Question about a Canadian health (s)care story....

[Demoiselle]

Yesterday (I think) CNN featured a Canadian woman who had had a brain tumor. They showed a video of her telling her story of being diagnosed with a brain tumor in Canada and being told by Canadian health officials that she would have to wait for four months for life saving surgery. So, she said, she went to the Mayo Clinic, got her operation, and survives to this day. She also said that she ran up 100,000 dollars in medical bills at Mayo which her friends and neighbors helped her pay. Tearful anguish aplenty. Allegations that Canadian health care would have killed her. No dates, no location cited in Canada.
The story was presented as a cautionary tale, heralded by opponents to public options/single payer in the USA as proof positive that it won't work.

I watched the story and assumed that it was a story full of half truths or no truths. I will admit fully to my prejudices in favor of single payer or (at the very least) a real public option.
Still, it's unnerving to hear such a story.
Anybody got any info on this, and/or other anecdotal stuff out there?

[HeresyLives]

1. Well, I've never heard this story,

but she'd be in surgery right away.

[Demoiselle]

2. The story certainly sounds wrong to me.

My father got very sick in Canada while he was on vacation. (An Elderhostel tour.)

After he was treated very well in a Montreal hospital and was recovering, Two Canadian EMTs DROVE HIM HOME in an AMBULANCE all the way to Philadelphia.
His out-of-pocket cost was minimal. He had good American health insurance, Medicare and a good supplemental as well, and I can't tell you who exactly paid for what.
But I was always impressed by the care the Canadians gave him.

[Hepburn]

3. And there are thousands upon thousands in the US who have NO health care options...

...because they are uninsured. They would not have gotten the operation in ANY months, let alone four as alleged in the program.

GMAFB....:eyes: Propaganda from big pharma and the immoral private health ins mega giants.

JMHO

[Astrad]

4. I'm Canadian and I've never heard of it

I'm 47 and have had numerous interactions with our health care system, as has my wife, ex-wife, parents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews and I know of no case in which anyone had a life threatening condition who wasn't treated promptly. I'm not saying it couldn't happen only if it did I believe it would be an anomoly and probably cause a scandal.

[YewNork]

16. In fact, if her doctor felt that she needed to be treated sooner....

then the insurance system in Canada would paid for her treatment in the US, picking up 100% of the cost.

There are delays in Canada, caused primarily by a lack of specialists (many of them have been lured to the higher salaries in the US).

What does not happen is the government saying when they will pay for treatments or how much treatment can be given in a year.

[Grey]

5. Hip replacement 4 months....

Brain tumor 4 days.

They wanted to fly my Step-mother to Toronto but she wouldn't leave Vancouver, so that is where the operation took place.

Edited to remove snark.

[Demoiselle]

6. I figured the story was false...

But I guess I'm still astonished at the depth and breadth of the lies people will tell and how eager media giants like CNN are to spread them.
Thanks.

[iverglas]

7. I've never heard it either

It doesn't mean it didn't happen, but I'm hard-pressed to see how it could have happened the way it's told.

Have a look at this thread, lower down the page in this forum, for some true lies about our system, and some debunking:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x63598

[iverglas]

8. here's the CNN story

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/06/canadian.health.care.system/

Google news: canadian tumor mayo

Canadians beware: spell it "tumor", not "tumour". ;)

And there are a couple of other reports of the same story. I'm off to check them out.

[iverglas]

9. this woman is all over the internet

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&num=30&q=%22Shona+Holmes%22&btnG=Search&meta=

Testifying here, being interviewed on Fox News there ...

Why just her? Shouldn't there be dozens, nay, hundreds of people with stories like that?

If you read the thread I linked to in my first post in this thread, you'll see what my family's stories -- a very few of them -- are.

I didn't mention the story from 15 years or so ago, the one where my father got neurosurgery as soon as it was necessary, in southern Ontario, to treat a subdural haematoma suffered on a roller coaster at Cedar Point, Ohio ... and then, two days later, emergency abdominal bypass surgery when he became extremely ill while still in hospital after the neurosurgery and it was discovered he had Crohn's disease. He was treated by one of the world's leading neurosurgeons, and a report of his head injury and surgery was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the first reported roller coaster subdural haematoma.

[iverglas]

10. Shona Holmes sued the Ontario government

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/253664

Patients suing province over wait times
Man, woman who couldn't get quick treatment travelled to U.S. to get brain tumours removed
September 06, 2007

Lindsay McCreith, 66, of Newmarket and Shona Holmes, 43, of Waterdown filed a joint statement of claim yesterday against the province of Ontario. Both say their health suffered because they are denied the right to access care outside of Ontario's "government-run monopolistic" health-care system. They want to be able to buy private health insurance.

Ontario's "monopoly" over essential health services and its delay in providing the services have left both patients to "endure significant financial, emotional and physical hardship to access such services in the United States," states the claim.

The problem: shortage of available services in some fields of medicine.

The proposed solution: allow patients to pay privately.

The big question: How will allowing patients to pay for services privately (either out of pocket or via private insurance) increase access to services?

Will it not just ensure that patients using the public insurance plan get bumped farther down the list?

That's exactly what the effect on the UK's NHS has been since private insurance has been permitted. Patients who "go private" get faster service, patients using NHS wait longer and longer.

Why, logically, would the type of payment a patient is using affect the availability of the service??

The only way this could happen is if service providers - doctors - withdraw from the public plan and offer their services privately -- at higher prices.

Has access been improved? Hardly.

Holmes and her co-plaintiff didn't sue to get access to services, or compensation for what they paid to access services outside Ontario.

They sued to get access to private health insurance / private health care.

I think the ideology-driven nature of the action is rather self-evident. Even if we don't note that the action was being funded by the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

http://www.canadianconstitutionfoundation.ca/

In case it isn't clear, it's a right-wing provocateur outfit doing just what such outfits also do in the US: wielding constitutional rights as a club against vulnerable groups and equality-seeking and social justice-seeking segments of Canadian society.

[YewNork]

18. It's because her story is cherry picked. For every bad story, the are millions of instances

of people being treated without a problem, and without the worry that they might lose their coverage or that their illness will bankrupt them.

[iverglas]

20. and it's because there's an agenda

She has hooked up with right-wing outfits in both the US and Canada and is gleefully doing their work for them.

Interesting to contrast her choices with someone else's.

http://kingstonwhigstandard.com/PrintArticle.aspx?e=1641422

Fran Tooley never expected CNN would want her opinion on health-care reform in the United States.

"It came as a complete surprise," said the demure Kingstonian, who gained unexpected notoriety last month when Sen. Mitch McConnell cited her case on the floor of the U. S. Senate as an example of the flaws in Canada's system.

... A number of Canadian patients and hospitals have been unwittingly brought into a political battle in the U. S. Senate by those opposed to the Obama administration's proposal for a public health-care option. It's gotten so bad the Canadian embassy in Washington is planning an education seminar for American politicians to clear up what it says are misconceptions about the Canadian system.

... "I think we're all being exploited and it's ridiculous."

Tooley has begun screening her calls, saying many of them start with a Washington, D. C. area code.

"Hopefully they can all just move on," she said. "(Health care reform) is a big issue that has nothing to do with me."

[iverglas]

11. for progressive critique of the Canadian system:

http://www.healthcoalition.ca/


Ah, the supreme irony - I hadn't heard this one.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli challenged the Quebec health insurance plan all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, arguing that the prohibition on private insurance violated his constitutional rights to life, security of the person, blah blah. He won -- in a very, very bad and insupportable judgment.


http://www.healthcoalition.ca/chaoulli3.html

http://www.montrealgazette.com/Health/Visit+private+clinic+sealed+fate+coroner/1524485/story.html

Visit to private clinic sealed man's fate: coroner
Report highly critical of treatment of patient who died in waiting room, didn't receive CPR
The Gazette April 23, 2009

It could be that Jean-Jacques Sauvageau would have collapsed and died even if had he gone to a hospital ER instead of a private St. Léonard clinic, a Quebec coroner said yesterday. "But one thing is certain, in going to this clinic he had very little chance of surviving," Catherine Rudel-Tessier said in an interview.

... It's not known exactly how long Sauvageau sat in the clinic's waiting room, dead. He was slumped over, his dentures on the floor, when doctor Jacques Chaoulli came to take his pulse, but did not try to revive him.

... In audio tapes of 911 calls, an <emergency services> technician repeatedly urged a nurse, then Chaouilli himself, to do heart compressions. "The clinic's response? 'It's useless, he's dead.' But it's someone <who was seen> alive just a few minutes earlier," Rudel-Tessier said.

Maybe some of your U.S. politicians would like to use this as an example of Canadian health care -- privatized health care. ;)

[iverglas]

12. Michael Dukakis weighs in

This is mostly in response to the tales about Kingston General Hospital I reported on in the thread linked to in my first post here. The article is in the Kingston newspaper, and mentions Shona Holmes.

http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1641422&

So how did Kingston get dragged into this debate?

"Depends on who you're talking to," said Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts and Democratic presidential candidate in 1988.

"These guys (Republicans) will try to find something, usually misinformed, about the Canadian system and then run that up the flagpole as an example of what will happen if we move in that direction."

Dukakis, a politics professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said Canada's system reports few of the incidents the Republicans are searching for.

"You could have a hundred of these incidents every day in the United States," he said. "I think, on a whole, you guys have a pretty good system."

Wait times are a problem in private clinics, too, where there's a shortage of primary physicians, Dukakis said.

"We've got them (wait lines) all over the place these days," he said. "Why do we spend time worrying about Canada, anyway?

[Demoiselle]

13. Thank you all for the research....

..and the perspective. It would be nice if CNN provided research and perspective, wouldn't it!
The Shona story sounded, and still sounds fishy to me.

[iverglas]

14. I tried ;)

There really would seem to have to be some reason why her surgery would have been delayed here.

It's entirely possible that it simply wasn't as urgent as the fee-collecting dr.s in the US decided it was.

Joint replacement surgery (and in some places, cataract surgery, e.g.) can involve somewhat lengthy wait times. That surgery isn't urgent / life-saving, difficult as the circumstances may be for the people who need it.

There are also some reports of delays in cancer treatments.

The big point to remember is: these are all down to funding. (Keeping in mind there can also be capacity and access issues in Canada -- with a population 1/9 that of the US, it is harder to maintain excess capacity to be available for unusual demand.) Two decades of right-wing budget-cutting in Canada, at both the federal and provincial levels, have resulted in less than ideal staffing levels in some specialties and some regions, for example.

Whatever happened to Holmes, it had nothing to do with the prohibition on private insurance / private delivery of services. If it was anything, it had to do with capacity, and capacity isn't increased simply by allowing private insurance/delivery.

And you're welcome, of course!

[YewNork]

15. Without all the details it's impossible to say

Having lived in Canada I feel I can comment having experienced the system myself. First, I'll admit that it does need improvements
because there are situations where you will have to wait longer than you would in the US. They have to prioritize based on severity,
not on the order you show up.

But, without knowing all the details of the woman with the brain tumor, it's impossible to objectively give an assessment of her
situation. How far along was her cancer when it was discovered? Would waiting four months have made a difference. When I lived
in Canada I never saw anyone who REALLY needed immediate care, not get it. My uncle arrived at his doctors office complaining
of shortness of breath, and he was told to go directly to the hospital where they admitted him that day, and he had open-heart
surgery the next day. So, in Canada, very often when you hear about people coming to the US it's because they don't WANT to
have to wait. Without knowing all the details it's just impossible to comment.

Now, do the people in Canada wish that for many things they didn't have to wait? Of course. They'd all love to have the level
of availability as it exists in the US, but if you told them that in order to get it they'd have to give up their universal health
coverage and move to a system where their health insurance was tied to their employment, that they could be denied coverage
due to a pre-existing condition, and that if they didn't have coverage that an illness could bankrupt them, you'd find few takers.

When I lived in Canada, my dermatologist determined that I had melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. If it wasn't
removed it would kill me. He told me that he knew several oncological surgeons that he could refer me to, and that they all were good,
but that I could choose another if I knew one. Since I didn't, I asked to see the one that could see me the quickest. I was given an
appointment four weeks later. My family in the US was appalled that I would have to wait four weeks to see the doctor. When I
spoke to my dermatologist about it, he said that the melanoma was very slow growing, that it was in extremely early stages,
and that four weeks would not make any significant different. He also added that if my melanoma had been more serious,
the surgeon would have seen me sooner.

In any case, I did see the surgeon four weeks later, and he scheduled me for a full in-patient procedure in the hospital to
have the melanoma and several lymph nodes removed. The surgery was three weeks after the first time I saw the surgeon,
so it was a total of seven weeks from when I had been diagnosed. The surgery was a success, there was no indication
that it had spread, and I have been cancer free for four years.

Does this mean that nobody has ever died waiting for treatment in a country with universal health care. Unfortunately, no.

But, for all these cherry picked scare stories, thousands of people are treated quickly, without financial worry, and universally,
every day.

P.S. Family obligations required me to move back to the US last year, where I have found it impossible to obtain
health insurance. The insurance companies here don't want to sell me any health insurance whatsoever, because I was
successfully treated for melanoma over four years ago. I've been told that after eight years I will become eligible for
health insurance that will cover me for everything except melanoma, and that after ten years they will consider covering me
for melanoma again.

[iverglas]

19. reasonable assessment

My brother also had a melanoma on his leg, several months after my father died of metastasized melanoma.

My dad had no symptoms until he broke a bone, and when he flew home to Canada from Florida he went straight to hospital from the airport, on a Saturday afternoon. He was given some appointments for the following week, but on the Sunday had such pain in his leg he was afraid of a recurrence of the clot he'd had some years before, and went back to the ER. A lung xray was done and spots were detected. He had a bone scan the next day, Monday, and was scheduled for a lung biopsy on the Wednesday but missed it, because my mum got stuck in a broken elevator on the way to get the car. It was done two days later, his blood oxygen failed to go back to normal afterward, and he was admitted to hospital where he stayed for the next six weeks. The cancer was way too far gone for treatment. After six weeks (which included radiation therapy, various specialists, pain management, and a scheduled hip surgery on three days' notice, purely for pain relief, which couldn't proceed at the last minute because his heart was too weak - no MRI because he had a pacemaker) he was sent home by ambulance at his request and set up with a 21st century hospital bed and a morphine pump, on-call doctor and visiting nurse. He died three days later, and we had paid not a penny out of pocket, except for a $25 prescription at the end that wasn't covered by the seniors' drug plan because of the form it was prescribed in.

My brother was offered genetic screening when he was diagnosed, but apparently couldn't be bothered. The results would have had no effect whatsoever on his health insurance, or that of anyone else in the family. We would have been alerted to the potential problem and able to seek whatever diagnostic procedures or monitoring were needed. My dermatologist (I paid $200 out of pocket about 5 years ago to have 2 little lumps on my legs and a mole on my back removed that were totally benign but bugged the hell out of me -- the cost included the tissue examination and report that nothing problematic was detected) told me that if genetic screening found a problem, he would see me yearly for full-body examinations.

My mum has skin cancers -- everything under the sun, as it were, except melanoma. She has things removed every few months, sometimes surgically, sometimes medically.

My sister did have genetic screening done last year when she was in the middle of treatment for advanced colorectal cancer. It has been suspected (given that she was a 42-yr-old non-smoking vegetarian) that her cancer was related to my dad's melanoma or to uterine cancer on my mum's side. Turns out it's a fluke.

Neither my sibs' cancers nor any genetic problem that might have been detected affects their or their kids' insurability in any way.

There is no such thing in any Canadian jurisdiction as an exclusion from the health insurance plan. For any reason. You're a legal resident, you're covered, period.

The idea that one can be denied health care - which is what being denied insurance amounts to for most people - because one has been sick ... boggles the bloody mind.

[YewNork]

17. On top of this, Obama is NOT looking to implement a Canadian style system here.

Canada's system, which in actuality is not one system - each province and territory runs it's own insurance system, is based on the single payer model, which Obama has said that he is not looking to implement.

If anything, the system Obama wants a system that resembles the one they have in Australia, where people have an option of buying private insurance, or using a government health insurance plan
which is always there for you.

It's funny how you don't hear horror stories about the Australian system being bandied about by the Republicans.