawyers who make too much money on targeting frivolous lawsuits, but this is where having the government take care of you goes horribly wrong. There may be a need for tort reform in medical malpractice suits here, but the fear of doing something wrong in medical situations is one reason why medical care here is so good. I doubt that the paramedics had forms for Richardson to sign refusing care. If they had, they could have at least talked her into having her vital signs taken. With a blood pooling problem, there is a good chance her blood pressure would have been a little high and she could have been talked into being seen by a physician earlier. In Canada, who cares. There is not much accountability when you work for the government.
If medical professionals mess up here, they know they are in danger of litigation problems. If it is the government and they mess up, who you going to go after? There is no relief. I find it hard to believe that attorneys are so into socialization. This is not only true of health care, but all other institutions as well. When the government owns everything, there is no one to sue. Most attorneys I know are very liberal. As most liberals are not very bright, attorneys are destroying their own livelihood.
I live in the middle of socialism central. Here is what will happen when Ole Blue Lips and the Bo Tox Queen get their way:
- 99% of us will have our health care rationed out by the same bureaucrats who run the VA. 1% will hire “Private” doctors and receive real health care. These Doctors will be located wherever the tax structure is best (Likely the Caribbean).
- Doctors and other highly educated people will stop immigrating to the US because the ability to make more money than a convenience store clerk will disappear.
- True research and pharmaceutical development will cease in the US and the industry will move completely to India where no pesky FDA can regulate them.
- Somehow, the ensuing mess will be GW Bush’s fault.
This is just a bad, bad idea. I am a bureaucrat. I manage bureaucrats. I can promise you, people who are insulated from reality, can’t be sued (under color of law, a Government employee doing his or her job according to regulation can not be held liable in a civil action) and can’t be fired are the last people in the world determining when, where and by whom you will be treated.
Rabbid, as an EMT, caveating that you of course cannot force treatment on someone nor are you qualified to diagnose, would you think it prudent to say to someone who is refusing treatment because they are fine something more or less like what I said?
And as to frontierguy, my point was not at all to put any sort of liability on anyone. My only point was that a lay person could very well not have nay idea they were inured badly and thus it is unfair to say she “killed herself” by refusing treatment.
Weird, coming from an attorney, but as legal goes, it is my point that measured litigation does a service good. In Universal Care, that will not be the case.
Richardson felt fine and was probably embarrassed that she was receiving attention. When people who are in accidents are presented with the refusal of care form, they many times decide to go ahead and receive an assessment when they think why it is a big deal to the paramedic to get this form signed. Maybe this would not have been the case this time, but it is worth the research to see if Universal Care caused this death. As many posted here of their personal experiences with Canada Care, Liberal ideas and policies always seem to have bad consequences.
I cant speak for ski patrol or Canadian SOP, only for Cali and non-Cali certifications that have lapsed.
My guess is the following scenario: Natasha fell and whacked her head. It obviously hurt and caused enough attention for her instructor or those around her to summon ski patrol. She probably cried.
The ski patrol assessed her, strapped her into the tobaggan and got her down the mountain. It was serious enough that the paramedics were called. However by the time she was down the mountain, she had recovered enough (and might have even been embarassed/joking) to say that she was fine.
I figure they told her that she needed to be evaluated further, BUT she was assuring them “No, Im fine. Really I’ll be OK, I’ll just go back to my room and take it easy for a while.”
From the stories I have read, the Paramedics never got to the mountain to talk to her. Their call was cancelled. And the ski patrol person sees many of those exact cases EVERY day, so why press her to do what she doesnt want.
Every day that I am on the slopes I have to stop by at least one person to check on them. I have only had to summon ski patrol once. Some days I make jokes about Sonny Bono, but the places I snowboard, its just a matter of time until I get carried down too (a helmet is not going to save me and they will be lucky to find my body before I freeze to death
).
Probably has to be French…
I think I saw this. The union boss got him a room for his father (with a bribe) on an unused floor. It was so crazy you know it was true to life.
Directly, no. Indirectly, yes. They do not have the medical infrastructure to manage acute care situations (and doubtfully other services). Appears that medical treatment is not high on the government’s list of priorities.
But what I find interesting is
Why is their population so low? Is the US Canada’s friendly and handy neighbor that provides those services that they themselves do not or care not to provide? More than the issue of socialized medicine is the issue of apathy that joins hand in hand with social programs run by government, and the underlying attitude that maybe life isn’t seen as precious as the need for big nanny.
I read this story with great interest yesterday… Reminded me of a piece I read in the WASHINGTON TIMES several months ago… Seems a lady in CANADA needed an MRI… None was available in her area, so they sent her to MONTANA for her MRI… They discovered her problem and performed the needed surgery… The piece went on to say that there are more MRI machines in PHILADELPHIA than in all of CANADA… We will never know in the HYPOTHETICAL case of MS. RICHARDSON, but for sure our health care system will suffer if it goes to NATIONALIZED HEALTHCARE…
I’ve been to Mt. Tremblant. It’s a tiny utopia in the middle of the wilderness, and I mean wilderness. Outside its boundaries it’s a 2nd world country (French). Ironically the patrons of Mt.Tremblant are extremely successful people, and one could probably find a few neuro-surgeons on holiday at any given time of the year.
I may not be the smartest guy in the room but, if Canadian healthcare was so good why would she have to be transported to the U.S. at all?
…aka: Democrat approved method to abort citizens.
Proof that liberal ideas are a failure.
That last story left me with chills even though it had a happy ending.
If government does as good of a job as they do with the VA, we’re doomed. Here come speakeasy-style Emergency Rooms.
But, if we get socialized medicine, where will Canadians go to have surgery? Mexico is too far.
At least little Morgan McCracken is all right. Thank the Lord.
If the liberals had used such a tragedy (as the death of Miss Richardson) to make a political point, conservatives — Michelle Malkin front and center — would be crying “Shame!”
Hypocrisy comes in handy sometimes, don’t it?
Logically, socialism, which involves massive government control of people’s lives is but another form of slavery. In some instances it appears benign but in other it is violent and genocidal. Nothing good has ever come out of socialism and nothing good can because it denies the very right of people to prosper based on their skills and work ethic.
Juliethejarhead, Mrs. Malkin is correct in discussing and pointing out the flaws in the Canadian healthcare system. And hypocrisy is something liberals are all too familiar with.