Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams said he went to the U.S. for heart surgery because his doctors recommended it, not because he lost confidence in Canada’s public health care, a decision that had sparked national attention.
“My doctors in Newfoundland indicated to me that I should go out of the province to get it done,” Williams said in an interview broadcast yesterday with the NTV network. “This is my heart, it’s my health, and it’s my choice.”
The move to seek treatment at a private U.S. hospital sparked debate about the state of Canada’s hospitals and the length of waiting times for surgery in Canada. Williams, 60, told NTV he has “confidence” in public health care and credited his doctors for diagnosing the problem last year and monitoring his condition afterward.
The surgery, which Williams said was for a “leaky valve,” was available in other Canadian provinces, NTV said.
Williams tries to express confidence in Canada's health care system, but he fails.
He came to the U.S. for his surgery.
Enough said.
2 comments:
Quit perpetuating the "Dumb American" stereotype:
From the Canada Health Act - http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/C-6/index.html
"The primary objective of Canadian health care policy is to protect, promote and restore the physical and mental well-being of residents of Canada and to facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers.
The intent of the accessibility criterion is to ensure insured persons in a province or territory have reasonable access to insured hospital, medical and surgical-dental services on uniform terms and conditions, unprecluded or unimpeded, either directly or indirectly, by charges (user charges or extra-billing) or other means (e.g., discrimination on the basis of age, health status or financial circumstances)."
Reasonable access in terms of physical availability of medically necessary services has been interpreted under the Act using the "where and as available" rule. Thus, residents of a province or territory are entitled to have access on uniform terms and conditions to insured health services at the setting "where" the services are provided and "as" the services are available in that setting."
In order to satisfy the criterion respecting portability, the health care insurance plan of a province
(a) must not impose any minimum period of residence in the province, or waiting period, in excess of three months before residents of the province are eligible for or entitled to insured health services;
(b) must provide for and be administered and operated so as to provide for the payment of amounts for the cost of insured health services provided to insured persons while temporarily absent from the province on the basis that
(i) where the insured health services are provided in Canada, payment for health services is at the rate that is approved by the health care insurance plan of the province in which the services are provided, unless the provinces concerned agree to apportion the cost between them in a different manner, or
(ii) where the insured health services are provided out of Canada, payment is made on the basis of the amount that would have been paid by the province for similar services rendered in the province, with due regard, in the case of hospital services, to the size of the hospital, standards of service and other relevant factors."
The Canadian system is required by law to provide citizens with emergency care without delay.
In situations where a Canadian specialist isn't immediately able to drop everything and treat a patient, our system is designed to provide extra-national alternatives.
In this case, that's what happened.
His doctors said he couldn't wait, so they sent him outside the country for emergency care.
That's how our system was designed.
The U.S. system has no comparable mechanism.
Certainly not one wherein doctors & hospitals decide patient care.
In the U.S., insurance companies decide who needs what, and how much of it they'll get.
So part of the CANADIAN system is to send patients it can't care for out of the country???
That's part of the design???
Too funny.
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