And ... if we did have a hole in our head, we might wait a very long time to get surgery for it if we adopted a system like the one in Canada.
Maybe, Michael Moore should have interviewed Canadian David Malleau who has endured a year-long wait for skull surgery after an accident:
David Malleau awoke in hospital with a gaping hole in his skull.
The 44-year-old Hamilton truck driver had suffered a devastating car accident in 2004 that forced doctors at Hamilton General Hospital to remove a fist-sized piece of bone from his skull to relieve pressure on his brain.
Once the swelling subsided and he was ready for surgery in March 2005, Malleau was sent home and placed on a waiting list.
Three months passed. Then six. He waited at home, a prisoner unable to leave the house for fear something would hit the exposed side of his brain - for him a potentially fatal incident. In the end, it took nearly a year before he could get skull replacement surgery.
[...]
Malleau, after finally getting his skull replacement surgery in January of last year, is paralyzed on his right side and his speech is only now beginning to return.
"I've pretty much had to fight for everything," says his wife Pat, a former bookkeeper.
"We were taxpayers. Owned our own home. We went from having our jobs, being in the middle class, to nothing."
23 May 2007 @ 6:13am