54 Replies to “An Ottawa Cancer Patient & Liberal Jim Watson”

  1. Samatha’s comments are a terrible indictment on Canada’s healthcare system.
    Is there a politician out there, of any stripe, that is willing to change the health care system, regardless of their own personal political consequences?

  2. The link to me is broken but it’s unimportant. Thank you for bringing Samantha’s fight to the attention of your readers, Kate. I broke down in tears hearing her recite her story on air.

  3. Yeah, but isn’t that whole faith-based schools thing soooo much more important that the health of the population……geeeez…..
    JCL

  4. We spend gobs on healthcare in Ontario, only to have it squandered by hordes of bureaucrats that have little if any value add.
    Where is the incentive to be efficient? There is none in a one-provider system.

  5. Sadly, she is not the only one. There is a young woman in Kitchener Ontario who had to go to Arizona to have a brain tumor removed–she apparently hadn’t filled out the proper papers here to get timely treatment.
    Does paper beat cancer? Just wondering, the Ontario government seems to think so.

  7. My friend has stage 4 cancer of the bowel and abdomen. He started waiting for chemo in April, got it starting in June, and will have a scan in October. For almost a year now he has absolutely zero information on how or if his cancer has progressed.
    When I had private medical in London, UK, a few years ago, I hurt my knee. I had an MRI done the very next day.

  8. My friend has stage 4 cancer of the bowel and abdomen. He started waiting for chemo in April, got it starting in June, and will have a scan in October. For almost a year now he has absolutely zero information on how or if his cancer has progressed.
    My mother waited over a year before getting knee surgery last month that enabled her to walk properly. Another friend of mine waited 18 months for similar surgery.
    When I had private medical in London, UK, a few years ago, I hurt my knee. I had an MRI done the very next day.

  9. Canada’s cancer survival rate is lower than many 3rd world nations….considering that cancer now effects 1 in 2 Canadians, it has become the plague of the 20th century…why do legislators not take this seriously?
    http://tinyurl.com/3xo6hc
    As long as one in 2 Canadians will contract this deadly disease and we have a system that can only save 14% of them, why are there other priorities…Cancer is the greatest public safety issue the nation has ever faced…..but what consumes our masters who hold the nation’s collectivist purse?

  10. There’s a special place in hell for those who place their political ideology over the very practical question of how best to deliver health care to the Canadian people.
    It may be that public health insurance is a great idea, but how can one justify stopping people from offering private health services and allowing private citizens to spend their own money there if they so wish? How can we justify limiting people’s freedom on something so vital?

  11. “Is there a politician out there, of any stripe, that is willing to change the health care system, regardless of their own personal political consequences?”
    The Greek
    It’s called an informed electorate who gets off it’s ass and demands action.
    Samantha’s plight is very sad but even as she’s telling her story she sounds like a pathetic, polite sheep which makes me want to cringe…The lady’s frickin dying and she almost sounds like she’s apologizing for a bloated and inneficient system.
    We are not out of the woods anytime soon and yeah, watch us reelect McGuinty’s gang.
    This is truly the land of morons.

  12. God bless you Samantha and give you His grace. Your splendid reserved account of the blundering government controlled health care mess is heart wrenching and that it was allowed to happen is deplorable. What soviet inspired freedom denying death requirement have our political masters brought us? That each of us should be forbidden to seek out health resources and spend whatever we have, in addition to whatever we spend collectively through government on our health is an abomination. Even our schools are permitted to operate freely outside the government perview why not health?

  13. You cant fix a problem until you define it.
    Problem is, there are too many avenues of escape for our politicians.
    The first thing that must be done IMO is to get rid of the dual responsibilities that presently exist.
    The Federal Government makes all kinds of statements (promises) that they cant fulfill since Health is a Provincial responsibility.
    The provinces complain that they dont get enough money from the Federal Government to deliver the kind of care that Canadians want.
    And we, the people who have the sword, wont use it.
    And so the sick are comdemned to be controlled by the Bureaucrats.
    During my lifetime, i have seen good healthcare, and i have seen care that should have resulted in prison time.
    The difference between the good and bad is the people who deliver the care.
    Unless we are ready to deal with this in an honest and open manner, theres no hope of improvement.

  14. “Is there a politician out there, of any stripe, that is willing to change the health care system, regardless of their own personal political consequences?”
    Yes, but he has to have a majority government.
    Most Canadian politicians simply do not care about the plight of patients in the health care system. They are much more concerned with political survival, empire building, and retaining power.
    If that sounds cynical, show me the facts to prove otherwise, and don’t bother to quote what any of them SAY. It’s action, not words, that count.
    Dr,Brian Day of the Cambie Surgical Centre in Vancouver, said that “every surgeon in B.C. has patients dying on the waiting list”. He was allotted about five hours per week of operating room time.
    We must allow private hospitals and clinics to operate parallel to our public system, otherwise we will continue to hear this story, repeated thousands of times, every year.
    This is a heart breaking story, and not at all unusual.

  15. I heard this story on the radio the other day. Later that day they had a doctor talking about the value of PET scans, and he agreed that they were very useful for picking up new cancers spreading through the body. He had no answer for why Ontario fails to more effectively utilize this tool.
    Of course this is just a drop in the bucket of failures of Canada’s health care system. When you have no choice in your care, you are at the mercy of the administrators. And of course the administrators have no incentive to change how they do things, as they get little feedback as to how effective the system is. It’s only the unusual case (such as this one will probably be) that attracts the attention of the politicians and brings a bit of change into how things are done. But that’s not enough.

  18. Brave, brave girl !!
    Why was she so polite ?? She should have walked up and paste him.
    Near the end, Watson said ‘all these important issues and the campaign is focused on FBS’. Excuse me !! That is the focus because the Liberal friendly media is MAKING it the issue.
    Perhaps this was the most significant statement of the debate (and signals a turn in stratagy?)
    “There are only two options for addressing the education funding system,” he said. “Either fund all faiths or fund no faiths.” JT

  19. Lee is so right about what he says. It is the luck of the draw. If you happen to get lucky and you encounter health care workers who are competent, caring and diligent your experience will be good. Unfortunately the system rarely works this way. As an insider for 30 years I watched union sanctioned behavior that cost lives.
    These workers that embrace the Union propaganda work as little as possible for as much money as possible. Many could care less about the people they are hired to serve. They see them as a nuisance that gets in the way of their computer games, internet surfing, online chatting, 45 minute coffee breaks and 60 minute(Supposed to be 30 minutes) lunch breaks. The employees themselves generally decide how much they can accomplish in one day and I can tell you from 30 years of experience that most of these individuals don’t overwork themselves.
    Many health care workers I worked with felt stressed if they had to do 2 hours of real work in an 8 hour day. I kid you not.The system can’t get rid of these sick time abusing , lazy , incompetent people because the unions go to the end of the earth to protect them. Patients and families suffer but these people don’t care and it’s disgusting.
    The only thing that is going to fix this system is to privatize it.

  20. Medicare has always been about budget control and not care. The question for each and every government is how can we control costs? Waiting lists is one method, endless treatment trials (despite the fact that such treatments have been shown effective already) is another. Can the biology of Canadians really be that different that Americans? Adding layers of bureaucracy becomes another method of hiding the inefficient nature of the current system. There is always another form or another criteria (often secret or unlisted) by which treatment can be refused and costs controlled. Do anything except admit that the current system doesn’t work.

  22. dmorris
    a majority will not solve the health care issue, Chretian had a majority when his Finance minister(p.martin)cut the provincial health care transfers.
    No we need a politician(govt)that will actually apply the monies reaped off of the backs of the taxpayers to health care & stop playing money games,stop promising the world, stop blaming the other guy, Just Do It.
    Every election we here the same thing, Here in Ont we had the biggest broken promise on health care(yet this guy still leads in the polls). When people speak as one voice Loud & clear then they will stand up & listen & perform.

  23. Canada has the best healthcare system in the world, until you have to use it.
    When you’re young and healthy it’s not a concern.
    Baby boomers dealing with aging parents and their serious health issues are now getting a rude introduction to “The best system in the world.” It ain’t pretty and we boomers know that we’re next in line. Private hospitals and health insurance are needed now.
    Why does this brave woman’s “right to choose” end with her uterus?

  24. What this woman is experiencing is known as “supervised neglect”.
    On Oct. 14, 1998 I went ‘postal’ on the doctor handling my mother’s case who suggested we wait 9 months for an MRI. At this stage she was siezing up due to Parkinson’s like late stage (Stage 4) rigor mortis.
    “Stage IV (advanced disease): Both sides of the body are affected, and there is disabling instability while standing or walking. The person in this stage requires substantial help.”
    I CC’d everyone in the system from the Prime Minister’s Office on down the chain of command.
    The following day I took my mother down to the hospital and demanded service with copies of all I had CC’d too.
    It took a three week battery of tests to identify a neurological palliative treatment which could have been started about 12 months earlier.
    In the end she died of a neurological condition known as ‘striato-nigral degeneration’ April 2002.
    It is the administrative gate keepers that will inflict ‘euthanasia by stealth’ unless they get a swift kick in the gonads.
    Here we are after the Chaoulli Supreme Court of Canada case and we are finally going to discuss access to healthcare almost a decade later!!
    After receiving more assinine letters from Canada Revenue Agency, in respect of my son’s Type I insulin dependent diabetes, I have come to conclude that euthanising by stealth is the preferred LIEberal option in Canada.
    Of course I am running out of family members on which to demonstrate, as CRA suggested, “group organ failure”. Should I find it necessary to visit CRA to demonstrate ‘group organ failure’ they will find it decidedly unpleasant.
    We have seen and experienced the “CARE AND COMPASSION” of the LIEberal system.
    It looks to me like the old National Socialist system where the ‘genetic defectives’ are just quietly eliminated by stealth, because we don’t want to waste precious dollars, on heavens, mere people. But of course one can’t say that out loud, it might disturb the inhabitants.
    Because as we have learned, money is more important than people.
    I’m glad we have now shed some light on the moral metrics as practiced by LIEberals.
    The LIEberal mantra: POWER and MONEY are important and you say whatever you have to, to get re-elected. Then you bury your ‘excrement’, Puffin style and hope that no one notices.
    As to the CRA proposition to demonstrate ‘group organ failure’, in the absence of an apology, they can respectfully GO TO HELL.
    Cheers
    Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht BGS, PDP, CFP
    Commander in Chief
    Frankenstein Battalion
    2nd Squadron: Ulanen-(Lancers) Regiment Großherzog Friedrich von Baden (Rheinisches) Nr.7
    (Saarbrucken)
    Knecht Rupprecht Division
    Hans Corps
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  25. About not being accepted into one of those programmes she said: “I don’t know what the parameters are”.
    Straight out of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” in which the main character is arrested but not told what the crime is. We never learn what it is.
    Make no mistake: the pencil pushers don’t know what the parameters are either.
    Sadly, I must agree with a couple posters above: the public is getting what it voted for, and good and hard (paraphrasing HL Menckhen).
    I’m very sad, but pi**ed with her politeness. She suffers from terminal politeness. Canada suffers from terminal politeness and terminal stupidity of course.
    Finally, quoting from my old man c. 1968 about Trudeau: “He doesn’t understand economics”.
    Canadians don’t understand economics. Don’t understand that, as von Mises showed, socialism CAN’T work.

  26. Just so y’all know the actual depth of the bullshit on this one, it is possible to -lease- a complete PET scanner in a truck. They give you the whole shooting match including a little waiting room. Pull up to your desired location, fire up the generator and start in scanning patients as soon as the magnet gets cold.
    Or an MRI machine, CAT scanner, lithotripsy suite (gall stones, owie!), SPECT scan, portable operating room, you name it and you can get it.
    But not here. “So sorry, no licenses are being issued for [name of your machine/service here] at this time. Please have a pleasant day.”
    If the Indian reserves weren’t run by such a pack of brain dead criminals they could be making a MINT off this.

  27. we keep dancing the same old socialist dance. no one seems to be able to change the two step. one step forward two steps back. hell we might as well be using leaches if we are not using current tech.

  28. a young man i know had an operation for prostate cancer in july. he will not have chemo or any other treatment until late november. note, a young man. early 40’s.

  29. This problem is beyond any political affiliation.
    Like any government control endeveour, it is bound to be inneficient, bloated and strapped with big, money siphoning unions.
    Communism does not work. Any government run institutions: Healthcare, education will demand more and more tax support and deliver less and less in the long run.
    The Canadian healthcare machine is so huge with it’s thousands of unionized paper pushing bureaucrats at the provincial and federal levels who don’t even remotely come close to administrating direct medical diagnosis and treatment to patients that no government leader dares to address the issue: CUT AND SLASH the bureaucracy and doubling (Fed and Prov) of management.
    This would be political suicide and would probably be reversed by a new elected leader…
    Bottom line is that we are somewhat doing it to ourselves!
    “You ask, who killed the Kennedys, when afterall it was you and me…”
    Sympathy for the devil by The Rolling Stones

  30. Hans–you are so right in your estimation that our leaders are practicing euthanasia by stealth. It is becoming more obvious every day.
    Google Shona Holmes and the same thing has happened to her. She ‘didn’t fill out the correct paperwork’! So that is what we have become–paper-filler-outers?
    This just sprang into my head this morning–remember all the ethnic groups that got millions of dollars from McSquishy just a few weeks ago? They didn’t even have to fill out paper work–they just were handed the money for their clubs, sports teams etc. I guess it is more important to get votes from active people than it is to take care of taxpayers? Can Soylent Green be far behind?

  31. I note that John Tory has forged a respectful working relationship with Howard Hampton. Would I prefer a PC government, inevitably a minority one, formally or informally propped up by the NDP? It’s what’s happening now in Ottawa to some degree, and it beats a Liberal government any day.

  32. Sam, I’ll say a prayer for you. God bless you.
    Leftards about to make a snide remark about religion: keep your sarcastic smart ass mouth shut until you’re dying from cancer.

  33. Sigh. I have some personal experience and knowledge with regard to these issues.
    It’s obvious that most people here think that access to more advanced and more rapid testing should be increased. Fair enough.
    How do you address the issue of costs? These things cost money. Who will pay? Who here is willing to have their taxes increased to pay for these?
    Or, do we abandon publically funded medicine for the American system? At least there would be a choice about getting the test faster, or a better test, if you were willing to pay your good money for it.
    I’m not trolling, I’m just trying to see what people think.
    Personally, I think that we should abandon public healthcare. Just like those with more money (i.e. the employed) get better houses and better food and better schools for themselves and their family, why can’t they get better healthcare if they are able and willing to pay?
    Is health care a more basic right, than food? Than shelter? than education? I think not.
    With specific regard to PET scans, they are incredibly expensive. For the money used to obtain a PET scanner and operate it (hugely expensive ongoing costs, not just the initial spending) one could argue that we could fund dozens of public nurses to go around and follow people for things like blood pressure control, proper prenatal care for pregnant women, and treat nutritional problems, and WAY more lives would be saved by this way of spending the money than by funding a PET scanner. Truly an ounce of prevention is worth a TON of cure, in medicine.

  34. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the lady, and perhaps I’m in a distrustful mood today, but since you Canadians are in a political season and this lady’s story fits so nicely in the anti-Liberal meme, I have to ask, do you know within a reasonable level of assurance that her story is for real?

  35. Lori:
    What most people object to is ‘supervised neglect’ when there is known technology and palliative care and it isn’t implemented.
    For example, while my mother was being denied her MRI, my sister came home with reports that cats and dogs were getting their MRIs during off hours from the animal emergency clinic!!
    But then the cat and dog owners were paying cash while our politicians were routinely stealing it.
    Cheers

  36. I don’t doubt the story is real. But for every story like this one, how many other stories are there of patients who
    1) got a PET scan and it made not a whit of difference
    2) were treated successfully without need for this test, which did not exist usefully until a few years ago.
    A more important question that kind of summarizes the whole thing is whether there is a significantly different cure rate, or longer survival with cancer, in say Ontario patients vs Quebec patients who have access.
    Further, Quebec is notorious for paying their physicians about 1/2 to 2/3 of what other physicians are getting in the rest of Canada. They have had a mass exodus of qualified specialists, and their waiting periods are among the worst, ERs are staffed by doctors essentially conscripted into the job.
    So, basically they have chosen to fund a test, at the expense of funding human knowledge and access to a physician.
    I’d bet dollars to donuts that the average cancer patient gets faster better care in Ontario than in Quebec.

  37. Lori, Ontario already has these machines in abundance. They are sitting idle.
    It matters not a whit whether Ontario Patients are waiting more or less time than Quebec patients.
    None of them should be waiting at all.

  38. There are nine PET scanners in Ontario, I think.
    A PET scan costs 5000 dollars. Per scan. So, 14 PET scans would pay the costs of a public health nurse for a year.
    The machine sitting idle means it is not costing money to operate. Moreover, they are not sitting idle. They are not available to OHIP patients much of the time, either because research is being done into their usefulness and accuracy, or because they are run “FOR PROFIT” to non-OHIP patients.
    Without research, there would be no advancement. The MRIs of today are incredibly more accurate than those of 10 years ago precisely because of this type of research. I remember years ago how people used to get so upset in Torotno because there were two MRIs at the Toronto Western Hospital and at Sunnybrook, and one was “for research only”. But it was necessary, and beneficial now.
    And while it may seem asinine to permit access to people who can pay cash from outside the public system (i.e. a patient with cancer cannot even BUY a scan in Toronto due to the Canada Health Act, but a tourist from the US can, because they are not covered and hence not restricted), the fact is that this source of income actually “pays the bills”, so the OHIP patient get their scan at a much lower cost to the system, partially on the back of the 3rd party payer who pays full cost + a premium.
    There is no great conspiracy out there to deny people care. This is one of the great unsolvable problems of the modern world. It is always possible to spend more on health care, without limits. At what point do we cut it off in a publically funded system? There are always tradeoffs.
    If there was a simple solution it would have been found by now.

  39. The answer, to the posts above about being able to get your pet an MRI before your mother is obvious: we should be able to pay for MRI privately if we have the money. Absolutely.
    But it is against the law – that’s the Canada Health Act. The sacred cow of Canadian politics.
    It sucks. Who has the will to change it and go to a two tier system? I certainly would support that.

  40. So the answer is that we need a lot less bureaucrats and more front line doctors and nurses to use the available funds more efficiently.
    This will in turn reduce waiting times and get people back to a healthier life or palliative care.
    Hence funds will be freed up to run the PET scanners.
    As to sacred cows, I’ve stopped worshipping those some time ago.
    Cheers

  41. Having services delivered by the private sector would certainly squeeze a lot of fat out of the system. How much? 25%, 40%, 50%, dare to dream. Why not put out an RFP for, say, 1000 PET scans per month to be performed. Let some medical companies bid on it. Bet it comes in at a lot less than $5000 per.

  42. The problem is that in the States, where it’s for profit private insurance company controlled, the system has actually proven LESS efficient than in Canada.
    That is the one way in which everyone agrees that the Canadian system is better. We spend a much higher proportion of our health care dollars on actually providing care than does the US.
    Part of the problem in the US is the medicolegal difficulty they have, but also the insurance companies require tremendous documentation for payment, and micromanage every decision about what they will pay and what they won’t. I remember seeing one professor having to call an insurance company, wait on line to speak to a clerk, to see if they would approve something, during the patient’s clinic visit. Insane!
    Doctors there have to employ multiple secretaries to do and keep track of billing and collections, while insurance companies employ thousands of bureaucrats to make sure they don’t have to pay a cent more than necessary.
    In Canada billing is pretty efficient – you send a bill to the government with about 4 items of information on it, they pay. Cheating is estimated at 2-4% and there are enough audits to keep a lid on it more or less. Often the billings for a whole group of physicians are done by a single secretary with her other duties as well. In the States this would be simply impossible.
    The Canadian system has very little fat in it. The fat has gradually been squeezed out of it in the last 20 years.
    Those 30 million bucks that Dalton wasted on paying off his ethnic buddies would cover very little. A single medium sized hospital costs 100 million or more to run annually, and we have dozens and dozens. A single ICU bed costs 20,000 dollars a day to operate. Health care costs are incredible.
    But, and this is the big but for me, at least there is choice. Within Canada is is AGAINST THE LAW to choose to spend your life savings to try to save your child, or yourself by getting quicker or better care. What kind of a country is this?

  43. Lori,
    With all due respect, you don’t know what you are talking about. PET, CT and MRI are different technologies that work differently and each has their strengths and weaknesses. A scan/test mayor may not make a difference but how would one know if they didn’t have one? The sooner you detect some cancers the better your chances of surviving. Had a PAP test or mamagram lately? Why bother if it might not make a difference.
    The problem (among many) with the Canadian Health care system is that they treat the patient as a liability, i.e. giving her that test or surgery will cost the system money. So the hospital cuts their costs by not giving treatment and machines go idle.
    And for G*d sakes, there are other systems out there besides the evil American system that have both public and private systems co-existing and working.

  45. “And for G*d sakes, there are other systems out there besides the evil American system that have both public and private systems co-existing and working.”
    Texas Canuck hit the nail right on the head. Instead of looking at health care systems that blend public and private care to everyone’s benefit, the left start with the labels, i.e. “the americanization of health care”.
    Until we get angry enough to hold the politicians accountable, we are stuck with an inefficient money pit that allows people to die on waiting lists.

  46. My wife and I went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota when we had a cancer scare during her first pregnancy.
    Her doctor, Oncologist and potential surgeon (who was required in the end) could not agree on the results of a biopsy and wanted to run radioactive die through her body (at a risk to the baby) to get “possibly” more accurate test results.
    Her employer was upset at the situation and made us an appointment at the Mayo Clinic.
    We flew down and had a new biopsy and an ultrasound that afternoon. The next morning the doctor told us to go home and have a healthy baby, then arrange to have the tumor – now guaranteed benign – removed a few months later.
    Before we left he asked why we had come down there for something so simple. We explained the story and he didn’t believe us. “Canada has a GREAT system, you just had a fluke bad experience” he said. I replied “If it’s so great, why are YOU here?”, as i pointed to the Diploma’s on his wall from Canadian Universities.
    He simply smiled for a moment and said “…touche”.
    Feeling absolutely guilty for my wifes employers expense for the “benign” result, we wanted to pay back the cost as it was worth any price for the peace of mind we received, we asked administration the final cost.
    $700 was the consultation fee and because the work done did not exceed that, it was the final fee. Our flights cost 4x that amount.
    Our surgeon was so upset at us when we got back that my wife was actually frightened to let her perform the surgery. “I told you I was right. The Vancouver lab and your Oncologist were obviously wrong” she said. They were all so concerned about who was going to be right and who was going to be wrong, they forgot about the patients needs.
    Absolutely disgusting…
    Oh, and that horrible pro-US evil capitalist employer that sent us there?
    http://www.usask.ca/campaign/news/read.php?id=41
    Would i go again now that i have experienced it first hand?
    In a palpitating heartbeat…

  47. Texas Canuck, who understands economics, said:
    “The problem (among many) with the Canadian Health care system is that they treat the patient as a liability”.
    Believe or not a Canadian doctor recently made exactly this point to me. In the US system the doctor is a source of REVENUE not a liability.
    I know a relative of Brian Day (the new CMA prez and a gifted orthopedic surgeon) who told me that one of the reasons he created Canada’s first private clinic was that he got only 4 hours a week of surgery — not enough, he claimed, to keep up his skills.
    With a single payor zero-deductible system rationing is inevitable no matter how gifted and sincere the politicans and bureaucrats are. You cannot rescind the iron rules of economics.
    What I can’t get my tired head around is that Canadians don’t seem to know enough basic economics to inderstand why their dogs and cats don’t have our health care problems.

  48. anyone have any info on Belinda Stronach’s treatment which is being also being in the US. I support her decision to do so but I also believe that she is obligated to offer the following disclaimer:
    “Yeah I’m a fukking hypocrite, but I have billions of dollars and you don’t- so be glad you have free medical care and political masters like myself whose lives and the ideology we represent are more important than yours so shut the hell up.”

  49. God bless her and her young family. How very sad it is that our universal health care system is so horrible that in trying to meet the needs of the many we actually end up meeting the needs of a very select few

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