Politics vs. Health
 Health Minister ClementYou gotta love it.
In British Columbia, desperate Canadians flee to the U.S. for life-saving surgery while the politicians who administer the health care system have other priorities:
The provincial and federal health ministries will be keeping a close eye on a new privately operated urgent-care centre when it opens its doors in Vancouver next week.
The urgent-care unit of the privately operated False Creek Surgical Centre is not due to open until Dec. 1, but as word got out Friday morning, it immediately attracted widespread attention, including that of the provincial and federal health ministers.
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... [Federal Health Minister] Clement has asked provincial authorities to make sure the centre conforms with the Canada Health Act.
("Officials to watch private clinic", Vancouver Sun, Maurice Bridge, 11/25/06)
 Rick Baker, Timely MedicalCanadian health authorities know how to act quickly when someone attempts to make money by providing private health care services, however they are very slow to respond to the cries for help from their constituents. Shirley Healey of British Columbia was certainly close to death due to a 99% blocked mesenteric artery until she contacted Rick Baker at Timely Medical Alternatives:
Shirley Healey has a $41,000 US bill from a hospital stay in Bellingham, but after having her surgery cancelled twice in Kelowna -- with no guarantee it wouldn't happen again -- she has no regrets about going to the U.S., because her health has been restored.
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A few weeks ago Healey's Bellingham surgery restored circulation to arteries in her stomach and intestines which had severe blockages. According to the Society for Vascular Surgery, mesenteric ischemia is a serious condition requiring urgent or emergency attention.
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After contacting Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives, she said she got a call from Craig Knight, an assistant deputy in the health ministry, who assured her he would look into her case. She assured him she would travel to Vancouver or anywhere else she could get the surgery without fear of being cancelled again.
"I never heard from him again," said Healey, who has so far paid for half the cost of the U.S. surgery which she is convinced saved her life.
"When I was in the recovery area, Dr. Coletti said to me, 'lady, you were starving to death. You were hanging on by a thread.'"
Healey said she assumes he meant that her arteries were starved of blood and oxygen, but she also was starving since she had lost 22 kilograms in a year due to all the vomiting and diarrhea associated with her illness.
("B.C. patient seeks help with U.S. bill", Vancouver Sun, Pamela Fayerman, 11/27/06)
 George AbbottIf there's anything the least bit amusing about Ms. Healey's story, it's the response of the provincial Health Minister George Abbott:
Health Minister George Abbott said in an interview that it is always regrettable when surgeries get bumped.
"But I assure you it is the exception, not the rule, and unfortunately, as in this case, it happens to the same patient more than once."
("B.C. patient seeks help with U.S. bill", Vancouver Sun, Pamela Fayerman, 11/27/06)
Mr. Abbott's office was informed about Ms. Healey's desperate condition long before she decided to go to the U.S.
He did nothing.
Posted by Stuart Browning
27 Nov 2006 @ 10:55am
Socialized Health Care On Trial in Ontario, Canada
 "No Brain Surgery Today!""Single-Payer" health care zealot George Smitherman - the Health Minister of Ontario, Canada - demands that citizens wait in long lines for appointments with specialists, diagnostic imaging and surgery rather than allow them to access private medical care and insurance. However, Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives in Vancouver is helping some desperate Canadians stand up to an unjust system:
A company that refers patients to private health-care clinics in Canada and the U.S. is trying to raise money from private hospitals to "sponsor" a threatened lawsuit against the Ontario government that it hopes could open the door to two-tier health care in Canada.
Richard Baker, president of the Vancouver-based Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., said his company wants to sue the province on behalf of a 66-year-old Newmarket man who went to Buffalo, N.Y., for an MRI and surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumour.
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At the heart of Baker's potential lawsuit is Lindsay McCreith -- a man from Newmarket who said he couldn't wait for surgery in Ontario and went to Buffalo instead.
Ontario's health insurance plan is refusing to foot McCreith's $28,000 US bill because the trip wasn't pre-approved.
Mr. McCreith had a golfball-sized tumor on his brain. His appointment just to get an MRI in Canada was a four month long wait. To get surgery would have been months more. Instead, Mr. McCreith contacted Timely Medical who brought him across the border to a U.S. hospital where he got his MRI in a week - and a biopsy and surgery in another week. The diagnosis? Brain cancer. Luckily, McCreith got his surgery quickly while the cancer was a stage 2 growth.
Posted by Stuart Browning
17 Nov 2006 @ 9:22am
Bad Dreams
 "Get in line, citizens."With the coming Democratic control of Congress, now comes the threat of new initiatives to nationalize the U.S. health care system as Hillary Clinton outlines legislative priorities:
"Health care is coming back," Clinton warned, adding, "It may be a bad dream for some."
Actually, in places where socialized medicine has been in place - like the U.K. - bad dreams have long been a permanent fact of life as health care is rationed in a callous and arbitrary manner:
Retired milkman Walter Field learned that beds were not available on both days he was due to be admitted to the hospital in Gorleston for urgent surgery for kidney cancer last month.
The 77-year-old, from Hopton, needs to have his left kidney removed and cancerous growths cut out from the other to have any chance of stopping the disease spreading. A tube will also be inserted from the kidney to the bladder so Mr Field no longer has to use a colostomy bag.
The eight-bed intensive care unit was full on both occasions when the grandfather of two was due to be admitted and he is still waiting for another date for the operation.
"It is very frustrating, my bags have been packed and obviously I am keen to have this done as soon as possible," he said.
"My son Alan has taken time off work to travel from London to be with us and keeps having to go back."
Mr Field's wife Doreen says she is furious about the cancellations and has made a formal complaint to the hospital.
"I was fuming when I heard, and keep hoping it would all be done and finished with and instead of that our nerves are still on edge. This is making a stressful situation even worse," she added
"There is concern about elderly people taking up beds, but we are the one who have paid the most taxes to support the NHS."
Mr Field was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of September and quickly admitted to hospital to have a colostomy bag fitted and released in time to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary.
The operation was due to take place last Wednesday after the previous appointment was cancelled on October 18.
Posted by Stuart Browning
13 Nov 2006 @ 6:11pm
Socialism Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
 The British National Health Service has historially served as a model for socialist health care "reformers" in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. - And everywhere government-run medicine has been tried, the results have been the same: rationing of healthcare. Unfortunately, all too often care delayed is care denied.
A mother who died when a swollen gland in her neck burst was due to have a routine operation three months earlier which could have saved her life.
Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust is now investigating why Ertrice Simmons, 56, of Blackbird Leys in Oxford, did not receive the operation she was promised.
The mother-of-10, of Pegasus Road, was due to undergo treatment on an enlarged thyroid in her neck in August last year. But she died at her home in November - three months later - when the thyroid gland burst.
Now, a year after her death, her daughter Annica Simmons-Bobb, of Teal Close in Greater Leys, is demanding an inquiry into why she was not treated.
A letter from the trust to Ms Simmons-Bobb said in April last year it was recommended her mother should have the operation before August 21 - but the surgery was not scheduled until the following January.
A trust spokesman said it could not explain why the operation was not carried out.
Ms Simmons-Bobb said: "I know no reason why she wasn't seen. She should still be here alive today but because of that mistake she is not.
"I want justice. I know had it been the other way round she wouldn't have just left it like that.
"I want them to admit to being responsible. Death from an enlarged thyroid is extremely rare.
Posted by Stuart Browning
6 Nov 2006 @ 9:38am
Compassionate Canada
 The word from the recently held Toronto Film Festival where Michael Moore showed excerpts from his upcoming health care documentary 'Sicko' is that there's a line in the movie where Moore says something like "In Canada people take care of each other while in the U.S., it's 'I''ve got mine, f*ck you'". I wonder if this is what he means.
Five months after a spot was detected on his lung and three months after a biopsy confirmed it was malignant, Harald Draxler arrived at Grand River Hospital on Tuesday for lung cancer surgery.
Having had heart bypass surgery in 2000 and a stroke in 2004, the Kitchener man was anxious but psyched up for the procedure to remove a portion of his upper left lung.
He could hardly believe his ears when a nurse told him an hour before the operation that it was cancelled.
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"The hardest part is that I worry that the cancer is spreading," said Harald ...
Posted by Stuart Browning
3 Nov 2006 @ 8:18am
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